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Tennis Cognitive Ease

Posted on June 23, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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Frank Giampaolo

Cognitive Ease

As humans, the more we see, feel or repeat something, the more we view it as correct. By repeating anything over and over, it gets easier to accept. Being familiar feels good, even when it isn’t good for maximizing tennis potential at the quickest rate. A teaching myth dispelled decades ago was the saying, “Practice makes perfect.” Now we know that practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect. Practice makes permanent.

For example, Mr. Jeffry books the club’s ball machine weekly. He unknowingly solidifies his biomechanically flawed backhand over and over again. While Mr. Jeffry is getting a cardio workout, his practice is not correcting the defect. It is systematically ingraining the deficient backhand. To him, what he repeats feels like an improvement. As some readers know, repetition, even bad reps, starts to feel comfortable. It’s cognitive ease.

Solution: So, what stunts cognitive ease? It’s tackling anything unknown. This threat causes cognitive (mental) strain. Athletes looking to improve need this uncomfortable strain. Practicing what you’ve not already mastered is essential for growth. As I’ve mentioned, it is exposure to improving the weakness, not avoiding the weakness, that matters.

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Tennis Intelligence

Posted on June 21, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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Modern Intelligence

High-performance tennis success stems from the ability to pay attention to and respond to match dynamics. The same holds true for intelligence. Smart used to be one’s ability to memorize information. Nowadays, everyone has this covered. Athletes with cell phones have instant access to all the information they desire.

Modern intelligence now comes in the form of mental and emotional warfare. Does your athlete have the following mental tools developed in their tool belt?

Solution: Modern intelligence is:

  • Situational Awareness
  • Filtering Information
  • Troubleshooting Ability
  • Clarity of Goals
  • Preset Protocols to Handle Problems
  • Having Multiple Game Plans
  • Ability to Identify Inefficient Training Protocols

The good news is that modern intelligence is a choice and skill worth developing.

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Training Tennis Anticipation

Posted on June 16, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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Training Anticipation

Competitive tennis is a violent game of keep away, not catch. Plan on each match being a 2-hour dog fight and plan on multiple matches daily on tournament days.

Yes, your athlete’s legs and lungs need to be at their peak performance level but preparing your athlete includes more than cardio endurance, speed, and agility. Factor into the equation anticipatory speed. This hidden skill set holds many benefits. Anticipation assists your athlete with their ability to quickly and accurately predict the outcome of actions even before that action occurs.

Roger Federer rarely appears hurried when executing strokes. The high-speed film confirms that he reacts and moves earlier than most competitors. His ability to apply agility and stability with his body and head through the strike zone is legendary. His early detection is essential for delivering and receiving on the run. So, how do top players like Federer do it?

Solution: Professionals acquire knowledge of their opponent’s favorite sequence of shots in particular circumstances. Athletes at the higher level all have preferred options of plays and patterns. They use pre-match video analysis and scouting reports to predict performance. If your athlete is preparing to play in the high-performance arena, I suggest uncovering ways to develop this incredible, secret skill set of predicting possibilities.

When my daughter played her first 14’s finals in the Hard Courts in Georgia, six fathers of her competitors videotaped her performance as a future scouting report. Yes, acquiring knowledge about opponents starts early.

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Tennis-The Secret of Pattern Recognition

Posted on June 12, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Psychology of Tennis Parenting

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The Secret of Pattern Recognition

Bill thinks he’s pretty good. He has the club pro feed him balls weekly, polishing up his strokes. He grooves with the other 3.5-level guys in the Thursday night men’s clinic and hits the gym a few times a week. Bill is now at a charity tennis event. He stands to receive serve against a world-class ATP Professional. Even though he’s been playing for decades, to him, returning a 130mph serve seems impossible. Decision-making abilities at that speed appear to be superhuman.

At the professional level, the receiver has milliseconds to decide how they will return a 130 mph serve. The truth is that experienced professional athletes have  an extensive database stored in their subconscious minds of past opponents’ specific types of deliveries. They’ve played thousands of points, and their brain picks up patterns of successful and unsuccessful choices.

Solution: What makes tennis professionals exceptional is that they’ve seen thousands of 130 mph serves, thousands of points, and hundreds upon hundreds of matches. After so much experience in live-ball point play, they can chunk patterns. Chunking is the term for seeing individual patterns, which are the opponent’s most likely stroke options and pattern probabilities.

