By Michael Shanks
As the Nike slogan says, “Just Do It”: Hard work is vitally intertwined with the mindset one brings to the soccer game. (see fearlessness and confidence)
When an individual gets “tired”, more often than not he simply doesn’t have the drive to push himself further, rather than his body literally being unable to continue. He unconsciously “decides” his body can’t continue, in an effort to avoid the physical strains and hurt associated with pushing oneself to the fullest. Unfortunately, this can be a devastating psychological hurdle that many athletes have had trouble surpassing.
Theoretically, distancing oneself from the analytical mind will make the body the only judge of tiredness, which will always outlast how far the lucid mind decides to push itself.
What my soccer coaches have always taught, and what my personal experience has reflected, is to focus all thought on one’s role in the larger sense of the soccer team, so as to promote separation from personal thoughts, consequently distracting oneself from fatigue.
Nike Football Presents: Ronaldinho’s Message to Football
Creativity will take you further than calculation… Do it your way. Play Free.
Ronaldinho wrote an incredible letter to himself, in which he spoke particularly about an event which changed his life: his father’s death. Ronaldinho was an exceptional player. But his journey was one of the most complicated and that’s putting it lightly. Now retired, Ronaldinho has time to look back on his story.
For Players’ Tribune, Ronaldinho wrote an open letter to his younger self. 8-year-old Ronaldinho didn’t know what was to come, 37-year-old Ronaldinho tells him everything in a touching, poignant and heartfelt letter.
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