Numerous scientific studies have demonstrated the usefulness of routines for- competition: essential for focusing attention, reducing anxiety, eliminating distractions, improving confidence, they contribute to a significant improvement in sports performance.
But what is routine and what is it for?
Routine by definition is a habit slowly acquired through practice and experience, a sequence of gestures and actions that are always the same.
It can be used during the warm-up or before the match and can involve a certain way of placing clothes in the locker room, a specific order in the warm-up exercises, a particular way of spinning the ball before serving.
Sport and Psychology
According to sports psychology researchers, routines pre-performance allow to mitigate distractions and limit the emotional component, facilitating the automatic execution of the athlete's skills.
The athlete knows that certain gestures made before or during a race correspond to specific psychophysical states: thanks to the routine he can learn to better manage anxiety and increase concentration, obtaining the best possible performance.
Various scientific studies have shown that athletes who follow a routine before a competition obtain significantly better performance than those who do not follow one.
An example of a routine could be the following: a basketball player can bounce the ball three times on the free throw line and take a deep breath before throwing the ball in the direction of the basket. The same thing goes for a volleyball player or a tennis player before a serve.
Rinspecting a certain type of gestures therefore helps to free the athlete's mind, allowing him to focus better on performance.
The Athletes' routine
We understood how important it is for an athlete to be aware of their routine, as thanks to it it is possible to:
- improve concentration
- automate the usual performance gestures and perform them with greater safety and speed
- regulate energies before a competition
Many athletes have developed more or less complex routines to face competitions. In previous articles we have interviewed Serena Troiani And Sara D'Ambrogio, ambassador SportLab Milan, who told us how important their routine is for-competition. Both, before each competition, use gestures and rituals to maintain concentration and increase
Over the years Sara has accumulated rituals that she performs before each game: for example, she chooses a specific bag, and then takes the grip to put on before the game, or she removes certain rings or wears a specific band. He tells us that the last ritual he entered is to apply ours WARMUP CREAM, the cream preparatory which helps warm up of the muscles: Sara loves using it, and now it has become a ritual for her for-competition.
Serena, on the other hand, has embarked on a path of sports psychology to manage the problem of performance anxiety. He tells us that he learned routines on this path for- competitions that help her to maintain concentration and transform anxiety into something that is functional to the competition; always listen to a lot of music during the warm-up to get charged up and face the competition in the best possible way.
The advice of scientists, coaches and sportsmen is therefore to develop one or more routines pre-performance that help concentration, improving confidence in one's abilities e helping to perform at their best!