Tag Archive for 'perdere'

Winning is not everything

Beginning in the 2000s, the purpose of the work of Smith and Smoll, who introduced a system for evaluating coach behavior twenty years earlier, has turned to the study of systems for training youth coaches to be more aware of their own behaviors and to improve them.

Their approach is based on four principles that all coaches should adhere to:

  • Winning is not everything, nor it is the only thing - Young athletes will drop out of the sport if they believe that winning is the only goal to be fulfilled. There are other equally important goals that sports allow them to achieve that must be understood by athletes.
  • Failing is not synonymous with losing - It is important that athletes do not associate that failing and losing mean the same thing.
  • Being successful is not a synonym for winning - Success or failure is not dependent on the outcome of a race. Winning and losing are about the outcome of a competition but do not refer to success and failure.
  • Athletes must learn that success is linked to commitment - They must be taught that they will never be a loser if they try their hardest.

Starting from these principles, they have identified and implemented a training system that has produced extremely effective results.

The motivation is all for the winning athletes

Many athletes believe that to be fit nd have developed their sports skills at the highest level are sufficient conditions to succeed in sport. In this spirit they compete and when their performance is unsuccessful, they do not know how this could be happen, because they felt so ready, that they should not go wrong. They show, in essence, a mechanical and simplified conception of competitive performance, according to which the owning physical fitness and sports skills should determine winning results.  As states Wilma Rudolph this, however, does not occur because they have underestimated the power of dreams and the spirit. They did not understand that fitness and skill are only the prerequisites for success, which it’s instead determined by the motivation to express the best of their abilities. Without that kind of motivation they do not go anywhere. Of course to show this attitude of perseverance and high intensity  before and during the race is very expensive, it takes away a lot of energy, without necessarily ensuring the victory, since there are also the opponents. Who supports this attitude will receive great satisfaction from the sport, the others will remain good athletes that they could have achieved more, by virtue of their skills but who have not taken till the end of this trip within their motivation.

Success depends upon previous preparation

In preparation for big sport events it’s crucial to get to opening day with the belief to be ready and that nothing can distract from the performance to do it. Reaching this state of mind is already a major achievement for any athlete. It does not mean to feel calm, but rather to be confident, having done everything it needed to get that appointment at the best. It’s like saying: “I am prepared to express myself at the best in this competition, I can do it.”

The preparation ends at that time and the next step is to do it. Now in the athletes’ mind emerge decisively anxieties and fears, that the athlete have to manage but who are limited by their confidence to feel ready.

In a little more than 10 months, the Olympics and Paralympics Games will start, the best athletes are engaged in qualifying and for all it will be important to reach those days feeling prepared at the best. The work of the sports psychologists will be very important for them to build this kind of mentality.

Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure. (Confucius)

Resilience teached by Tiger Woods

If you are a champion you do figure out how to address the losses and Tiger Woods definitely  is.

One day after the worst score of his career, Tiger Woods played the final round of the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide just like it was any other Sunday. He wore his red shirt. He played at the same pace. He tossed blades of grass in the air to judge the wind and crouched to read important putts. The only difference was he played as a single. He even removed a flagstick by himself when his caddie was busy raking a bunker.

“Just because I’m in last place doesn’t change how I play golf,” he said. “Whether it’s the first day or last day, doesn’t matter. Play all out.”

“This is a lonely sport,” Woods said. “The manager is not going to come in and bring the righty or bring the lefty. You’ve just got to play through it. And that’s one of the hardest things about the game of golf, and it’s also one of the best things about the game of golf. When you’re on, no one is going to slow you down. When you’re off, no one is going to pick you up, either. It’s one of those sports that’s tough. Deal with it.

Tiger Woods carded a 74 Sunday at Muirfield Village, a day after his career-high round of 85. (Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)

Milan lose for lack of will

Yesterday’s match AC Milan-Atalanta is an example of how the defeat could depend on the lack of will, which it has been showed during the match in terms of reduced commitment, lack of fighting spirit, excessive distractions and misakes, distance between players and so on. Inzaghi has said that the team, saw yesterday, is not the real one, “after beating Napoli and deserved to win against Roma we cannot be these one … serve availability, will, heart.” This sentence contains two important truths. The first: it is easier to play with serenity against top teams because the team has nothing to lose. Against them Milan does not have to win at all costs and thus the team can play more confident. Second, it is much more difficult to show that attitude against the other teams, which in turn want to get a winning result, because they play against the team second in the world for trophies won. It’s just against these teams that Milan should show the availability and willingness asked by Inzaghi. To achieve this goal it needs as recalled the journalist Gianni Mura “less narcissises and more true players.” It’s around these mental group aspects that Inzaghi should coach the team, otherwise whatever type of play he will propose he will not see it ever implemented for lack of will.

