Benefits of Proactiveness in Team Sports
During this weekend I spent some time working on a LAB Profile of a football (or soccer) team playing on the highest level in Finland.
One of the things that caught my attention was the proactiveness of the players. A highly proactive person usually acts with little or no consideration and is highly motivated by doing. On the other end, what we in NLP call a reactive person, is a person who is motivated to wait, analyze, consider and react.
In football, and in many other team sports, the possible benefits of proactiveness depend on the position and the role of the player. For a striker, it is benefitial to be proactive. On a decisive moment to score a goal, the striker should be proactive and just go and do it. If he starts to analyze the situation and consider which corner he should aim for or whether it would be better to see if he'll get to a better position after a couple of moves, a defender will probably come and kick the ball away from his reach.
A defender, on the other hand, might have more use of reactiveness. He should be able to constatly analyze how the players of the opposite team are positioning themselves and react accordingly. However, due to the nature and the speed of the game, the defenders should not take too much time to wait and see what will happen, neither. They, too, should have the ability to act without hesitation when that is required from them.
To find out more about how to perform at your peak, whether in sports, arts or business, please check out this site.
Also, if you are interested in coaching in team sports, I highly recommend reading Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior by Phil Jackson, the most successful team sport coach ever!