February 1, 2024 • 67 mins
You can access the youtube video and watch iwth subtitles here: https://bit.ly/RobChio.
In this episode, we delve into the world of sports psychology with our distinguished guest, Maurício Pinto Marques. Holding a PhD in Psychology, Marques shares his insights into the paradigm-shifting impact of technology and how it has become embedded in his profession. He offers a glimpse into the experiences of athletes engaged in both physical and digital sports, the intersection of mindfulness and athletics, and the mental nuances that heavily influence an athlete's performance. Discover the obstacles and breakthroughs Maurício faced in his journey within this unique domain and his advocacy for open information exchange and collaboration.
https://www.instagram.com/gamechanger.podcast
https://www.instagram.com/robertochiodelli
Conscious Athlete Program: https://robertochiodelli.com/en/programa-atleta-consciente-pac/
E-mail: consciousathlete.cap@gmail.com
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Maurício's links:
https://instagram.com/psicologomauri
https://www.youtube.com/@psicologomauri
http://lattes.cnpq.br/2814451272361747
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:19):
Hello, we are here in a new edition of the Game Changer Podcast,
this time in Portuguese.
I'm going to interview the dear Maurício Pinto Marques, my friend,
known there from Porto Alegre, who I interviewed on the podcast Demasiado Humano
six years ago, in 2016, a long time, right, Maurício?
(00:41):
But it will be a pleasure to be able to talk to you again about this topic,
about the question of high performance.
Let's make a quick presentation, Maurício is also a psychologist,
PhD in Sport Psychology, professor and researcher in the field of Sport Psychology.
(01:02):
Maurício, welcome, it's really nice to have you here again, because there's
a lot we can talk about. Thank you, Roberto, thank you audience too.
It's a pleasure to be here talking a little bit with you, talking about my passion,
which is sports psychology, about our work, right, also as psychologists,
as psychologists, we work with mindfulness too, and to share a little,
(01:25):
the pleasure is this, it is to promote the area and show this world that has
possibilities that many people still don't know, but that fortunately is no
longer being born, is growing a lot here.
Exactly this point that I would like to talk about, because we talked about
who, back in 2016 in the other podcast,
Demasiado Lano, a great conversation about the area, about prejudice that still exists,
(01:53):
but at the time I think it was much bigger.
And since then, our lives have changed, right?
I'm here in Portugal, I came to do my doctorate here, imagine,
seven years, a lot of things happen. The world has changed too.
I was here thinking, I was here using Zoom and artificial intelligence and other
(02:15):
thousand possibilities.
So I would like to start there, Maurício. What has changed all this time?
I think the generations have changed, the athletes have changed,
the way of life has changed.
Changed, I'm amazed, right, how technology is more and more present,
how important it is for us to be aware of it, right?
(02:38):
So I'd like to know a little bit about your vision about this time.
Nice, I was trying to imagine it too now.
The situation was 2016 and it's funny, it seems that we already had a large
part of the tools we have today.
We had used cell phones, we had 4G and.
(02:58):
So the base, let's say, was ready, but I don't even remember the cell phone
being so fixed in our hand, the extension of our body as it is today.
And this year was when I defended my doctorate in Barcelona,
I did a sandwich on the contrary, I trained research here in Porto Alegre,
and I had gone from there in 2012.
(03:21):
I stayed from 2008 to 2012, four years. I did my master's degree in one year
and I continued my doctorate, I started my doctorate in almost 6 years,
a little more than 6 years actually, and even there, when I left,
WhatsApp and everything was starting, and I even remember that I went in 2016,
I went to visit a friend of mine in Liverpool, and by chance,
(03:44):
I work in Liverpool, it's not psychology, it's the area of informatics and marketing,
And I was already surprised because the chip, even if I hadn't heard of Brexit,
there were all these different systems in England compared to the rest of Europe.
And my chip from Spain wasn't working on the cell phone that I had taken.
(04:07):
But I was already surprised that I could use Google Maps in any way to move there.
So I already had a macro to use the macro as a physical map,
only on the cell phone. When I found out that the GPS followed,
I thought, wow, it's much easier to do tourism.
Because I'm from the time when I arrived in Barcelona, I left with a map of
this size, of the English court in the middle of the city, to find me.
(04:31):
And at the same time, this brings us a much greater security, comfort, right?
Even on the same trip, I was saved by having Uber in Vienna.
I was visiting a colleague of mine from college, who was doing postdoc there,
and my plane delayed, I arrived in time, I had finished the trains.
And my luck, at that moment, this thing that we had these notifications not
(04:55):
requested on the cell phone, when I saw that I lost the last train,
I went to the hotel to get the wifi to tell my friend what I was doing.
I would do that because it was another city, the airport, and it opened a screen
that had Uber there. My Uber opened automatically, I took the Uber and saved myself.
So thinking already, imagine, we were already with WhatsApp,
with Uber, with several other things.
(05:16):
And this has certainly been changing,
it's not even changing, it's growing with the athletes who are younger today,
especially having teenagers and young adults, some already 6,
7 years old, a few months ago, and we notice the difference between generations,
the ease of this online,
(05:37):
especially after the pandemic, But on the other hand, the dependence on it,
it changes the type of athlete they want to be, the athlete they can be. How do they...
How do they relate to this screen, but also how this screen brings other things
to the point of, for example, I'm not even good at science these days,
(06:00):
an athlete is 12 years old, so I say, Maurício, how do I get a sponsorship?
And I say, who do you want a sponsorship for? What's your idea?
It's more of a boy who has a family with a lot of conditions compared to his
colleagues in the soccer world, right?
He says, no, because I saw on Instagram that this guy already has a sponsorship
from Adidas every year, the other has from Nike.
(06:22):
And that person doesn't need it, but he needs to show that he is so good that
he has a sponsorship, because that is a chancel that exists.
So it's very interesting to think about these athletes who were born in this digital world, right?
When I turned 41 now, I got the transition.
(06:43):
I had to take care of the ladder internet, what we used to call the wide band,
right when I entered college.
University, this university with the internet, even though even in the doctorate
it was very difficult to access articles, there was that thing of sending e-mails
to the magazine to make a fable, sending an article in the physical,
starting access to PDFs, but that was before the Science Hub,
(07:07):
which later gave access to everyone for the articles, and for me it may be the
greatest scientific evolution of the last few years, the last decade, was this portal.
It's funny, but it's true, right? I almost had a PhD in science and engineering,
and I went to the library to look for articles and magazines.
It evolved. It evolved. Before that, I listen to my teachers that I had to talk
(07:33):
to, I had to go to the library of such a university, search for the news they had about.
That topic on paper, right?
So, the article, today the article is published and a minute later it's in everyone's
hands, right? So I think that's wonderful.
I, doing my PhD here, I had this opportunity to access a lot of the article
(08:00):
of the year, the article that just came out, so it's a great advantage.
Advantage, but as we say, it has the advantages that are immense,
but it also has the other side, right?
I don't want to, I'm not even talking about the others, I think about myself,
(08:20):
how I have this need to police myself with the use of the internet,
how these applications have a It's a vicious power to hold you there and not
surf the internet, but to snuff out on the internet, I like this term a lot.
We snuff out, we understand, ah, I'm going to send an email,
(08:42):
but then you see that there is a message, then you see an advertisement and it starts and dives.
And then it goes away, right?
I think a lot about it and the effects that it has on us, on myself,
and I think about other people, how we are in this virtual world,
(09:03):
it seems that it has become bigger,
more present in our lives, I don't know if you realize that.
I think it's good that you talked about surfers that we used.
It's a virtual world and I think we can't, it's no longer virtual, it's our reality.
We feel that we can have a certain separation of this, I'm going to go on the
(09:25):
internet and now the internet is already in us.
And it will stay even more with the map and everything else that is coming.
And just talking about it, thinking about my players who are a little younger,
young people, they no longer have this distinction between the virtual or the
I will enter, as we now played,
and feel that they, that's why I think they have a lot more difficulty disconnecting,
(09:48):
because they don't need to disconnect, right?
It's you choosing not to look to this side, because you're connected,
it's very rare to be disconnected, and I think that we, there are people who
are over 30, maybe even less than 50, because 50 is a barrier for a lot of people
with a lot of technology, right?
(10:08):
I took a course that day so that my father could use WhatsApp,
because after my mother passed away, he can't use WhatsApp, and he can't,
and he doesn't know how to use an Uber, an app, and we... And sometimes I'm
like, I'm going to get a taxi.
The limits of the borders, the use of the internet.
(10:28):
And precisely, we can be a generation that has a certain awareness of this transition,
but also of, I'm using too much, this here I will try to do something related to this.
Younger people have a much greater difficulty with this, because it is awareness,
(10:48):
right? It's a key word for psychology and so on.
But to realize, to get out of the automatic plan, and that's so...
Put on the computer, with more and more technology for it, that technology makes
a lot of effort to keep us inside it.
We know that apps are made with apps, especially TikTok, it's made in a way
(11:16):
that your brain gets addicted to it.
And the games are made for that too.
I even raised this question in the penultimate presidential congress of the
PESPA, which was in 2019,
and at the time people didn't even understand my question, because I was already
(11:39):
working with League of Legends teams, I worked with Counter Strike and Free
Fire through Corinthians as well, but what I had put,
at the time I had two football athletes and another tennis athlete there at
16 or 17 years old, 16, 17,
and on the same week I had this obligation from the mother of both.
(12:04):
My son, if he's not training, he's in the little game and I already started
trying to understand because I was still a little alien to these games, how they worked.
And then another golf athlete, but he didn't explain to me, I was attending
him at his house and he said, I want to show you the little game,
(12:25):
I'm playing in the little game.
And I realized that they were very perverse, at the same time that they are
super popular, that they are light and grateful, they make you buy things that
are not necessarily necessary, just for fashion, style skins,
but that already had a certain social ascension in the hierarchy of the game,
(12:47):
which I think is the maximum of capitalism. capitalism, right?
It's a free thing and you can do everything for free, but you pay for something
completely unnecessary.
And that was a addiction for children, they were asking for birthday cards,
bonus cards, money to use in a little game, basically, right?
To be able to buy these completely useless things for performance.
(13:10):
We're talking about performance, right? What is really performance and what
is accessory to performance?
Even here we know that it has a mental damage also of self-esteem,
of confidence, and we can stay traveling if we imagine for a long time.
Interesting there, Tirá, and how much did you bring that, right? So you also worked with.
(13:31):
I don't know if with virtual sports athletes, we call them athletes,
has there ever been a controversy if this is a sport or not a sport?
I don't know, because this is a giant world, right?
It's a very big industry, right? And I don't know if you've worked with this medium too.
(13:51):
Yes, yes. I think the idea of the size of the industry, Roberto,
At the time I worked with the first League of Legends team, which was in 2018,
if I'm not mistaken, Redemption was the best LoL team here in Porto Alegre,
without virtual tournaments.
The owner of the team told me that LoL, the empire, let's say LoL,
(14:17):
was already moving more money than NBA.
Than NBA? Than NBA.
Again, the game is free. I want to say that the game is free.
This information is impressive.
Exactly, and I'm very happy. I came back now on the last Saturday,
(14:38):
I don't know when it's going to air, but it was November 21st.
Exactly, it was November 21st. I talk a lot with my colleague that I met in
the previous presentation, Claudio.
Claudio was a psychologist, now he is a coordinator of the Liquid team.
(15:00):
Liquid's major shareholder is Michael Jordan.
The CEO, the president is on top of the CEOs, the executive that came from Time Warner,
basically one of the heads of Warner, and this is the size it took and we talk
a lot about the question of the culture of athletes, athletes,
who work with athletes from all over the world, literally from all over the world, and sports,
(15:27):
as you like to call it, and there are several sides to it.
Sports embraced psychology from the beginning, practically.
The sports of the mind have that, the athlete has no way of pretending that
the mind doesn't matter.
Physical effort is very small, but cognitive and emotional effort is huge.
(15:47):
So they embraced it very quickly, like the other athletes that I work with a lot too.
