Since many athletes face long air travels to reach the venue of a championship game or competition, it occurred to Nike not to waste the valuable time spent on board and instead put it to good use.
However, if it is not possible to have athletes train while flying thousands of feet above the ground, this time can be used to work on other aspects of their training, including rest.
That’s how the concept for a 787 Dreamliner “prepared” as a flying gymnasium came about by Nike in collaboration with design firm Teague, designed especially for basketball teams. A plane that has nothing of the usual flying tube full of seats. The “athletic” 787 is a set of rooms or “zones” designated for different activities: from massage room, to viewing videos of past encounters and figuring out where to intervene, to actual rest areas.
The seats of course are there, but they are calibrated to give ample living space to the passengers, who are generally quite tall. So these can lie down and sleep (this is called “catching up,” not “sleeping”) or view game footage of opponents or themselves on their OLED screens. Or relax by chatting with each other or the technical staff, having a healthy drink and checking their physical parameters at the same time.
Such an airplane may seem like an exaggeration, but it is also on these details that a hypercompetitive sport like basketball decides a team’s success or failure: in fact, it is not only physical training that counts, but above all the mental toughness of a team, especially in such an environment, which leaves nothing to chance and always demands the best from those who play it.
It may not have anything to do with running entirely, but it is still sport and says one basic thing: everything is training and preparation for those who care about sports results.
Nothing does not affect and only those who really only and always do their best succeed and have personal satisfaction.
Also in flight.
