The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s NEW Amazon #1 New Tennis Book Release, Preparing for Pressure.
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Molding Their Inner Voice
“Parents beware: Your thoughts and words become your child’s beliefs, and their beliefs become their actions.”
Leading into competition, great parental dialog from a non-tennis playing parent includes de-stressing and confidence-building banter. High IQ tennis parents can review software solutions. These performance reminders are both mental and emotional. Mental triggers to discuss may include the athlete’s “A” game plans, contingency plans, their script of essential patterns, and opponent profiling.
Emotional triggers to discuss before matches may include solutions to performance anxieties, how to handle “creative line callers,” how to stop self-destructive performances, and how to close out a lead. Optimistic self-coaching in match play stems from molding the athlete’s inner voice. It is the counterforce needed to reverse the habitual pessimistic internal dialog that sabotages peak performance.
Taming the critic that lives inside the athlete’s parents is essential in preparing the athlete for pressure. This parental metamorphose doesn’t happen overnight.
