Winning in sports and life happens in your head
2011-09-17 15:54
Marlene Malan
Winning is not only the physical ability and technical skills to do.
You can choose to win. And you choose to lose. It's not something that just "happened", said prof. Tim Noakes (62), head of the Sports Science Institute at the University of Cape Town (UCT).
Course counts as balhantering sport skills, endurance and fitness, sporting talent and the hours you put exercise.
Actually, sporting nothing but psychology: faith in oneself, refusing to lose the "knowledge" of winning.
As with Wales last weekend against the Springboks, Noakes says: "Wales was by far the best team. But he chose to lose. "
It's easy with the professor to discuss. You feel at home in his company.
A calm radiates from him, amid government and self-assured self-knowledge. What he says and what he writes is what he lives. His field is the result of his own questions about life and challenges.
His office at the Institute in Newlands, Cape Town, near the place where the largest sportkragmetings already occurred.
Behind him hung two framed jerseys of his favorite team Ikey. Sportpette to different sports in mind, lying on a shelf in front of him.
Right behind him, up against a cabinet, is a checkered poster of one of the people who most influence on his career as a runner had: the athlete Eddie King.
King is the man who in the sixties on the run received.
"At school was running on my radar screen. Rugby and cricket, yes. Ends? Never! "
When he met King at UCT, where both had studied medicine.
"I could not run and Eddie could not do physics. When I teach Eddie just in the running. "
The long distance runner Tim Noakes was born when he first completed the Comrades.
For long distance running, is with yourself acquainted, he said. "It's just you and the road. You have nothing else you can do when thinking. You have peace in yourself, for you are your only company. "
Sport is about "why," says Noakes.
"If you do not know why you run or play rugby or cricket, you can only loose. The 'why' is what drives you to them victory. "
In 1990, Noakes says, he grew bored with running.
"What I needed was to break away. That's when I started the academy on the focus, in coaching and science of coaching. "
In 1995 the Sports Science Institute was established.
"My academic debate dealt with the involvement of the brain and performance coaching."
He was maligned at the time when he, among others warned about the dangers of too much fluid during sports.
"Rude comments about my academic abilities. It has not bothered me. My research was right. I knew I would be vindicated. "
At that time the awareness has grown with him about the value systems of pharmaceutical and petrochemical companies, "people who destroy health instead of building it, as they pretend."
For conventional, accepted theories to challenge, Noakes for food, "as long as I can prove it."
The problem with sport in South Africa is that it is not on an intellectual level, viewed, says Noakes.
"In countries like Australia is a long, urgent consideration to a particular coach a national team gave. The coach is raised, trained. But here we are ... We constantly reinvent the wheel. "
South Africa is a young country and it is so important that our strength and expertise in the sports field evidence. "We must realize the importance of sport as a factor of association. Therefore we should not take chances with our performance in the international arena is not. "
Last week, Wales lost because they did not believe they can beat Springboks. "That's all. Because they gave us hands down. If the Springboks are not sure why they are in New Zealand and why they want to win, I provide heaviness. "
Noakes two years ago became involved in the Springbok team in this year's World Cup play. He later withdrew.
"When all the players said they serve two masters: their province and the national team. It does not work. In addition, the Super-15 total in their destructive work - physically and mentally. "
The Springboks are tired of games before they participate internationally, he wrote in Challenging Beliefs.
We measure his top team are not on an international level. "For us, the Currie Cup to the top."
Noakes is happy about the return of Gary Kirsten at the Protea cricket team, "because in India he showed that spiritual power means. That's what he brings to us. "
Sport Principles may equally well in your daily life is applied. "That's when you win if all options considered and lose part of your thinking is. Negativity is a self-fulfilling thing. Your future is what you believe it will be. "
In his life was the late Bob Woolmer, a former cricket coach one of his biggest role models.
The former Springbok captain Morne du Plessis continues to play a major role in his life, as friend and sounding board. An athlete that he still admired, the golf star Gary Player.
Home is his wife, Marilyn Anne, his friend and partner since the sixties, which inspired him most. His two children, Travis and Candice Miles Amelia.
They taught him to care and caring, to be yourself, to make the right choices. That's where he continues his daily strength and inspiration were fetched.
