The mental readiness is based on the concept of resilience. Resilience is the capacity of an athlete to recover quickly, resist and perform at the best in front of the performance pressure and stressful situations.
Tag Archive for 'stress'
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Often an obstacle to change is represented by the conviction to have no sufficient time available to change. The athletes often answer in this way but also their coaches, who usually do not spend time for psychological preparation, because they think to have already too many things to do. Once time to answer these objections I did long explanations about the importance of psychology and the efficient use of the mind. Then I found out that this answers had the only effect to reinforce the beliefs of my interlocutors, who continued to believe that they do not have time. At this point, I changed my approach. I started to respond by asking them if they had 15 minutes a day to devote to something else that was not the physical and technical training. Of course they all said yes, and on the basis of this positive response was easier for me to explain how to organize a mental workout in that short period of time.
Juventus had expected the test to be who it said it was and not a scary team in Europe. Juventus has due to arrive on the edge of the abyss to know its value. Juventus in this match has been fighting continuously. Now he must learn to think better as a team. After going ahead, it was expected that the Greeks would attack to get the equalizer and, unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened after just two minutes. Be calm would allow him to predict the reaction of the opponent and get ready to fight it. In fact until the second goal Olympiacos Juventus played and it went on and on but in a confused way. Then the incredible happened, Juventus has changed his fate because the fighting has combined the strength and the conviction that it was possible to win. And that has made all the difference compared to the first half. The next time it might find this state of mind before being at one step from the abyss, because the other teams do not always allow this type of recovery. A big step forward, but the European mentality does not exist yet.
Today in Granada Giovanni Pellielo won for the seventh time the right to participate in the Olympics. He finished 3rd at the Trap World Championships with an exciting track. In the qualification rounds, he scored 124 out of 125, finishing first with two other shooters. In the semi-finals took 14 out of 15 clay targets He had unbalance with another shooter, he immediately make a mistake and he competedi n a race against another shooter for the third place. Again 15 targets, he hit all the targets, while his opponent misses 3. With this result he also won the Olympic Quota to Rio at the first opportunity. If, as is likely, he will go to Rio it will be his seventh Olympics, where he won 3 medals so far. He’s the most successful athlete in the history of shooting, having also won 4 world and dozens of international competitions. He’s 44 years old.
Today I am at a shooting international competition in Todi (Italy) and athletes of different nationalities, from Iran to Great Britain have asked me about their difficulties face in the race, here are a few:
- What should I do first when for a while I forget what I have to do?
- What do I do to remove the panic that sometimes comes over me?
- What I have to do not think of breaking the target and be focused only on my performance?
- Which are the skills of clay shooting champions?
- How do I know I am ready before to start?
- I have not always the same time to shoot, what I have to do to be more consistent?
- After a mistake I get too nervous, how can I control myself better?
These questions highlight how the difficulties of international level athletes are specific and require that the sport psychologist has specific knowledge of this sport. As psychologists, we must not only provide global responses based on the idea that we must improve the confidence of these athletes, as these questions are asked by athletes who are the best in their country and are used to compete, but this in itself does not eliminate these difficulty.
What do you think?
What I learned from the Commonwealth Games 2014:
- was attended by 71 countries and 7000 athletes
- there are many nations that I did not know (at least 5/6 around Australia and New Zealand)
- for all the participants are as important as the Olympics and maybe more, because many athletes in this competition can aspire to a medal that at the Olympics would be almost impossible
- as always win the athletes who best manages the competitive pressure and they are not always the best to do it.
- even small countries like Cyprus can win 5 medals
- small countries who win a medal are those in which the athletes are not influenced by the reduced size of their nation but travel abroad to compete regularly and frequently.
- to win you must often compete at the international level in order to learn how to cope with the stress which increases wildly when you understand that you can really get into the finals and fight for a medal. Those who go beyond these moments can do it, otherwise they gets scared and collapses. And this is happened.
In sport, when you reach a high level of technical expertise allowing to be competitive, it needs to go to the next step that requires you to do a certain number of competition per year. Even in shooting sports, which are the ones that I participate in the Commonwealth Games, before to compete in an event so important it’s necessaryto have done at least 6/7 rcompetitions, the majority of which must be at the international level. In the case of athletes who made a few, it’s very difficult to succeed in this type of competitions, because they rarely have tested their ability to cope successfully under pressure. Only through the races, you train this skill to do the best in the most important moments. If not it’s easysy to succumb at the stress and provides a really bad performance. This reflection highlights not only the importance of an adequate psychological preparation to be carried out during these races, but also the need for planning annual competitive season which the athlete has to face.
I am now convinced that the sport psychologist is necessary in any sport club starting from the age of children. It is not a coincidence that in a sport like football, practiced in Italy by the majority of children, the football federation has decided to enter this professional in the football school. It’s useful to coaches who need to educate not only the body but also the mind. It’s ‘also useful for the best talents, they must learn to manage themselves through the daily frustrations. It’s also necessary for world-class athletes, who need to manage their competitive stress effectively. It’s useful to those who want to win an Olympic medal for making their best performance a specific day, at a specific moment, not minute before or a minute later.
There are now many sport stars who use meditation to reduce stress, among others there are Kobe Bryant and Lebron James in basketball, the beach volleyball Olympic gold medallist Misty May-Trainor and Kerri Walsh and Andy Murray in tennis. Focus to be in tune with ourselves and own performance. In Italy, in most cases we are still stuck to the well-known concept to pull off the male attributes to overcome stress.
Mental Coaching
This is the mental coaching program I propose who really want to improve their sport performances using a system used by athletes who won 10 Olympic medals. The program is divided into 5 areas of intervention as described below:
1. Your goals
- How to establish goals
- Which commitment show the tough athletes
- The correct mental habit during the coaching sessions
- The focus: on the performance and not on the results
- The athlete main mental mistakes
2. The stress management
- What is relaxation
- Strategies of optimal activation pre-event
- How to learn relaxation and reach the right activation
- When/how to use them during the competition
3. The concentration
- Which kind of focus you need
- Strength and weakness points of each athlete
- The focus during the performance
- Exercises to be focused during the coaching
4. Which are your fears
- Are you worried about what?
- Are you ready to perform, to do your best?
- Is the fear useful?
- How to manage the fear
5. Planning the competition
- How to stay in your individual zone of optimal activation
- One hour before the events: what to do
- Your thoughts and feelings before the beginning and during the event
- What to do during the competition days
For further information write to: info@ceiconsulting.it
