Tag Archive for 'presente'

Attention can be destroyed by the wrong emotions

In any sport to be focused on the present is one of the key success factors and its main enemy are the emotions arising in the athletes’ mind to distract them from the performance.

Any young athlete who learned the necessary skills to be competitive at his/her sport level should devote much of the training to improve this competence to compete with a winning attitude.

Otherwise, the technique will not help anything, rather it will be a source of further frustration for the young athletes not able to use it in the race, because they are dominated by an emotional condition that hinders them.

If you want to be competitive you have to train vigorously your self-control, it’s the only way you can prove the fundamental value of the technical skills.

Mindfulness and marathon

Yesterday there was the webinar titled “The marathon mental coaching” and one question concerned the use of mindfulness in the marathon. If we mean with mindfulness “to allow the present to be as it is and to allow us to be, simply, in this present” (John Teasdale) this mental condition can certainly be useful to the marathon. During the long distance running the present is the stride or the breath. Learn how to listen it’s especially useful in the early pahses and in the end of the marathon, in which for the athletes is important to be aware of the reactions of the body. During the run the mindfulness can be differentiate from non-judgmental acceptance of the present, because the athletes may be aware that they are in trouble. For example, they realize that breathing became too frequent or the heart rate is too high, or even that the stride is becoming increasingly heavy. In these moments, the runners have to go in a state of mind more active, with the aim to reduce or counteract these feelings that are undermining the run.The runners maybe short the stride or slow down a few seconds the speed or shift the attention to other aspects, distracting from these debilitating feelings. Many runners use a dissociative strategy allowing to be focused on anything else but your own body. Paula Radcliffe said that in these moments she counts to 100, knowing that after she counted three times she ran another mile. Every runner has to find solutions during workouts. The marathon training is very challenging and difficult times met are used to find these answers and begin to put them into practice, so as to arrive at the day of the race the runners will be mentally prepared.

L’importanza di avere fame … di vittorie

Conte vuole che la Juventus mangi il campo. Anche Berruto ai suoi durante un time out di Italia-Serbia dice “abbiamo fame”. Pure gli atleti spesso dicono: “Se facciamo ancora un errore quelli ci mangiano”. E’ necessario avere fame di vittorie e non sentirsi invece sazi, come ricorda il portiere del Milan dopo la partita persa contro il Napoli: “Loro hanno avuto più fame di noi”. La lotta sul campo attimo dopo attimo o colpo su colpo è il modo in cui si manifesta a se stessi e agli altri che si è dentro la dimensione mentale dell’affamato. Non è certamente vietato pensare in grande (ad esempio vincere lo scudetto o campionati europei) ma queste idee vanno lasciate fuori dalla competizione, perchè in quei momenti bisogna avere pensieri semplici e concreti che permettano di fare in quell’istante la cosa migliore. Avere fame vuol dire essere costantemente concentrati sul presente o meglio ancora su ciò che sta per accadere fra un istante. In questo modo tenacia e consapevolezza del momento di gioco sono gli strumenti mentali utilizzati da chi ha fame.