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The Pain of Changing

Posted on April 12, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The Psychology of Tennis Parenting

The Pain of Changing

Improving stems from changing; to some junior athletes, change is more painful than losing. That’s correct. The pain of making needed changes is more agonizing than losing tennis matches. Use the dieting industry as an example. We know that exercise and eating healthy are the answer, but that agony is more painful than not fitting into our skinny jeans. So, we don’t change.

For some, change only happens when the athlete is tired of not getting the results, they are capable of reaching. When that pain is greater than the pain of hard work, they’ll choose the hard work because it’s less painful. If improving is of the utmost importance, I suggest a quarterly reboot. Here’s how:

Solution: To maximize potential, routinely take your athlete out of the tournament cycle for a couple of weeks every quarter. This scheduled time off will kick start the freedom change demands for improvement. After all, if they don’t continually improve, their results will disappear.

Opponents around the globe are training with sports science efficiency. If your athlete wants better results, they must become better athletes. This desire takes a parent who can organize the athlete’s enhancement schedule and an athlete mature enough to focus on making the changes required. You first have to develop a better competitive athlete to achieve those better results.

Changing Inner Belief

Posted on April 10, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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Changing Inner Belief

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Teach your athlete that we all have empowering and destructive beliefs. Remind them that the power of positive inner belief will become thoughts that guide their new actions.

It’s important to note: Athletes can’t outplay their belief system, so if they think they can or can’t, they’re usually right.

One of the reasons that it’s challenging to change emotional habits is that the athlete is usually loyal to them only because they’ve believed in them for so long. Changing their perspective will take commitment from the athlete, parent, and coach. If your athlete is willing to improve their inner belief at crunch time, these ten tips are for you.

Solutions: Parents, please ask your athlete to utilize the following tips:

  1. Choose inner dialog and positive self-talk that boosts confidence versus the standard negative monologue that derails confidence.
  2. Please list of all your unique strengths, then one by one, appreciate them.
  3. Employ SMART goals which are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. Reminder: Winning every time isn’t a smart goal.
  4. Develop a skill each day. Inner belief comes from growth.
  5. Seek new inspiring mentors as trusted advisors.
  6. Nourish your inner belief by exchanging pointless social media with informative YouTube posts regarding confidence and belief.
  7. The human mind magnifies the bad. So, review the matches you were clutch under pressure versus those you gifted away.
  8. Focus on what could go right versus what could go wrong.
  9. Remember: Where your focus goes, energy flows.”
  10. If you’re going to have an attitude, make it gratitude.

Changing inner belief begins with these ten simple reminders.

Comfort Is Where Dreams Go to Die

Posted on April 7, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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Comfort Is Where Dreams Go to Die

Let’s use an archer’s bullseye target as an analogy to illustrate the growth cycle of an athlete. The target rings have several colors. The black outer ring represents your child’s comfort zone. The inner blue rings represent the fear zone. The red-colored ring represents your athlete’s mastery zone. The inner circle or bullseye is yellow, representing the management zone. Top athletes have to manage the tools they’ve mastered. Common issues occur when the athlete would rather remain moderately uncomfortable yet safe instead of dealing with the uncertainties that would make a real change in their life. I recommend asking your athlete to repeat this saying:

“If I Keep on Doing What I’ve Always Done…I’m Gonna Keep Getting What I Always Got”

Solution: Improving your athlete’s performance starts by understanding the growth cycle. Athletes must be ready and willing to leave their Comfort Zone and step into their Fear Zone. Only by passing through the Fear Zone can Mastery be attained. After skills are mastered, managing those skills takes place. The pathway:

“Comfort Zone … Fear Zone …Mastery Zone …Management Zone”

My mentor, the late Vic Braden, said this a thousand times: “Once the pain of losing to another inferior opponent overrides the pain of change, the prognosis is good for quick improvement.” If change is still more painful, growth is stalled.

Avoidance versus Exposure

Posted on April 4, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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Avoidance versus Exposure

Although avoidance can lead to temporary relief from anxiety, the avoidance approach typically creates deeper fear in the future. By putting off solutions, athletes unknowingly multiply their anxiety about the topic. Exposure strategies are more proactive. They lead to a way out of the drama while minimizing stress in the future. What helps an athlete improve? Avoidance or exposure? In the world of performance anxieties, the answer is more exposure. But what do most athletes choose? Avoidance.

Sometimes the most profound tip is the simplest. New, correct pathways often change athletic careers. The old saying is, “What you resist persists.” Teaching your youngster that avoidance can increase anxiety isn’t an easy sell, which is why most teaching professionals avoid it. Keeping lessons light decreases the drama of facing real issues, so most tennis pros avoid changing anything serious. If your athlete is hesitant to face their fears, these few tips should help.