Recompensation brings several other demands, including the need for them to
have a lifestyle, not necessarily of an athlete,
but of a healthy adult who needs to train very well, needs to sleep,
rest very well, who is exposed to the screen all day, needs to do a physical
(16:10):
activity, because all this influences the cognitive performance a lot.
On the contrary, we still have to convince the athletes that they need to have a routine,
thinking about mental energy, the mental energy system, I think he explains
well, and I think there is nothing mixed, that's why I say it's mental, but our energy varies.
(16:31):
A very nice example that I can give of a soccer athlete, a goalkeeper in the
sub-20 transition category, a professional in terms of contract,
because he played for one of the great teams here in Porto Alegre,
so he already had a professional contract, the possibility of,
with two great coincidences, playing in the Brazilian championship or being
(16:54):
on the bench in his team's game.
And his first and second consultation already came and said to me, it was not the first one.
As far as the routine or his demands are concerned, that he was coming, Unfortunately,
we talk a little bit about the evolution of sports psychology,
he came from the base categories of the Rio team, that he worked with psychology
already during his teenage years, in the football or base category,
(17:19):
from the sub-15, sub-16, sub-17.
I even had, at the time, facilities that we have because of the network,
he released me to talk to the psychologist who attended there,
said that it came because of her too,
and we could already make a change from another point of service.
But what was one of his demands at the time? That he made a lot of mistakes
(17:41):
at the end of the training.
And his goalkeeper coach said that he was late, and we thinking together with that what.
Physical fatigue too, I asked him what time the training has been,
it's usually in the afternoon, in the afternoon, but it's at night,
(18:06):
especially in the middle of the afternoon.
And he, as he was already an athlete, he was already at an age that he wasn't
in college anymore, he was in college, so I asked him, tell me,
since the time you went to sleep, I've always wondered what you do in the morning,
he said that the night The night of sleep starts the night before, right?
Your day starts an hour before you go to sleep, the night before.
(18:28):
And he said he was playing one of those games, I think it was Counter Strike, I was Fistfire.
And I stopped and moved away a little, thinking about the demand he was having
for the brain, several hours before he started performing, he had the desire
to perform in his sport, in football.
And I realized that there is a side of his mind that is even exhausted from making decisions.
(18:51):
Because these games make you make a lot of decisions for the second.
Like soccer also makes open games, games with almost peripheral vision,
at the edge of the screen, but that have 360, right?
And I realized that he was spending this mental energy, this decision making,
and probably there would come a time when it would run out. physical training, right?
(19:12):
When you get more sensitive to the brain, the physical also starts to fail.
And it was one of the first interventions, we modified the health on the back.
Obviously, you have to be able to play, but you have to know how to dose and
know how to dose a rest to get the best energy possible for training.
Organizing, many times, is much more about what we organize between the training
(19:33):
and the games than what we do at that time,
which is the time it seems that It seems that we are dealing only with the training
with the game, a large part of the work is done within it.
Exactly, this is very interesting when we think about athletes and also professionals
who want to have better performance, more productivity, it's not just the work
(19:58):
moment, it's all around,
it's sleep, it's food, it's quality, It's the moment to have pleasure and pleasure
too, that this is important too,
and this question of games is very interesting, virtual games,
as it is a very mental thing, they already have this notion, right?
(20:18):
I like chess, sometimes I play chess online, which is a lot,
you also have to take care of yourself, because it is something that requires
a lot, and if we don't take care of it, it comes in hours, right?
I take care of myself a lot, but I remember that Bob Fischer is considered one
of the best in history, there are documentaries, he was there swimming,
(20:40):
he had that moment to be able to balance the physical side.
With the mental effort. So there are these two worlds.
This is already a very strong change that came from e-sports that came six years ago,
we didn't even talk about it, about this modality and the size of this industry that I knew was big,
(21:06):
but in 2018 already being bigger than the NBA is already ...
It's like a game, right? We have several games, but these conglomerates work
with 5, 6 sports, some with a lot more.
Yes, and it's something that everyone can do at home, so there's a very wide
(21:32):
audience, the internet did that.
Of course, NBA too, this can happen, but maybe these games are much more frequent,
it's almost impossible to have the frequency that these games have,
I'm thinking here about this reality.
Ok, very good. So, and with this athlete, I was in doubt, did you try to change
(21:54):
this routine or how was your strategy with him, this goalkeeper?
The main thing was that he had this awareness of what he needed,
and I think this is a central point of my work.
It is very important for them to be able to deal with this demand,
(22:15):
let's call it energy demand, or activation, but also relaxation. of relaxation.
We are talking about people who traditionally call it a little bit of motivation
and sometimes they also call it anxiety,
or we call it activation and sometimes the anxiety that I used to say is bad,
activation is to have a good anxiety, which is to know how much you need to
(22:36):
be connected to your activity,
but it can't be too much either, because otherwise you lose this,
let's say, a little bit of this control, right?
Anxiety does that, right? It's not about not having anxiety,
because you also always have anxiety anxiety as a pejorative.
Anxiety is this activation that until a certain point we can improve performance, right?
How connected we have to be to study, for example, a test, for example,
(22:59):
when you go to the café, you take it to, for example, sometimes you have to
study for hours for a test,
but until a certain point it will help you and after a certain point the performance
drops and you really You lose concentration.
You lose focus, you get too fast.
And if only coffee does that, imagine how much more we can be stimulated.
(23:23):
So for all athletes, talking about this self-knowledge of theirs, be it for training,
and of course it puts a greater blame on you when in the games or matches or
championships, it depends on the sport, in poker they perform every day because
they are playing for real every day.
You almost don't train, you study, but compared to what you play, it's very little.
(23:46):
In sports like soccer, you will have a maximum of two games a week.
In some other sports, sometimes tennis stays a week without playing,
and you play six games in two days.
In crossfit, sometimes it takes months for a competition. In bodybuilding,
you prepare the legs for two competitions a year.
So, the concern is much more, of course, with what he does more repeatedly.
(24:08):
Then from here the team will look for you at the end of the championship.
The championship will be in August, but the more conscious know that our preparation
happens well before, even though the competitive environment will always bring
situations that you can prepare,
you can modulate a little bit, but it will never be the same.
(24:30):
The game is game, training is training, it's true, for any sport.
So you will have sensations, you will have the level of nervousness and pressure.
They exist sometimes in the environment, they almost always exist in the competition environment.
You will not match that.
So that's why there's always a difference between the two.
But of course, preparation is much more necessary.
(24:53):
For each contest game, you have a lot more training hours, where you have a
slightly more controlled environment, of everything we talked about,
of training, of sleep, of nutrition, of mental energy, of enrichment,
whether it's reading a book, watching a series, watching a podcast,
because we also have to deal with that, right?
(25:13):
The idea is that the books we read are nobler, and there are situations where
we don't know how to differentiate, or you can learn a lot by listening to a
podcast, you can do a course with audio.
For us, it's so common, Americans use audiobooks for dozens of years.
And it can be a series, especially the biographies, which I really like,
(25:36):
about athletes, about coaches, about great personalities of humanity.
You can learn as much as a book. We have a little chance too,
on our intellectual side, no, but the book, I myself am here with ...
I don't buy books, I don't buy books, I have a Kindle, but there are four that
I brought back to the physical congress.
On my side, a Kindle that I almost don't use, I still have it in my bag.
(25:58):
I use Kindle, but I still prefer to have the book there, only that Kindle is very practical, right?
For those who are out, for those who travel.
Yes, but I think the videos are so appealing, right?
And so many podcasts are other means that sometimes I think the fact of reading
(26:20):
a book, of stopping, of being there, is a different attention.
It seems to be a refined attention that is given, I don't know,
I don't want to evaluate or even judge, but it's that moment when the feelings
are so great about the videos and everything else, that sometimes the book seems a little...
It's attractive for those who are extreme, so it requires that...
(26:43):
And at the same time, it's maybe the most common multiple of attention, right?
A blank sheet with the letter, but we also do it...
It opens you to other processes, which is imagination, right?
Which is something that sometimes you will see in a movie, in a series,
in a book, and you find it very boring, because in your head it was much cooler.
(27:04):
And if you want, we go to the toys, where nowadays, I also have an athlete like
this, with a golf athlete, this one who showed me the Free Fire.
As I worked in the golf club, which was in the condominium, I attended him at
his house, I already enjoyed the trip.
And in his room there was a giant Lego, I'm always in love with Legos,
(27:29):
and he had one of the Batmobiles, one of my favorite superheroes,
the only superhero I like, actually.
And I was showing him how I played with Lego, with Batman Lego,
when I was his age, that I would take a black clothes, put a helmet,
build the Batmobile there, and he had everything ready.
And that's what happens sometimes with these super games.
(27:55):
They don't allow you anymore, they don't demand you to imagine and create, it's ready,
if we go to the channels, there's the real, there's the symbolic, there's the imaginary,
it gives you a lot of mental need too, and at the same time it's very cool,
because it's very rich, it enters this environment, on the other hand,
(28:16):
it leaves you in several other areas of the brain deactivated that we are forced
to activate when it's with the paper and the cold letter there,
having to imagine for us.
The exercise of imagination is very important, it's true, psychoanalysis brings
a lot of this, the symbolic question, it's all very real, immediate,
(28:38):
we call it, I want to eat, there's an iFood, it's all there, it's real.
Good, ok. I was also thinking about this question,
we see the athlete sometimes, a famous one, winning a competition,
an Olympic or something like that, but we don't see him there almost every day
(29:00):
at 7 in the morning, swimming alone.
So we know that high-end sports require a very high discipline,
and we talked about it well.
And also the difference of this moment, they train for a long time,
they prepare and then there is that crucial moment.
(29:21):
I think next year we will also have the Olympics, right?
Yes. And how is this worked out?
What techniques are possible to use in sports psychology that have been used to work this out?
You think, ok, the game, the time of pressure, the competition,
that moment, it's normal, sometimes
(29:42):
the person has a block, because it's different, there's the crowd,
there's the cameras and everything else, are there any techniques or strategies to deal with that?
Pedro, that's precisely one side that sports psychology starts to have its own field,
(30:03):
even though it's not the exclusivity of sports psychology, I mean,
in psychology, to work with situations.
But I think it's a little different from the approaches, the approaches,
no, sorry, the classic tools that were classic until then, right?
When the sport psychology was happening, psychologists were working in sports,
(30:27):
we already had a psychologist working with the national team,
João Carvalhais, the first world championship in Brazil, but they were psychologists,
and then Taíde, who was famous for passing the K-pro test to Garrincha and everything
else, they were psychologists using the tools of psychology in athletes trying
to grow, they are our pioneers, our innovators.
(30:49):
But since the 70s, more or less, what we consider the most modern stage worldwide.
We have some more specific tools that we work with, because,
remembering, the sports psychology is an area of action and not an approach,
that is, you can be a sports psychologist, a psychoanalyst, a cognitive-behavioral,
a humanist, a therapist, among many others.
(31:12):
So, the view of the human being continues to be of each psychologist,
but there are many tools that are common, especially I think they work.
Work, basically, I want to prove scientifically that they work.
So, within this circle that enters sports psychology, where the coach is also
(31:32):
born, the English coach, right, this mentoring,
this training with the coaches, that's why we say that everything a coach does
is included, almost everything a coach does is included in psychology.
Because it came from there, but another one was created in Brazil,
in Brazil, especially, and another profession was created with other things,
(31:53):
including all the difficulties that extend,
for example, not having scientific validity of the work instrument,
which is a very dangerous thing, but then within the sport project in general,
we try to instrumentalize the athlete, precisely because it is also a training, right?
Because it takes time, it needs repetition, it needs trial and error to know
(32:14):
what works for him and not for him.
I always tell my athletes, if it works If it worked for everyone in the same
way, I wouldn't have to attend everyone for at least an hour to be able to follow
up on the consultations.
I would have made a book, I would be selling it and I would be receiving my
checks, as the Americans say, my email, I would be receiving the notifications.
(32:36):
At the same time, it would also be completely unnecessary, but each athlete is unique, right?
