- I increased my own scans on the pitch automatically.

Being a consistent midfielder ever since he was young, Rekdal explains that he enjoys playing both as a deep-lying midfielder and central midfielder - positions that require the ability to always know what's going on, in other words: a high level of perception! 

- My style of playing is less about contact and more about being as prepared as possible. 

It was always football

For Rekdal, football was something he more or less was born into. Both of his parents, uncle, brother and cousins all played or still play. His father and uncle were also at one point both pro-footballers with Belgian and German teams; his uncle Kjetil Rekdal, later going on to coach elite teams in Norway. 

- I come from a family of footballers, and played on a team already at 5 years old. I started earlier than most, and was usually always the youngest, playing with people maybe 3-4 years older than me, while also playing on a team for my age group. 

- Although I was kind of born into it, playing professionally was always my dream. It has always been what I love to do. Even though it's a little more serious now, it's still awesome. I still have the most fun when playing. 

VR-technology does what Fifa doesn't

Having only tried VR a couple of times before, Rekdal was impressed with the overall virtual reality experience.

- I've always thought it would be really cool to be able to play match scenarios with VR and actually be in the game. Almost like getting to play Fifa, but with way more to it. And now I can. 

Rekdal has been training with The Be Your Best VR-trainer for a few months now, using it almost everyday, before and sometimes after, every training session with his team. 

- I train shorter sessions, maybe 10-20 minutes before every team activity, to mentally prepare for today's drills. 

Deliberate practice 

With such a consistent and structured method of training scanning and perception, Rekdal is conducting what we know to be deliberate practice: the best way to excel in something. 

 - I actually notice more [negative] difference in my performance when I haven't used it in a while. At the start, I increased my own scans on the pitch automatically. It was almost subconscious, coming naturally after using the Trainer.  

One element of successful deliberate practice is to also gain feedback for continuous improvement, something Rekdal makes use of through our Replay-feature. 

- The coolest feature is the Replay-feature, to be able to evaluate my performance and look at different possibilities of scanning and decision making. 

We'll continue to follow Rekdal on his exciting journey to achieve his lifelong goals!