TRAIN HOW TO PLAY
Jorge Araújo
Team Work Consultores
Take, for example, the support I gave to a young soccer coach.
With the aim of preparing his team for a decisive match over the course of a week, a young soccer coach exchanged a series of emails with me.
The day before the match I sent him the following message:
“How has training been going? Reactions? Don’t forget, from now on focus on what they have to do, each and every one of them, because they need to be sure of what they have to do in the face of everything that the opponent and the environment will put them under.”
“Beyond the greater or lesser talent of the players and what happens around the team, what will dominate the game in your favor is the self-awareness that the team and each of its members have about what can happen and what they have to do (down to the smallest details). And attention to detail!”
“As for what you do, don’t forget, you’re a role model and a reference, the players are always looking at you and you’re always communicating, even when you’re not talking. Which means that if you’re passionate about what you do and confident and focused on your task, they’ll naturally be passionate, confident and focused.”
On the day of the match, I sent him another message:
“In today’s game, you and the players will need your emotions to make the necessary decisions.” “Which means you have to let them out! But, of course, by “controlling” them… without “freezing” them.
“Our entire rational and intelligent decision-making process needs emotional stimuli to achieve high levels of performance!”
“To achieve this, you have to know how to recognize and manage the natural emotional impulses that the importance of the game will provoke in you, putting them at the service of the tasks that each of you has to perform.” “In other words, it’s essential to manage the natural anxiety you’ll feel by focusing on the respective tasks, focusing your attention on the performance and not on the environment, the referees, or the taunts, etc.”
“Total and selective attention to what will really help win the game, “disconnecting” from everything else!”
“And be extremely careful with the details that win games!”
After the match, I received this message:
“We lost. We did well. We were ahead twice.”
“Focused, yes! We did what we set out to do.” “But… an individual error isolated our opponent three minutes from the end…”
“A draw was gold…”
I replied…
“Details… Always the details that make the difference.”
“And you can’t solve this difficulty in a week or two.”
“If they’re not trained to play for two consecutive hours at very high levels of concentration, they’re going to make sometimes fatal mistakes in the final moments of the game (when the pressure is on).”
“Excellence performed automatically, under great emotional pressure and with virtually no errors in detail, takes time to acquire.” “That’s why the know-how of high-performance coaches naturally has to go far beyond technique and tactics!”
What better example of the importance of “training how to play”?