And when teaching strategies that are, for example, relaxation techniques for
excess activity, anxiety, sorry, or activation techniques to reach this level,
we work a lot with the classic psychological competencies, right?
Being worked on is also a matter of goals, right?
(32:58):
Especially short and medium-term, you have to think about the long-term goal,
which is the dream, but not, So the short courses are more important because
what is the short term, in fact, the very short term is your day.
And your day can still be divided into several pieces, and these pieces reach
the minimum particle, which is that second, which is the present, right?
That only second, as the rapper I like.
(33:20):
As I said, there is only one ball in football, there is only one play,
there is only one card in poker that is the card you have in your hand,
because this is the present, right?
I worked with the shooter, he gave 400 shots in a small space in a test.
I said, no, you just have to hit a plate, which is the one you have.
If you take the previous plate, you will already miss this one.
(33:42):
If you think about the other, you will miss them.
So this goal becomes the day, let's draw your day, which we can do in the best way possible.
Besides the goals, I work with the selection of thoughts, images,
words that they use, or inner dialogue, or self-talk, which is a little better,
(34:04):
but what you say to yourself.
And Mindfulness got into it in the last decade.
There is this book here that I'm going to make a Merchan, which is from our
GP, the National Association of Physicists in Psychology.
We made a book with more than 20 authors, exercise sports, theoretical models.
Research and intervention.
(34:24):
So, Erick Conde, Alberto Figueira, Zé Anangelo, Adriana Pereira and Tiana Carvalho organized it.
I think there are 27 authors for those chapters, something like that,
and in my chapter, along with Marisa Martunas, who is a psychologist today in
the basic categories of the women's football section, she went through the Olympic cycles with boxers,
(34:45):
one of the sports that has given the most medals in Brazil.
And we put these classic competencies and put Mindfulness as something that
in the most ancient times speaks to us.
It was something that I made a request as the author of the chapter to put you,
because it is a reality today, even though in Brazil there is little talk.
(35:06):
I have been working with mindfulness athletes for almost 10 years,
considered one of the first to enter this area, but because I looked for myself
first, I said, wow, this works.
Until I started to understand that this already existed in the world,
it was being placed and it was very interesting.
All this will put tools for athletes to use on the day of the competition,
(35:28):
but nothing will work only on the day of the competition, if you don't train
before, if you don't use it before.
It's that athlete who always has a routine, especially with young people,
who go to a tennis court, there was a tennis court at the time,
and they go there and they will create a new kickboard, they never played with
a kickboard, they will put it there.
Or you will take two energy drinks, because the energy drink makes you super active.
(35:51):
But if you trained with so much caffeine, it will probably give you a much higher
anxiety peak than having your average performance.
Or this barbell that will give you a headache, it will hurt you.
And I always say to them, you will not do this, you will not have a barbell
on the day of your most important game.
You will not use a technique that you have never tested, and it's normal.
(36:13):
I ask you to look for it on your story sometimes, because on Monday,
for the first post to be Tuesday, because there is a competition on Saturday,
I already say, look, if I don't spoil anything until there, I'm already happy.
The work will start after that. Exactly.
So, it seems to me, from this answer, that nothing like a good preparation,
(36:34):
a good training routine to bring us confidence in the moment of the competition,
in the decisive time, look, I know I gave my best, I got here at this moment,
so there is no price, there is nothing else that can bring that.
And psychology also has a lot of that, because sometimes they take this idea,
(36:58):
let's do a session for the final game.
Look, there is no ... the work is much more consistent, much more consistent
and constant than a simple motivation session.
How do you see these sessions like this?
Wow, coaches and let's save and that's it. I like that a lot,
(37:21):
because maybe it's what I do least, but at the same time it was what brought me to study sports.
The first question when I went to study was how does a coach change a locker
room in the break and the team goes there to become another team and becomes a game?
That was my research question when I did my first job as a sports teacher,
my first 100 meters from college, back in 2003. It was just that.
(37:45):
And it's funny how that takes you to a place that sometimes turns out to be
what you... I didn't push it anymore, I was more critical about it,
even because there was a whole question of how this is sold.
And fortunately, I think it's getting more and more in the place it had to be,
which is sometimes like a show to distract the players.
(38:10):
Of these lessons before, especially when it goes to people who do not propose
to only give a performance.
There are a lot more, sometimes there are coaches who don't like to take a comedian
to important games, then I think you're in the right place to be,
because yes, you can do different things near different games.
(38:35):
Guardiola did this with Barcelona in 2009, he made a video I made a video with
Eran and Boma, I made it with the gladiator film, with the players.
This is cool, I already did this too, in Curitiba, for example,
when the coach asked and the players liked it and asked later to do more.
But you have to know when to put this, it's not the motivational video.
(39:00):
What time will it pass, what do you have to do between this and the time of
the game, you have to know the group.
If you don't know it, you have to do it at a very low level,
because it's very simple if you think of a group of five people,
we are the two, but there are three people.
Sometimes what motivates me
is to cause anxiety, and in the third year I won't even do it with the 15.
(39:22):
In the locker room I saw a lot of that, with speeches from the commission and
sometimes from the athletes themselves.
So that's why you have to know the group, like the history of the book,
You can't have a book with all the things in psychology and it won't work.
And I think that's where our great competence as psychologists also resides.
We are trained exhaustively in college, in the stadium, and after,
(39:44):
for the rest of our lives, to listen, to look, to think and decide,
to choose words, to choose moments.
And this timing, when you do something closed, I have this package of this motivational
class, it doesn't exist, I'm giving you a closed problem and each one will hit it in a way.
I always remember the year that I think it was Corinthians who was relegated
(40:05):
and the guys talking about the transmission saying something like that.
The physical coach did a motivational job there to play the players, with a family issue.
And I saw something very similar once when they passed by looking for Nemo,
for the boys from Grêmio where I did the stage, right at that time.
(40:26):
Someone, a physical trainer too, and I looked and there was a player entering the field crying,
a player, a 1.90 meter player, crying like that, maybe he didn't,
I remember I looked at the TV and said, maybe he's not in the necessary activation
for him to have the best performance in this game.
15 minutes of the game, 1-0 for the opponent, who failed, grossly, that player,
(40:49):
the game ended 1-0, it was the game that helped the dropout of Corinthians,
and that, only that will make you drop out, no, but the details,
they count a lot in the high performance,
the higher the performance, the more details will make a difference,
because the games are very similar in many things, including the physical preparation,
(41:12):
So we have to be aware of these details and know that at times we can sometimes
miss, and sometimes help more.
It is this awareness that is necessary.
And at the same time, of course, listen to the demands too. I,
for me, would not have made so many videos when I did the Buritiba,
but they asked, it was an exception, they asked.
(41:32):
There is something there, I will listen to them to know what they got,
what hit there at one moment or another.
We have to listen first, and that's why listening is our first tool,
but understanding that this spectacularization that is done,
and now with video editing, much more, not only lectures, but.
(41:53):
Sessions of almost witchcraft, it seems that it happens to people in various areas, right?
How much that is a A well edited video of a coaching lecture,
wow, you jump out and roar, as it happens a lot in videos, but that's for whom,
for what moment, it works with whom, right?
And that's what we have to work with when we work collectively and when we are
(42:17):
with the individual client, that each one finds their point,
we help them find their point, at what moment they need one thing and at what
moment they need another.
We help them with self-knowledge, right? To make the famous self-regulation.
Yes, exactly, exactly. That's it, I see the work of the sports psychologist
a lot, I don't see it, no, he is like that, he is much more present,
(42:40):
right, he needs the importance of having this regularity, of being there,
different from calling someone, okay, let's do a motivational lecture,
okay, maybe it can work, maybe not. When it works, they publish it, right?
When it doesn't work, nobody talks about it, but it happens a lot and it's not cheap, huh?
Look, it's not cheap, but it's okay, I think it's also this vision, right?
(43:03):
Because sometimes the vision that you have is that moment, right? Soon before the game.
Maurício, I would like to ask you, how do you perceive.
Today, the need of the athletes to work, I know there are several modalities,
you have already worked in football, in Curitiba, but in several,
several areas, you have already presented some others.
(43:25):
But if you could, again, of course, each one is one, you demonstrate this very
well, each one has its own uniqueness,
but if you could generalize, generalize, being able to generalize and find some
similarities, what has emerged the most in the athletes?
(43:46):
I think the main one, if I can write a complaint, are athletes who are below
their own level, the level they already have.
I'm not talking about the athlete who wants to reach the highest level,
They are athletes who have noticed a drop in performance in relation to themselves.
(44:09):
And this generates... There is a mental situation that I like to think of Bob
Rutella, who is a famous player for golf.
He says that no one throws above their possibilities.
If you've done that once, it's because it's within you. They'll do it to you other times.
And I think it's very plausible. You know, there are still amazing days when
(44:30):
everything comes out a little more. but he can get there again, because he already did.
And a little bit of this complaint of a player in the collective support that
has a performance that has become a reserve, a player who has already been champion
and is not able to beat, and the anxiety that this generates in terms of performance, right?
This is much more than athletes who say I want to reach the next level.
(44:53):
This appears especially with children and teenagers that their I know that my
son has a very complicated world,
I want to prepare him before,
this is wonderful, this is something that is unthinkable.
30 years ago, maybe even 20 years ago. Today it is common in the consultancy.
(45:17):
I think the prejudice against psychology has diminished a lot.
This is helping a lot the sports psychology.
And then, let's say, the episode of Simone Biles in the last game of the Australian
Olympics with the game changer.
So, if I were to generalize, we have a complaint, it's this,
(45:39):
the initial complaint that we talk about here, where the first thing comes,
we know that everything is only one, but it makes you seek consultation and a point to be worked on.
And sometimes the point to be worked on is exactly, it doesn't matter anymore
what you did, let's see what you can do from now on. There are issues of development,
sometimes, at certain ages, in these physical sports, like football itself.
(46:01):
A year or two in adolescence, in physical training, it's a lot of things.
You can lose some things in comparison to others. Some mature before,
as they say, in several levels, including cerebral.
And sometimes we don't see what it can be from now on.
Sometimes it's even, it's that, it's leaving the past there,
(46:21):
using the good things, as I say, put it in the pocket.
To generate confidence, I've already done this, I'm able to do this,
I've already done it, to admit the performance, not to doubt yourself,
much more than to do it again, to be able to focus on the present,
which is the only way to prepare for a good future.
It's always the focus on the present, which for me is the main tools of my clinical
(46:45):
and collective work, because it brings me a series of guidelines that are very well justified,
theoretically, scientifically proven.
And gives you a safe basis for us to look at and say, this here can be applied
in almost every situation, and we can, because this is talking about,
(47:09):
something that is very human, which is the non-judgment, the acceptance,
and especially the question of compassion, which is the point that is least
spoken about in the sport mindset.
And by far the most difficult and most important to be worked on.
Exactly, because with all this world based on images,
(47:33):
which is this virtual world, and the increase in the expectation of demand, of demand,
gets even bigger, so everyone there in the media is super, everyone is beautiful,
is full of money, so people post the best photos and everything else.
So I see that this search for perfection, in quotes.
(47:56):
Perfectionism, here I see in Portugal, in the schools where I work,
it is very common, I'm not even I'm not even talking about the sport, right?
And then I see it as a remedy for that, or a magic potion, let's say,
to deal with it, it would be self-compassion, working on this aspect of mindfulness.
(48:18):
And how is that? When you enter with this part of the possibility of the person,
ok, I will take care of myself. the athletes, are they familiar with this?
Very little, very little, it was very difficult.
Especially when I started working more with the athletes, I was talking to Dani
(48:41):
Stopescu, my first instructor, together with Thiago Taton, and we went to set
up an office of the Sportful Minds Corridor, which is there in.
And she asked me, how is your self-compassion, and I couldn't answer,
I'm from the city, so I'm proud to answer the question, I managed to go two steps back,
(49:06):
I don't know what to think about it, from day to day, and I started to see that
it was very lacking, above the normal lack that we have as a society,
which is already enormous.
And in the middle there are these paradoxes, sports has a lot of paradoxes,
the difference between the acquisition of skills and the development of them.
