The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible
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BETWEEN POINT RITUALS AND CHANGE-OVER RITUALS
Most intermediates think, “What’s the big deal with these between point rituals? The balls not even in play!” Unfortunately, this is a result of not properly educating our youngsters about the importance of rituals- early and often. Athletes that neglect to implement rituals are missing an important opportunity to dissect the opponent, relax and recover, and organize future patterns. Their mind is too caught up with contaminating thoughts regarding the ramifications of the future outcome, whose winning on court #6, or any of their invented performance anxieties that have been keeping them from getting the results they deserve.
It’s estimated that during a match, the athletes are actually playing in-the-point approximately 20-30 percent of the time that they are on the court. Seventy-eighty percent of the time they’re in between points. That’s a staggering amount of time. Wouldn’t it be wise if they learned how to put that time to good use?
In the 25 seconds allotted in between points, it’s advisable to create a customized 3-part routine that the athlete is comfortable performing each and every point. There are two forms of these rituals that are performed simultaneously:
1) Internal Rituals: I refer to internal rituals as the mental/emotional doorways a player must pass through. I have categorized them into 3 phases: Getting over the last point, planning the next point’s pattern and applying a relaxation ritual.
2) External Rituals: These rituals are the routines outsiders see. They commonly consist of taking the racquet out of the dominant hand to relax it, time management routines such as taking extra time to prepare, toweling off, or looking at their strings to relax the eyes. Once an athlete buys into, understands and develops these rituals they’re on their way to a higher level.
Parents, along with your child’s coach, schedule time for practice sets with the mandatory between point and change over rituals firmly in place.
The second most important “down time” in match play is during the 90 seconds allotted for changeovers. While this is a physical rest-break, it is not a total mental/emotional detachment from the task at hand.
During changeovers, there are, once again external rituals like toweling off and hydrating. It is during this phase of the of the match cycle that important internal routines should be executed. I recommend beginning by briefly thinking only about the previous two games. Assess what went right-what went wrong in the previous serving game as well as the return of serve game. Make a strategic plan to repeat what’s working and to re-vamp what isn’t. After the athlete performs their external routines, they go internally once again and review.
Experienced competitors visualize both their upcoming service game as well as their upcoming return of serve game. They choose to plan on running the same past successful patterns and avoid past failures. Applying this change over rituals will keep your athletes attention in the present-task oriented, peak performance state of mind.
Remember the boxing analogy, “Stop the bleeding”- Shut down their winning patterns and “Cause more bleeding”- Keep pounding away at their weaknesses.
