The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s updated release: How to Attract a College Athletic Scholarship.
College standout Steve Johnson provides his view on college tennis. Special e-Book price is $1.99
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Eliminating Internal Judgment- Part 5
The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis. Click Here to Order through Amazon
Eliminating Internal Judgment
How to Strengthen Self Coaching Solution #5:
Monitoring Outer Dialog
The fifth method of nurturing a positive inner dialog is to ask the athlete to monitor their outer dialog under stressful conditions. An athlete’s outer dialog includes speech, body language, and physical behavior, which are natural bi-products of an athlete’s internal dialog.
Monitoring this process begins with the athlete recognizing their automatic system of behavior under the stressful conditions of competition. Although it is common to default to old comfortable habits under stress; negative habits not only perpetuate pessimistic thought patterns, they alert the opponent that self-destruction is in the works. Self-spotting outer dialog behavior will help the athlete to recondition their inner dialog chatter.
How to Strengthen Self Coaching Solution #6:
Resist Attention Seeking Negative Dialog
A behavior management strategy is to coach the athlete to resist attention seeking negative dialog and behavior. Athletes gain sympathy by projecting pessimistic behaviors. A typical example of this is an athlete’s excessively loud mini-tantrum in competition to gain sympathy from spectators, family, or coaches. In essence, the athlete is projecting, “I’m usually so much better than this…I must be having an unusually bad day!” Ironically, the tantrum is seen every day.
In my opinion, tactically ignoring the outbursts in hopes that they go away is not dialog management because an appropriate alternate behavior is needed. An athlete’s dialog projects their thoughts and beliefs. Their voices have been simply programmed into their subconscious. Since they determine the course of their life, reprogramming their negative inner chatter is a battle worth fighting.
“Optimistic self-coaching is a wonderful technique to create better human beings on and off the tennis court.”
Here’s an alternate view of tennis parenting and tennis teaching. The conventional method has been to feel balls, criticize what’s broken, and then focus on the athlete’s problem areas. This judgment based approach isn’t always in the student’s best interest. Why? Because it subliminally plants the toxic seeds of negative inner dialog and in competition, this learned behavior of focusing on what’s wrong opposes the natural flow state found in nonjudgmental, effortless, peak performance. Seeking “what is broken” isn’t part of performing in the zone or “treeing” as today’s juniors describe playing at one’s optimal level.
MATCH DAY VIDEO ANALYSIS- PART 2
The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers! Click Here to Order
MATCHDAY VIDEO ANALYSIS
Pre-Match Routines:
- Equipment preparation
- De-stressing versus over stressing environment
- Managing the overflow of adrenaline
- Opponent profiling
- Proper nutrition and hydration
- Use of dynamic stretching
- Essential warm-up routines
- Quiet time visualization
Match Performance:
- Proper use of between point rituals and changeover rituals
- Strokes: efficiencies and deficiencies
- Patterns and plays: strengths and weaknesses
- Identifying the actual cause of the errors
- Opponent dissecting/match awareness
- Score management and real-time problem solving
- Emotional performance state
- Universal movement flaws (Footwork)
- Cognitive processing speed (Hesitation)
- Correctly spotting and playing positive and negative “Mega” points
- Length of peak performing
- Controlling the “energy-flow” of the match
Post-Match Rituals and Routines:
- Recovery
- Static stretching
- Nutrition and hydration
- Opponent scouting
- Match logs
As I conduct high-performance player assessments around the world it is amazing that even top ITF players and their coaches have never even heard of quantifying their performances in such detail.
As parents, it is up to you to organize video analysis and review sessions. As coaches, it is up to you to suggest video analysis and review sessions to be initiated. And it is up to you, the player, to be willing to “allow” video analysis and review sessions.
Elite Tennis Training
The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s updated release: How to Attract a College Athletic Scholarship.
College standout Steve Johnson provides his view on college tennis. Special e-Book price is $1.99
To Order Click Here
Positive Tennis
The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers! Click Here to Order
POSITIVE VERSUS NEGATIVE PSYCHOLOGY
“Guidance from a coach or parent with a negative mindset is extremely toxic to a child.”
Exposing and destroying pessimistic beliefs and attitudes is an integral part of my daily mission, both personally and professionally. It’s your job as the tennis parent to eliminate these poisons from your athlete’s world.
Sadly, it’s often a parent, sibling, friend, or coach that’s feeding the negative beliefs and pessimistic attitudes. It is in your best interest to remedy this issue or remove the negative source(s) from the child’s tennis entourage.
Parents, just as it is your duty to remove negative psychology, it is your responsibility to teach positive psychology. Teach belief and confidence, find their motivational buttons, develop their desire and hunger for mastering the game, and teach them to embrace the challenge. These positive life lessons are part of raising athletic royalty. If you teach the love of the game and the benefits of commitment, your athlete will progress seamlessly through the losses, technical difficulties, injuries, and bad luck that come with athletics.
Allow the tennis teachers to teach, the coaches to coach and the trainers to train because as you know now, the tennis parent’s job description is far too comprehensive to micro-manage each entourage’s role.
Mind-Sets: Fixed versus Growth
Similar to the two sides of psychology, there are also two mindsets. Coaches often see students with either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. While the athlete’s genetic predisposition is undoubtedly present, it’s most often the nurtured opinions of their parents, siblings, and coaches that set their outlook.
- A person with a debilitating fixed mindset truly believes that they cannot change. They are extremely rigid, view the world as black or white, and are uninterested in change. Their unwillingness to accept new challenges often results in remaining average at best.
- A person with a growth mindset believes that their opinions, outlooks, attitudes, and abilities can and will change throughout their lives. Growth mindset individuals are more willing and open to accept change in the name of progress/improvement.
“Raising athletic royalty is a direction, not a destination.
What you choose to teach your children now will live on for generations to come.”
I find that parents who encourage both positive psychology and a growth mindset are developing much more than a future athlete, they are developing future leaders.
Neglecting Smart Work
The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers! Click Here to Order
INTELLIGENT TRAINING BLUNDERS
Neglecting Smart Work
Great coaches have the ability to zero in on player’s weakness long before players or parents even know it exists. High IQ coaches are a bit like fortune-tellers who can read the future. We see mechanical –structural damage the days leading up to an event and we know which components will surely crack under the strains of stressful competition.
If your child has some major holes in their game, please don’t continually send them off to competition. The opponent doesn’t have to beat your child because they’ve come to the game broken. That’s a little like sending a battleship off to war with structural holes in its hull. That majestic ship’s going to sink all by itself.
Encouraging “One Set Wonders”
The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers! Click Here to Order
INTELLIGENT TRAINING BLUNDERS
Encouraging “One Set Wonders”
First of all, I congratulate any juniors that actually play full practice matches. Across the country, most juniors hit for 20 minutes, maybe finish a set and then leave. They become accustomed to being “one set wonders!” This is especially true in the intermediate levels of junior tennis.
Winning those tough three-set tournament matches require practicing whole matches. Rehearsing the art of closing out full matches versus a single set will improve their mental toughness. If time is of the essence, I recommend that players play 3-sets, starting at 2-2 instead of the typical one set routine. Handling the stress of closing out the set is a big advantage.
“There is a huge difference between mechanical confidence and competitive confidence.”
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