Play from your heart E-Book

Xesco Espar

• Herausgeber: Plataforma
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 149

Beschreibung

How do you defy your destiny when others start from an advantage? How can we break through the upper limit of our maximum performance? How can we face life when excellence is not enough? The answer is not in your head, but in your heart: listening to what we want, not just to what we think. Our head analyses, but our heart holds onto our deepest desires, and this is what really makes us act. Although talent is necessary, as it allows us to overcome major challenges, once we have been able to rise above the failures, it is the heart. Xesco Espar is clear that in order to reach excellence you must train for it, but to go further than this, you have to transform yourself: face each problem as a challenge, a way to grow, a test. Using examples from his experience as a professional handball coach, and his particular way of understanding the world, Espar shows us how life harshly punishes those who simply talk, pretend or put on a front. Whereas those who take action, who transform themselves and grow, are showered with rewards… in other words, those who play with their hearts.

Leseprobe

Play from your heart

Excellence is not enough

Xesco Espar

First edition in this collection: February 2010

Twenty-first edition: May 2019

© Xesco Espar, 2010

© of the present edition: Plataforma Editorial, 2010

© Translation: Lucy Powell, 2020

Plataforma Editorial

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www.plataformaeditorial.com

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ISBN: 978-84-18285-69-1

Cover design: Utopikka

Cover illustration: Umbilical

Photocomposition: Grafime

All rights reserved. Any reproduction of this work in its entirety or partiality is strictly prohibited without express authorisation of the copyright owners. Reproduction by any medium or procedure, including reprography, digitalised treatment and distribution of digital copies via lending or public loans is punishable under established legal sanctions. If photocopies or a reproduction of any fragment of this work are required please contact the editor directly or visit CEDRO (www.cedro.org).

Index

We all have three lives1. Excellence is not enoughIn search of excellenceSometimes excellence is not enoughBreak through your upper limit2. Play from your heartTalent and heartYou only live onceListen to your emotions3. The danger is in not taking risksTaking risks: advantages and disadvantagesYou miss all the shots you don’t take4. Believing is seeingWhat’s the point in a vision?When the team shares the visionThe vision is not a miracle5. Breaking the limitsDemotivated, or lacking goals?The goals are set, what now?6. Who you will becomeCatch, rather than huntImprove yourself. Transform yourself. GrowWorking for free sometimes pays off7. How to work as a teamHumility and generosityCommitmentEnthusiasm8. Leading and managing a teamRecruit A peopleBuild confidence as a managerGold and platinumLeading and planning9. Your life is now

For Pol, Anni and Clara.

Because your look and your smile light up every day my heart.

We all have three lives

We all have three lives: a public life, a private life and a secret life.

Our public life is the one that everyone knows. It allows us to make a living. It is made up of our circle of personal contacts, work colleagues, friends who are simply acquaintances, people in our professional sector... Fortunately or not, these are the people we usually spend most of our time with, so much so that far too often we confuse our public life with our real life.

Our private life gives us, and sometimes takes away, stability. It is made up of our family and closest friends. We promise ourselves again and again that we will devote the time to it that it deserves. Occasionally we achieve this, although not always. It provides us with rest, leisure and fun. And most important of all: it fills us with love.

But it is the secret life that generates our vital force. It is the guardian of our boldest dreams and it is in this life that our passion and aspirations are born. Here is where we keep all our dreams that we don’t dare to share with others, for fear that they’ll think we are mad.

In the secret life, people are alone, or occasionally have a travelling companion, and this is where their true destiny is forged. The deepest part of the heart is where all our projects, that then pass on to our other lives, are brought to life and put into motion. Our secret life is the essence of our being.

Sometimes I perceive my secret life as the hidden part of an iceberg. My public and private ones are just a visible piece of something much bigger and stronger. Precisely because my secret life has always been extraordinary, its strength has allowed me to rebalance every time I have received a heavy blow in the visible part. My secret life, my goals, my hopes and my dreams have been taking shape in the heat of an uncontrollable passion to share the extraordinary gifts that life constantly offers me.

What is certain, is that those three wonderful years in charge of a sensational sports team could not be understood without an incredible secret life.

1. Excellence is not enough

There are barely five seconds left. The referee has not even blown the final whistle and the excitement begins to explode as people jump around like lunatics across the court. We had just won the 2005 Champions League.

I’m crying as I hug my assistants. Tension gives way to joy as I turn to greet the coach of the rival team and the referees. I then quite literally throw myself on top of the pile of players that had gathered a while before.

A television microphone chases me around as I thank the players for their sacrifice, their struggle and for giving me a year of their lives. They have grown. They are bursting with talent, but above all, they have put their heart in everything they have done.

