The reality is that when these great champions appear at an early age it is exciting to see how they are able to evolve in their game. It is clear that they have gotten there by improving their performance, but suddenly, installed in the elite, they show that their learning capacity is still extensive.
I remember that once they asked me to write an article about Messi, trying to explain where he was different from the rest of the players. Of course, the first thing I thought is that to try to explain all this, it would be necessary to write a book, where there would be very varied chapters. But of course one of the most important would be about the ability to learn.
All this comes to mind because in my WhatsApp group of tennis fans, commenting on Carlos Alcaraz’s great victory against Djokovic in the Wimbledon final, I wrote “The man who learned by sleeping.” To which one of my colleagues told me that he would make a good headline for an article. My reasoning was based on the fact that Carlitos’ evolution in three weeks of his game on grass is incomprehensible. From the doubts of when the Queens tournament began, to how great players much more adapted to that surface were eaten, finished off with victory for Djokovic, one is not able to understand how it can evolve so quickly.
If we look at Alcaraz’s activity during those weeks, we understand that there are a few hours dedicated to competing and beating your rivals, there are other hours trying to evade the responsibility that comes with being a favorite to reach number one and win tournaments, there is a long time that you dedicate to rest, another to train, various interviews granted, the time that lunch and dinner require… In other words, there seems to be little time left to analyze what aspects need to be evolved, because meetings with your technicians are also designed to take advantage of the possible weaknesses of the rival. And we must also understand that analyzing how your game should evolve does not mean learning, but even though it is key, only the important aspects are being pointed out.
For this reason I can only understand that learning occurs during the sleep phase. Where the accumulated experiences added to the ambition of improvement, force the brain to work from the subconscious. Where the neurons are moving from one side to another to generate the necessary information so that your body is then able to reproduce what has simply been mentally visualized. There may be those who think that perhaps the pot has gone to me. But it is a subject that intrigues me, because having been a professional athlete, I experienced firsthand the difficulty of not only learning, but even daring to do it, when everything around you moves at great speed.
