Physical and Mental Intelligence Robert Carlos

The physics of the Roberto Carlos kick.

We are all bombarded with so many videos. The media saturation today is staggering. We are all addicted to media, content, and dopamine. We’ve seen countless videos and consume them with a seemingly biological drive.

So…through the years, we’ve seen tremendous amounts of video footage, news, sports, events, and countless TV shows, movies, and creatively applied uses of video.

So which ones stuck? Which ones do you truly remember in this oversaturated landscape? For me, there are plenty of videos I regularly share throughout the day, sending a link to group chats. But a few videos have stood the test of time and today’s blog is about one such video.

This is a physics analysis of one of Roberto Carlos’s goals. This goal is undeniably incredibly difficult to execute by any analysis of any layman watching. You do not need to know anything about soccer or even be a fan, to recognize that the degree of difficulty involved with scoring this goal is next level.

However, one of my favorite videos is this thorough physics explanation of precisely what makes this goal so fabulously improbable. It is “Almost impossible.” Please watch this remarkable breakdown below!

As you can see from the video above, this goal is simply amazing. The video does a good job of breaking down this play into statistics that highlight the degree of difficulty. It is truly almost an impossible shot.

This video resonates with me because it speaks to several topics that are schticks of mine. One is the differing nature of intelligence. Intelligence is very misunderstood, and intellectually rigorous thinking is valued and perceived more than other forms of intelligence.

For instance, one may easily be able to say that this physicist describes Roberto Carlos's goal as smart because these equations resonate with a certain cultural version of intelligence, and by all means, this is an extremely valid and straightforward highly valuable form of intelligence.

I’d like to discuss an oversimplified jock/nerd cliche here. So this guy analyzing the goal is the nerdy math guy and Roberto Carlos is the jock. This does not leave room for an appreciation of sports by the nerd. It also doesn’t allow for the intelligence that Roberto Carlos possesses.

I’d like to make the argument that despite not thinking of his athletic performance as an intellectual feat, there must be forms of mathematical brilliance at play in relation to angles, speed, and a whole slew of factors. An athlete of that caliber must train pretty extensively in order to achieve such heights.

This training often involves lots of metrics, speed, dietary specificity, lots of numbers, and metric-oriented analysis. Anyway, I am making my point a bit sloppily. Roberto Carlos possesses some sort of innate understanding of those laws of physics.

He may not lean towards describing it in the same fashion as this gentleman did, but he undoubtedly had to execute and be the manifestation of the math. He is applying all these factors, with lightning speed and using his body to deploy them.

This is simply sensational. This absolutely requires a great deal of intelligence. The correlation between mind and body intelligence may be at play here. Mind and body connection crudely explained by me would be the ability for your body and mind to affect and interact with one another in symbiotic ways.

I’m also now wondering if there are components of this theory that involved learning through physicality. I, for one, have learned various philosophical theories and life perspectives I find to be invaluable through my practice of yoga. They undoubtedly have aided me in a mental capacity and have increased perspective and understanding. These are all tasks associated with the mind but unlocked via the use of the body.

I’d also like to write in the future about a similar concept I like. I’d like to argue that there is a great deal of art that is not recognized or appreciated by the art world. There are facets of our world that are full of art that would not be identified as art. These are often masculine or jockey. But can be beautiful and artistic.

ONE STUPID THING ABOUT THIS VIDEO

It is kind of hilarious how this guy makes the goalkeeper seem incompetent and inept and then talks about how the goal was otherworldly. The goalkeeper basically had no historical precedent to think that a plausible shot on goal could be occurring from that angle and at that moment. Yet this guy is absolutely ruthless in his criticism.