Solution: Deciding on a plan and then putting it into action begins with sitting down and talking with your athlete. Start the conversation by acknowledging that you feel anxious about a particular topic and then ask them about their true feelings towards the issue. Let them know you want to support them and enjoy your time together through their tennis journey.

Remind them that it’s no accident that “Unshakeable” athletes are the way they are. It’s not by CHANCE …but by CHOICE. Next, nudge them in the direction that the most crucial component to control in the world of competition isn’t the drama; it’s their reaction to the drama. Then bring to light the reoccurring drama in your athlete’s matches and devise those customized solutions.

Life Skills Through Tennis

Posted on March 30, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The truth is, most often, sports don’t teach life skills; they expose them. Competition reveals underdeveloped life skills; the athlete has to be taught how to improve that individual skill set.

If you’re paying a technical coach to fix stroke mechanics, please don’t assume they’re teaching your kids life skills. The common misconception is that your child’s coaches are teaching those critical abilities. Most often, parents assume that the coaches are educating life skills, and the coaches assume that the parents are teaching them. Guess what? No one is.

Solution: Psychosocial competence or life skills are abilities and behaviors that enable athletes to deal with the demands and challenges of competition on and off the tennis court. Be mindful of who’s developing the character traits of your child daily. The type of individual your child becomes is dictated by who is nurturing them.

Sabotaging Athletic Performance

Posted on March 26, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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When Advice Creates Drama

“I always tell my kid the same thing, and they don’t listen to me!”

The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM) states that there is a neurobiology of attachment between parents and children. As you intuitively know, the learning environment becomes more challenging when the athlete can’t separate the role of a loving parent and a demanding coach.

The athlete’s perceived lack of a consistent, caring parental relationship often instigates and prolongs dramatic coaching exchanges. The parent-coach dual role can make it more difficult for the athlete to regulate emotions, develop confidence, or build a trusting athlete-coach bond.

Solution:

If your athlete is resisting your parental coaching role, I suggest letting go of the “coaching gig.” Now, this doesn’t mean that you should completely detach. It means adjusting your parental coaching role to keep the love of the sport and the love between you and your athlete alive. So, if you believe your role as your athlete’s primary coach is essential, hire a primary coach to channel your strategies. Now you have a team working together; your athlete will feel free to express their needs and wants without fearing losing their parent’s love and respect.

Here are a few tips:

  • Keep Things Fun
  • Ask and Listen
  • Promote Long Term Goals
  • Emulate Leaders
  • Respect their Personality Profile
  • Guide them to Better Choices
  • Avoid Lecturing
  • Apply Modeling
  • Build Relationships with the Coaches
  • Provide Love Regardless of Results

Although coaching your child may be enjoyable and more economical, being your child’s coach may stunt their growth if they challenge your coaching role. It is common for parental coaches to eventually retire from their coaching gig and recommit to being their child’s full-time essential parents.

Psychosomatic Dramas

Posted on March 22, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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Psychosomatic Dramas

Pre-match problems that are invented are called psychosomatic dramas. This condition involves feelings of physical symptoms, usually lacking a clear medical explanation. Athletes with these symptoms may have excessive thoughts, feelings, or concerns about competition, affecting their ability to perform well.

Some athletes are prone to worry. A junior competitor who seems to have excess fear creates psychosomatic problems. By inventing problems, they temporarily get to avoid actual vulnerability. Most athletes who deny inventing their pre-match drama share a common way of thinking: “If I give 100% effort and fail, it’s all on me… it’s my fault. But if I say that I’m injured or sick and then happen to lose, I’m giving myself a built-in excuse. This way, losing isn’t so painful.”

The preventive medicine approach is needed to reduce competitive stress. These tips can assist your athlete in managing their mental health and improving their sanity come game day. I recommend experimenting with coping strategies.

Solution: The preventive medicine approach includes the following:

  • Accept your feelings but don’t chase them.
  • Prioritize controlling what’s controllable
  • Practice relaxation. Deep breathing/meditation
  • Going for a run naturally produces stress-relieving hormones
  • Ask them to Google: Fear, then discuss it.
  • Ask them to Google: Psychosomatic issues, then discuss them.

Junior competitors sometimes hold perfectionism traits. These traits lead to fear of failure because they worry it might define them. In the psychological world, the term is Atelophobia, an actual fear of flaws. Athletes with Atelophobia may develop a fear of competition. Please remind your athlete that in 2017 Novak Djokovic won 53% of his points, Roger Federer won 54.5%, and Rafael Nadal won 55% of his points played. They chase excellence, not perfection.

