Tag Archives: mental tennis

How the Brain Affects Performance- Part 1

Posted on June 26, 2021 by in The Soft Science of Tennis

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.

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How the Brain Affects Performance

 

“Athletes who share similar cerebral inner workings also share mental and emotional strengths and weaknesses
in the competitive arena.”

 

This chapter will uncover how brain design affects tennis performances. The following brain design categories can be used as an informal observation as you first profile yourself. However, I suggest going online to the dozens of more in-depth questionnaires. Choose the accuracy and depth of the personality profiling questionnaire that is right for you. After a bit of research, you will recognize learning preferences that best describe your brain design.

Let’s review the basics from earlier in this book. There are 16 configurations of personality profiles found around the world. By completing your chosen questionnaire, you will discover your association – a 4-letter acronym nicknaming your personality profile. Once comfortable with the terminology, you will be able to categorize your athletes into their unique designs. Following is a list of commonalities I’ve uncovered on-court with my high-performance students.

 

Uncovering Your Students Typography

Introverts (I) versus Extroverts (E)

Introvert Students

  • Reserved, reflective thinkers.
  • Prefer concrete advice versus abstract thinking.
  • Need quiet, alone time to recharge their batteries.
  • Prefer to blend into groups versus stand out.
  • Energy conserving, private and quiet individuals.
  • Enjoy the one-on-one settings of private lessons over group lessons.
  • Prefer to retaliate in match play versus instigate action.

 

Extrovert Students

  • Enjoy the energy in group lessons with lots of people.
  • Enjoy the limelight, center court, and center stage.
  • Vocally and physically expressive on court.
  • Easily bored with mundane repetition.
  • Prefer to make things happen in matches versus retrieving.
  • View tournaments as social environments.
  • Work best in short attention span type drills.
  • Strangers are friends they haven’t met yet.
  • Benefit from stretches of silent tennis drilling.

 

“Coaching confusion takes place when an athlete’s body type (size, speed, agility, strength) opposes their hidden inner workings.

For example, the athlete’s body type appears to be designed to instigate action by capturing the net, but they religiously choose to stay back and retaliate instead. Typically brain design overrides body design.”

Coaching Brain Type Performance- Part 6

Posted on June 17, 2021 by in The Soft Science of Tennis

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.

Click Here to Order through Amazon

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ENFP: Extrovert Intuitive Feeler Perceiver

 

Challenge: ENFP’s are creative, outside-the-box thinkers. For them, stepping outside of their comfort zone is easy. Instead of rigidly adhering to mundane rules and regulations, ENFP’s simply work around them.

Solution: Avoid micromanaging this type. A trick to coaching the ENFP is to keep drills fresh. Rallying to 100 is not only non-practical but will bore them to tears. Instead, customize 2-3 ball patterns based on the athlete’s offense, neutral and defensive situations. Challenge them to stay focused until they complete the exercise 10 times. Add negative scoring (deduct one from their score for each error) to improve their focus ability and their emotional component along with their hardware.

 

Challenge: The downfall of being extroverted is that ENFP’s are often in high demand. They repeatedly have trouble saying no when friends, family, acquaintances or even strangers ask for their help. Their empathetic nature is their blessing and their curse. This occasionally overwhelms the EF type, and they need to shut down and IT (Introvert/Think) for a bit.

Solution: Coaches should be on the lookout for signs of extrovert burnout. Symptoms include a noticeable shift in character. Such as when their natural optimism is turning pessimistic or when this popular, friendly type begins to act less approachable, sharp-tongued, and uncaring. At this time, motivate them to take some time off to recharge their batteries.

 

Challenge: ENFP’s are social and energetic tennis players. Their EF traits make them infectious partners and tennis teammates. They are natural investigators and explorers who get quickly bored with routine. Multitasking, communication, and people skills are their strong suit, but their problem solving and focus skills on-court may need your attention.

Solution: ENFP’s are future-minded, big-picture athletes. On-court they can struggle with keeping their mind focused “In the game.” Disinterested with the past and even the present, these types have to be reminded to stay focused on this stroke, this tactical play, and only this point. Coaches would be wise to develop their match closure skills.

