Fosbury Flop drawer #02
In the Fosbury Flop drawer I keep the things that have empowered me to live —and coach— better. I like to share them but I prefer to add new ones. Feel free to let us know yours!
“Behind every kick of the ball there has to be a thought.”
—Dennis Bergkamp
Letter —and reply— to his former teacher, Louis Germain, after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature | Albert Camus
“Dear Monsieur Germain,
I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honour, one I neither sought nor solicited.
But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened.
I don’t make too much of this sort of honour. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.”
Who has been your “Louis Germain”? Forward the letter to her or him.
Training or Synergizing? Complex Systems Principles Change the Understanding of Sport Processes | Rafel Pol, Natàlia Balagué, Angel Ric, Carlota Torrents, John Kiely & Robert Hristovski
If A Treatise on Efficacy is a life-changing book, Training or Synergizing is the same in paper format.
“Experiential and scientific knowledge, relating to sports training methodologies, has been historically influenced by reductionist models. Based on complex systems science and theories of biological evolution, we provide […] methodological principles to transform the understanding of the sports training process. This contribution is not another methodology; it simply seeks to promote the critical thinking of scientists, coaches, and practitioners to help them update or create safer and efficient interventions.
Coaches and practitioners usually search for practical recipes, but the only recipe emerging from complex systems principles is that there are no fixed recipes. Functional methodologies and interventions in one context can be dysfunctional in another, and contexts are always unrepeatable and inevitably unique. Instead of focusing on practical recipes, the focus is put on understanding the systems (athletes/teams) properties and the principles that rule their interactions with the environment, keeping in mind the main aim of the process: developing the diversity/unpredictability potential of athletes/teams, that is, synergizing the system.
The fittest are not necessarily the strongest or fastest but the most diverse.”
I wish you way more than luck!
Una abraçada,
Martí Cañellas | Fosbury Flop
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