(49:30):
What is an automatic pilot? How conscious do you need to be?
But the movement needs to be fluid, so it has to be almost automatic.
It's always transiting between a lot of things. and compassion also has that, right?
The amount of non-compassion I need to test some limit of mine,
(49:53):
to seek some limit of tolerance for pain,
physical and emotional tolerance, psychological pressure, how much I need to
be exposed to this to evolve and get stronger more strong mentally,
more rough as I used to be, and how much it is to know that there is a point
that I say, no, I don't want to go through here, it's too much for me,
(50:15):
here I need care, here I need,
healing, because we know that the high-earning sport is not healthy,
neither physically nor mentally,
it will take you deformations that sometimes stay for life, right?
A athlete gets retired at with 20 years old, 30 years old and several sports,
and will lead to arthritis,
(50:35):
surgery of crossed ligaments, shoulder problems and traumas,
and will wake up 20 years later sweaty,
remembering a scene that seems like a competition, a very extreme situation
for his whole life, right?
And it's very difficult to work thinking from this perspective,
(50:55):
that the sport is like that and there is a part of it that will not change.
Because we are talking about limits, excellence, performance,
and at the same time knowing how much we can also contribute in this environment,
because it seems that we have to accept everything that is happening because
we are going to work with the sport.
And no, how much we can be there to soften these processes a little.
(51:16):
And I'm not just talking about the coach who pulls athletes,
the coach is a person in general with a lot of suffering in the sport as well,
I told you, this is a work group in Congress, and very lonely for that too,
because it seems that he is always a slacker, he has to pull the athlete to the limit.
And putting this in mind, there's a scene that I always joke about when I ask
how it is to work with football and all that.
I joke that I'm the only member of the technical committee who can smile.
(51:41):
Because in the middle of special football, but more masculine football.
The bomb of the surprise that exists, right?
The creator has a great training, much more than the games. The games there
are a special moment, a spectacle.
Mourinho always says that I like it a lot, the way he treats it.
But on a daily basis, the trainer has to be pushing the athletes,
(52:02):
the physical trainer has to be pushing even more, because that's it,
you have to achieve performance to have physical preparation,
we know that physical preparation is to reach the extreme, right?
As the situation is to get to the fault of the muscle many times and even the
nutritionist often has to give in the cloud because he has to eat this or that
(52:23):
and if I can't have a more affectionate bond even with the athletes,
I can't work with them anymore, I don't feel the will to come to my side and
tell something and I know that this is discrepant and even Until I understood
that it was also my characteristic, because it is a characteristic of the person.
(52:44):
I will change what I am just because I think that sport requires it.
But it was also a softening, and I think that's why we have so many colleagues,
women working in male football.
And so much success that is found in the space that the rest of the structure,
even more the centenary structure, the Brazilian show, almost does not allow
(53:06):
other environments, right?
We saw now, for example, John Arias from Fluminense thanking the psychologist,
and we have this happening all the time, and that made me want to do the stage
at the Grêmio, that the environment there, which was the psychosocial, which was psychology,
nutrition and social service, were all women, the professionals,
(53:29):
the interns, it was me and another young man at the time, in the pathology,
the rest were also women, and how it was in the female space,
there inside the club, how it was necessary, how I distanced myself, how I welcomed it,
and I took a while to understand at that age how important it was inside the
(53:50):
sport, but when it is seen as a threat to the whole rest, because it is a different space.
Exactly, you can still see yourself in a different way, but it is a space of
welcome, in the middle of so much hardness, someone there who will be able to listen to you.
I watch, I like a lot, I love football and I also like tennis a lot,
(54:14):
and watching these times I saw that Meligeni made a very good comment,
I think it was Djokovic or Nadal, it can be either of the two because they are monsters.
The ability he has to forgive himself is amazing, because with every mistake,
how are you going to deal with a failure?
(54:36):
So there is a lot of this question of self-compassion, okay,
I made a mistake, let's go to the next one, I'm not going to get stuck in that,
this game, and it's a way to work on resilience.
Anyway, these guys for me are super examples that can be taken from almost any other planet.
(54:57):
This is very interesting, right? Sport, I see that it seems that it has changed for a few decades.
We have Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi who managed to maintain a high level for
a long time. the top for a long time.
Then in tennis too, these three tennis players, Federer, Nadal and Djokovic,
(55:18):
managed to keep it for a long time.
I think it has a little to do with this more complete vision of the sport,
not to work only the physical part, not to work the technical part,
but to have these other care,
how they have other professionals there, along with them, nutrition,
(55:38):
finally, the medical part has probably evolved and also the psychological part, right?
I don't know if you have any, do you notice anything in this,
do you have any observations about this?
It's a very interesting point, right? You said that I stopped to think about
these athletes, not only of great performances, but of sustained performances, right?
(56:02):
As you said, both at the top, right? The tennis trio is absurd,
they are the three greatest together in history, and like Messi and Chanoal
in terms of numbers and in modernity, at least.
And at the same time, if there was necessarily an animality between them,
which I think is very interesting.
(56:23):
The animality was not something like Senna Prost, for example,
who was a realist, almost separated enemies.
And it's interesting, I think, having to agree with you, thinking about this
hypothesis, that they managed to have a global care, much greater,
(56:48):
well-accessed, in all these environments,
all these factors, and I think this favors them to make good decisions of all kinds.
In the case of the football players, where to play, where to stay,
which club to choose, at what time, with which coach,
which tournaments to choose to play and which not to play, respecting a certain
(57:09):
injury, this self-knowledge with all the technology that helps us today to map
this too, which is undeniable.
It seems that they don't have a bigger repertoire to make these decisions that keep them active.
And certainly there are many psychological factors within that.
(57:31):
We know about Jokovic working with psychologists, including Mayfiles.
Cristiano Ronaldo, for a long time, was an advisor to a psychologist.
Psychologist, and this question of understanding the factor, or it's a lie, it's a,
(57:52):
joke, but the psychological factor is part of the performance and the mentality.
Exactly, that's interesting. I remembered now of Lebron James too,
who is a top athlete who managed to maintain the high level,
I think it's a great difficulty,
getting there is already ultra difficult, difficult, but being able to stay
at the top for so long is something that catches my attention.
(58:15):
Before they couldn't do it for as long as now, so they go there and they're
breaking records and records and records.
And I believe LeBron James also uses mindfulness, right?
I think all this evolution helps them to keep it, they become super athletes.
Look, Maurício, I think we're getting there, I didn't want to know your availability,
(58:36):
but I would like to know a little bit about your work too, if you could talk
a little bit about how you have worked.
Because sometimes in football we enter a team and we are almost immersed there,
but there are several sports modalities and I know that you are attending different modalities,
(58:56):
so who would like to know more about the information that you can pass on?
Today, individually, I attend athletes from different sports,
football is still one of the main ones,
it's what brought me to the sport psychology, I argue that it is the sport that
(59:17):
I like the most at the same time, the most difficult to work,
the most difficult, the most complicated,
culturally and structurally,
But I also had a lot of new sports.
I work with a poker class, golf.
My novelty in recent months is that I worked with Cubo Mind.
(59:38):
I don't know how to do it yet, but I won.
It's here, it's here. The sponsor sent it to me.
In terms of consulting, I also work a lot based on Mindfulness.
But the people at AbraPESP call me a random sports psychologist.
I think I felt an openness to work with different sports, I worked with crossfit,
(01:00:02):
I worked with pole dancing, I worked with padel and even preparation for contests.
But it's a self-performance sport, I'm a student who intended to enter medicine
too, autism performance in Brazil.
And this at an individual and collective level.
(01:00:23):
Even after the pandemic, the fight is still being restructured,
but it's not my focus anymore. I also worked with golf clubs, with bodybuilding.
I also did a lot of work, I think, as a pioneer in Brazil, within Integral México.
I have a bottle of Integral that taught me to drink liters and liters of water a day.
To have this openness, right? To listen to the athletes, even this position
(01:00:45):
of not knowing anything about your sport, but I know a little bit about sports
psychology and we can understand each other.
I always had this openness, a student asked me how I worked with sports,
and there is an article about the club's psychology in the team,
and I said yes, I think you have to look.
Every sport has its own culture, has its own vocabulary,
(01:01:07):
its own glossary of expressions, the idols, different cognitive needs,
but there is a whole other side that is much bigger than that,
which is the basis of sports psychology, they are already applicable in different
ways, at different times,
but with practically everyone.
Some athletes will join more online, others will not join in any way,
(01:01:29):
but we know that we have a certain obligation to offer, to try and work,
maybe not at that moment that he will also work, but I think it's part of my
job, work, this accompaniment, this listening, and offer these possibilities
that work, I say work, because they are proven scientifically,
(01:01:51):
they are proven to work, many times, others not, but to have this practice also
based on evidence and at the same time the evidence, let's say,
semi-universal scientific evidence, we know that this changes every few years.
It can change, science is not inevitable, within the particularity of each one,
of each athlete, of each team, the singularity that each one has, right? Exactly.
(01:02:16):
And today, right, the services can be, the internet brings this facility,
so it ends up being very online too, in addition to the face-to-face in Porto Alegre, right?
Much more, almost 100% every week.
Almost 100% online, what madness, right? The pandemic was a super super catalyst for that.
(01:02:37):
So that's where it came from. I remember that before the CRP,
right, the psychology council, there were several restrictions against that,
now there's no way to hold it anymore.
Well, to finish, you came from the congress, right, from ABRAPESP,
is that it? ABRAPESP. ABRAPESP.
(01:02:59):
BRAPESP, any news, what's going on, can you bring us some updates?
What I can bring is growing interest in sports psychology, it hasn't stopped
increasing since I joined, I went in and did work for everyone,
(01:03:23):
people working in various fields,
in sports like some that I brought that I thought about for some people,
others that I also didn't understand.
I was talking to people who worked with bands, university bands, cheerleaders too,
who had some university athletics, that we also have very strong esports that are developing a lot,
(01:03:48):
the de-colonial esport psychology, the term that I started, that I went to know
there, I was studying yesterday, reading the articles to understand a little
of it, something very new too,
so I know we're talking about a heritage of colonialism,
of our countries, in the case of Brazil, but still in the slave trade.
(01:04:12):
Being dominated by European peoples, who are still said to be the majority of science,
sport and everything else, in the United States, obviously today,
to the other end we were talking about artificial intelligence, what IA can,
it crosses our work and facilitates some situations, and in others it will be
(01:04:35):
something that we are not dealing with, we are not talking about it, but it is not ready.
There is a big world and, fortunately, these face-to-face meetings,
since Código do Congresso was virtual,
which does not have, I think, 20% of the wealth that a face-to-face meeting has,
we value it a lot, I think, for the running moment, which is what happens between
(01:04:55):
the GTs, the thematic groups that
work, there are great moments of coffee break to be able to favor that.
Because it is in this encounter that we can recognize ourselves as equals,
people who work with the same situations and who are not competitors.
And I think it's a very beautiful greatness in this, because there are a lot
(01:05:17):
of people that we don't see in congresses.
And it's not because you have to be a scientist, it's just because it seems
like it's just a market reserve, I'm competing against everything else,
I do something in my incredible work that no one else does and I think no one
invented the wheel, right?
Each one has their own different wheel, different materials,
colors and surfaces, but we can improve each one of our wheels when we exchange with others, right?
(01:05:44):
That's the main thing. Look, it's good to know, I'm very happy to know that
it has grown, right, the prejudice has diminished and the sport industry,
it covers other areas too, right?
For those who want to have a high performance in other activities.
This is very interesting because it works with this focus too.
(01:06:05):
So, Maurício, thank you very much for this conversation.
I love this topic. We could stay here for hours talking about it.
I got other observations, but let's leave it for next time. I know you have to have time there too.
So, thank you very much for your availability. we will launch,
(01:06:27):
I don't know yet when, today is the 21st of November, 2023, but again,
I thank you very much for your presence.
I always thank you for this conversation, I always say it's delicious,
whenever you want we can do part 2, or it's open,
because it's something I always value, especially in interviews interviews or
(01:06:49):
even in the congress, right? Who knows, ask good questions.
