The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.
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Personality Based Training
“Personality profiling assists coaches, athletes, and parents in understanding how individuals gather information and make decisions. It’s how we are wired. It’s what makes us tick.”
Personality Based Training (PBT) is a training method that focuses the attention on the athlete’s unique brain design as opposed to the educator. When applying PBT, tennis pros and parents welcome and respect the athlete’s unique preferred styles of learning, behaving, and playing the game. The athletes feel empowered because their views and needs are recognized. And once understood, students are more motivated and inspired to learn and improve. An inspired student is more likely to take the leadership role in achieving their goals.
“Athletes would benefit from understanding the advantages and disadvantages of their unique brain design. It’s why they are naturally good at some things and uncomfortable with others.”
It’s important to note that while I’ve studied sports psychology for the past 30 years, I am a veteran, “In the Trenches” practical application tennis coach, not an “Academia” psychologist. But neither were Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Myers, authors of the famous Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI- A psychological questionnaire used to understand individual mental preferences.) published in the United States in 1943. Together Myers-Briggs noticed that individuals have different temperaments and unique ways of seeing the world.
While some scientists say the MBTI doesn’t stand up to scientific reliability, I can say with all honesty that it has helped me coach over 100 National Champions and several Pro tour athletes. More importantly, personality profiling benefits my athletes and their entourage of parents, coaches, and trainers at a much deeper level. A study conducted by Psychology Today, reports that approximately 80% of Fortune 500 companies use various personality tests to hire future employees, assess progress, and maximize efficiency and harmony through team-building events. The time has come to broaden the role of personality profiling into the athletic realm, as I have outlined in The Soft Science of Tennis.
