Manage Yourself
Tags: Football, Sports, Lifestyle, Time Management, Soccer

As a footballer, what does your day look like? If it is similar to the daily habits of an average person, then what are you going to do to take it that extra mile? You cannot treat the game as just a hobby if your intention is to become a professional player, those two parts do not add up. You need to be willing to dedicate a certain amount of time to ensure that you push yourself to that next level!

To quote Lionel Messi,

“I start early and I stay late, day after day, year after year, it took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.”

Arguably the best to ever play the game, if you think he was born able to juggle a ball as a baby, you must be out of your mind! Show us the video evidence if you think he could… He would have worked tirelessly year-round to ensure his touch, speed, balance, mental fortitude are at a level that is above the rest, continuously working on his game, even to this day he is constantly a student of the game. He has an abundance of love and passion for Football that drives his improvement, it goes to show, even when you are considered the best, you cannot let up, you cannot slow down, there is always room for growth.

Let's build from this and ask some questions to reflect on what YOU are currently doing:

How is your sleep cycle?

What do you eat every day?

How & do you do your own extra training every day?

What do you do to keep your mental health stable?

How is your social life?

What does your sleep schedule look like? Maybe the amount of sleeping hours you get per night is around 6–8 hours but the time at which you sleep is inconsistent, sometimes you sleep at 10 PM while other times you sleep around 1 AM or 3 AM. This is not good for your body because our body has certain biological habits (circadian rhythm) that dictate when your body feels tired or when it should work, but it can’t tell time. So if last night you went to bed at 10 PM, tonight your body will be ready to sleep at 10 PM and If you don’t sleep at that time, your body will get tired after 10 PM and that tiredness will keep on accumulating until you get too tired. By the time you sleep, even if it’s for 6–8 hours, you are still going to feel tired afterwards because you overloaded your body with work when you didn’t go to bed at 10 PM.

Nutrition. Quality food for your body doesn’t mean expensive food. But, you should be aware of what you are putting into your body to facilitate the fuel required to keep your performance levels high. Whether it is from your own research, personal nutritionists or recommendations from your doctor, one thing to note is that we as individuals are all different and what may work for one athlete may not see the same results for another. So, experiment in and around the dietary choices that are best suited for you, gather all the options that you would prefer and work from there.

Work ethic is everything. What are you demanding of yourself and what are you willing to give up to progress individually with extra trainings? These are the questions you need to be asking yourself. Do you love the grind so much that you don’t need anyone to tell you to do it; you just love to play football that you will play it anytime, anywhere and with anybody. Could you do your extra session after your team training times, to avoid being tired during the team trainings, do you have a teammate that is willing to stay with you to work on a specific aspect of your game that the both of you could benefit? How about getting up early for an individual morning session? It can be quite an intimidating task, however, if you block out your time, you will begin to realize the positive habits that you can build in balancing each of your commitments.

How do you spend your free time? Sometimes you may need to take a moment to breathe, find something that will serve the purpose of giving you a bit of down time. If that’s a movie to boost your mood and you come out feeling good, then great. Whatever you decide, always look to feel good afterwards. If you don’t feel good or you’ve fallen into the trap of seeing the free time as an impulse to take advantage of unwanted activity… Then you’re doing something wrong. For example, let’s say you decide to watch a movie, YouTube or Netflix. The one movie or video becomes a second movie, a third movie and before you know it, you’ve watched the entire Harry Potter franchise (Oops.), what’s even worse is you have a match tomorrow and you know your performance will suffer because of this choice.

Who are the people you are surrounding yourself with on a daily basis? It could be your family, friends, coaches, teammates or anyone around you. We are influenced by our surroundings, yes, that includes the people we share a lot of our time with. If you surround yourself with pessimistic people that are negative, not going to training, not taking things seriously you will find that these traits will start to build in your own habits sooner or later. Take a moment to recognize the people you are surrounding yourself with, if you are not the best on your team, who is? What makes them so good? What can you do to emulate their success? Find the friends, the teammates that actually support your pursuit of excellence and hold themselves to a high standard, find like-minded individuals that go to training no matter what, each session they have intention and detail in what they set out to achieve, have specific dietary habits, are thorough in their preparation, these are the type of people that you can look to for positive influence, support, even when the going gets tough, you know that you can rely on the fact that the people in your corner have got your back and they are a reminder each day to keep on going and to chase your dreams.

Author: Zaya Mardika

Editor: Michelle Vinita

Editor: Mitchell Hines