Tag Archives: tennis

Beating Pushers- Part 1

Posted on February 18, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!

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HOW TO BEAT MOONBALL/RETRIEVERSfrank

 

No matter what you call them…retrievers, defensive baseliners, counter punchers, moonballers, or pushers, they have one common distinction at almost every level of the game-they have all the trophies!

In my workshops, I seek out competitors re-occurring nightmares- problems that happen over and over again. I then systematically destroy the nightmare by offering self-destruction solutions. One nightmare that seems to be on the top of almost everyone’s tennis list, around the world, is “How to Beat a Moonball/Retriever.” Let’s look at some common key characteristics that separate most of “us” from them.

 

Retrievers versus the Rest of Us:

  • Patient versus Impatient
  • Satisfied to let the opponent self-destruct versus Having to hit bold winners to win
  • Energy conserving versus Energy expending
  • Responds after reasoning versus Responds before reasoning
  • Inspired by the real/practical versus Inspired by the imaginative
  • Found in the present versus Found in the future
  • Concerned with the task versus Concerned with the outcome and how other will view the outcome?
  • Organized in their plans versus “Uh…we’ll see what happens.”
  • Avoids surprises versus Enjoys surprises

 

As you can see, the psychological profile of a retriever may be a little different than your athlete. Tactically, retrievers prefer to retaliate instead of instigate the action. Armed with the knowledge of the actual unforced errors to winners ratio in the sport, this tactic is actually quite intelligent. Lucky for us, having a firm understanding of a retriever’s brain has allowed us to organize a wonderful plan of attack!

Please keep in mind that your child loses to retrievers because your child is not fully developed. There are most likely holes in one or more of the four major components of your athlete’s game. Below I’ve re-listed those four components and their corresponding success principles.  Ask your child’s coach to develop these and your athlete will routinely defeat these pesky opponents.

POSITIVE Coaching

Posted on February 14, 2021 by in The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

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POSITIVE VERSUS NEGATIVE PSYCHOLOGYIMG_080_R_WHITE

 

“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.

 

MindSets: Fixed versus Growth

Similar to the two sides of psychology, there are also two mindsets. Coaches often see student’s with either a fixed mindset or a growth mind set. 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.

Tennis Slump?

Posted on February 11, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!

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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.”

Re-Commit to Tennis- Part 3

Posted on February 1, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

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QUESTION: How do we help our daughter re-commit to her tennis? (Part 3)

Encourage your athlete to stretch beyond their comfort zone and try new approaches by:

  • Putting your goals and plans in writing.
  • Acknowledging that the better choice is often the harder choice.
  • Identifying possible negative influences.
  • Cutting out trouble making friends and instigators.
  • Limiting time spent with negative people.
  • Establishing the rules in troubled relationships.
  • Flipping negative talk: “I don’t know” or “I don’t care” or “I hate…”
  • Letting go of “I can’t, I’m terrible, or I am not good enough.”
  • Addressing difficulties as challenges and not defeats.
  • List solutions, not problems.

 

The above proactive behaviors are not necessarily tennis issues, they are life issues. I find that we’re all too often addicted to our old comfortable thoughts. Behavioral changes stem from changing those unproductive negative thoughts.

 

“While your athlete can’t go back and change the past … they surely can start over and create a better future.”

 

Your athlete’s tennis re-birth begins as soon as your athlete commits to improving!

Re-Commit to Tennis- Part 2

Posted on January 30, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!

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QUESTION: How do we help our daughter re-commit to her tennis? (PART 2)

Begin your one-month organizational plan by reminding your athlete to:

  • Flip their negative words and thoughts to positives.
  • Take ownership and be accountable.
  • Let go of past failures and be future-orientated.
  • Believe in their plan. (The athlete is more likely to believe in a plan if it is their plan.)
  • Commit to daily and weekly planners.
  • Complete a nightly focus journal.
  • Accept that change is uncomfortable…but that’s where growth lives.
  • Take away destructive behaviors.
  • Celebrate positive behaviors.
  • Identify proactive behavior and destructive behavior.
  • Choose to chase excellence, not perfection.
  • Acknowledge that today’s results stem from past choices.

 

“Every choice your athlete makes either pushes them closer to their goal or further away from their goal.”

 

Re-Commit to Tennis- Part 1

Posted on January 28, 2021 by in The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!

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QUESTION: How do we help our daughter re-commit to her tennis?

