Jul 28-
What is the best way to hype up your athletes?
If you are or once were an athlete, you know the power of a good hype-up before a game, race, or competition. Typically it’s a speech, pump-up song, or pre-game ritual. But those ideas are in the past now, because the hype-up slap is the new wave. Yup, a slap, athletes are a different breed, I swear.
Watching the Olympics, it’s interesting to see how different countries train, motivate and react to their athletes compete. For instance, we got German competitor Martyna Tradjos getting slapped in the face by her coach “to fire her up”. The International Judo Federation (IJF) was not happy about this one. They did not like how he violated such behavior.
The #judo slap heard around the world. The athlete is Martyna Trajdos #ger & her coach Claudiu Pusa is from Romania. #Tokyo2020 #Olympics
— Mark Pickering 🏴🇯🇵マーク (@_MarkPickering) July 28, 2021
After watching that, I got fired up for her.
Let’s Go Germany!
Listen, this is going to sound bad, but after watching this coach hype-up video, it makes me want to watch judo now. She looks so in the zone after that slap. After the video went viral, Trajdos wrote on Instagram “looks like this was not hard enough”. NAILS. NAILS. This girl is nails.
*I’m not saying I condone this and I do agree it is very bizarre. But she does look fired up after that.
She took to Instagram to also share this:
I wish I could have made a different headline today. As I already said that’s the ritual which I chose pre-competition ! My coach is just doing what I want him to do to fire me up!
She was just trying to do her thing but I guess the hype up didn’t entirely work as she lost that fight against Szofi Ozbas from Hungary.
I don’t think we should judge people for their pre-game rituals though. Let’s just look at other athletes’ rituals.
Shaquille O’Neal goes bowling. He would pretend to throw a bowling ball and use his teammates as the pins. John Henderson likes a pump-up slap, also, you’re not alone Martyna. And AJ Griffin strums his guitar before a game.
Everyone’s got something that pumps them up, so just let them be. If it works for them and makes them happy, I have no issue with a player getting slapped before a game.
Follow me on Twitter @_danibets.
