Monthly Archive for February, 2020

Motivation: a beautiful word, understood by few people

Do people who every day talk easily about motivation, explaining to others that it is enough to believe in it, to see their dreams come true, know how much is a very complex psychological dimension to manage?


The problems of Juventus’ uncohesive team

The situation that Juventus is experiencing is interesting to try to understand how it is possible that a team built to win the Champions League is not able at this time to play at its level and suffers the initiative of teams significantly inferior in quality.

As many have said, in this match against Lyon Juventus lacked in speed, determination and intensity of play. Many players were distracted on the pitch and Cristiano Ronaldo’s individualism was not enough to overturn the final result.

In this period, Juventus lacks the commitment and total dedication of the collective to achieving the performance and result goals, the essence of a successful team. Observing the behavior on the pitch, rarely and only in the final minutes of the matches, there is no physical or mental readiness to play the ball, react to a mistake or move to help a teammate.

Juventus is made up of some champions and others very good, all playing in their respective national teams. Now it’s a cohesive team, lacking a core group of players who can lead it. Successful teams always have a strong internal group for the moments of greater competitive stress, it remains only Bonucci who alone can not play this role effectively. Too many don’t have the look of a tiger (Betancourt, Rabiot, Pjanic, Quadrado) and seem to perform assigned tasks rather than playing a football match.

Leaders of a team cannot be Ronaldo, Dybala and Iguain, they are the stars shining thanks to the work of a team that supports them.

The second problem for Juventus is Sarri’s way of thinking. He said that he can’t make the team understand a concept as simple as that of speed, but I personally don’t understand what he wants to explain.

Speed can be differentiated in two aspects. The first, for example, refers to the fact that when a player suffers a foul he must get up immediately and be immediately ready for the next action or if he loses the ball he must quickly continue in the action. This is a concept that a professional footballer should express regardless of the type of team play. It is about combativeness and toughness that must always be present in every minute of the match.

The second aspect, on the other hand, concerns speed in relation to the type of game that the team has prepared during the week and each coach requires according to his philosophy.

It seems to me, that Juventus lacks the first type of speed that is the basis of competitiveness and if it is missing prevents any other type of reasoning, because the slowness makes the game predictable and easily counterbalanced by any team that is more reactive on the field even if of lower level.

I would suggest to Sarri to coach these days the heart of the players and not the schemes.

10 reason to be sedentary

In Italy there 25 millions of sedentary.

10 reasons not to practise sport

  1. It’s more fun to stay on Facebook or Instagram or play a video game
  2. I did it for a while, then it was too tiring
  3. I lose weight and dress size, and I had to pay to renew my wardrobe
  4. It’s just a fashion of these days, I’m fine as I am!
  5. I’m so tired of work, I just want to rest
  6. I’m too fat and ashamed
  7. I am no longer of age
  8. I used to meet people who only talked about exercise and sportswear…
  9. If you do this for a while it’s no useful and I’m not a constant person.
  10. My partner is not a sportsman so I prefer to be with him

The junior sport psychologist job in Italy

To find a job you just have to rely on your own strength, unless you belong to that group that you settle through friends of friends. I have never belonged to this type of group and, therefore, I take the opportunity of giving some suggestions to the young psychologists who write to me and who want to do it with their own strength. Here they are, they are simple, perhaps they may seem trivial but they are actions available to everyone:

  1. know English: very well
  2. want to specialize and, above all, to do so (there are better masters in Europe than there are currently in Italy)
  3. be part of an international social network of young professionals who exchange ideas and opportunities for work and internship: www.enyssp.com
  4. map the people known, predicting how each of them could be useful to increase opportunities and knowledge in sport
  5. do internships abroad (summer or not)
  6. ask to the university professors (or others) to get to know youth experts who have managed to achieve what they wanted and talk to them for information.
  7. read the most updated manual of sport psychology and then for the articles, find the authors’ email on the internet and write to them, they will send them to you
  8. don’t listen to those who say there’s nothing to do, work hard to find your way
  9. establish a fixed time to find work in your city, then you will have to search in a wider geographical area
  10. In Italy at the moment the opportunities for collaboration in sport, for young graduates, are mainly with football schools, they need the psychologist to be classified at the highest level by FIGC (it may be useful to contact the psychologist of your Region in the youth and school section of the FIGC) and in tennis that provides the role of mental trainer to work in the clubs (information on the website of the Italian Tennis Federation)