 

Frank: It sounds like it’s time for you, the CEO, to formulate a fresh, deliberate, customized developmental plan for your athlete. It’s often too painful for a struggling athlete to jump wholeheartedly back into the never-ending old cycle of training during a losing streak. When struggling, baby steps are often required. So I suggest seeking a commitment to try a brand new one month challenge.

I recommend applying The Tennis Parent’s Bible’s self-evaluation chapter (Section VII CUSTOMIZED PLAYER EVALUATION) to assist your team in assessing your athlete’s efficiencies and deficiencies. Use the data to organize a fresh weekly developmental plan. Include all of the essential components found in this book. You and your athlete must make peace with your past then let it go, so it doesn’t impair your future.

This new found dedication starts with flipping a non-believer into a believer once again. To rekindle their belief system, ask your child to read and discuss the optimistic challenges listed below. This re-birth begins with shifting back to an optimistic, motivational state of mind.

Challenge your athlete to be fully engaged for a single month. The following common negative behaviors should be prohibited:

  • Blaming Others or Circumstances
  • Inventing Excuses
  • Complaining
  • Initiating Unnecessary Drama
  • Choosing a Pessimistic Attitude

Competitive Tennis Dramas

Posted on January 26, 2021 by in The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

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COMPETITIVE DRAMAS: INTERNAL STRUGGLESblack_ebook_design2

 

QUESTION: Coaches always say “focus!” But what should my daughter focus on?

 

Frank: Focus management refers to the skill of focusing on variables in your control.  Throughout a match, a player must shift focus accordingly, so the correct statement is “focus on what the moment demands.”

Back in 2000, I brought in Pistol Pete (Sampras) as the Touring Pro at Sherwood Country Club. During one of our member clinics, a parent of two ranked juniors asked Pete, “What do you think about when you’re playing Wimbledon, down break point…serving in front of millions of viewers?”

After a long pause, Pete said, “I just toss to my spot.”

After about 10 seconds of uncomfortable silence, a short, balding gentleman suddenly vents “Oy Vey. That’s it …I paid $75.00 for your serving clinic and all you say is …to toss to your spot?”

In Pete’s defense, he focused on controlling the controllables.  This skill set was one of the major factors that contributed to Pete’s incredible success. He excelled at focusing on what he did best. Like we covered earlier, the efficiency each junior seeks is based around trimming the fat. This applies to mechanical stroke production as well as the hidden mental and emotional components such as focus.  Pete simply trimmed the fat.

Intermediate juniors often fail to focus on controlling the controllables.  They sometimes worry about controlling all the factors that are out of their control.  Professionals think about a hand full of cue words for each match while amateurs think about a thousand irrelevant thoughts per match.

 

Competitive Tennis Dramas

Posted on January 23, 2021 by in The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

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COMPETITIVE DRAMAS: INTERNAL STRUGGLESblack_ebook_design2

 

QUESTION: My child’s mind wanders off in matches, how can we fix that?

 

Frank: Lapses in concentration are so very common.

Focus is a key mental/emotional skill set. Without it, even the most gifted ball strikers are usually early-round losers. Focus requires the athlete to understand that their mind is like a muscle that needs to be continually tightened and toned. Remember from the previous section, an un-toned brain can easily slip back and forth between its under-arousal state of mind, to its optimal emotional conduct state of mind to its over-arousal state of mind.

Let’s look once again into the thought process of these three different “headspaces.”

In the under-arousal state, the athlete often begins to detach and slip into past or future thought scenarios. After the mind wanders off, athletes often report that they choked.

In the ideal performance state, the athlete stays deeply entrenched in their calm, happy, confident script of patterns. This mental, emotional state of readiness lasts throughout the match. The athlete often reports that they’re in the zone.

In the over-arousal state of mind, the athlete slips into the over hitting, rushing, and reckless style of play. The athlete often reports that they were trying to play better than they actually needed and simply panicked.

The initial key to solving this issue is to ask the athlete to begin to notice where their thoughts are at certain stages of the match. (This is best done through match play video analysis.)

 

Remember, triggers are used to get an athlete back into their script of patterns. Triggers are both verbal and physical.  Triggers serve the athlete in two very positive ways: it inflates their energy while deflating their opponent’s energy and by sending the message that they’re in it … to win it.

Competitive Tennis Dramas – Anger Part 2

Posted on January 18, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!