 

Challenge: ENFP’s prefer to rely on their intuition and flow subconsciously through competition. Coaches can spot the moment when these NFP types stop playing in the moment and begin to think about the outcome. Examples include: “Man, I’m up 4-1 versus the top seed. I can win this…then boom!” They just traded in their intuitive, performance state of mind for a sensate overwhelming outcome mindset. Or “I’m down 2-5, I’m gonna lose anyway so I might as well relax and go for my shots…Boom!” They win three straight games to 5-5 only to flip the switch back to over-thinking about the outcome and drop the set 5-7.

Solution: Designing their strategic script of customized top patterns and ingrain them through pattern repetition, dress rehearsal, and practice match play. Teaching an ENFP to close out points, games, sets, and matches while staying on script is the key to developing their competitive focus.

 

Coaching Brain Type Performance- Part 4

Posted on June 11, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.

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ESFP: Extrovert Sensate Feeler Perceiver

 

Challenge: ESFP’s are performers at heart. They’d often prefer to daydream about the big moment versus relentlessly preparing for it.

Solution: Accountability is vital. Assist them in customizing their detailed developmental blueprint within their weekly planners. They’re more likely to accept the rules if they view the rules as their rules instead of a parent or coach’s demands.

 

Challenge: ESFP athletes typically learn best by doing (kinesthetic) versus listening (Auditory). Sitting still and listening to a coach or parent’s theories for extended periods is a waste of time for this type.

Solution: Offer short 1- minute sound bites and snippets of pertinent information throughout their hitting sessions. The kiss of death for this cerebral design is the coach that talks at the student for 45- minutes of their 1- hour lesson.

 

Challenge: ESFP’s are optimistic, friendly athletes but can turn negative in a passive resistant manner when they begin to feel unstimulated, especially in group lessons.

Solution: Look for nonverbal clues such as their wandering eyes and mind. Detecting that you have lost their attention is the first step in regaining their attention. Add customized, personal challenges to these types to keep them zeroed into the task at hand.

 

Challenge: EF’s are often easy marks for opponent’s who apply gamesmanship. Their genetic need for peace and harmony can complicate the drama found as the opponent employs their “creative line calls.”

Solution: Preset step by step solutions to handling gamesmanship. Discuss why cheaters cheat and why it’s often a successful tactic at the beginner and intermediate levels but not as athletes mature and soft skill sets are developed- such as perseverance, resiliency, or conquering performance anxieties. Explain the neuroscience of channel capacity. (The human brain cannot solve two complicated tasks simultaneously). By pulling the ESFP into the drama “channel,” this type unknowingly aborts the all-important performance goals “channel.” The result is a significant drop in performance level.

Coaching Brain Type Performance- Part 3

Posted on June 7, 2021 by in The Soft Science of Tennis

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.

Click Here to Order through Amazon

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ISFP: Introvert Sensate Feeler Perceiver

 

Challenge: ISFP athletes tend to have their own agendas and schedules. They “beat to their own drum.” The structure and rules of others are often difficult for them to follow.

Solution: When too many demands and obligations fall upon them, these introverted individuals need alone time to recharge their batteries. Their SF function makes them want to do everything correctly to make others proud. Provide information and instruction at a rate that is comfortable for them to digest so that they can better assimilate. Excessive details tend to bog down ISFP’s.

 

Challenge: Pay particular attention to the amount of criticism offered to the ISFP. Lack of appreciation is a sure fire way for them to pull away from the sport.

Solution: Apply the five-compliments to one-criticism approach when working with this cerebral design. Use video analysis to point out their incredible strengths and improvements instead of only their weaknesses and failures. Instead of offering advice in the heat of the moment, offer to be available to chat when they’re ready to talk through their feelings.

 

Challenge: Under stress, this type can become excessively critical of themselves and others trying to assist them. These athletes tend to be harsh as they obsess over their mistakes and imagined problems.

 

Solution: Validate that you understand their feelings but reassure them that feelings are simply emotions and emotions are often speculations, not absolute facts. Have some fun as you remind them that their catastrophic thoughts are just thoughts and often not reality.

