Mental chatter fills most people’s heads all day long. On the tennis court I have heard these lovely comments involuntarily rolling around in my head: “I am a hopeless human being, I can’t even hit a forehand over the net”, “this guy will never play with me again I’m so bad”, “why do I make the same f***ing mistake over and over again?”, “I hope he makes a double fault”….<\/p>\n
There are many things that drive mental chatter, here are just two of them:<\/p>\n
We think we are better players than we are and so we are incensed when the results don’t show it. Playing a sport is quantifiable: if I really am a better player than my opponent, I would have won.<\/p>\n
Self image is a fragile thing. It is bolstered by winning and battered by losing.<\/p>\n
The truth is that it doesn’t matter what I think. If I’m so bad that my opponent will never play with me again, there’s not a lot I can do about it except play as well as I can. It’s a little late to think that I can morph into even a 47 year old version of Martina Navratilova<\/a> at this point. It won’t help my game if I think I am better than I am and it will likely hurt it if think I am the worst player on the planet.<\/p>\n The thing that will help me is to concentrate on each point and use the skills I have at the moment. Run the mental program<\/a> for each point, write down the things I need to improve after the match and then come up with a plan to make those improvements. It’s not as exciting as an alien spirit swooping down and giving me superpowers, but there you have it.<\/p>\n Practice and Competition Report<\/em>: played T. today, he is so much better than I am that he gives me 3 games each set, 4-6, 3-6, 6-4. Mental chatter fills most people’s heads all day long. On the tennis court I have heard these lovely comments involuntarily rolling around in my head: “I am a hopeless human being, I can’t even hit a forehand over the net”, “this guy will never play with me again I’m so bad”, “why do I make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mental-skills","category-tennis-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSolutions Analysis<\/em>:
\n1. Looking for a solution to the problem of rushing the shot when my opponent is at the net. What can I say, I get rattled.
\n2. Looking for a solution to returning deep, looping topspin shots. I need to develop a feel for when to come in and take them on the fly, when to short hop them and when to drop back and get under them.
\nSuccess Analysis<\/em>:
\n1. My serve<\/a> was consistent. I concentrated on serving<\/a> deep in the service box and it resulted in some service winners.
\n2. I figured out how to return those soft second serves by slowing down the 1-2-3 rhythm of the return of serve<\/a>.
\n3. I overcame my feeling of insecurity about playing a much better player, stayed with the mental program<\/a> for each shot and I beat him in the last set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"