3.4 Routines for your Performance

KEYS FOR SPORTS PERFORMANCE A SOCCER PLAYER´S MENTAL PREPARATION 3.4 Routines for your Performance

ROUTINES FOR YOUR PERFORMANCE

➡️ A set of thoughts and behaviors that a player or team carries out before and during the competition to keep their attention, concentration and activation at an appropriate level.

➡️ It is more important to use this technique before in training than in games. Acquiring this type of techniques and tools that we are seeing has its difficulty. Like technical and tactical skills, to use and benefit from them in matches, you have to train them before to master them.

➡️ The importance of applying routines in sports is great. Empty your mind between each action so as not to drag out frustrations and to have a clear, cool mind.

➡️ Focus on the here and now. Avoid making changes based on the result.

➡️ Some athletes have these routines conditioned to achieve an optimal mental state.

A good example of a top athlete is Rafael Nadal.

He performs many repetitive gestures at specific times: When he was losing, he would raise his leg and left hand flexed strongly while shouting and celebrating the action.

Usually he managed to improve his game, it was a routine to help himself connect with his game. Always the same routine. Routines that by the way, only depend on him.

One of his great virtues is that he empties his mind between each point, which helps to reduce frustration from one lost point to the next. And he achieves this through his ritual of gestures before each serve:

- - - After each point, go to his ball boy
    - He grabs the towel, dries his left arm, face, and then right arm
    - If he has made the first serve he will put 2 balls in his racket and three if he has not. With three balls on the string, he examines them and chooses two.
    - First he bounces several balls with the racket in his left hand, and as many with his right (usually more than five with each hand)
    - In between, he wipes a drop that falls on his face.