Q&A - Tennis Psychology
How to stop thinking and more...

Here you will find questions and answers related to tennis psychology part of the game. The questions were submitted by readers as a bonus for purchasing TennisMindGame.com ebooks, were sent through the email or I answered on tennis forums.

The grammar and spelling of questions from readers were left in their original form...

How to stop thinking about outside problems?

A:
Ok, here's a ritual that you can use to "train" your mind to stop thinking. When you are still outside the court and are about to enter it, say to yourself: "Since there's nothing I can do to change (put your problem here - girl, job, school, ...) during this tennis game and it also makes me play worse, I will not think about it for the next 2 hours (or how long you intend to play). I will stop thinking about it as soon as I enter the court. And when I come back I will start thinking about it if I have to."

Then enter the court and imagine that your mind shut off all the outside problems.

This may seem a silly exercise but before you make any conclusions try it for a couple of times and then let me know what happened.

This worked 100% for me when I still had to do this. Now it's automatic - my mind just switches from outside life to tennis.

"Why do I play?"

No one can take that away from me. It's my reality, my view on the game and even if one beats me it has nothing to do with me or my tennis.

This may sound strange but I'm completely detached from outcomes of tennis matches (or points).

In reality they are just neutral events. We give them meaning, we make the stories around them. I lost the stories a while ago.

Now I play because I enjoy immensely to move in harmony and have my mind occupied with a ball and nothing else. I enjoy the feeling of the ball hitting exactly in the middle of the racquet. I enjoy hearing the sound of the ball leaving the strings.

I enjoy running fast, accelerating, stopping and changing directions on the court and at the same time keeping my thinking completely cool and not in anyway connected with the dynamic movements of my body.

I feel like am observing myself and using a superfast computer to calculate what my best tactics and shots are going to be. Then I focus only on the ball and experience that short moment of impact as something very special - an extraordinary event which in reality lasts 0,005 s but it expands in my mind for at least a second.

I play to give the partner on the other side one of the best experiences that they ever had on the tennis court. I play to show them the way - that tennis can be a joyous, fun and relaxing moment of your day.

Most people go on tennis courts to express their frustrations and anger and tennis doesn't look so great when they do that. I show them that tennis has nothing to do with your personality if you decide so.

"What if I miss this shot?"

In his last match that he played (the scoring was no-add) he lost all points at 40:40 exactly because he was so worried that he might miss a shot in the point.

How can we (or you) help him?

A:
As you have already found out the problem lies in the thinking :"What if I miss?" OR "I don't want to miss right now."

This type of thinking affects us in two ways:

1. The player starts to think too much and he is thinking about negative consequences. This affects his body abilities: he feels heavy arms and legs and his breathing is shallow. He is not able to play his best in this state.

2. He subconsciously starts to play in the »direction« of his thinking. Although he doesn't want to miss he is still thinking about missing the ball. Our subconscious doesn't not understand the word no (not).

That's why we must always focus on what we want and not on what we don't want. This is true for tennis and life.

12 year old kids are usually not able to be aware of their thinking let alone control it. Especially in the match when they are under stress.

First talk with your child and figure out exactly what he would like to achieve in that point. He would of course like to win the point but that is not what he can control.

This is one the main reasons for stress and anxiety. We want to control things that are actually out of our control. We can't control: hitting in, score, weather, opponent's play, draw, luck, surroundings and so on.

The player can only control his effort, attitude and how he intends to play. He can decide to play left and right with lots of spin but he cannot control the actual results.

This is quite a difficult concept to accept – for young and older players.

This is where the old tennis saying comes from: "Play point by point." That's because there is nothing else that you can control except giving your best in the current point.

To wrap up: He needs to think what he wants in the critical situations. This is exactly what the Mental Manual for Tennis Winners accomplishes – IF you use it. :) It shows the player how to think in a critical situation to be focused on what he wants and to prevent negative thoughts from appearing in our mind.

Back from Q&A to Tennis Psychology

Back from Q&A - Tennis Psychology to TennisMindGame.com