Commitment, both on and off the pitch, was the main characteristic of that team. Despite not starting out as the favourites in any competition, our desire to grow allowed us to home in on moments of truly extraordinary performance.

We also had our low moments... In fact, the competition didn’t start well. We lost the first two games played abroad (in Romania and Hungary) during the group stages of the Champions League. Even our trajectory in the regular Spanish league had its ups and downs. But the way to face up to these losses, and what we took away from them was, in the end, what allowed us to go on to win the Champions League. Every match is a lesson learned.

The growth that our team showed during the first ten months of the championship, and the commitment that was put in place in the locker room, were not just an example of sports excellence. They were also an example of how barriers to personal performance can be broken down and merged into the multiplying synergy of teamwork. Undoubtedly it was an exemplary team which showed excellence.

In search of excellence

Excellence in sport is not easy to achieve. It has more obstacles than you can find in many other professional careers. It is often believed that because players earn a lot of money, they must be perfect machines, who are motivated and ready for anything. Simply put, in reality these players are like anyone else, with their highs and their lows, who in addition are subject to a great deal of pressure and distractions, which are their two big enemies. When you are famous and have money, it is not easy to focus exclusively on your work for a large part of the day, everything that surrounds you is demanding your attention and the distractions mount up. In truth, there are few who can deal with it well. They are the “superclass” of players.

I remember the case of Roger, a young and promising 18-year-old who started training with our professional handball team. He had been training and living as a professional player for barely three months when one day he approached me and said:

“Xesco, can we talk?”

“Of course!”, I said. “What’s up?”

“Well, nothing really, but…”, he hesitated. “My friends are making comments.”

“Comments?”, I asked him. “What sort of comments?” “Well, for example, they say that my coach has no right to tell me what time I need to go to bed and that for the salary I’m earning, I shouldn’t need to be so disciplined. And these are my friends, so of course…”

“Well”, I said, trying to appear calm. “In a way they’re right… I agree that a coach may not have any right to tell you what time you need to go to bed. But…”, and it was then that I exploded and raised my voice. “You should already have it in this half-baked brain of yours that if you want to be a professional player, you need to be in bed by midnight! You need your rest because the next day you need to train!”

“But…”, he tried to answer but I quickly cut him off.

“Look, Roger, discipline gives us freedom.”

“What?”, he interrupted me, looking incredulous.

“It’s the opposite! Discipline takes away my freedom because it means I can’t do what I want…”

“That is not what you want. It’s what your friends want! If you don’t have discipline, or self-discipline rather, you’re not free to choose who you want to be. If we don’t have self-discipline, we cannot choose our own future and we will always be at the mercy of others.”

“Discipline gives us freedom.”

Excellence in sport is only achieved by constantly giving one hundred percent and being highly demanding of yourself. This means every day of your life, and not just during matches.

Being motivated and giving your all during matches is not difficult. Everyone likes to play. However, having that same desire when preparing yourself for them; this is what distinguishes a good player from a true champion. Motivation has a multiplying effect on performance, and the quality and daily improvement of the team is the other multiplying factor.

All teams and all athletes have two levels through which their performance flows on a daily basis.

Everyone has their best day and everyone has their worst day. One of the biggest concerns for coaches is to make this performance as stable as possible, in other words, making the worst day as close as possible to the best day. Obviously, this equality must be achieved through raising the level of the worst day and not vice versa; and the key to making this happen is simple. It is in no way easy, but it is simple. When a player is tired, stressed, under pressure... and there is a drop in his performance, until he reaches his basal level of effort, or the minimum level of effort which he is used to each time he gets his kit on. In the same way that their heart rate goes down to a level – which is not zero – that depends on their training status. The secret in achieving this stability therefore lies in the dedication, concentration and rigorousness with which the player performs each of the training sessions. This is your minimum habit.

Therefore, it is crucial to set down a high level of motivation and rigour in terms of attitude during training sessions. The habit acquired not when you are competing, but when you are preparing yourself, is your buffer that will bring you back when things don’t go to plan on the day of the competition. If you don’t have that buffer, the hit will be tremendous.

One of my best friends, Pep, appeared one day at training. Although the sessions were closed to the public, we always allowed coaches or students of Physical Education to come and watch in silence. Pep is a football coach, so none of the players thought anything strange about his presence on the stands.

Once the session was over and the players had left the pitch, I headed towards him so that we could talk about what he had seen. When I asked him about the training session, he said:

“That was so intense! I think the players take more hits in one of your sessions than in many of the games which I have seen them play.”