The secret expertise that only comes from live-ball point play is recognition. Recognition leads to chunking data into the subconscious and later applied through intuition. It is the same in almost every field; past experiences lead to quicker recognition of high-percentage replies and options. So, if you’re looking to help your athlete improve their mental game, replace grooving strokes with live-ball decision-making exercises and match play.

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Tennis Rudimentary Anticipation

Posted on June 8, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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Rudimentary Anticipation

Anticipatory speed is one of the mental components that we need to teach much earlier. Anticipation is linked to cause and effect. It is based on the understanding that each shot hit in a match has finite responses from the opponent across the net. Experience gives athletes feedback, and the athletes who pay attention mentally log those responses. The mentally tough players log their winning and losing trends into their memory, which they use to anticipate where the ball will likely be in the future.

The more matches your athlete plays, the more they can apply subconscious programming. Because there are only milliseconds between shots in tennis, our athletes need recognition by intuition. There isn’t sufficient time to analyze the situation and set the proper shot selections and motor programs into play. Athletes build memory logs of data and feedback. Once the experience of going through similar events takes place, anticipation is applied.

Solution: Parents and coaches would be wise to start to develop their young athlete’s anticipatory skills at an early age with this rudimentary three-step process. (Examples are assuming both athletes are right-handed)

  • Returning Serves: Be mindful of the opponent’s ball toss. When they toss out in front to the right, the serve is most likely to go to your athlete’s right, which is their forehand. If the opponent tosses back over their head, to their left, it’s most likely going to your athlete’s backhand.
  • Rallies: Pay close attention to the opponent’s strike zone. A waste-level ball is typically hit with an offensive drive. A low, sock-level strike zone is often a slice reply. A head-level strike zone stroke usually falls short.
  • Volleys: Be aware that a high, shoulder-level volley is typically hit with pace and cross-court. An opponent’s low volley is usually a drop volley.
  • Identify Offensive, Neutral and Defensive Situations: Opponents who commit fewer unforced errors play high-percentage tennis. They do this by understanding zonal tennis and attempting to hit the shot the moment demands.

Once these foundational anticipatory clues are established, ask your athlete to log match clues between point routines and changeover rituals.

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Run Toward the Fire

Posted on May 29, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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Run Toward the Fire

Tennis players that rise to the occasion in those pressure-packed finals have courage and confidence in themselves and their training. These athletes tackle problems head-on and cope with the hardships of the sport in an unstressed fashion. Developing mental and emotional strength is essential for long-term tennis goals. Share with your athlete this analogy.

Ask them to think of themselves as a firefighter. Firefighters walk into the fire versus running away from it. Regarding your athlete’s fears, I recommend asking them to do the same. It’s human nature to avoid scary situations, so you’ll have to show your athlete how to face fears. If your child avoids difficult moments like closing out a set versus a better player, they’ll crumble in those moments unless they are trained to regulate their emotional state. Does this require exposure to the stressor or avoidance?

Solution: Athletes who thrive under pressure replace their mechanical thoughts like how they are hitting their forehand, backhand, serve and volley with focusing on emotional essentials such as managing momentum, maintaining intensity, focusing on the here and now, and retaining their positive mindset.

While solid strokes get the athlete into the events, the additional software skills enable them to hold up another trophy.

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Self-Sabotage

Posted on May 24, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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Frank Giampaolo

“Run Towards Winning Versus Running Away from Losing.”

Self-Sabotage

Self-sabotage is an “inside job.” If your athlete is their own worst enemy in competition, the issue likely lies in the relationship between your athlete’s conscious and subconscious mind. The conscious mind is the analytical, neurotic part of each athlete’s personality. It wants to help so badly that it causes problems. The issues occur because the conscious mind is constantly editing and evaluating every aspect of the performance. It is rarely possible to get into the zone and stay in that flow state if the athlete is editing too much during competition. You see, great competitors apply effortless effort. Meaning they’re putting out effort without the worry.

The subconscious mind is easygoing. It trusts the fact that it has performed these routines thousands of times. It’s the automatic pilot relaxed performer. Gifted athletes choke and panic at the most inopportune times because their conscious mind is overthinking and worrying about the possibility of future failure. This catastrophic way of thinking becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Stressing out about the possibility of future failure causes dopamine and adrenaline to flood the body systems as fear and muscle tension take center stage. Too many of these released hormones hijack an athlete’s brain.

