Practice makes perfect – every head this before? When I was younger, I used to play soccer for almost 10 years. We trained 3-4 times a week, amateur league, frankly speaking. I stopped playing regularly for nine years.
Last week, we were walking past the stadium in Cape Town, where Roger Federer, Bill Gates, Rafael Nadal, and Trevor Noah played Tennis for the great “Match in Africa”. We tried to get Tickets but found out, that they were already sold out in September after a couple of hours. Back to our story, we walked past the stadium, and on a big soccer field, there were about 20+ men playing soccer. For the soccer goal, they used their backpacks. It was very fun watching them from the sideline and indulging in olden times.
As one of the players made his way to the goal, he shot and missed the goal. The ball was now speeding up in my direction. Without thinking, my body reacted exactly the same as it reacted nine years ago when someone passed me the ball in a match. I was sprinting to the ball, stopped it with the inside of my right foot, as I always did, pushed the ball a little forward, and kicked it back to the players direction. After I’ve done that, I was amazed at how my body knew exactly what to do and did it without me thinking about it.
This reminded me of a quote from J.L. Moreno
“The body remembers what the mind forgets!”
Cape Town, South Africa