Sinner, what a strain to keep everything under control and make the pieces fit together perfectly: watch out for the crazy variables.
It doesn’t depend solely on talent. Nor does it depend solely on how you play the game, strange as it may seem to say such a thing in the context of a discourse concerning sports. So does the head, which is an unavoidable variable in a sporting context such as the tennis court may be, to take a not at all random example.
And Jannik Sinner knows it well, focused on his body and on building a physique up to the challenges to come but also, as is only right, on his mind. Or rather, on his brain, to be more precise, given that he told Gazzetta dello Sport verbatim, “I always want to understand how my brain works, this is also part of the work I do with Riccardo (Ceccarelli, ed. ). But the rest I do on the field, day after day.”
The Ceccarelli he is talking about is the director of Formula Medicine, which we had already told you about here several months ago: it is, for those who have never heard of it, a kind of consulting-collaboration program. A collaboration that is simultaneously psychological, mental and scientific, because it rests on the effectively basic assumption that in sports not only the muscles count, but also – not to say above all – the brain.
Sinner, it’s all under control, but what a struggle
Many pilots joined this program even before Sinner, because they too, like the blue tennis player, need to have the tools in their hands to manage tension. And, more generally, to deal with moments of difficulty, which cannot be overcome unless one has a thorough knowledge of one’s brain and concentration strategies and is in full control of one’s emotions.
An endowment that we know is indispensable not only in Formula 1, but also in tennis. Ceccarelli’s goal is to make sure that his “students” learn to keep their minds in check. It would be a wild variable if one did not learn to manage and interpret it. And that would cause even higher levels of stress than athletes are already forced to deal with.
The work Jannik Sinner does on himself is not, however, “only” reduced to this. “There’s the specific work and there’s the work you do during training and it’s as fundamental as the technical work. It’s a habit to keep going despite everything, to bear stress. Sometimes you don’t feel like doing something but you have to grit your teeth and do it anyway. Do you sleep badly at night? It doesn’t matter, you get up and work out anyway. Did you eat something that hurt you? Ditto, you make no excuses and go to the field or gym.”
“These are things that will happen to you in the match anyway,” he noted further, “If you can’t handle a situation when you don’t have the stress of the match, how can you expect to do it when you’re in the match…. There’s nothing to it: philosophy looks good on everything, always.