“Yes, yes”, I answered him, smiling. “We have a tough match on Saturday, and you can tell they are working hard for it.”

“Yes. But it wasn’t just the intensity that caught my eye”, he said. “What was especially impressive was the silence.”

“What do you mean?”, I asked him.

“Nobody speaks! There is absolute concentration during the exercises. You can even hear the noise of the resin on the ball when it rolls along the pitch!”

That atmosphere of concentration, determination and mental duress was what prevailed during the matches.

Accessing a state of excellence is very simple. To achieve excellence in your field you have to work each and every day, giving one hundred percent in every situation, until it becomes a habit. You have to set the bar high at the very highest point and say to yourself, “From here I will not lower it; I will go over it every day.” Absolute dedication and not selling yourself short. It is crucial to focus on what is important and not to accept the multiple distractions which we are bombarded by on daily basis.

Sometimes excellence is not enough

With the wind in your favour, excellence allows you always to be close to your goals. When you start at an advantage, striving to be your best consistently allows you to maintain a stable performance, which is close to your maximum. And as you are better than the rest from the very start, you will perform better than the rest.

But what happens when you’re not the best?

One of the defining moments of any Olympic Games is the one hundred metres final. The eight fastest people in the world come face to face before millions of spectators in a race that barely lasts ten seconds.

The starting gun fires and eight perfect machines take off like bullets in the direction of the finishing line. Just ten seconds later, the group has been split into three: a euphoric runner, two satisfied runners and five others who know that the only people who will remember that they were there, are their family and friends. And they are among the eight fastest people on the planet!

All of them have been training for years to the full.

They have sacrificed themselves and done everything they can to give one hundred percent on countless occasions; however, the distinction goes to just one person. Bafflement? Deception? Injustice? There is none of that. Simply put, sometimes excellence is just not enough.

“No performance which is less than very good, is rewarded today.”

The relationship between the performance offered and the reward obtained has changed in recent years. Competitiveness has become fierce. A few years ago, in the Asobal Handball League, only three or four foreigners were allowed in each team. This meant that most of the players in the league were Spanish. The highest quality players made up the top teams, while the others were distributed among the other teams.

The lowest performing players were in the lower teams, relative to their quality. But not now. Now they are out. In a similar way, some years ago, if you had a low job performance, your income was also low. Now it is zero. Now you are almost certainly unemployed.

No performance which is less than very good is rewarded today. Nowadays, clubs can bring many players from abroad and this forces Spanish players to be nothing less than excellent if they want to be in the top league, as most of those foreign players are excellent.

In highly competitive fields, excellence is not always enough to be first. If any of the participants starts with an advantage (a bigger budget, better skills, better...) and always yields to their maximum potential, they will finish first. By optimising all of their resources and giving their all during every moment of the preparation, they will always achieve a performance which is very close to their maximum and, from this advantageous position, the other teams will have to settle for looking up at them from below.

When the Bosman ruling allowed access to a much larger number of European players in Spanish teams, I was training the FC Barcelona youth handball team.

Among the players I trained during that process, was David, a young goalkeeper with great talent, who at that time had a great future ahead of him.

I remember one day, on one of the team’s trips, a few team members were speaking precisely about the “invasion” of foreign players and how it could harm their sports careers.

“Now they will be able to sign more foreign players and it’s going to be harder for us to reach the professional teams”, said David with a look of worry on his face, since his ambition was to be a player in the Spanish professional league.

“Yes, it’s true”, I said, but you don’t have to see it as something bad. Depending on how you look at it, you will still come out winning…

“Yeah, sure!”, they exclaimed at once. “The players who are going to come and play for Spain will be the best players in their countries!”

“How do we compete with that?”, they asked each other.

“Yes, it’s true that they are good, but then, what is it that you want?” I challenged. “Are you wanting an easy road to playing in the professional league? And then what? That’s it?”

That group of players were extraordinarily competitive. I knew that throwing a challenge at them would be a greater stimulus than the best reasoning I could provide, so I continued:

“Think about it. Yes, it’s going to be harder. But if you look at it as a challenge… in other words, instead of complaining, what you have to do is to fight, not just to get into the professional team, but to be a starter player in the team. And when you get there, fight to get into the Spanish national team, and when you get there, fight to be a starter player in the national team. If you fight to be better than them, you will not only be better than them here in Spain, but when you face them in international tournaments, in being better than them, you will also beat them.

Today, David Barrufet has won, among many other group and individual titles, the European Cup eight times, the Champions League once and the National League eight times. He has played in more international matches with the Spanish national team than any other player in history and has won two Olympic bronze medals and a gold medal in the 2005 World Championship.