Mini ESA

Mini ESA started in 2012 and is the ‘proof of concept’ of the future centre of excellence for Belgian athletes. This life-size experience allowed Brussels young athletes, between 15 and 22 years old, to improve their performance while benefiting from professional and personalised follow-up for four years. In addition, the project showed the importance of having quality sports facilities in Brussels.

A hundred tests performed by 25 Belgian promising athletes from the world of athletics and soccer were needed to enable the multidisciplinary selection committee to select five young athletes in each of these two disciplines. These tests are of a physical, psychological and technical nature and were conducted by internationally recognised experts in their speciality, such as Jef Brouwers, Titi Mullie and Guy Cheron.

Various activities were proposed during these four years. First of all, athletes have benefited from a mobility programme, to be performed twice a week, allowing then to harmonise their entire body, improve their perception and prevent injuries.

Afterwards, our young athletes took part in an activity aiming at analysing the Alpha and Beta waves in sport including measuring their degree of concentration during the effort. The psychological test has meanwhile helped identifying the personality of the athletes.

The results of this first edition are spectacular! In athletics, two out of the five athletes took part in the Rio Olympics while three out of the five promising young soccer players are now evolving within the first division of the Anderlecht Royal Sporting.

However, the need to physically settle Mini ESA in a place arose. Indeed, being split into multiple places made the visibility of Mini ESA unclear and did not contribute to create a body spirit. Therefore, it was thought to use an intermediate centre, the ESA Arena. This intermediate centre allowed performing the activities without waiting for the creation of the big International ESA excellence centre. Activities are therefore performed in an infrastructure which, even if it does not entirely belong to ESA, has been identified as ESA being also part of it.