I think the good questions make what is said grow everywhere, right?
Because we as psychologists, we ask great questions to patients, right?
But we are also sometimes not used to receiving and that enriches any construction, right?
(01:07:11):
So thank you for this construction of ours and I will wait for the next one,
but I'm also Thank you for what you are doing with your next guests,
with your next characters in your program. Thank you very much, Misericórdia.
Thank you, Maurício. Thank you. Big hug.
Music.
(00:19):
Hello, we are here in a new edition of the Game Changer Podcast,
this time in Portuguese.
I'm going to interview the dear Maurício Pinto Marques, my friend,
known there from Porto Alegre, who I interviewed on the podcast Demasiado Humano
six years ago, in 2016, a long time, right, Maurício?
(00:41):
But it will be a pleasure to be able to talk to you again about this topic,
about the question of high performance.
Let's make a quick presentation, Maurício is also a psychologist,
PhD in Sport Psychology, professor and researcher in the field of Sport Psychology.
(01:02):
Maurício, welcome, it's really nice to have you here again, because there's
a lot we can talk about. Thank you, Roberto, thank you audience too.
It's a pleasure to be here talking a little bit with you, talking about my passion,
which is sports psychology, about our work, right, also as psychologists,
as psychologists, we work with mindfulness too, and to share a little,
(01:25):
the pleasure is this, it is to promote the area and show this world that has
possibilities that many people still don't know, but that fortunately is no
longer being born, is growing a lot here.
Exactly this point that I would like to talk about, because we talked about
who, back in 2016 in the other podcast,
Demasiado Lano, a great conversation about the area, about prejudice that still exists,
(01:53):
but at the time I think it was much bigger.
And since then, our lives have changed, right?
I'm here in Portugal, I came to do my doctorate here, imagine,
seven years, a lot of things happen. The world has changed too.
I was here thinking, I was here using Zoom and artificial intelligence and other
(02:15):
thousand possibilities.
So I would like to start there, Maurício. What has changed all this time?
I think the generations have changed, the athletes have changed,
the way of life has changed.
Changed, I'm amazed, right, how technology is more and more present,
how important it is for us to be aware of it, right?
(02:38):
So I'd like to know a little bit about your vision about this time.
Nice, I was trying to imagine it too now.
The situation was 2016 and it's funny, it seems that we already had a large
part of the tools we have today.
We had used cell phones, we had 4G and.
(02:58):
So the base, let's say, was ready, but I don't even remember the cell phone
being so fixed in our hand, the extension of our body as it is today.
And this year was when I defended my doctorate in Barcelona,
I did a sandwich on the contrary, I trained research here in Porto Alegre,
and I had gone from there in 2012.
(03:21):
I stayed from 2008 to 2012, four years. I did my master's degree in one year
and I continued my doctorate, I started my doctorate in almost 6 years,
a little more than 6 years actually, and even there, when I left,
WhatsApp and everything was starting, and I even remember that I went in 2016,
I went to visit a friend of mine in Liverpool, and by chance,
(03:44):
I work in Liverpool, it's not psychology, it's the area of informatics and marketing,
And I was already surprised because the chip, even if I hadn't heard of Brexit,
there were all these different systems in England compared to the rest of Europe.
And my chip from Spain wasn't working on the cell phone that I had taken.
(04:07):
But I was already surprised that I could use Google Maps in any way to move there.
So I already had a macro to use the macro as a physical map,
only on the cell phone. When I found out that the GPS followed,
I thought, wow, it's much easier to do tourism.
Because I'm from the time when I arrived in Barcelona, I left with a map of
this size, of the English court in the middle of the city, to find me.
(04:31):
And at the same time, this brings us a much greater security, comfort, right?
Even on the same trip, I was saved by having Uber in Vienna.
I was visiting a colleague of mine from college, who was doing postdoc there,
and my plane delayed, I arrived in time, I had finished the trains.
And my luck, at that moment, this thing that we had these notifications not
(04:55):
requested on the cell phone, when I saw that I lost the last train,
I went to the hotel to get the wifi to tell my friend what I was doing.
I would do that because it was another city, the airport, and it opened a screen
that had Uber there. My Uber opened automatically, I took the Uber and saved myself.
So thinking already, imagine, we were already with WhatsApp,
with Uber, with several other things.
(05:16):
And this has certainly been changing,
it's not even changing, it's growing with the athletes who are younger today,
especially having teenagers and young adults, some already 6,
7 years old, a few months ago, and we notice the difference between generations,
the ease of this online,
(05:37):
especially after the pandemic, But on the other hand, the dependence on it,
it changes the type of athlete they want to be, the athlete they can be. How do they...
How do they relate to this screen, but also how this screen brings other things
to the point of, for example, I'm not even good at science these days,
(06:00):
an athlete is 12 years old, so I say, Maurício, how do I get a sponsorship?
And I say, who do you want a sponsorship for? What's your idea?
It's more of a boy who has a family with a lot of conditions compared to his
colleagues in the soccer world, right?
He says, no, because I saw on Instagram that this guy already has a sponsorship
from Adidas every year, the other has from Nike.
(06:22):
And that person doesn't need it, but he needs to show that he is so good that
he has a sponsorship, because that is a chancel that exists.
So it's very interesting to think about these athletes who were born in this digital world, right?
When I turned 41 now, I got the transition.
(06:43):
I had to take care of the ladder internet, what we used to call the wide band,
right when I entered college.
University, this university with the internet, even though even in the doctorate
it was very difficult to access articles, there was that thing of sending e-mails
to the magazine to make a fable, sending an article in the physical,
starting access to PDFs, but that was before the Science Hub,
(07:07):
which later gave access to everyone for the articles, and for me it may be the
greatest scientific evolution of the last few years, the last decade, was this portal.
It's funny, but it's true, right? I almost had a PhD in science and engineering,
and I went to the library to look for articles and magazines.
It evolved. It evolved. Before that, I listen to my teachers that I had to talk
(07:33):
to, I had to go to the library of such a university, search for the news they had about.
That topic on paper, right?
So, the article, today the article is published and a minute later it's in everyone's
hands, right? So I think that's wonderful.
I, doing my PhD here, I had this opportunity to access a lot of the article
(08:00):
of the year, the article that just came out, so it's a great advantage.
Advantage, but as we say, it has the advantages that are immense,
but it also has the other side, right?
I don't want to, I'm not even talking about the others, I think about myself,
(08:20):
how I have this need to police myself with the use of the internet,
how these applications have a It's a vicious power to hold you there and not
surf the internet, but to snuff out on the internet, I like this term a lot.
We snuff out, we understand, ah, I'm going to send an email,
(08:42):
but then you see that there is a message, then you see an advertisement and it starts and dives.
And then it goes away, right?
I think a lot about it and the effects that it has on us, on myself,
and I think about other people, how we are in this virtual world,
(09:03):
it seems that it has become bigger,
more present in our lives, I don't know if you realize that.
I think it's good that you talked about surfers that we used.
It's a virtual world and I think we can't, it's no longer virtual, it's our reality.
We feel that we can have a certain separation of this, I'm going to go on the
(09:25):
internet and now the internet is already in us.
And it will stay even more with the map and everything else that is coming.
And just talking about it, thinking about my players who are a little younger,
young people, they no longer have this distinction between the virtual or the
I will enter, as we now played,
and feel that they, that's why I think they have a lot more difficulty disconnecting,
(09:48):
because they don't need to disconnect, right?
It's you choosing not to look to this side, because you're connected,
it's very rare to be disconnected, and I think that we, there are people who
are over 30, maybe even less than 50, because 50 is a barrier for a lot of people
with a lot of technology, right?
(10:08):
I took a course that day so that my father could use WhatsApp,
because after my mother passed away, he can't use WhatsApp, and he can't,
and he doesn't know how to use an Uber, an app, and we... And sometimes I'm
like, I'm going to get a taxi.
The limits of the borders, the use of the internet.
(10:28):
And precisely, we can be a generation that has a certain awareness of this transition,
but also of, I'm using too much, this here I will try to do something related to this.
Younger people have a much greater difficulty with this, because it is awareness,
(10:48):
right? It's a key word for psychology and so on.
But to realize, to get out of the automatic plan, and that's so...
Put on the computer, with more and more technology for it, that technology makes
a lot of effort to keep us inside it.
We know that apps are made with apps, especially TikTok, it's made in a way
(11:16):
that your brain gets addicted to it.
And the games are made for that too.
I even raised this question in the penultimate presidential congress of the
PESPA, which was in 2019,
and at the time people didn't even understand my question, because I was already
(11:39):
working with League of Legends teams, I worked with Counter Strike and Free
Fire through Corinthians as well, but what I had put,
at the time I had two football athletes and another tennis athlete there at
16 or 17 years old, 16, 17,
and on the same week I had this obligation from the mother of both.
(12:04):
My son, if he's not training, he's in the little game and I already started
trying to understand because I was still a little alien to these games, how they worked.
And then another golf athlete, but he didn't explain to me, I was attending
him at his house and he said, I want to show you the little game,
(12:25):
I'm playing in the little game.
And I realized that they were very perverse, at the same time that they are
super popular, that they are light and grateful, they make you buy things that
are not necessarily necessary, just for fashion, style skins,
but that already had a certain social ascension in the hierarchy of the game,
(12:47):
which I think is the maximum of capitalism. capitalism, right?
It's a free thing and you can do everything for free, but you pay for something
completely unnecessary.
And that was a addiction for children, they were asking for birthday cards,
bonus cards, money to use in a little game, basically, right?
To be able to buy these completely useless things for performance.
(13:10):
We're talking about performance, right? What is really performance and what
is accessory to performance?
Even here we know that it has a mental damage also of self-esteem,
of confidence, and we can stay traveling if we imagine for a long time.
Interesting there, Tirá, and how much did you bring that, right? So you also worked with.
(13:31):
I don't know if with virtual sports athletes, we call them athletes,
has there ever been a controversy if this is a sport or not a sport?
I don't know, because this is a giant world, right?
It's a very big industry, right? And I don't know if you've worked with this medium too.
(13:51):
Yes, yes. I think the idea of the size of the industry, Roberto,
At the time I worked with the first League of Legends team, which was in 2018,
if I'm not mistaken, Redemption was the best LoL team here in Porto Alegre,
without virtual tournaments.
The owner of the team told me that LoL, the empire, let's say LoL,
(14:17):
was already moving more money than NBA.
Than NBA? Than NBA.
Again, the game is free. I want to say that the game is free.
This information is impressive.
Exactly, and I'm very happy. I came back now on the last Saturday,
(14:38):
I don't know when it's going to air, but it was November 21st.
Exactly, it was November 21st. I talk a lot with my colleague that I met in
the previous presentation, Claudio.
Claudio was a psychologist, now he is a coordinator of the Liquid team.
(15:00):
Liquid's major shareholder is Michael Jordan.
The CEO, the president is on top of the CEOs, the executive that came from Time Warner,
basically one of the heads of Warner, and this is the size it took and we talk
a lot about the question of the culture of athletes, athletes,
who work with athletes from all over the world, literally from all over the world, and sports,
(15:27):
as you like to call it, and there are several sides to it.
Sports embraced psychology from the beginning, practically.
The sports of the mind have that, the athlete has no way of pretending that
the mind doesn't matter.
Physical effort is very small, but cognitive and emotional effort is huge.
(15:47):
So they embraced it very quickly, like the other athletes that I work with a lot too.
Recompensation brings several other demands, including the need for them to
have a lifestyle, not necessarily of an athlete,
but of a healthy adult who needs to train very well, needs to sleep,
rest very well, who is exposed to the screen all day, needs to do a physical
(16:10):
activity, because all this influences the cognitive performance a lot.
On the contrary, we still have to convince the athletes that they need to have a routine,
thinking about mental energy, the mental energy system, I think he explains
well, and I think there is nothing mixed, that's why I say it's mental, but our energy varies.