Tennis Thriving Versus Suffering

Posted on March 20, 2023 by in The Psychology of Tennis Parenting

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THE SUFFERING

“Don’t be upset by the results you didn’t get with the work you didn’t do.”

Izzy is a tall, quintessential California girl. When she walks into a club, heads turn, looking like the real deal. At age 16, she appears to be a WTA superstar in the making. Her father is sure that she’ll be on tour soon. Her coaches shake their heads because she looks like she could be world-class, but they know, at this rate, she won’t.

Unfortunately, with her current mindset, she’s spiraling downward. You see, she wants the rankings without the hard work. The rewards and not the struggle. The prestige, not the process. Izzy’s in love with the fan fair, not the fight. To Izzy, suffering is felt as a personal defeat. Having to work hard is something naturally gifted athletes don’t have to do. Sadly, triumph doesn’t work that way.

Solution: Izzy will have a shot at greatness if she buys into hard work and discipline. A less physically gifted athlete with a better work ethic will outperform a more physically talented athlete with a weaker work ethic. For all athletes, including the physically gifted, properly handling the pain of training determines success. Who you are is defined by how hard you are willing to work.

The Argumentative Athlete Tennis

Posted on March 16, 2023 by in The Psychology of Tennis Parenting

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The Argumentative Athlete

For most teens, argumentativeness is more a reflex than an angry choice. Typically, high-performance athletes believe their knowledge of their sport exceeds their parent’s knowledge. Hence, giving them a perceived advantage over their parents. Turning damaging arguments into healthy disagreements is an emotional strategy. The lesson learned is that everyone can get their concerns heard and considered. Parents can find these arguments puzzling. You’ll help athletes regulate their emotions and solve problems by teaching them how to respond better.

Solution: Nurture the ability to postpone and censor their responses to advice. This key self-awareness trait will serve your athletes well on and off the tennis courts. Here are some tricks to get them started:

  • Digest the substance of the request.
  • Recognize when emotions are running the show.
  • Take a break.
  • Avoid criticizing before responding.
  • Set the ego aside and choose your battles.
  • Formulate evidence before stating your case.
  • Offer solutions versus pointing out flaws.
  • Disallow the blame game.
  • Confront the subverting of the conversation.

 

Remember, even though your athlete’s tennis skills are mature, their emotional regulating skills are likely still under development.

Tennis Mind Set Matters 2

Posted on March 13, 2023 by in The Psychology of Tennis Parenting

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Decisions Not Situations

Mark is a very athletic junior from Florida. He has a wicked serve and a pre-stretch, compact forehand reminiscent of Agassi, but he performed poorly in matches. Through video analysis, I determined it was clear that Mark’s match decisions were the cause of his match failures. Here’s what I found charting his match.

Mark’s mechanics were reasonably solid, but his reckless shot selection caused the lion’s share of his unforced errors. Mark won 68% of the points that he played inside the court. Unfortunately, he played most of the match from 10 feet behind the baseline. From the backcourt, Mark won 36% of those points. His chosen court position wasn’t exposing his strengths.

In the first set, Mark allowed fear to control his mind during mega points, abandoning his strengths and pushing to be careful. He choked after building a comfortable lead due to his lapses in concentration. After dropping the lead in set one and losing the set, Mark started set two in a destructive mindset, racing through points. His self-doubt and negative self-talk were on full display. While he occasionally played brilliant pro-level tennis, his lack of mental and emotional training was running rapid.

Mark’s hardware skills were good, but his software skills needed development. His decision-making skills applied between-point and during changeover routines were non-existent. Every choice an athlete makes will either push him toward their goals or pull them away from them. These choices are part of the athlete’s software components.

Solution: The best way for Mark to improve his results is to shift his focus to new software development. Strategically Mark would be wise to use his strengths more often, especially on big points. Mark hit approximately 50% forehands and 50% backhands. A 75%/25% ratio would be beneficial. Also, from the tactical side, Mark should be attempting 70% of his first serves with his huge kick serve instead of the flat bomb that rarely hits its mark. Emotionally, between points, Mark needs to keep unwanted, contaminating thoughts out of his mind by keeping his mind filled with his performance patterns of play. Mark’s outcome wants trumped his performance needs, as seen in his lack of routines and rituals.

For Mark, I recommended that he fill his mind with solutions rather than a laundry list of problems. Being solution-oriented is the mindset that matters in competition.