Triathlon and Team Formation

Team formation is the key to succeed in many endeavors, team sports formation is better known to us.  Our performance will depend on how the team works and how the winning culture evolves:

1)   On time for training.

2)   Concentration during the event and training:

    "There is no doubt that mental concentration is tiring. Anyone who has attended a meeting will appreciate the fact. The process of simply sitting around a table for a couple of hours mainly concentrating upon what other people are saying is tiring. Driving a car for hours is tiring. But these efforts are nothing by comparison with the footballer who constantly is required to assess each situation always trying to think ahead and outwit his opponent...

    Of course, we all know that it is more difficult to concentrate when we are tired. The efficiency of a footballer in a team performance depends very largely on his concentrating on the task he has to perform... If one player fails the whole team is likely to fail."

http://www.bettersoccermorefun.com/dwtext/concentr.htm

3)   More than a 100% effort while training. Neymar says that Brazil lost because they do not take seriously each training session:

"You train more, but sometimes you train with less determination. That's how Brazilians are." http://sports.yahoo.com/news/tried-were-slipping-brazils-neymar-030648259--sow.html;_ylt=A0SO8wg7Es9T8H8ADipXNyoA

I will give you an idea of how things can go bad if we do not have the culture to learn, to share, and to follow rules.  In Mexico a shelter existed for 60 years and now became international news.  It worked according to how the rules and society changed; it worked well when it started and when our society what somehow under control.  It was the mirror of what it was happening outside, in the State, the Nation.  Little by little it became a culture of drug trafficking to the point that the police had to intervene.

Owner of raided Mexico child shelter was admired

ZAMORA, Mexico (AP) — For more than six decades, poor parents struggling to support their children or raise troubled youths sent them to a group home in western Mexico run by a woman who gained a reputation as a secular saint.
Rosa del Carmen Verduzco raised thousands of children in The Great Family home. She cultivated patrons among Mexico's political and intellectual elites, and was visited by presidents and renowned writers.
Then, last year, parents began complaining to authorities that they couldn't visit their children at the home. Residents told investigators of Dickensian horrors — rapes, beatings and children held against their will for years in trash-strewn rooms with filthy toilets.
On Tuesday, heavily armed federal police and soldiers raided the home and arrested nine caretakers, including the 79-year-old woman known as Mama Rosa.
The revelations spawned disgust and horror, but also a rush to Mama Rosa's defense by supporters who include some of Mexico's most respected intellectuals and some of the very children who say they were mistreated at her facility.
"It was a great job that she did in Zamora and now, clearly, she is being persecuted," Elena Poniatowska, one of Mexico's most prominent writers, told Milenio Television. "What should be done, really, is that the government should take better care of people."
The outpouring of support appears based on the belief that Verduzco was not complicit in any abuse, even if her age and declining health stopped her from correctly overseeing the home. It also reflects deep skepticism of President Enrique Pena Nieto's government, which publicized the raid as an example of its efforts to protect children.
Tomas Zeron, federal chief of criminal investigations, told the Televisa network Friday that he doubts Verduzco will be charged with a crime, saying she lost control of a once-worthy charity because of her age, and would probably go free.
The Great Family appears to have operated more as a commune than a professionally run children's home. In interviews with The Associated Press, current and former residents described a chaotic world where troubled teenagers were overseen by adult residents, many of whom started living there as children themselves, with virtually no professional supervision.
The police raid on Tuesday found six babies, 154 girls, 278 boys, 50 women and 109 men, federal officials said. Prosecutors said 10 people were so severely malnourished they couldn't determine their ages.
Children and adult residents couldn't leave the home without a chaperone. Sex inside the facility was common, both consensual and, according to the government, rape and sexual abuse.
Luis Perez Juarez, 32, a waiter at a local bar, said he fled the home in 2003 after almost a decade there.
"She punished me, she hit me, she pulled my ears and she left me without food for a week," prompting other children to sneak him food, Juarez said of Verduzco. But, "she gave me a bed, a place to stay, food and an education, and I am grateful to her for that."
Many members of Mexico's elite remain loyal to her.
"Filth, abuse. Did that merit a military operation?" historian and essayist Enrique Krauze wrote on his Twitter account.
Former President Vicente Fox, whose administration helped gather donations for the home, wrote in his Twitter account that "a great injustice is being committed .... Mama Rosa, we know you and your great work."
The country's child-protection agency referred many of the children to the home after their parents said they were financially or emotionally unable to care for them. Funding was a mix of private donations and public money. Inspections apparently were lax or non-existent.
Former residents told the AP that Verduzco adopted many of the children, giving them her name.

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/crime/article/Owner-of-raided-Mexico-child-shelter-was-admired-5632258.php

I trained at the Central New Psychiatric Children Psychiatric Center where three staff members were present for one child.  Most of the children were sent there by the judges to be evaluated.  There were complaints of abuses and other things related to the interaction between patients and caregivers.  The Center was also investigated for such complaints from families receiving services.  The Center needed this quantity of caregivers and staff to keep the boat straight.  One on one would be impossible with the characteristics of the existing population at the CNYCPC; seven hours holding a child throwing a tantrum was required at times (best way to avoid a more severe acting out behavior), their anger continued at a low level for the months or years they stay in.  “Education is like bending the child,” as one of my supervisor told me.

The comparison is not different from what we encounter as athletes in countries like Mexico; team formation gets the mirror of what exist outside the team.  The members’ heroes are very different from what a champion is; in Mexico, we have not had real champions for years and if they exist, they are far from the understanding of the people.  They have respect and admiration for “El Chapo” or the like. 

Sin disciplina en la vida, no hay nada. Así respondió Rosa Verduzco Verduzco, conocida como Mamá Rosa, cuando el periodista León Krauze le preguntó sobre los señalamientos que hay respecto a la severidad con que trataba a los niños del albergue ‘La Gran Familia’.

Rosa Verduzco Verduzco dio su versión sobre lo ocurrido al también columnista de EL UNIVERSAL, durante una entrevista con Univisión.

“Yo soy dura en la vida (...) Me hice dura y yo sé que sin disciplina no hay nada”, dijo Mamá Rosa cuando León Krauze le preguntó por la disciplina con que dirigía ‘La Gran Familia.

Al ser cuestionada sobre los alimentos en estado caduco que daba a los menores, Verduzco respondió:

“Vivimos en dos mundos diferentes: el mundo que come las tortillas frías, los frijoles en un piso de tierra; la gente que tiene un nivel de vida muy alto piensa que tomar un refresco vencido es muy malo, pero yo apenas llevo comiendo así 80 años”, señaló.

Sobre las razones por las cuales pedía un documento notariado a los padres de los menores, Mamá Rosa dijo:

“Porque (‘La Gran Familia’) no es un internado, una guardería en la que te llevó en la mañana y voy por ti en la tarde, somos una familia y no vamos a estar rompiendo diario la vinculación con la familia”, dijo.

Finalmente, Mamá Rosa dijo que ha criado a cuatro mil jóvenes a quienes dedicó su vida. “De una cosa sí estoy segura, que les he dado lo único que yo tengo, mi vida, es lo único”.

The creation of a team starts with how the members choose their heroes.  Most of the children with Mama Rosa did not have parents and were coming from prison.  Greatness is related to what they saw important in prison or related areas.