Emotional Toughness in Competition

There is an emotional toughness in competition that is developed over time.

Emotion – an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hat, or the like, is                      experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of                                          consciousness.

Developing Emotional Control

When a tennis player develops skills to the point of entering competition another emotional factor enters the picture. The player will have learned the basic techniques, i.e. forehand, backhand, serve, some volley. They would also apply these to various strategy scenarios, i.e. keep the ball in play  one more time than your opponent, cross court rallies are higher percentage, keep the ball deep, etc. However, there is an emotional component that enters the stage when in actual competition. Here, the player has to apply emotional control in situations that may seem out of their control (down 4-0), or visa-versa (up 4-0). If your strategy of being more consistent than the other player isn’t working, or some other form of strategy, emotions can come into play. They can either bring on a panic mode or cause the junior player to try harder. I found the statement, focus of intensity of concentration to apply to these circumstances.

Focus of Intensity of Concentration

Focus – the center of interest or activity.

Let’s take an example. While playing your match you go down 4-0. You realize you have been paying attention to your good practice buddy who is playing two courts over, or, maybe you are thinking about the concert you will be going to with your friends that evening.  You need to block out those interests and activities that are detracting from your focus and narrow it to only your match.

Intensity – the measurable amount of a property,such as force, brightness, or a magnetic field.

In this case the intensity that would be measurable is the score of the set. Let’s take an example. You are up 4-0. Things are under control. Then your opponent closes the gap to 4-1, 4-2,4-3, then 4-4. Now the level of intensity has increased measurably. You need to be aware of the intensity level in a match.

Concentration – the action or power of focusing one’s attention or mental effort.

Concentration can have two elements. One of ‘over’ concentrating, in which case you have to find a way to relax, and the other of being too relaxed in approaching your match. In the one case you have find ways to calm yourself by possibly taking deep breaths, or releasing your mind from overthinking and simplify your approach mentally. In the other you have to start make yourself move faster, think, and react quicker. It is important to find the right mix. This happens over time with experience.

Conclusion

To bring all three into play is to be aware how they interact in a competitive situation and to work at bringing all three into a balance that works in your favor. Do you agree or disagree with this approach?

Beginning Player Survival Skills in Tennis

Physical Skills

-Do you have good eye-hand coordination? Holding a 27 inch tennis racket and swinging it to hit an incoming tennis ball requires it.

-Do you have good balance? Moving backwards, forwards, sideways, and diagonally to set yourself up to hit the incoming tennis ball requires it.

-Do you have good reaction time? Hitting or retrieving a hit tennis ball requires you to not only return to a dominant position on your side of the court, but it requires you react to the ball your opponent hits in time to get set up to hit it back.

-Do you have the ability to keep yourself (or improve) your physical condition? A tennis match is on average 40 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes. While there are set time breaks on changeovers and between sets, do you have the stamina to withstand a full tennis match, especially in hotter weather?

Mental Skills

-Do you enjoy solving puzzles? Tennis is like an RPG(role playing game). You have to know your own strengths, weaknesses and your opponents strengths and weaknesses. Come up with a game plan (strategy) to imprint into your opponents mind you have the skills to beat them. Then show them, or not. Either way you are improving your ‘chess’ skills.

Emotional Skills

-Are you emotionally stable in difficult situations? Do you get angry and walk away when things aren’t going your way, or do you assess the situation, control your emotions and use those desires to complete your objective – to play your best. This may mean winning or losing, but either way, you are meeting the challenge and growing in the game.

Conclusion

Entering the arena of beginning tennis requires certain survivor skills that I have only touched on. To desire to compete to the highest level of a professional requires a level in each of the areas listed above that excedes normal expectations. To enjoy tennis doesn’t require that. Find beginning players on your own ‘survival skill’ level that will allow you  considerable enjoyment and ‘fun’ as well as exercise and stress relief.

 Control Over Nerves in Tennis

When there is another person across the net from you, whether in warm-up, practice, or a match, it is important to learn techniques for controlling your nerves..

5 Ways to Control Your Nerves

1. Warm up properly. Take the time beforehand to get your body moving-do some slow stretches, jog a quarter mile, skip some rope, perform some calisthenics,etc. If you have the time, do this an hour before your time on the tennis court. Your mind and body will benefit from this.
2. In pre-warm up on the tennis court with your partner/opponent  focus on the ball travelling from racket to racket. The nerves you feel with gradually dissipate as you begin to adjust your timing and your movement in accordance with the movement of the ball. You will find yourself adjusting different elements in your game: i.e. your forehand isn’t as comfortable as your backhand, your not tracking the ball as well as you volley at the net, your first serve is smooth and powerful, etc. By focusing on these your nerves will calm as you focus on putting the different elements of your game together for this occasion.
3. Determine your emotional state. Some days you are too relaxed and need to push yourself to perform at a higher level. This causes you to ‘ramp up’ your physical approach and get the adrenalin flowing. Other days you are too nervous and need to take deep breaths and slow yourself down, forcing yourself to a more relaxed state of play. Exercising control over nerves while playing tennis is extremely important.
4. Slowly tune out the sounds and action that have nothing to do with your ‘on court’ play. Spectators watching, dogs barking, horns honking, sirens in the distance-all fade away as you submerge yourself in playing your ‘best’ tennis.
5. Recognize your level of concentration and your opponents. This will help greatly in overcoming your anxiety at certain times. For example, you go up 5-0 in the first set and are cruising. Your opponent, raising the level of his game, gradually turns his 0 into 1,2,3,4, and then 5 games. By now, and hopefully quite a bit before 5-5, you have realized your opponent is concentrating at a higher level and has found a way back into the match. Instead of letting your nerves get the better of you, at this point, you have to analyze what is happening and find a way to counter act it. Focus of intensity of concentration has much to do with this ‘turnaround’. This could turn into a winning experience for you, or a learning experience, as you grow in your practice/match play.