Motivation and leadership

Why we don’t train the breath in sport

The wrong beliefs about the mental skills

There are many people who approach the psychological preparation without knowing what it is. Often the main reason for this request comes from the experiences of athletes or those who follow them and lies in the desire to improve sports performance, to be less anxious and more determined, to accept mistakes, not to lose concentration at stressful moments. Rarely the request is more specific and, therefore, the risk is that mental training is experienced as a magical activity that will solve problems, as a kind of therapy to become more confident in the race or as a way to share the responsibility for failures with another, as parents or coaches have failed in this intent and now they try with the psychologist.

This approach reveals the lack of knowledge in relation to what a psychological preparation program is. Many coaches, athletes and parents approach the psychologist to find simple and easy solutions. They think that in a short time, maybe a few weeks, the athletes will improve the confidence and stress management. They also apply in this area, the widespread attitude in today’s society to be impatient in face of difficulties and the belief to solve them in a short time.

They are not aware that psychological skills, like any other type of skill, require continuous and intensive training over time. The word training next to mental is not there at random but it serves to highlight the need for continuous practice over time.

World champions also have to manage their emotions

Research data emerging from TAIS Performance Systems and elaborated by me show that the management of emotions is a decisive aspect for all athletes, be they College level, international level or world champions. In fact, the results below show that even world championship winners believe that emotions can be a significant disruptive factor to manage effectively.

They consider themselves to be better than the group called athletes, which includes athletes of international level in their sport. On the contrary, it emerges that in the business world, the men and women managers, perceive themselves to be much less emotionally influential than world champions. Probably on this difference in perception weighs the difference in age also very significant and the characteristics of performance, which in sport are typically individual and occur in a short time, quite frequent, predetermined and without possibility of postponement. To compete every week as in team sports, tennis, skiing and many others determines a continuous up and down of one’s emotional condition, requiring a constant and frequent control of one’s moods. This explains why the world’s top athletes follow psychological preparation programs in order to use at the best their sport and competitive skills, while maintaining a high level of self-control.

Use your social and cognitive skills to find a job

Jobs with a high demand for cognitive and human skills, and therefore cities with a high concentration of such occupations, are generally less sensitive to recessions, according to a study by Carlianne Patrick and Amanda Weinstein. Their research is the first to show that the recovery of metropolitan areas from economic recessions depends more on the composition of skills – cognitive, social or motor skills – than on the level of education, which is more difficult to measure.

“Existing studies show that recessions reinforce trends already in place, so we looked at the data in light of multiple recessions, especially the Great Recession. With each recession, it seemed to take the economy longer to recover, and we wanted to understand that particular trend,” said Patrick. “In the Great Recession, for example, more than 8.6 million people across the country lost their jobs, but not always in proportionate amounts to their community populations.”

Researchers examined metropolitan areas with high levels of cognitive and social skills, and others with a high concentration of motor skills. They found that workers with high cognitive and/or social skills had less unemployment, especially during recessions, than those with high motor skills.

In addition, metropolitan areas, even small ones, which were fortunate to have a high concentration of workers with cognitive and social skills, were not only less likely to feel the effects of a recession, but were more likely to recover quickly from a recession.

“Occupational data shows that people with cognitive skills also tend to have people skills, and it’s the ability to relate to people that is most important in reducing the length of time it takes a city to return to pre-recession levels … Education is important but it’s not enough. It’s critical to cultivate people skills in workers with motor skills, to help them weather changing economic conditions,” Patrick said.

Because workers need high levels of cognitive and social skills to increase their chances of employment during a recession, researchers suggest that governments, particularly in cities and regions that have historically relied on motor skills, should consider training workers to build their cognitive and social skills and people to foster more resilient and recession-proof economies.

As long as I breath, I hope


“As long as I breathe, I hope.”


… reciting pieces of a trial in a court on a steep climb learned to pronounce the maximum number of words with a single exhalation.

He trained himself to speak in a medium tone that could be heard at 50 paces. Never bend your neck, don’t move your shoulders. The eyes must always follow the gesture unless you have to reject an eventuality. To use your fingers, bend your middle finger towards your thumb, extending the other three.