(16:31):
A very nice example that I can give of a soccer athlete, a goalkeeper in the
sub-20 transition category, a professional in terms of contract,
because he played for one of the great teams here in Porto Alegre,
so he already had a professional contract, the possibility of,
with two great coincidences, playing in the Brazilian championship or being
(16:54):
on the bench in his team's game.
And his first and second consultation already came and said to me, it was not the first one.
As far as the routine or his demands are concerned, that he was coming, Unfortunately,
we talk a little bit about the evolution of sports psychology,
he came from the base categories of the Rio team, that he worked with psychology
already during his teenage years, in the football or base category,
(17:19):
from the sub-15, sub-16, sub-17.
I even had, at the time, facilities that we have because of the network,
he released me to talk to the psychologist who attended there,
said that it came because of her too,
and we could already make a change from another point of service.
But what was one of his demands at the time? That he made a lot of mistakes
(17:41):
at the end of the training.
And his goalkeeper coach said that he was late, and we thinking together with that what.
Physical fatigue too, I asked him what time the training has been,
it's usually in the afternoon, in the afternoon, but it's at night,
(18:06):
especially in the middle of the afternoon.
And he, as he was already an athlete, he was already at an age that he wasn't
in college anymore, he was in college, so I asked him, tell me,
since the time you went to sleep, I've always wondered what you do in the morning,
he said that the night The night of sleep starts the night before, right?
Your day starts an hour before you go to sleep, the night before.
(18:28):
And he said he was playing one of those games, I think it was Counter Strike, I was Fistfire.
And I stopped and moved away a little, thinking about the demand he was having
for the brain, several hours before he started performing, he had the desire
to perform in his sport, in football.
And I realized that there is a side of his mind that is even exhausted from making decisions.
(18:51):
Because these games make you make a lot of decisions for the second.
Like soccer also makes open games, games with almost peripheral vision,
at the edge of the screen, but that have 360, right?
And I realized that he was spending this mental energy, this decision making,
and probably there would come a time when it would run out. physical training, right?
(19:12):
When you get more sensitive to the brain, the physical also starts to fail.
And it was one of the first interventions, we modified the health on the back.
Obviously, you have to be able to play, but you have to know how to dose and
know how to dose a rest to get the best energy possible for training.
Organizing, many times, is much more about what we organize between the training
(19:33):
and the games than what we do at that time,
which is the time it seems that It seems that we are dealing only with the training
with the game, a large part of the work is done within it.
Exactly, this is very interesting when we think about athletes and also professionals
who want to have better performance, more productivity, it's not just the work
(19:58):
moment, it's all around,
it's sleep, it's food, it's quality, It's the moment to have pleasure and pleasure
too, that this is important too,
and this question of games is very interesting, virtual games,
as it is a very mental thing, they already have this notion, right?
(20:18):
I like chess, sometimes I play chess online, which is a lot,
you also have to take care of yourself, because it is something that requires
a lot, and if we don't take care of it, it comes in hours, right?
I take care of myself a lot, but I remember that Bob Fischer is considered one
of the best in history, there are documentaries, he was there swimming,
(20:40):
he had that moment to be able to balance the physical side.
With the mental effort. So there are these two worlds.
This is already a very strong change that came from e-sports that came six years ago,
we didn't even talk about it, about this modality and the size of this industry that I knew was big,
(21:06):
but in 2018 already being bigger than the NBA is already ...
It's like a game, right? We have several games, but these conglomerates work
with 5, 6 sports, some with a lot more.
Yes, and it's something that everyone can do at home, so there's a very wide
(21:32):
audience, the internet did that.
Of course, NBA too, this can happen, but maybe these games are much more frequent,
it's almost impossible to have the frequency that these games have,
I'm thinking here about this reality.
Ok, very good. So, and with this athlete, I was in doubt, did you try to change
(21:54):
this routine or how was your strategy with him, this goalkeeper?
The main thing was that he had this awareness of what he needed,
and I think this is a central point of my work.
It is very important for them to be able to deal with this demand,
(22:15):
let's call it energy demand, or activation, but also relaxation. of relaxation.
We are talking about people who traditionally call it a little bit of motivation
and sometimes they also call it anxiety,
or we call it activation and sometimes the anxiety that I used to say is bad,
activation is to have a good anxiety, which is to know how much you need to
(22:36):
be connected to your activity,
but it can't be too much either, because otherwise you lose this,
let's say, a little bit of this control, right?
Anxiety does that, right? It's not about not having anxiety,
because you also always have anxiety anxiety as a pejorative.
Anxiety is this activation that until a certain point we can improve performance, right?
How connected we have to be to study, for example, a test, for example,
(22:59):
when you go to the café, you take it to, for example, sometimes you have to
study for hours for a test,
but until a certain point it will help you and after a certain point the performance
drops and you really You lose concentration.
You lose focus, you get too fast.
And if only coffee does that, imagine how much more we can be stimulated.
(23:23):
So for all athletes, talking about this self-knowledge of theirs, be it for training,
and of course it puts a greater blame on you when in the games or matches or
championships, it depends on the sport, in poker they perform every day because
they are playing for real every day.
You almost don't train, you study, but compared to what you play, it's very little.
(23:46):
In sports like soccer, you will have a maximum of two games a week.
In some other sports, sometimes tennis stays a week without playing,
and you play six games in two days.
In crossfit, sometimes it takes months for a competition. In bodybuilding,
you prepare the legs for two competitions a year.
So, the concern is much more, of course, with what he does more repeatedly.
(24:08):
Then from here the team will look for you at the end of the championship.
The championship will be in August, but the more conscious know that our preparation
happens well before, even though the competitive environment will always bring
situations that you can prepare,
you can modulate a little bit, but it will never be the same.
(24:30):
The game is game, training is training, it's true, for any sport.
So you will have sensations, you will have the level of nervousness and pressure.
They exist sometimes in the environment, they almost always exist in the competition environment.
You will not match that.
So that's why there's always a difference between the two.
But of course, preparation is much more necessary.
(24:53):
For each contest game, you have a lot more training hours, where you have a
slightly more controlled environment, of everything we talked about,
of training, of sleep, of nutrition, of mental energy, of enrichment,
whether it's reading a book, watching a series, watching a podcast,
because we also have to deal with that, right?
(25:13):
The idea is that the books we read are nobler, and there are situations where
we don't know how to differentiate, or you can learn a lot by listening to a
podcast, you can do a course with audio.
For us, it's so common, Americans use audiobooks for dozens of years.
And it can be a series, especially the biographies, which I really like,
(25:36):
about athletes, about coaches, about great personalities of humanity.
You can learn as much as a book. We have a little chance too,
on our intellectual side, no, but the book, I myself am here with ...
I don't buy books, I don't buy books, I have a Kindle, but there are four that
I brought back to the physical congress.
On my side, a Kindle that I almost don't use, I still have it in my bag.
(25:58):
I use Kindle, but I still prefer to have the book there, only that Kindle is very practical, right?
For those who are out, for those who travel.
Yes, but I think the videos are so appealing, right?
And so many podcasts are other means that sometimes I think the fact of reading
(26:20):
a book, of stopping, of being there, is a different attention.
It seems to be a refined attention that is given, I don't know,
I don't want to evaluate or even judge, but it's that moment when the feelings
are so great about the videos and everything else, that sometimes the book seems a little...
It's attractive for those who are extreme, so it requires that...
(26:43):
And at the same time, it's maybe the most common multiple of attention, right?
A blank sheet with the letter, but we also do it...
It opens you to other processes, which is imagination, right?
Which is something that sometimes you will see in a movie, in a series,
in a book, and you find it very boring, because in your head it was much cooler.
(27:04):
And if you want, we go to the toys, where nowadays, I also have an athlete like
this, with a golf athlete, this one who showed me the Free Fire.
As I worked in the golf club, which was in the condominium, I attended him at
his house, I already enjoyed the trip.
And in his room there was a giant Lego, I'm always in love with Legos,
(27:29):
and he had one of the Batmobiles, one of my favorite superheroes,
the only superhero I like, actually.
And I was showing him how I played with Lego, with Batman Lego,
when I was his age, that I would take a black clothes, put a helmet,
build the Batmobile there, and he had everything ready.
And that's what happens sometimes with these super games.
(27:55):
They don't allow you anymore, they don't demand you to imagine and create, it's ready,
if we go to the channels, there's the real, there's the symbolic, there's the imaginary,
it gives you a lot of mental need too, and at the same time it's very cool,
because it's very rich, it enters this environment, on the other hand,
(28:16):
it leaves you in several other areas of the brain deactivated that we are forced
to activate when it's with the paper and the cold letter there,
having to imagine for us.
The exercise of imagination is very important, it's true, psychoanalysis brings
a lot of this, the symbolic question, it's all very real, immediate,
(28:38):
we call it, I want to eat, there's an iFood, it's all there, it's real.
Good, ok. I was also thinking about this question,
we see the athlete sometimes, a famous one, winning a competition,
an Olympic or something like that, but we don't see him there almost every day
(29:00):
at 7 in the morning, swimming alone.
So we know that high-end sports require a very high discipline,
and we talked about it well.
And also the difference of this moment, they train for a long time,
they prepare and then there is that crucial moment.
(29:21):
I think next year we will also have the Olympics, right?
Yes. And how is this worked out?
What techniques are possible to use in sports psychology that have been used to work this out?
You think, ok, the game, the time of pressure, the competition,
that moment, it's normal, sometimes
(29:42):
the person has a block, because it's different, there's the crowd,
there's the cameras and everything else, are there any techniques or strategies to deal with that?
Pedro, that's precisely one side that sports psychology starts to have its own field,
(30:03):
even though it's not the exclusivity of sports psychology, I mean,
in psychology, to work with situations.
But I think it's a little different from the approaches, the approaches,
no, sorry, the classic tools that were classic until then, right?
When the sport psychology was happening, psychologists were working in sports,
(30:27):
we already had a psychologist working with the national team,
João Carvalhais, the first world championship in Brazil, but they were psychologists,
and then Taíde, who was famous for passing the K-pro test to Garrincha and everything
else, they were psychologists using the tools of psychology in athletes trying
to grow, they are our pioneers, our innovators.
(30:49):
But since the 70s, more or less, what we consider the most modern stage worldwide.
We have some more specific tools that we work with, because,
remembering, the sports psychology is an area of action and not an approach,
that is, you can be a sports psychologist, a psychoanalyst, a cognitive-behavioral,
a humanist, a therapist, among many others.
(31:12):
So, the view of the human being continues to be of each psychologist,
but there are many tools that are common, especially I think they work.
Work, basically, I want to prove scientifically that they work.
So, within this circle that enters sports psychology, where the coach is also
(31:32):
born, the English coach, right, this mentoring,
this training with the coaches, that's why we say that everything a coach does
is included, almost everything a coach does is included in psychology.
Because it came from there, but another one was created in Brazil,
in Brazil, especially, and another profession was created with other things,
(31:53):
including all the difficulties that extend,
for example, not having scientific validity of the work instrument,
which is a very dangerous thing, but then within the sport project in general,
we try to instrumentalize the athlete, precisely because it is also a training, right?
Because it takes time, it needs repetition, it needs trial and error to know
(32:14):
what works for him and not for him.
I always tell my athletes, if it works If it worked for everyone in the same
way, I wouldn't have to attend everyone for at least an hour to be able to follow
up on the consultations.
I would have made a book, I would be selling it and I would be receiving my
checks, as the Americans say, my email, I would be receiving the notifications.
(32:36):
At the same time, it would also be completely unnecessary, but each athlete is unique, right?
And when teaching strategies that are, for example, relaxation techniques for
excess activity, anxiety, sorry, or activation techniques to reach this level,
we work a lot with the classic psychological competencies, right?
Being worked on is also a matter of goals, right?
(32:58):
Especially short and medium-term, you have to think about the long-term goal,
which is the dream, but not, So the short courses are more important because
what is the short term, in fact, the very short term is your day.
And your day can still be divided into several pieces, and these pieces reach
the minimum particle, which is that second, which is the present, right?
That only second, as the rapper I like.