 

Challenge: Due to their FP design, these individuals are likely to mentally drift into future thoughts after a lead is established. These outcome thoughts include: “what’s my ranking going to be?”, “Who do I play next?”, “What are my friends going to say when I beat this top seed?”

Solution: Assist the ISFP’s in remaining on script, within their performance state of mind after they’ve built a lead. Drifting into outcome-oriented scenarios while still in the match is a receipt for disaster.

Coaching Brain Type Performance- Part 2

Posted on June 5, 2021 by in The Soft Science of Tennis

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.

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ISTP- Introvert Sensate Thinker Perceivers

 

Challenge: ISTP’s are bold, courageous competitors-fighting until the bitter end. Often young ISTP’s believe they have little use for boring fundamentals. “Open the can… serve’em up” is their battle cry.

Solution: Make fundamental stroke building into a competitive game, not a chore. Mundane, repetitive drills bore them to tears. Add negative scoring to each basic drill to keep the competitor interested. Rallying for hours on end is a surefire way to lose this great athlete to another sport.

 

Challenge: On the stress-free practice court, ISTP’s will digest detail. They’re not content with simple instructions on how to hit a ball; ISTP’s want to know where, when, and why.  But, in live-ball sparing scenarios, this type dials in their competitive focus and doesn’t want a ton of instruction.

Solution: In private tennis lessons, explain who, what, where, why, when. This information ties into their sensing typography. In live ball sessions, allow them time to process themselves. Instead of talking, shadow swing the stroke or pattern so they can visualize and perceive the proper sequence.

 

Challenge: ISTP’s aren’t initially comfortable with coaches or teammates with opposing brain designs. Due to their thinking design, they can be sensitive to their feelings yet cold and impersonal when it comes to the feelings of others. Accepting other’s points of view can be difficult.

Solution: Educate emotional intelligence along with logic. Remind ISTP’s that their cerebral design is merely one of the 16 different personality profile categories and each profile has varying preferred learning processes. Reinforce the fact that everyone is not wired like them and it is possible they aren’t always right.

 

Challenge: The ISTP’s distinctive patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving have made them favorites in the field of sports psychology type based assessments. While high-performance ISTP athletes prosper in the hardware department, they often languish in the development of their software.

Solution: Early in their development, put forth great effort into building their life skills, especially relationship skills. ISTP’s often struggle with finding the right words to nurture their alliances optimistically. Out-going people often aggravate strong ISTP’s. They may find an extroverted, feeler coach or teammate suffocating so they prefer to reject the much-needed affiliation.

Personality Based Training – Part 3

Posted on May 26, 2021 by in The Soft Science of Tennis

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.

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In my experience, personality profiling is a soft science, meaning other factors such as nurturing and environments skew the data. With that said, I believe that athletes have specific preferences in the way they experience the world and these choices affect their actions, values, and motivational needs on and off the tennis court.

Universal Truths

  • Gaining an understanding of this soft science takes time. Be patient as you learn to apply this newfound skill. I encourage you to apply personality profiling as a means to understand how students tick versus stereotyping or grouping athletes by mere age or general ability.

 

  • Coaches can’t change an athlete’s primary brain design, but they can nurture both the individual’s weaker, opposing profile and strengthen their dominant profile.

 

  • Interestingly, on rare occasions, a student’s on-court persona opposes their off-court persona.

 

  • Everyone exhibits both dominant and auxiliary traits. For example, introverts can be quite sociable for short stints of time.

 

  • There isn’t a right, wrong, superior, or inferior type, but rather preferred approaches to the game and life. Although there are only 16 unique brain design categories, everyone is unique. For example, there is a broad spectrum of each preference ranging from moderate to extreme.

 

  • All brain designs need to devote time and energy to nurturing their non-dominant functions.

 

 

  • It is not unlikely for athletes young and old to inaccurately self-profile their brain design to fit into a more popular, cool version of themselves.

 

  • Pay attention to other’s brain designs because this is why opposite types make you crazy and similar types make you comfortable.

 

  • An athlete will benefit significantly from understanding the advantages and disadvantages of their unique design.

 

  • Customized development through personality profiling increases self-esteem and breeds confidence, which is seen in the athlete’s peaceful performance.

