Rafa Nadal: "I Am Not Superstitious" — The Truth Behind His Obsessive Rituals
For years, cameras have scrutinized his every move: his carefully aligned bottles, his pulled-up shorts, or his hair being fixed.
Asked about this in an interview for Movistar+, Rafa Nadal said this:
"I am not very superstitious, contrary to what you might think. Outside of tennis, I have no routine or ritual. All of that stayed on the court and in competition. I needed it.
I would have liked to be able to reach that level of concentration without these routines. I didn't have them as marked at the beginning of my career. Tennis is demanding and eats away at you from the inside. We go on the court every day knowing that we can be eliminated and go home in the evening.
You have to find routines that make you feel comfortable, safe, and that help you not lose track of what you are doing, to isolate yourself from everything else.
I tried to reduce them, because when I saw myself on television, I didn't like what I saw, but that passed. They gave me the feeling of being 100% focused on what I was doing."
What Nadal ultimately reveals is that his rituals were not eccentric habits... but the key to an extraordinary mindset.