(33:20):
As I said, there is only one ball in football, there is only one play,
there is only one card in poker that is the card you have in your hand,
because this is the present, right?
I worked with the shooter, he gave 400 shots in a small space in a test.
I said, no, you just have to hit a plate, which is the one you have.
If you take the previous plate, you will already miss this one.
(33:42):
If you think about the other, you will miss them.
So this goal becomes the day, let's draw your day, which we can do in the best way possible.
Besides the goals, I work with the selection of thoughts, images,
words that they use, or inner dialogue, or self-talk, which is a little better,
(34:04):
but what you say to yourself.
And Mindfulness got into it in the last decade.
There is this book here that I'm going to make a Merchan, which is from our
GP, the National Association of Physicists in Psychology.
We made a book with more than 20 authors, exercise sports, theoretical models.
Research and intervention.
(34:24):
So, Erick Conde, Alberto Figueira, Zé Anangelo, Adriana Pereira and Tiana Carvalho organized it.
I think there are 27 authors for those chapters, something like that,
and in my chapter, along with Marisa Martunas, who is a psychologist today in
the basic categories of the women's football section, she went through the Olympic cycles with boxers,
(34:45):
one of the sports that has given the most medals in Brazil.
And we put these classic competencies and put Mindfulness as something that
in the most ancient times speaks to us.
It was something that I made a request as the author of the chapter to put you,
because it is a reality today, even though in Brazil there is little talk.
(35:06):
I have been working with mindfulness athletes for almost 10 years,
considered one of the first to enter this area, but because I looked for myself
first, I said, wow, this works.
Until I started to understand that this already existed in the world,
it was being placed and it was very interesting.
All this will put tools for athletes to use on the day of the competition,
(35:28):
but nothing will work only on the day of the competition, if you don't train
before, if you don't use it before.
It's that athlete who always has a routine, especially with young people,
who go to a tennis court, there was a tennis court at the time,
and they go there and they will create a new kickboard, they never played with
a kickboard, they will put it there.
Or you will take two energy drinks, because the energy drink makes you super active.
(35:51):
But if you trained with so much caffeine, it will probably give you a much higher
anxiety peak than having your average performance.
Or this barbell that will give you a headache, it will hurt you.
And I always say to them, you will not do this, you will not have a barbell
on the day of your most important game.
You will not use a technique that you have never tested, and it's normal.
(36:13):
I ask you to look for it on your story sometimes, because on Monday,
for the first post to be Tuesday, because there is a competition on Saturday,
I already say, look, if I don't spoil anything until there, I'm already happy.
The work will start after that. Exactly.
So, it seems to me, from this answer, that nothing like a good preparation,
(36:34):
a good training routine to bring us confidence in the moment of the competition,
in the decisive time, look, I know I gave my best, I got here at this moment,
so there is no price, there is nothing else that can bring that.
And psychology also has a lot of that, because sometimes they take this idea,
(36:58):
let's do a session for the final game.
Look, there is no ... the work is much more consistent, much more consistent
and constant than a simple motivation session.
How do you see these sessions like this?
Wow, coaches and let's save and that's it. I like that a lot,
(37:21):
because maybe it's what I do least, but at the same time it was what brought me to study sports.
The first question when I went to study was how does a coach change a locker
room in the break and the team goes there to become another team and becomes a game?
That was my research question when I did my first job as a sports teacher,
my first 100 meters from college, back in 2003. It was just that.
(37:45):
And it's funny how that takes you to a place that sometimes turns out to be
what you... I didn't push it anymore, I was more critical about it,
even because there was a whole question of how this is sold.
And fortunately, I think it's getting more and more in the place it had to be,
which is sometimes like a show to distract the players.
(38:10):
Of these lessons before, especially when it goes to people who do not propose
to only give a performance.
There are a lot more, sometimes there are coaches who don't like to take a comedian
to important games, then I think you're in the right place to be,
because yes, you can do different things near different games.
(38:35):
Guardiola did this with Barcelona in 2009, he made a video I made a video with
Eran and Boma, I made it with the gladiator film, with the players.
This is cool, I already did this too, in Curitiba, for example,
when the coach asked and the players liked it and asked later to do more.
But you have to know when to put this, it's not the motivational video.
(39:00):
What time will it pass, what do you have to do between this and the time of
the game, you have to know the group.
If you don't know it, you have to do it at a very low level,
because it's very simple if you think of a group of five people,
we are the two, but there are three people.
Sometimes what motivates me
is to cause anxiety, and in the third year I won't even do it with the 15.
(39:22):
In the locker room I saw a lot of that, with speeches from the commission and
sometimes from the athletes themselves.
So that's why you have to know the group, like the history of the book,
You can't have a book with all the things in psychology and it won't work.
And I think that's where our great competence as psychologists also resides.
We are trained exhaustively in college, in the stadium, and after,
(39:44):
for the rest of our lives, to listen, to look, to think and decide,
to choose words, to choose moments.
And this timing, when you do something closed, I have this package of this motivational
class, it doesn't exist, I'm giving you a closed problem and each one will hit it in a way.
I always remember the year that I think it was Corinthians who was relegated
(40:05):
and the guys talking about the transmission saying something like that.
The physical coach did a motivational job there to play the players, with a family issue.
And I saw something very similar once when they passed by looking for Nemo,
for the boys from Grêmio where I did the stage, right at that time.
(40:26):
Someone, a physical trainer too, and I looked and there was a player entering the field crying,
a player, a 1.90 meter player, crying like that, maybe he didn't,
I remember I looked at the TV and said, maybe he's not in the necessary activation
for him to have the best performance in this game.
15 minutes of the game, 1-0 for the opponent, who failed, grossly, that player,
(40:49):
the game ended 1-0, it was the game that helped the dropout of Corinthians,
and that, only that will make you drop out, no, but the details,
they count a lot in the high performance,
the higher the performance, the more details will make a difference,
because the games are very similar in many things, including the physical preparation,
(41:12):
So we have to be aware of these details and know that at times we can sometimes
miss, and sometimes help more.
It is this awareness that is necessary.
And at the same time, of course, listen to the demands too. I,
for me, would not have made so many videos when I did the Buritiba,
but they asked, it was an exception, they asked.
(41:32):
There is something there, I will listen to them to know what they got,
what hit there at one moment or another.
We have to listen first, and that's why listening is our first tool,
but understanding that this spectacularization that is done,
and now with video editing, much more, not only lectures, but.
(41:53):
Sessions of almost witchcraft, it seems that it happens to people in various areas, right?
How much that is a A well edited video of a coaching lecture,
wow, you jump out and roar, as it happens a lot in videos, but that's for whom,
for what moment, it works with whom, right?
And that's what we have to work with when we work collectively and when we are
(42:17):
with the individual client, that each one finds their point,
we help them find their point, at what moment they need one thing and at what
moment they need another.
We help them with self-knowledge, right? To make the famous self-regulation.
Yes, exactly, exactly. That's it, I see the work of the sports psychologist
a lot, I don't see it, no, he is like that, he is much more present,
(42:40):
right, he needs the importance of having this regularity, of being there,
different from calling someone, okay, let's do a motivational lecture,
okay, maybe it can work, maybe not. When it works, they publish it, right?
When it doesn't work, nobody talks about it, but it happens a lot and it's not cheap, huh?
Look, it's not cheap, but it's okay, I think it's also this vision, right?
(43:03):
Because sometimes the vision that you have is that moment, right? Soon before the game.
Maurício, I would like to ask you, how do you perceive.
Today, the need of the athletes to work, I know there are several modalities,
you have already worked in football, in Curitiba, but in several,
several areas, you have already presented some others.
(43:25):
But if you could, again, of course, each one is one, you demonstrate this very
well, each one has its own uniqueness,
but if you could generalize, generalize, being able to generalize and find some
similarities, what has emerged the most in the athletes?
(43:46):
I think the main one, if I can write a complaint, are athletes who are below
their own level, the level they already have.
I'm not talking about the athlete who wants to reach the highest level,
They are athletes who have noticed a drop in performance in relation to themselves.
(44:09):
And this generates... There is a mental situation that I like to think of Bob
Rutella, who is a famous player for golf.
He says that no one throws above their possibilities.
If you've done that once, it's because it's within you. They'll do it to you other times.
And I think it's very plausible. You know, there are still amazing days when
(44:30):
everything comes out a little more. but he can get there again, because he already did.
And a little bit of this complaint of a player in the collective support that
has a performance that has become a reserve, a player who has already been champion
and is not able to beat, and the anxiety that this generates in terms of performance, right?
This is much more than athletes who say I want to reach the next level.
(44:53):
This appears especially with children and teenagers that their I know that my
son has a very complicated world,
I want to prepare him before,
this is wonderful, this is something that is unthinkable.
30 years ago, maybe even 20 years ago. Today it is common in the consultancy.
(45:17):
I think the prejudice against psychology has diminished a lot.
This is helping a lot the sports psychology.
And then, let's say, the episode of Simone Biles in the last game of the Australian
Olympics with the game changer.
So, if I were to generalize, we have a complaint, it's this,
(45:39):
the initial complaint that we talk about here, where the first thing comes,
we know that everything is only one, but it makes you seek consultation and a point to be worked on.
And sometimes the point to be worked on is exactly, it doesn't matter anymore
what you did, let's see what you can do from now on. There are issues of development,
sometimes, at certain ages, in these physical sports, like football itself.
(46:01):
A year or two in adolescence, in physical training, it's a lot of things.
You can lose some things in comparison to others. Some mature before,
as they say, in several levels, including cerebral.
And sometimes we don't see what it can be from now on.
Sometimes it's even, it's that, it's leaving the past there,
(46:21):
using the good things, as I say, put it in the pocket.
To generate confidence, I've already done this, I'm able to do this,
I've already done it, to admit the performance, not to doubt yourself,
much more than to do it again, to be able to focus on the present,
which is the only way to prepare for a good future.
It's always the focus on the present, which for me is the main tools of my clinical
(46:45):
and collective work, because it brings me a series of guidelines that are very well justified,
theoretically, scientifically proven.
And gives you a safe basis for us to look at and say, this here can be applied
in almost every situation, and we can, because this is talking about,
(47:09):
something that is very human, which is the non-judgment, the acceptance,
and especially the question of compassion, which is the point that is least
spoken about in the sport mindset.
And by far the most difficult and most important to be worked on.
Exactly, because with all this world based on images,
(47:33):
which is this virtual world, and the increase in the expectation of demand, of demand,
gets even bigger, so everyone there in the media is super, everyone is beautiful,
is full of money, so people post the best photos and everything else.
So I see that this search for perfection, in quotes.
(47:56):
Perfectionism, here I see in Portugal, in the schools where I work,
it is very common, I'm not even I'm not even talking about the sport, right?
And then I see it as a remedy for that, or a magic potion, let's say,
to deal with it, it would be self-compassion, working on this aspect of mindfulness.
(48:18):
And how is that? When you enter with this part of the possibility of the person,
ok, I will take care of myself. the athletes, are they familiar with this?
Very little, very little, it was very difficult.
Especially when I started working more with the athletes, I was talking to Dani
(48:41):
Stopescu, my first instructor, together with Thiago Taton, and we went to set
up an office of the Sportful Minds Corridor, which is there in.
And she asked me, how is your self-compassion, and I couldn't answer,
I'm from the city, so I'm proud to answer the question, I managed to go two steps back,
(49:06):
I don't know what to think about it, from day to day, and I started to see that
it was very lacking, above the normal lack that we have as a society,
which is already enormous.
And in the middle there are these paradoxes, sports has a lot of paradoxes,
the difference between the acquisition of skills and the development of them.
(49:30):
What is an automatic pilot? How conscious do you need to be?
But the movement needs to be fluid, so it has to be almost automatic.
It's always transiting between a lot of things. and compassion also has that, right?
The amount of non-compassion I need to test some limit of mine,
(49:53):
to seek some limit of tolerance for pain,
physical and emotional tolerance, psychological pressure, how much I need to
be exposed to this to evolve and get stronger more strong mentally,
more rough as I used to be, and how much it is to know that there is a point
that I say, no, I don't want to go through here, it's too much for me,
(50:15):
here I need care, here I need,
healing, because we know that the high-earning sport is not healthy,
neither physically nor mentally,
it will take you deformations that sometimes stay for life, right?