Solution: Remind your athlete that it’s a privilege to be able to play tennis. Worrying about the outcome brings unwanted visitors through the conscious judgmental mind. Ask your athlete to observe their performance and make adjustments without judging. Before competition, preset solutions to possible future problems. Accepting an excellent performance versus a perfect performance is a great start to distressing an athlete. Great performances are born in inner silence.

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The Fault Finder

Posted on May 20, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The Fault Finder

Sadly, most parents think they are helping after losses as they discuss the athlete’s laundry list of faults. Feeding the monster, or as we call it, the Inner Critic, is the last thing you want to do.

Your job as the parent is to foster the belief in their ability over being the fault finder. As you intuitively know, an external and internal battle rages in competition. Your youngster is not just battling the opponent and trying desperately to please you but also fighting a conflict within their head. If you are counting folks, that’s three wars raging simultaneously inside their underdeveloped brain.

Defeating the inner critic is the conflict inside the conflict. I hear a common statement from parents every weekend: “The opponent didn’t beat them … my kid beat themselves!” This statement implies their inner critic got the best of them once again.

How do we, parents and coaches, convince athletes that they will perform better if they tone down the attack from their own judgmental minds?

Solution: On match days, please remember it’s your job as the parent to avoid adding outcome-oriented, contaminating thoughts. (Your kid already knows you want them to win). Stick to performance-based dialogue with a relaxed demeanor and a chill tone of voice. Solutions to defeating their inner critic require calming, confidence-building dialogue that will help rid their mind of the typical outcome of “What If” worries.

This inner stability happens before your athlete is ready for the higher levels of the sport. Defeating the athlete’s inner critic requires the fault finder to stay silent and the loving parent to appear.

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Red Flags

Posted on May 15, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Psychology of Tennis Parenting

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Red Flags

A red flag is a signal that goes off when something’s not quite right. A commonality in sports is when the students’ words often don’t match their actions. Their words say, “I want to be a professional athlete,” and their actions say, “I don’t want to actually work for it.”

If your athlete brings internal drama and is unpleasant and frightening to be around on match days, the family is in for a world of uncommon hurt.

Solution: Here are a dozen red flags we do not see in the top competitors. Be honest as you read the list of common stumbling blocks. Do any sound too familiar?

  1. Inconsistency in effort
  2. Entitlement issues
  3. Inappropriate anger issues
  4. Lazy choices/poor decisions
  5. Avoids solo training
  6. Negative attitude
  7. Faulty nutrition habits
  8. Poor sleep habits
  9. Substandard time management
  10. Lack of gratitude
  11. Second-rate preparation
  12. Chooses mediocrity


An age-old saying provides insight: “There are contenders and pretenders.” Which do you have?

If you have a pretender, it may be in everyone’s best interest to put an end to the weekend drama’s and enjoy a normal life with a normal child.

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Performance Anxiety

Posted on May 10, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Psychology of Tennis Parenting

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Performance Anxiety

Performance anxiety affects every competitive athlete at one time or another. Without proper understanding, it crushes enjoyment, causes devastating losses, and destroys self-confidence. Your athlete’s anxiety symptoms may include a racing heart rate, rapid but shallow breathing, dry mouth, trembling hands, nausea, and blurred vision.

Reduce your athlete’s anxiety by helping them practice in the manner they’re expected to perform. Prepare them properly for long tournament days of pressure by reminding them to focus on what could go right.  As your athlete confronts their fears and learns ways to handle the below common stressors, they’ll develop resistance. Resiliency comes from facing fears.  As I’ve mentioned, they need exposure, not avoidance.

Solution: Discuss how managing common performance anxieties pays off. These common performance anxieties include:

  • Fear
  • Nervousness
  • Choking
  • Panicking
  • Tanking
  • Overcoming Lapses and Concentration
  • Self-Doubt
  • Self-Condemnation.


Start by asking your athlete to describe their description of these topics. Then ask them to Google any topic that relates to them. Next, ask them to YouTube those topics to better understand how common they are in sports and life. Lastly, ask them to write a brief paragraph describing the issue and their very own plan to conquer the anxiety.

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