The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!
QUESTION: My son is in a slump. How can we help him through this stage?
Frank: The best way to achieve improved results is by shifting your son’s developmental plan. A new plan will help motivate a new mindset which will intern cultivate new beliefs, actions, and results. Below are ten focal points to address to ignite continued growth and maximum potential.
1) Focus on Improvement.
Ask your player and entourage to let go of winning and losing and focus their energy on improvement.
2) Accept that Rivalries Encourage Growth.
Understand that your child needs rivals. Begin with local, then regional, then national, and lead into international. Rivalries encourage growth.
3) Train Adrenaline Management.
On match day, managing the systematic building and calming of adrenaline is often the deciding factor that often pulls an athlete into the winner’s circle.
4) Choose a Supportive Like-Minded Entourage.
Top athletes have an entourage. The entourage provides a “team effect” to an individual sport. Their collaborative efforts help to inflate the athlete’s confidence and fight while supporting the athlete when they need to the most.
5) Role Play Against Various Styles of Opponents.
Parents, I’ve touched on this topic before, plan on paying slightly older better players to play sets weekly versus your child while role-playing. (For instance, “Here’s $25.00, please play 3-sets versus my son …and be the most annoying pusher possible. My son’s going to rehearse the patterns used to pull a crafty retriever out of their comfort zone. Thank you.”)
6) Play Practice Matches.
Remind your athlete as well as their entourage that success in competition requires protocols that simply aren’t found in simply hitting back and forth.
7) Reinforce Playing Smart.
Regarding competition, educate your athlete that having the presence of mind that missing the shot the moment demands is ok. It’s those reckless, uncalled for shot selections that will make them early-round losers.
8) Learn to Play Through Fear.
Elite competitors control their fears and ultimately their destiny. Intermediate athletes allow their fears to control their psychology and physiology as it steals any real chance of peak performance at crunch time.
9) Adopt a Warrior Mentality.
For some people, the competitive fire is innate, they flourish under stress. For others; they wilt under the very same environment. For these athletes, developing their fighting spirit is a learned behavior.
10) Use Competition as a Learning Tool.
Competition is the best facilitator for improvement. It’s the engine that awakens each athlete’s hidden reserve of effort which later is seen as “talent.”
