competitive psychology Quotes

The difference between ordinary players and champions is the way they think.

All these nice people saying I'm going to be world champion won't make me any faster, you have to believe it yourself.

The calmness and confidence I take into matches has an effect not only on our rivals but also on my team-mates, who are counting on me.

Bjorn was a different breed, I threw my best material at him, but he would never smile, but that added to the charm when he played me and Mac. We were going nuts and losing our mind and he was sitting back like he was on a Sunday stroll.

The lust that drives others to enslave an empire, had become, in her limits, a passion for power over him. She had set out to break him, as if, unable to equal his value, she could surpass it by destroying it, as if the measure of his greatness would thus become the measure of hers, as if the vandal who smashed a statue were greater than the artist who had made it, as if the murderer who killed a child were greater than the mother who had given it birth.

I don't get butterflies. I get a good feeling in my stomach before I compete. When I don't, I get worried.

I've fought guys that I like. When you're fighting a guy that you don't like, you have to be able to separate certain aspects of it.

I hate to lose more than I like to win.

How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away. Nets and fences can be mirrors. And between the nets and fences, opponents are also mirrors. This is why the whole thing is scary. This why all opponents are scary and weaker opponents are especially scary. See yourself in your opponents. They will bring you to understand the Game. To accept the fact that the Game is about managed fear. That its object is to send from yourself what you hope will not return.

Everyone who has been to an Olympics says expect the unexpected. That kind of psychology games does go on, so I'm kind of expecting things to happen but I don't know who from. I think it's kind of silly but I'm prepared for it. I'd probably just laugh it off because it means that they are afraid of racing me, so it's like a huge compliment

I am trying to beat the guy sitting across from me and trying to choose the moves that are most unpleasant for him and his style.

There's always a lot of talk about motivation to race, but nobody really knows what I do or what I think apart from myself, so I don't really care what people think.

Never did I want to call the first time-out during a game. Never. I wanted UCLA to come out and run our opponents so hard that they would be forced to call the first time-out just to catch their breath. At that first time-out the opponents would know, and we would know that they knew, who was in better condition. This has a psychological impact.

There can be a lot of mind games going on between the players. When you're about to serve, people will try to throw you off your rhythm by taking a walk. If you're tired, you can't show that at all to an opponent.

There are two kinds of men and women, those who have in them resisting as their way of winning those who have in them attacking as their way of winning.

Maybe I'm the kind of athlete who absorbs the atmosphere instead of trying to block it out.

The first thing I do when I book a fight is I go to the Internet and I print out a picture of the guy and put it on my refrigerator.

I had a lot of fun playing football and basketball, but deep down, the chess match or cat-and-mouse game between the pitcher and batter in baseball really drew me in. It's a thinking man's game, and for me, nothing can compare to that.

I never chased around with the opposition or got too well acquainted with them, because when the time in the ballgame came up where I had to pitch inside, I didn't want to hesitate.

Ibrahimovic is certainly a great player, but during a match, I don't waste any thoughts on who is opposing me, and you never have any fears on the pitch.

I don't really do it on the field, but off the field, I use it to my advantage. I'll talk a lot of smack.