A athlete gets retired at with 20 years old, 30 years old and several sports,
and will lead to arthritis,
(50:35):
surgery of crossed ligaments, shoulder problems and traumas,
and will wake up 20 years later sweaty,
remembering a scene that seems like a competition, a very extreme situation
for his whole life, right?
And it's very difficult to work thinking from this perspective,
(50:55):
that the sport is like that and there is a part of it that will not change.
Because we are talking about limits, excellence, performance,
and at the same time knowing how much we can also contribute in this environment,
because it seems that we have to accept everything that is happening because
we are going to work with the sport.
And no, how much we can be there to soften these processes a little.
(51:16):
And I'm not just talking about the coach who pulls athletes,
the coach is a person in general with a lot of suffering in the sport as well,
I told you, this is a work group in Congress, and very lonely for that too,
because it seems that he is always a slacker, he has to pull the athlete to the limit.
And putting this in mind, there's a scene that I always joke about when I ask
how it is to work with football and all that.
I joke that I'm the only member of the technical committee who can smile.
(51:41):
Because in the middle of special football, but more masculine football.
The bomb of the surprise that exists, right?
The creator has a great training, much more than the games. The games there
are a special moment, a spectacle.
Mourinho always says that I like it a lot, the way he treats it.
But on a daily basis, the trainer has to be pushing the athletes,
(52:02):
the physical trainer has to be pushing even more, because that's it,
you have to achieve performance to have physical preparation,
we know that physical preparation is to reach the extreme, right?
As the situation is to get to the fault of the muscle many times and even the
nutritionist often has to give in the cloud because he has to eat this or that
(52:23):
and if I can't have a more affectionate bond even with the athletes,
I can't work with them anymore, I don't feel the will to come to my side and
tell something and I know that this is discrepant and even Until I understood
that it was also my characteristic, because it is a characteristic of the person.
(52:44):
I will change what I am just because I think that sport requires it.
But it was also a softening, and I think that's why we have so many colleagues,
women working in male football.
And so much success that is found in the space that the rest of the structure,
even more the centenary structure, the Brazilian show, almost does not allow
(53:06):
other environments, right?
We saw now, for example, John Arias from Fluminense thanking the psychologist,
and we have this happening all the time, and that made me want to do the stage
at the Grêmio, that the environment there, which was the psychosocial, which was psychology,
nutrition and social service, were all women, the professionals,
(53:29):
the interns, it was me and another young man at the time, in the pathology,
the rest were also women, and how it was in the female space,
there inside the club, how it was necessary, how I distanced myself, how I welcomed it,
and I took a while to understand at that age how important it was inside the
(53:50):
sport, but when it is seen as a threat to the whole rest, because it is a different space.
Exactly, you can still see yourself in a different way, but it is a space of
welcome, in the middle of so much hardness, someone there who will be able to listen to you.
I watch, I like a lot, I love football and I also like tennis a lot,
(54:14):
and watching these times I saw that Meligeni made a very good comment,
I think it was Djokovic or Nadal, it can be either of the two because they are monsters.
The ability he has to forgive himself is amazing, because with every mistake,
how are you going to deal with a failure?
(54:36):
So there is a lot of this question of self-compassion, okay,
I made a mistake, let's go to the next one, I'm not going to get stuck in that,
this game, and it's a way to work on resilience.
Anyway, these guys for me are super examples that can be taken from almost any other planet.
(54:57):
This is very interesting, right? Sport, I see that it seems that it has changed for a few decades.
We have Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi who managed to maintain a high level for
a long time. the top for a long time.
Then in tennis too, these three tennis players, Federer, Nadal and Djokovic,
(55:18):
managed to keep it for a long time.
I think it has a little to do with this more complete vision of the sport,
not to work only the physical part, not to work the technical part,
but to have these other care,
how they have other professionals there, along with them, nutrition,
(55:38):
finally, the medical part has probably evolved and also the psychological part, right?
I don't know if you have any, do you notice anything in this,
do you have any observations about this?
It's a very interesting point, right? You said that I stopped to think about
these athletes, not only of great performances, but of sustained performances, right?
(56:02):
As you said, both at the top, right? The tennis trio is absurd,
they are the three greatest together in history, and like Messi and Chanoal
in terms of numbers and in modernity, at least.
And at the same time, if there was necessarily an animality between them,
which I think is very interesting.
(56:23):
The animality was not something like Senna Prost, for example,
who was a realist, almost separated enemies.
And it's interesting, I think, having to agree with you, thinking about this
hypothesis, that they managed to have a global care, much greater,
(56:48):
well-accessed, in all these environments,
all these factors, and I think this favors them to make good decisions of all kinds.
In the case of the football players, where to play, where to stay,
which club to choose, at what time, with which coach,
which tournaments to choose to play and which not to play, respecting a certain
(57:09):
injury, this self-knowledge with all the technology that helps us today to map
this too, which is undeniable.
It seems that they don't have a bigger repertoire to make these decisions that keep them active.
And certainly there are many psychological factors within that.
(57:31):
We know about Jokovic working with psychologists, including Mayfiles.
Cristiano Ronaldo, for a long time, was an advisor to a psychologist.
Psychologist, and this question of understanding the factor, or it's a lie, it's a,
(57:52):
joke, but the psychological factor is part of the performance and the mentality.
Exactly, that's interesting. I remembered now of Lebron James too,
who is a top athlete who managed to maintain the high level,
I think it's a great difficulty,
getting there is already ultra difficult, difficult, but being able to stay
at the top for so long is something that catches my attention.
(58:15):
Before they couldn't do it for as long as now, so they go there and they're
breaking records and records and records.
And I believe LeBron James also uses mindfulness, right?
I think all this evolution helps them to keep it, they become super athletes.
Look, Maurício, I think we're getting there, I didn't want to know your availability,
(58:36):
but I would like to know a little bit about your work too, if you could talk
a little bit about how you have worked.
Because sometimes in football we enter a team and we are almost immersed there,
but there are several sports modalities and I know that you are attending different modalities,
(58:56):
so who would like to know more about the information that you can pass on?
Today, individually, I attend athletes from different sports,
football is still one of the main ones,
it's what brought me to the sport psychology, I argue that it is the sport that
(59:17):
I like the most at the same time, the most difficult to work,
the most difficult, the most complicated,
culturally and structurally,
But I also had a lot of new sports.
I work with a poker class, golf.
My novelty in recent months is that I worked with Cubo Mind.
(59:38):
I don't know how to do it yet, but I won.
It's here, it's here. The sponsor sent it to me.
In terms of consulting, I also work a lot based on Mindfulness.
But the people at AbraPESP call me a random sports psychologist.
I think I felt an openness to work with different sports, I worked with crossfit,
(01:00:02):
I worked with pole dancing, I worked with padel and even preparation for contests.
But it's a self-performance sport, I'm a student who intended to enter medicine
too, autism performance in Brazil.
And this at an individual and collective level.
(01:00:23):
Even after the pandemic, the fight is still being restructured,
but it's not my focus anymore. I also worked with golf clubs, with bodybuilding.
I also did a lot of work, I think, as a pioneer in Brazil, within Integral México.
I have a bottle of Integral that taught me to drink liters and liters of water a day.
To have this openness, right? To listen to the athletes, even this position
(01:00:45):
of not knowing anything about your sport, but I know a little bit about sports
psychology and we can understand each other.
I always had this openness, a student asked me how I worked with sports,
and there is an article about the club's psychology in the team,
and I said yes, I think you have to look.
Every sport has its own culture, has its own vocabulary,
(01:01:07):
its own glossary of expressions, the idols, different cognitive needs,
but there is a whole other side that is much bigger than that,
which is the basis of sports psychology, they are already applicable in different
ways, at different times,
but with practically everyone.
Some athletes will join more online, others will not join in any way,
(01:01:29):
but we know that we have a certain obligation to offer, to try and work,
maybe not at that moment that he will also work, but I think it's part of my
job, work, this accompaniment, this listening, and offer these possibilities
that work, I say work, because they are proven scientifically,
(01:01:51):
they are proven to work, many times, others not, but to have this practice also
based on evidence and at the same time the evidence, let's say,
semi-universal scientific evidence, we know that this changes every few years.
It can change, science is not inevitable, within the particularity of each one,
of each athlete, of each team, the singularity that each one has, right? Exactly.
(01:02:16):
And today, right, the services can be, the internet brings this facility,
so it ends up being very online too, in addition to the face-to-face in Porto Alegre, right?
Much more, almost 100% every week.
Almost 100% online, what madness, right? The pandemic was a super super catalyst for that.
(01:02:37):
So that's where it came from. I remember that before the CRP,
right, the psychology council, there were several restrictions against that,
now there's no way to hold it anymore.
Well, to finish, you came from the congress, right, from ABRAPESP,
is that it? ABRAPESP. ABRAPESP.
(01:02:59):
BRAPESP, any news, what's going on, can you bring us some updates?
What I can bring is growing interest in sports psychology, it hasn't stopped
increasing since I joined, I went in and did work for everyone,
(01:03:23):
people working in various fields,
in sports like some that I brought that I thought about for some people,
others that I also didn't understand.
I was talking to people who worked with bands, university bands, cheerleaders too,
who had some university athletics, that we also have very strong esports that are developing a lot,
(01:03:48):
the de-colonial esport psychology, the term that I started, that I went to know
there, I was studying yesterday, reading the articles to understand a little
of it, something very new too,
so I know we're talking about a heritage of colonialism,
of our countries, in the case of Brazil, but still in the slave trade.
(01:04:12):
Being dominated by European peoples, who are still said to be the majority of science,
sport and everything else, in the United States, obviously today,
to the other end we were talking about artificial intelligence, what IA can,
it crosses our work and facilitates some situations, and in others it will be
(01:04:35):
something that we are not dealing with, we are not talking about it, but it is not ready.
There is a big world and, fortunately, these face-to-face meetings,
since Código do Congresso was virtual,
which does not have, I think, 20% of the wealth that a face-to-face meeting has,
we value it a lot, I think, for the running moment, which is what happens between
(01:04:55):
the GTs, the thematic groups that
work, there are great moments of coffee break to be able to favor that.
Because it is in this encounter that we can recognize ourselves as equals,
people who work with the same situations and who are not competitors.
And I think it's a very beautiful greatness in this, because there are a lot
(01:05:17):
of people that we don't see in congresses.
And it's not because you have to be a scientist, it's just because it seems
like it's just a market reserve, I'm competing against everything else,
I do something in my incredible work that no one else does and I think no one
invented the wheel, right?
Each one has their own different wheel, different materials,
colors and surfaces, but we can improve each one of our wheels when we exchange with others, right?
(01:05:44):
That's the main thing. Look, it's good to know, I'm very happy to know that
it has grown, right, the prejudice has diminished and the sport industry,
it covers other areas too, right?
For those who want to have a high performance in other activities.
This is very interesting because it works with this focus too.
(01:06:05):
So, Maurício, thank you very much for this conversation.
I love this topic. We could stay here for hours talking about it.
I got other observations, but let's leave it for next time. I know you have to have time there too.
So, thank you very much for your availability. we will launch,
(01:06:27):
I don't know yet when, today is the 21st of November, 2023, but again,
I thank you very much for your presence.
I always thank you for this conversation, I always say it's delicious,
whenever you want we can do part 2, or it's open,
because it's something I always value, especially in interviews interviews or
(01:06:49):
even in the congress, right? Who knows, ask good questions.
I think the good questions make what is said grow everywhere, right?
Because we as psychologists, we ask great questions to patients, right?
But we are also sometimes not used to receiving and that enriches any construction, right?
(01:07:11):
So thank you for this construction of ours and I will wait for the next one,
but I'm also Thank you for what you are doing with your next guests,
with your next characters in your program. Thank you very much, Misericórdia.
Thank you, Maurício. Thank you. Big hug.
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