Inzaghi has to coach the will of his players by acting on personal and group motivation, self-determination, will to take initiatives, fast mistake control, volitional efficacy, awareness of the player roles in the pitch, goal maintenance during the match . He must daily challenge the players to show this attitude against any team regardless of its name and rank.

When you lose instead to win

There is not only the tension of those athletes who are losing or in trouble during a race. There is also the one who was in the lead and begins to feel the tension that can no longer dominate, losing the opportunity to win or at least to do well. Often the athletes will say: “I do not know what happened, I felt just like before but I make a mistake.” These are the moments when they lose the sensitivity of their shots, they think to be as a moment before. Instead, the mind has fallen into the trap, it’s anesthetized and the athletes react like a robot losing the body control. They perform without realizing that the tension is growing and it bring them to move rigidly and not fluid, the actions lose their coordination, speed and accuracy, and in doing so theybegin to go down. It happens in all sports and just a mental program practiced with persistence and used during the races can be taught to overcome these negative moments.

In tennis is determinant to accept to lose

I am not a tennis statistician  but I got curious to know how many matches are won/lost in a career. I did this research onlychoosing few women tennis players, even though I hope that someone has done extensive studies on the relation between matches won and lost. The results found are interesting for me to understand the situations that tennis players find themselves living more frequently and to understand which could be the psychological implications.

tennis players   matches   lost    won    %

Camila Giorgi   322        193    129    59

Karin Knapp    519        314    205    60

F. Schiavone    902        526    376    58

Sara Errani      617        368     249    59

R. Vinci           843         520    323    61

S. Williams      764         650     114    85

M. Sharapova  672         535     137   79

It appears that with the exception of the firsts in the world and winners at least one Grand Slam tournament, as Williams and Sharapova, who lost an average of 2 out of 10 games played. For the others, although among the best in the world, the percentage of games lost is very high, on average around 4 out of 10. Tennis, perhaps more than any other sport also for the high number of tournaments played each year, requires the ability to know how to live the losses because they are a frequent  and repetitive occurrence. Only very few athletes in the world not fall into this category since they have a very high success rate, it’s necessary for all others recover immediately from a defeat at the risk of falling into a losing streak, given the high probability of losing is always present.

On the basis of these considerations it’s evident the need for the women tennis players to improve their mental reaction to failures, otherwise they run the risk of getting into a downward spiral from which it’s taken more time to get out .

to win or have doubts

Winning is hard enough when you believe in yourself

but it is impossible when you start to have doubts.

Disappointed sports fans increase consumption of fat and sugar

Being fans of a team that wins it may be beneficial to health. So this year the Roma fans should feel much more healthier than last year. It’s what emerges from two studies of North American and French football fans who showed that if your team loses on Monday you eat more fatty foods and sweeter in order to mitigate the frustration resulting from the negative result, while this does not happen if it win. “Although prior studies had shown that sport outcomes influence reckless driving, heart attacks, and even domestic violence, no one had examined how they influence eating,” says Yann Cornil, researcher at INSEAD Business School and lead author of the study. By comparing the outcomes from two seasons’ worth of NFL games with people’s food consumption in over two dozen cities, Cornil and INSEAD professor Pierre Chandon were able to determine the amounts and types of food consumed after victories and losses.

The data do not show what happens to the fans of teams that recede, they are all suffering from liver or after a certain number of losses they put your soul in peace and on Monday they do not eat lasagna?

Be fit is not all

In this time of the year in most of the individual sports, the athletes perceive themselves in shape and ready to compete. This is the time to remember that to be fit is obviously a positive feeling  but also to know that this alone will not allow certainty to compete at the best. Because to do well means to manage the emotional state during the competition day, it is this psychological state that will open the door to a good performance rather than a poor.

The belief of being in shape is necessary to know that we did everything we had to do to get now this psycho-physical condition, but the day of the race is necessary to show a well-defined routine to manage the competitive stress  that, indeed, will try to disturb the performance. The higher the expectations of the athlete as well as its real chance of winning, the greater the need to feel immediately this personal optimal condition, just because the athletes on the podium is allowed to make very few mistakes and worsen the performance of 2% compared to other opponents, the more means losing.
The own personal routine is extremely important to follow a path that will put the athlete in his/her favorites physical and mental condition.