FOSBURY FLOP

Look at the attached picture below and think about how many actions in a tennis match —or season— are identical. No action is the same: It is not said by Philip or me, Rafa Nadal says it . Well, tennis training has always gone in the opposite direction to this principle. The complexity of the sport has been forgotten and has been trained by breaking it down and repetitively. Philip provides us wit...

How culture impacts how we play. Go to FosburyFlop.substack.com to check the written version of the episode, its notes and much more content. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.fosburyflop.blog/subscribe

The conversation is in Spanish. You can watch it with English subtitles in the YouTube video of the episode . 10km running up the mountain, 1h and a half weights, 12km swimming with a shirt or weights, 1h gym, 1h and a half soccer match —because the coach wanted to play— and a last waterpolo training session was the daily bread of Dani Ballart and the entire Spanish waterpolo team to prepare for t...

I would summarize the way of seeing the world of Raúl and his Fidias team with Mishima’s quote: “Qui n’ha begut en tindrà set tota la vida.” (“Whoever has drunk of this will be thirsty all his life.”) He doesn’t give us a recipe, but he teaches us how to cook. He doesn’t explain us a methodology or tell us what exercises to do, but he teaches us how to build our and choose them. That’s why his way...

Football is played all over the world but you can find many different game-styles depending on the culture and society in which they are carried out. In Barcelona, the Gothic cathedrals are wide, rather than deep, like the style of play of Pep Guardiola’s Barça. In Brazil, samba has influenced the moves of its players forged in the streets and in small playing spaces. A capitalist society focused...