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Novak Djokovic is a boraderline insane person who believes an astonishing amount of nonsense. His success is because of his incredibly work ethic and incredibly will to be successful.
He came up into an area where the two most dominate players ever dominate the sport and he had to try to break into that. Its a real case of rising to the challenge.
He rose to the very top when he massively improved his flexibility while being an absolute beast in cardio. His flexibility allowed him to create power shots of low balls that most players wouldn't reach or could at best punt back. That's the real secret sauce of his success.
Like this:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...
And in terms of Cardio, check out Australian Open: 2012 final, Novak Djokovic vs. Rafael Nadal – 5 hours, 53 minutes. Basically two of the most insane althletes in the world pushing themselves to the very edge of what humanly possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwBCCvWRoFQ
He of course also systematically worked on his game, and all his weaknesses. He is just a complete player.
> Novak Djokovic is a boraderline insane person
Not surprised at all to see qualified psychiatric professionals chiming in on HN! Have an upvote!
I'm not diagnosing, I'm using a common colloquialism.
He also chose the right parents.
Novak Djokovic also credits absorption of energies from the allegedly most ancient pyramids on Earth in Bosnia and Herzegovina to his success. They're supposedly built anywhere from 12k to 34k BCE, claimed by a Bosnian-American shyster from Texas who "discovered" them in 2005.
In truth, they're just hills and Djokovic is batshit.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bosnian-pyramid-novak-...
If Djokovic believes in it I already know it's some woo crap made for people with too much money that gets easily impressed
> This was an uncontrolled study that concluded that wearing the patch improved grip strength and squat jump.
It's even more ridiculous when you see the size of it and how does it attach to the body
With this stuff everything boils down to how you answer a simple question (which usually most people hardly think about or are encouraged to think about) which is - Do you know how to produce Faith?
In yourself (or others). Faith that you can do things, no one including yourself thinks you can.
If you sit down and think about that question, and spend time experimenting with different answers, what you will come up with, wont be too different from what all the religions of the world or djoko comes up with to generate Faith. Which is stories. myths. imagery. rituals etc. The more faith you need to generate the more absurd the methods can look to an external observer. But what matters is not the absurdity (especially if its not hurting anyone else) but whether the methods have caused your Faith gauge to see an uptick.
So go try and see what you come up for yourself or for someone else, next time there is a big challenge ahead. It will help you understand what you see others trying to do.
Can someone please explain to me why this comment has been downvoted? Because to my eyes it is 100% relevant to the post, well-written, does not insult anyone, is elaborate, and potentially helpful for others.
The only answer I can buy right now is some allergy to the word "faith", especially if it comes with a capital F. Which is quite a pity: if we dare to be honest enough about it, even the hardest-core atheist/rationalists are driven by faith.
The comment didn't offend me and I didn't downvote it, but Faith only has anything to do with success if you squint. There are so many tennis players with faith who will never reach the level Djokovic has, and to ponder that he's right about the patch forces us to consider that people that haven't reached his level just don't have enough faith in themselves, forgetting other variables like genetics, training, circumstance.
Furthermore, there are lots of people who are cautious, practical, and carry some imposter syndrome, but still enjoy lots of success. Faith can certainly be motivating, but it's not the end all be all.
If it seems like there's an allergy to the concept, it has less to do with religion and more to do with the fact that putting faith in ones destiny above all else tends to be adjacent to people that are delusional about the effort they need to actually put in to the task, and see any criticism of their skill as a personal attack on their identity, and not helpful feedback on their output. For every Djokovic, there are 1000 people that are delusional about how little they are actually trying to fulfill the story they tell themselves, and it can be genuinely exhausting to see as a supporter of these people. We wouldn't accept a subpar programmer who was certain he was the next John Carmack because his crystals told him so, unless the work was speaking for itself
Thank you for your response. We'd need a podcast to unpack everything, but I appreciate your willingness to be constructive--thus I'll try to give my 2 cents and call it a day.
> [...] Faith only has anything to do with success if you squint. I understand that the original post puts "success" on its title, and hence justifies your wording. But I find success irrelevant to the discussion that the--not any more--downvoted comment hinted towards. Secular achievements are mere byproducts of a Faith-fueled life in my view. Reconciliation with the prospect of death, defeat of despair, and the sense of a life well and fully lived, are more at the center.
> [...] putting faith in ones destiny above all else tends to be adjacent to people that are delusional about the effort they need to actually put in to the task. Not my experience at all. It has to do with the weight and meaning one puts on words, I guess. Yes, Faith means, at least according to Kierkegaard, that everything is possible. But as regards the needed effort to attain said everything, if it's downplayed by the actor then it's not Faith we're talking about--but rather, as you say, delusion. If anything is implied by Faith, it's seriousness.
I am with you on your point about judging programmers according to their provable merit. I am certainly not with you on framing Faith as "being certain he's the next John Carmack". I believe lots of people carry the same misconception, and it's a fact that saddens me.
BTW, I ceased being an Orthodox Christian a long time ago, and was quite fervent about religion until that point. I am not trying to any dogma here, other than that Faith breeds Greatness if done right.
>>> It's even more ridiculous when you see the size of it and how does it attach to the body
First time I hear about TaoPatch. Dismissing it because of its size is surprising, to say the least.
FTA: “Novak Djokovic’s Wimbleton winning streak came to an end this past weekend […] This year he was observed wearing a patch on his chest”
So, he started wearing a patch, he didn’t win Wimbledon for the first time in years, and yet, he called that patch “the biggest secret of his career”.”*?
He is getting cash from this endorsement. The prices range from 400-3000 CAD. That’s insane for between 3 to 6 patches..
He didn't win Wimbledon but he did win the French Open prior to that.
And the Australian open, but he won those and Wimbledon in 2021, and people thought he was on course for a grand slam.
Just because you are good at tennis does not mean that you have a functional grasp of how other things in life work. Novak Djokovic is a perfect example of this. He is an extremely talented moron who believes ridiculous conspiracies about Covid and ancient pyramids, amongst other things.
If he is claiming some magic juju patch is the reason for his success, I can bet I already know what the science will say about it.
At the very least, I assume there is more than one of these patches in the world? Where do all the other users of the patch stand in world tennis rankings?
Novak has more than a few weird beliefs that aren't grounded in anything remotely scientific.
But good luck arguing with him when he's clearly the best male tennis player that ever lived
> he's clearly the best male tennis player that ever lived
Who are the non-male tennis players that are better than him?
In absolute terms? None obviously, but Margaret Court still has one more win in a fewer years.
Say what you want about the athlete in question, but has it not been shown that the power of placebo is a real factor in sports performance even for those with more “normal” beliefs?
How many athletes do the silliest rituals or recovery protocols that have no backing by modern day science and yet it works for them.
Our beliefs and expectations about the product are what honestly matter here, not the product in question.
Is Djokovic trying to sell snakeoil?
Unlikely.
Actual snakeoil works *
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/snake-oil-salesme...
* for some combinations of ailments and 'works'
The historical scam associated with "selling snake oil" wasn't that snake oil was worthless but that what they were selling wasn't snake oil.
Novak, as a healthy young man, refused the vaccine. So as the adage goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.