 

  • Profiling your athlete’s personalities won’t provide you with the final answers, but it will assist in organizing their unique developmental pathways, which will maximize enjoyment, as well as help them to reach their potential at a quicker rate.

 

  • It’s our job as educators and parents to de-code each athlete, so we are better equipped to assist them in maximizing their potential.

 

  • Due to the combination of nature and nurture, exceptions shadow every rule in the soft science of personality profiling.

 

 

In chapters 8-11, challenges and dominant solutions are presented to help understand the specific cerebral designs. It is important to note that many of the given solutions may also be used with other cognitive types.

The following chapters uncover the valuable benefits that result from revealing the mental typographies of our athletes.

 

Benefits of Personality Profiling- Part 1

Posted on May 21, 2021 by in The Soft Science of Tennis

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.

Click Here to Order through Amazon

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Benefits of Personality Profiling

 

Caroline Sanchez was a top 50 ITF junior in her day. She played D-2 college ball in Florida and competed on the challenger circuit for three years earning her a world ranking of #676 on the WTA Tour. Caroline sounds like an experienced competitor, but is she the right fit for your player’s coaching needs?

Let’s take a more in-depth look at Caroline’s background. Caroline grew up on the slow red clay in Barcelona where her coaches demanded she train and play the “Spanish Way” – steady, retriever style. Caroline possesses solid groundstrokes, great lateral movement, and a 20 ball shot tolerance level.  She loves to camp 15 feet behind the baseline and extend points in a retriever fashion. Like her past coaches, she’s been nurtured to be an old-school drill sergeant style of coach and demands every student train and play in the style that she found to be most successful.

Coaches, is she a good fit for your program? Parents, is she a good fit for your child? The answer: No, not likely, unless all your athletes are wired with the same exact cognitive brain design, body type, and temperament which would be extremely rare. Coaches who only teach the system that they found to be successful regardless of the student’s needs are doing a disservice to the athlete. Tennis playing styles are an extension of the athlete’s brain design and body type. An athlete’s most successful style of play incorporates their inherent strengths versus their coach’s past strengths.

Devising an athlete’s developmental plan is the ideal time to incorporate their personality profile. Training and nurturing athletes to play the style that flows with their genetic predispositions and not against it will maximize their potential at a much faster rate.

 

As I travel around the globe, I notice that coaches and parents religiously focus on the development of the athlete’s hardware (strokes and athleticism) yet tend to neglect the critical development of their student’s software (mental and emotional). Personality profiling falls into the software or soft science of teaching tennis.

 

“Coaches and parents who understand the athlete’s personality in greater depth utilize a more comprehensive foundation from which to maximize performance.”

 

A simple analogy is a comparison between the four main tennis components (strokes, athleticism, mental and emotional) with a conventional four-legged table. A table with four-legs is not stable under stress without all four legs intact. The same holds true for your tennis athletes.

So, how does the understanding of the software development relate to you as parents, coaches, tennis directors or club managers? It develops a greater understanding of how others tick and that sets you and your players above the competition. Software assessment helps us to understand how individuals perform as tennis players. It assists coaches and parents in developing much more than strokes. It helps shape positive character traits, life skills, and a moral compass.

 

Sharpening Healthier Communication- Part 2

Posted on April 14, 2021 by in The Soft Science of Tennis

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.

Click Here to Order through Amazon

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Is the state of the art instruction about the instructor’s proficiency in performing drills, or is it about the instructor’s ability to connect with their student? Communicating above or below the digestion rate of the student is ineffective. While tennis knowledge and drilling efficiency are important, I believe a master teacher connects to the student and monitors the rate at which each student digests information. As we saw with Wendy and her father, the message received within the dialog is much more than the facts.

As I researched how to sharpen my communication skills, I realized that the way in which information is presented influences the outcome. I learned to focus on communicating honestly and with authenticity, but also to consider stressing or de-stressing the learning environment based on the energy in the room.

