Tag Archives: tennis

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

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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.

 

Competitive Tennis Dramas

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

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COMPETITIVE DRAMAS: INTERNAL STRUGGLESfrank

Personal Promise

Performance goal setting often starts with an athlete’s personal promise. This is done before the match in the “morphing into an athletic warrior” phase of the pre-match preparation.

An example of an athlete’s personal promise sounds like this:

“Today I will remain in my peak performance frame of mind. I will stay on script and trust my training. My best chance of success is doing what I’ve been trained to do. Today, I’m going to hit the shot the moment demands. Today is my day. I’m going to enjoy the battle!”

Often, top warriors have an optimistic phrase called a mantra that represents their personal belief system. They memorize it and repeat it several times before each match as a form of self-hypnosis. So, what is your child’s personal promise to themselves?

NOTE: This emotional component is so important and so popular in my workshops that I will be tackling this topic twice from different perspectives in this section- emotional intelligence and emotional readiness.

 

QUESTION: What’s the difference between emotional and intellectual ability?

 

Frank: In the junior levels of tournament competition, I see two very different character traits: natural born Warriors and natural-born Worriers.

Natural born warriors compete with superior emotional ability and are constantly ready for a threat. They have a high pain threshold and they can switch tasks quickly as they enjoy thinking “on their feet.”

Natural born worriers often come to the party with superior intellectual abilities but inferior emotional abilities. Their fear of making a mistake results in over-processing game situations which ultimately leads to a more timid competitor.  Worriers are less comfortable with new situations and frequently stress about speculated issues that aren’t truly present. They seem to shut down more often under stress. This makes them unable to adapt to the ever-changing match scenarios.

Interestingly, many worriers, who have parents and coaches wise enough to focus on the mental and emotional components of the game, actually progress nicely into the higher levels of the sport. They learn to handle the chaos of competition extremely well after years of deliberate, customized emotional training.

 

 

Competitive Tennis Dramas- Part 2

Posted on January 11, 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

 

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QUESTION: What does emotional conduct have to do with winning? Part 2

 

Very few athletes have been taught to be aware of their emotional state of being. An athlete’s optimal emotional state is dependent on their ability to spot their under-arousal and the over-arousal states of mind. Let’s dig deeper into these issues.

Under Arousal -Choking

Players drifting into their under arousal state believe that they are choking. Instead of staying on their pre-set performance scripts and simply controlling the controllables, such as their performance goals, athletes in the under-arousal state of mind begin to choke because they choose to focus on the uncontrollables, such as their anxieties, match outcome, or the ranking ramifications.

Because most athletes haven’t been taught their optimal emotional conduct, they start fearing that they are going to blow yet another match, so they begin to unknowingly push versus hit. Their anxieties quickly spiral out of control as their new negative self-image takes control- essentially allowing the “inmates to run the asylum.”

Under Arousal Solutions -Triggers

Triggers are both verbal and physical solutions that are used to snap a player back into their optimal emotional code of conduct. Triggers used to stop choking include:

Verbal triggers: -“come on”, “let’s go”, “you got this”, “right now”, “hit through the ball”,  “trust your training”, “Play to win!”…

Physical triggers: – Moving your feet and pumping up the adrenaline, slapping your leg, fist-pumping, taking deep breaths, kangaroo jumps, walking more confidently, walking to the back fence and rebooting the energy, taking a towel break, fixing your hair/hat, changing your racket …

 

Over Arousal-Panicking

Players drifting into the over-arousal state of mind report the opposite responses of players choking. This is a sense of panic. Panicking is the opposite of choking because it is underthinking. Panicking players are often seen rushing, applying reckless play, trying to play better than the moment demands, forgetting to apply between point rituals, appearing unattached- with a deer in the headlight look on their face, over hitting, trying to end the point too quickly or playing angry and fearful.

Over-Arousal Solutions-Triggers

There are sometimes different triggers for different emotional states. The solutions to snapping out of the panicking, over-arousal state of mind include:

Verbal Triggers: “slow down”, “deep breaths”, “relax”, “re-start right now”, “3- balls in first”, “steady-high and heavy”

Physical Triggers: A player in an over-arousal state of mind must defuse some adrenaline by taking the full 25- seconds between points, taking the full 90- seconds during changeovers, re-gripping the racket, taking towel breaks, changing your racket, taking a legal bathroom break, taking a legal trainer break.

 

“Maximizing talent under stress requires the athlete to perform in their Optimal Performance state of mind.”

 

Sport science experts can detect whether an athlete is choking or panicking through psychological and physiological tests by monitoring brain wave patterns, muscle tension, heart rate, and breathing rate. They can also detect when a trained athlete switches “channels” away from or back into their peak performance state of mind.

Emotionally educated performers maintain a reduced level of neurological activity, less muscle tension, a lower heart rate, and slower breathing. This saves crucial battery life for the later rounds. Emotions play a key role in competition.

 

“A player’s emotional skill sets control the internal climate that allows the athlete
to perform comfortably for longer periods of time.”

 

Competitive Tennis Dramas – Part 1 

Posted on January 9, 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

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QUESTION: What does emotional conduct have to do with winning?

 

Frank:  Maintaining peak performance is dependent on a player’s emotional intelligence. Let’s look deeper into where an athlete’s focus shifts during competition when they leave their optimal performance state of mind.

Optimal emotional conduct is a performance state of mind that allows a competitor to reach and maintain their peak performance level. It’s important to note that even though stroke mechanics are solidified in a non-stressful practice environment, poor emotional control can cause solid fundamentals to faultier under stressful match conditions.

 

“Pre-setting appropriate solutions is emotional readiness.”

 

Champions in their optimal emotional state of mind report being very happy, confident, dialed into the moment, flowing not forcing, feeling confident, safe and secure, performing on script, being ready and optimistic about the match.

Often the difference between a great competitor and good competitor is the understanding and implementation of their optimal emotional conduct.

 

“Average athletes unknowingly drift in and out of their competitive script – floating through their under and over-arousal state of mind. This instability allows their performance level to drop significantly.”