by Carl Bunton 5 years ago 
Whatever sporting code you actively participate in, you likely want to maintain a high level of intensity and competition. However, even in the case of semi-pros and full-on professionals, it’s near-impossible to recreate the same intensity in your training as you put your body through when you’re in the actual, in-game situation. Here are some tips to help you get as close as possible to recreating in-game intensity, when there’s a natural lack of motivation and incentive to do so during your practice or training session.
Develop your tactical skills
The best performing athletes, both professional and those who are just competitively participating in some activity non-professionally, aren’t necessarily the fittest and most talented ones. A huge part of any competitive sporting code or activity resides in the application of tactical skills.
Use the training session as an opportunity to develop some of your tactical skills by applying the different tactics you have, honing and refining them in what is naturally a less pressurized situation. The less pressured situation is likely still competitive enough for you to try out your tactics and refine them in real-time, with less downside to the risk, i.e. you won’t be costing your team points or the game if you get things horribly wrong.
Mental toughness
The tactics involved with participating in any sporting code, whether as an individual or as part of a team, are only as good as your complementary ability to maintain composure under pressure and to think straight. The likeliest scenario is that during an in-game situation, every decision you make has to be conceived at lightning-fast speed, to the point that it’s more like an instinctive action than actually going through the process of making the decision.
During your training session is the perfect time to develop this mental toughness and it’s only done through fighting for every inch and competing to win. You get used to the pressure by constantly putting yourself in a position that has you exerting yourself as if you were in an actual in-game situation.
Fight for every inch and play to win
Coaches at development level always preach the gospel of practicing as if you’re in an actual real game, competitive situation. This is indeed the gospel by which ultimate winners live by, making the necessary adjustments in the effort they put in when their discipline demonstrates to them that they’re perhaps slacking off a bit.
Just play like it’s your last game, which means you must put in your best effort to win each point, play, phase of play, race, etc.
Create incentives to perform at your peak
Since pro athletes are effectively not allowed to engage in something like sports betting, they often quench their thirst to try their luck and place their bets through a selection of some of the best live casinos, but they do it as a motivational factor to create some of the incentive that can be absent from a training session. For instance, a marathon runner who wants to break a certain barrier (like running a certain distance within a certain time), might schedule some big auto-bets on a live casino to go off at the exact time they want to complete running that specific distance, returning just in time to stop the big bet going through.
How about that for some real incentive with monetary implications?