Successfully communicating the facts is highly dependent on WHAT message is being delivered and HOW the message is being delivered. The following list offers eight techniques I recommend applying to communicate effectively:

  • Intertwine sports science facts with personal, emotional storytelling.
  • Impart humor within a conversational tone to bond the relationship.
  • Avoid a distancing style with an elitist attitude and academic language.
  • Use inclusive pronouns like “We all need to…”
  • Apply cadences, rhythms, and dramatic pauses to accentuate meaning.
  • Vary their volume from a scream to a whisper to deepen the message.
  • Pull listeners in by modifying the pace of delivery from excited and fast to dramatic and slow.
  • Match and mirror the listener to make them more comfortable.

Great communicators presenting in groups or one-on-one have developed their presentation power. Armed with a full toolbox of delivery methods, they trade in intimidating, interrogating, and dictating with sharing everyday experiences to engage the audience which is the heart of genuinely connecting.

Sharpening Healthier Communication- Part 1

Posted on April 10, 2021 by in The Soft Science of Tennis

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.

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Sharpening Healthier Communication

 

It’s dinner time at the Klein’s house. Mr. Klein and his daughter Wendy spent the day at a USTA level 3 girls 16’s event. Wendy was seeded #4 in the tournament. Her 9:00 am match went terribly wrong. Wendy’s serve percentages were catastrophically low and as a result, she suffered an embarrassing first-round loss.

Later that night at the dinner table the conversation quickly escalated from small talk to another tennis-related screaming match. As they passed the potatoes, another family dinner was ruined.  Mr. Klein wished he had an instruction manual for these heated exchanges.

 

Psychologists researching communication offer a concept called the Four-Sides Model. The theory states that Mr. Klein’s initial comment “Honey, your serve was really off today.” exposed four possible ways Wendy could accept the data:

  • As an impersonal factual stat.
  • Insights about Mr. Klein’s feelings.
  • As a personal underlining insult towards Wendy.
  • As an appeal for improvement.

The message Mr. Klein was intentionally trying to convey isn’t necessarily what was perceived by Wendy. Mr. Klein’s statement “Honey, your serve was really off today.” led to a whirlwind of problems between him and his daughter. This, in turn, spiraled into the silent treatment from his wife because once again their family harmony was disrupted.

For Mr. Klein, the factual data and appeal for improvement were the only reason for the statement. Wendy’s interpretation of his statement was polar opposite. Wendy felt awful because she believed that she had let her parents and coaches down. She also concluded that her father’s statement about her serve implied that she was not working hard enough and that she was a failure.

 

“Communication is less about what is being said and more about how the words are decoded by the listener.”

 

As coaches and parents communicate with their athlete, the athlete’s personality profile acts as a filter as they decode the information. Some athletes are wired to accept and enjoy the analysis of cold hard facts while others are wired to overlook the facts and instead zone in to the emotional climate of the conversations. Each athlete connects the dots and paints the picture they choose to hear. An individual’s personality profile determines how one communicates. (We will interpret personality profiles in greater detail in coming chapters.)

 

 

 

 

Communication Skills and Tennis Success- Part 1

Posted on April 5, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Soft Science of Tennis

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.

Click Here to Order through Amazon

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Creating an Exceptional Culture

 

Mr. Martinez is the tennis operations manager at Big Sky Country Club. A short time ago, he hired Richard as their new tennis director. Richard played college ball, graduated with a highly regarded tennis management degree and his resume checked all the boxes. On the technical side, Richard was microscopically detailed. He could spot a student’s opposing force vectors on their serve six courts away. He was adept at video analysis, organizing compass draws, teaching stroke fundamentals, and eager to oversee the club’s racket stringing service. On paper, Richard was a good fit for a Country Club.

Sadly, within weeks, Richard turned out to be a nightmare. While he had tennis business knowledge, he possessed no interpersonal communication skills. Richard’s interactions with members and co-workers were so poor; it led to his termination just one month into the job. Let’s look into why Richard was let go so soon from Big Sky Country Club.

Richard had a pompous demeanor toward everyone all the time. When adult members would ask for his assistance, he would respond with a loud disrespectful sigh.  When Mrs. Jones asked him to fill in with the ladies league for 15-20 minutes until Helen arrived, Richard shook his head in disgust and said, “My hitting rate is the same as my lesson rate. For me to go on court, it’s $120.00 an hour!” Richard even drew complaints from the parents of the junior program because he would scold the children if they smiled and laughed in their beginner’s clinic. Richard was a taskmaster, and to him, clinics were to work and not to play.

