I got really nervous as the wind blew and the second deuce sudden deaths kept piling up. Finally I had a bit of a meltdown and missed a bunch of easy shots. As soon as the match was over the nervousness was immediately gone.<\/p>\n
I know many figures in sports who absolutely hate to lose. Don Shula comes to mind. His daughter said the family kept their distance from him after a Miami Dolphin loss because he took it so hard. Is it necessary to hate losing to be a winner? I think that the process of wallowing over a loss is similar to being obsessed by a previous point while playing a match. If I am thinking about something that already happened, I cannot possibly concentrate on what I’m supposed to be doing at the moment.<\/p>\n
After I lose a match, particularly if I lose due to a meltdown, I think about the improvements I need to win next time and then come up with a plan to make these improvements. Here is my current plan: do the nervousness affirmation<\/a> again, mentally rehearse thinking about where I want the ball to land instead of thinking about technique, mentally rehearse taking my time to hit a solid return of a soft second serve.<\/p>\n Next, I lift my head up out of the puddle I am wallowing in and write down the things I did well because there are probably a lot of them.<\/p>\n I considered jumping into a sty with a bunch of pigs and wallowing to my heart’s content. Completely exhausting an emotional response is a good way to get past it and the silliness of wallowing would probably become very apparent to me.<\/p>\n Practice and Competition Report<\/em>: I started league<\/a> play today, we play one set of doubles and one set of singles: 7-6 (7-4), 5-7 I got really nervous as the wind blew and the second deuce sudden deaths kept piling up. Finally I had a bit of a meltdown and missed a bunch of easy shots. As soon as the match was over the nervousness was immediately gone. I know many figures in sports who absolutely hate to lose. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mental-skills","category-tennis-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSolutions Analysis<\/em>:
\n1. looking for a solution to getting nervous. Possible solution: use the directive affirmation for nervousness<\/a> again. Obviously it didn’t work the first time.
\n2. looking for a solution to the problem of losing my stroke during a match. Possible solution: clear my mind of any strategy for the time being and think only about where I want the ball to land when I hit it.
\n3. looking for a solution to rushing the return<\/a> of my opponent’s soft second serve. When I rush this shot, the ball ends up in the net or somewhere else it shouldn’t go.
\nSuccess Analysis<\/em>:
\n1. I had only one double fault at a time when the wind blew and the sun was directly overhead.
\n2. My reactions were very good, I flicked my racket out there and caught a good number of balls cleanly. I also ran down a lot of balls.
\n3. I realized that I just had to keep the ball in the court instead of going for a lot of winners because my opponent was making enough mistakes without my help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"