How The Mind Affects Sport

Source

Why does Rafael Nadal find it easiest to win the French open of all the 4 major ATP Tours?, why do you teams have an advantage playing at home?, or why does a team/individual continue to lose even when they have a stronger and better team? This is a big issue that needs to be considered

As we all know that "Sport" is any activity that requires physical exertion or skills competitively under a set of rules. The development of "Sport" from being just an activity carried out for fun, or as an hobby, to being more of a profession is amazing, most especially in developed countries. And it's even more amazing when you see sportsmen such as Roger Federer, Christiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, LeBron James, Mayweather, Tiger Woods etc earn huge taking part in an activity that is supposed to be for fun.

However, of all the professions I have seen, "Sport" is one of the fewest, if not the only, that requires a high level of both Physical and Mental involvement. Naturally, you would want to say Sport is mainly physical, but deep down, we all know being physically sound alone doesn't guarantee you excellence as long as "Sports" is concerned. And this brings us back to my earlier questions.

Source

Permit me to say that "a strong mental belief" is the simple answer to the question why a Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, or even a Dominic Thiem can easily get a victory over Nadal on eny other surface, but when the clay surface is involved, Rafael Nadal becomes very unbeatable because their mind have come to settle with the fact that he(Nadal) is the "King of Clay" so he is practically undefeatable on this surface.

Source

An example of the 2nd is Liverpool's amazing home record in the EPL. No team(even Man City at her peak) have gotten an answer to this question, and that's why it is so funny that even with Liverpool's injury worries m, they still brushed aside a very good Wolverhampton Wanderers side(Although, the 3rd question still applies to Wolves). Another good example is Everton's good home run against Chelsea even during periods when the latter have a better squad than the former.

Source

For question 3, we have Arsenal against Mourinho, and Dortmund against Bayern Munich. Irrespective of the excellent form the formers might have, once they face off against the latter, they end up being a shadow of themselves.

Source

All these and much more can be attributed to "Mental Strength", and a huge one is needed for this embargoes to be broken, like AC Milan's current good runs against Juventus, Rangers awesome performance generally, and over Celtic in particular, Leicester's amazing win of the EPL etc.

Although, other reasons can also be attributed to the breakthrough, but the " Mental Strength"
is of utmost importance.

Feel free to drop your opinions and comments.

Thanks.