The club’s co-workers were also scared of Richard. His pessimistic problem-oriented view of his job made him uncomfortable to be around. The club’s assistant pros reported that he would consistently complain about the facility and the management staff directly to the members. His negative verbal and nonverbal communication reaped havoc throughout the club.

Richard was also incompetent at the most essential interpersonal communication skill:  listening.  For example, one Friday afternoon, Mr. Martinez, the club manager, handed two rackets to Richard and told him that he had assured junior club member, Joey, that both his rackets would be strung by Saturday morning at 8:00 am. He could pick them up on his way out-of-town to the tournament.  Although Richard was looking at Mr. Martinez as he took Joey’s rackets from him, Richard wasn’t listening. His focus was on a tennis match on the pro-shop television.

So Joey and his dad stopped in Saturday morning and his rackets sat unstrung in the pro-shop. The members were obviously upset and Mr. Martinez was furious with Richard.  Mr. Martinez addressed Richard about why they were not strung, and he snapped: “You didn’t tell me to string them yesterday!”

After multiple “red flags,” Mr. Martinez had no choice but to put Richard on probation. Richards’s lack of interpersonal communication skills continued to disrupt the club’s optimistic culture. Richard didn’t possess the ability to problem solve, adapt, correct issues or even care to attempt to fit into the club’s corporate guidelines. The final straw was when a member came into the pro-shop and complained that his children are no longer enjoying the clinics and they are considering going elsewhere for lessons. Richard took it personally, called the member an idiot, and instigated a shouting match, “If you want Mikey and Lauren to learn the correct strokes, let me do my job! If you want them to be hackers…then go! I don’t care!”

Richard’s lack of communication skills instigated his firing. He couldn’t apply appropriate decision making, empathy, analyze options or come up with win-win solutions. It was his way or the highway- period. Insulting the members prompted Richard’s demise. The members quit the club and Richard lost his job.

 

Interpersonal Communication

 

If technical knowledge is the science of teaching, interpersonal communication is the art of teaching. Interpersonal communication characterizes the interaction that takes place between two or more people. In the coaching world, gaining an understanding of sports biomechanics is important, but mastering communication is essential. Is your athlete being nurtured interpersonal skills? The following is a laundry list of interpersonal communication skills that facilitate success in tennis and in life.

Accountable, Accuracy, Adaptability, Adept, Alertness, Ambition, Amiability, Analytical, Articulate, Assertive, Attentiveness, Business-like, Capable, Caring, Competence, Confidence, Conscientiousness, Considerate, Consistency, Cooperation, Creative, Critical Thinking, Dedication, Dependability, Detail Oriented, Determination, Diplomatic, Efficiency, Empathy, Encouraging, Energy, Enterprising, Ethical, Experienced, Flexibility, Hardworking, Helpfulness, Honesty, Imaginative, Independent, Industriousness, Influential, Innovation, Insightful, Intuitive, Leadership, Logical Thinking, Loyal, Management, Motivation, Nonverbal Communication, Optimism, Organizational, Passion, Patience, Perceptive, Positive, Practical, Problem Solving, Productive, Professional, Progressive, Punctual, Rational, Realistic, Reflective, Reliable, Resourceful, Respectful, Responsible, Sense Of Humor, Sincere, Sociable, Teachable, Teaching, Teamwork, Technical Literacy, Tolerance, Trustworthy, Understanding, Verbal Communication, Versatility, Visionary, Work Ethic…Whew!

 

Without a doubt, any parent or coach would love to have their athletes possess these personal skills.

Excellence begins with a positive culture both at home and at the club. In our sport, invested athletes don’t search out places like “Allen’s Average Tennis Academy” or “Mike’s Mundane Monday Night Clinic.” On a conscious level, parents and athletes seek excellent technical knowledge. On the subconscious level, they pursue meaningful interpersonal relationships.

The culture I recommend is solution-oriented versus problem-oriented. Athletes are much more likely to flourish in a solution-orientated environment. Coaches that provide a solution-based program are teaching lasting life skills.