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COMPETITIVE DRAMAS: INTERNAL STRUGGLESFrank Giampaolo

 

Champions Experience Failure

Discuss how most tennis champions have probably lost way more matches than your child has even played. Ambitious people experience many failures. One of my past students is Sam Querrey (ATP top player). He’s been playing full time on the ATP tour for ten years and has won 7 ATP singles titles and a handful of double events. That means, most of the time, Sam goes home losing week in and week out. Would you say he’s a loser? Not a chance- Sam is a top touring professional!

Never Outgrow Fun

You often see top professionals battle and still smile in the course of a match. Negative thoughts, stress, and anger clutter an athlete’s thought process and tighten muscle groups, both of which decrease the player’s ability to perform. Pessimism affects both an athlete’s physiology and psychology. Optimism is a coping skill used to combat the negatives that are found in one-on-one competition. Smile, laugh, and enjoy the competition.

Tennis Is a Gift Not a Right

Discuss how there are millions of natural-born athletes that are the same age as your child that will never get the opportunity to compete at a high level. Tennis isn’t fair, right?

But has your child thought about how lucky they are to be able to play tennis and have a family that wants to support their passion?

Good Judgment Comes from Experience

So where does experience come from? The ironic answer is bad judgment. Talk to your child about how it is far less painful to learn from other peoples’ failures. After a loss, stay at the tournament site and chart a top seed. Analyze their successes and model them and their pitfalls and learn how to avoid them.

Rehearse Focusing on the Solutions Not the Problems

Ask the athlete to allow you to videotape a few matches. As the athlete and coach watch the matches, ask them to spot unforced errors and then categorize them into their cause of error chart. Ask them to recognize negative thoughts, loss of concentration, or an emotional breakdown on the court. Now, remind the coach not to ask the athlete to think about NOT repeating the problem. That only draws deeper attention to the problem. Instead, discuss the development of the solution to the problem. Then simply focus on the rehearsal of the actual match solution.

A Genius Simplifies the Complex

In the higher levels, most lessons should be focused on “trimming the fat” off of strokes and/or off of the player’s thought control. Going from really good to great is not always about adding more. There are often hidden contaminants that bog down gifted athletes.

 

Maturing the mental and emotional components is a life skill.  Athletes need to manage anger and stress.  The old Buddha saying is “Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Competitive Tennis Dramas – Anger Part 1

Posted on January 17, 2021 by in The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!

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COMPETITIVE DRAMAS: INTERNAL STRUGGLES

Frank Giampaolo

QUESTION: How can we help our son overcome his on-court anger?

 

Frank: First of all, not all anger is bad. Fire can be used as an analogy. A controlled fire can be used to cook meals and heat homes. An uncontrolled fire can burn down homes. Managing anger and fire requires knowledge and skill. Often it is the good anger that actually propels your child into an upward spiral. This requires being aware of adrenaline. This rush of adrenaline often pushes them into a higher competitive level.  Players who know how to “call up” or “quiet down” their adrenaline at the appropriate times are managing their emotions.

 

“Managing adrenaline is one of the most important emotional skills found at the higher
levels of competition.”

 

Notice how the top professionals know how and when to pump up their energy with the use of adrenaline. When do you see them applying this emotional skill set? Typically it is during the closing stage of the set.

The concerns most parents and coaches have arises when the player chooses to let their negative emotions control their behavior versus focusing on their pre-set performance goals.  In my opinion, bad anger on the court stems from a lack of emotional intelligence, resources, and tools.

Below is a list of mental and emotional components your child should digest in order to begin to manage anger and stress. Talk it through with your athlete and their coaches and have some fun.

 

Developing Mental and Emotional Strength:

Say Something Positive

On the practice court, ask your athlete to rehearse finding something they did well on each point. This will shift their focus from negative to positive. This rule applies to parents as well. Flipping your list of negative comments into positive comments will change your outlook, your relationships, and your world!

Tennis Is Not Fair

There are so many reasons why the game of tennis is not fair. Understanding these issues will reduce the stress some juniors place on themselves. For instance, luck of the draw, stylistic matchups, court surfaces, availability of referees, match location, elements like weather (wind, sun, etc.), and lucky let courts, not to mention the finances needed to compete at the higher levels. Can you think of a few?

Managing Stress

Experience tells us that if you are in a verbal argument, take some time to clear your head. Get away, go for a brisk walk. Talk to your child about time management as it pertains to controlling the pace of the match. Winners often take (legal) bathroom breaks at critical times during match play. I am sure you have seen this control drama play out in both professional and junior level matches. Controlling the energy flow of the match is a super way to control the fire.