Conclusion

This blog is just touching on how learning to control your nerves before, during and after  practice/match play in tennis, will benefit your having fun playing tennis. I hope you find these helpful and share some of your experiences in ‘controlling’ nerves.

Approach Shot-Tennis

The approach shot was used much more in the past than it is in todays game.

The ‘Old’ Days

In the ‘old’ days of tennis (i.e. wood tennis rackets, more difference in surfaces,less power, etc.) the approach shot was a viable alternative in most match situations. The player would wait for a short ball, hit it deep (usually down the line with slice) and follow it in to the net. This would set them up for a volley. Of course this would depend on the style of their opponent.  Some players liked the player to come in. They enjoyed the opportunity of hitting a passing shot. Other players didn’t like it when a player came in and challenged them to hit it past them. Players like Pat Rafter, Stephan Edberg and Martina Navratilova all loved coming to net, putting pressure on their opponent, and trying to end the point with a volley.

The “new” Era

Starting in the 90’s the racket technology began to change with the rackets getting stiffer and the stringing technology improving. This caused the game to change in ways that stifled the approach shot as it was known prior to the 90’s. Now a player coming to net had to contend with increased power and spin coming back at him at the net.It changed from the net rushing player having the advantage to the ground stroker at the baseline having the advantage due to the increased speed of the ball coming off the racket and the increased spin on the ball which opened more court to hit the passing shot into. This in turn changed the fundamentals of the ‘old’ approach. Now the attacking player, if he chose to come to net had to be aggressive with his approach, hitting with ferocious power and topspin as opposed to the slower slice.

The game has changed. I liked the old style of setting up your points and anticipating a player attacking a short ball and the foray into the net to see if he could outduel his opponent. Nowadays, there is so much power in the game, fitness enters into the mix and so do injuries. The game is played at such a high velocity now the players tend to stay back and rally back and forth until one makes a mistake. The spectators thrill of seeing which player is going to slice and dice and attack the net is mostly gone with advent of the power and technology in the game today. It is power, power, power.

What are your thoughts? Do you enjoy the power in the game today versus the old strategies that used to be employed?

How the Game of Tennis Has Changed

What makes the game of tennis interesting today is the personalities, not so much the style of the game each pro plays. Before the advent of similar surfaces, stronger racket technology and newer string technology, the game seemed to be more interesting in turns of style of play. Personality was exemplified more in the way pros applied their trade.

Style of Play

It used to be players were categorized by their style of play. They seemed to fit into four categories:

1. Offensive base-liner – this type of player stayed mostly on the baseline and created openings by hitting high paced ground strokes and either opening up the court for a winning shot or over powering their opponent with velocity. A player of this nature was Andre Agassi with his aggressive baseline style of play taking the ball early and hitting punishing groundstrokes.
2. Defensive base-liner – this type of player had good foot speed, not overpowering ground strokes, but consistently put the ball back in play until forcing an error. Good strategists, they wear their opponents down by their mental toughness as well. An example of this type of player would be Brad Gilbert.
3. Serve and volley – this type of player had a strong serve and rushed the net at every opportunity as they were very effective volleyers. They exerted pressure on almost every point by the threat of coming to net and finishing the point off. A player of this type in the past array of pros was Stephan Edberg.
4. All-court player – this type of player could either stay back and rally, or come to net and attack, equally well. Their personality could adapt to either, or both styles of play. A player of this nature was Pete Sampras.

Today’s Game

In today’s game with the players staying back and hitting with such power and top spin due the advances in technology and also with the surfaces becoming so similar, the pro’s personalities and different styles of play don’t seem as exciting as they used to be. Matching up an offensive base liner against a serve and volleyer on different surfaces used to be entertaining, to see which one could impose his stye of play on the the other. In today’s game it seems much more dependent on conditioning and mental ‘freshness’ with the players.

Let’s Talk about Your Game

This blog dealt with professional players. Let’s talk about the club level of play. At this level the game can be more interesting as the game isn’t at the most powerful level of play, which allows different styles of play and personality to enter the arena. This makes again for a more interesting match up in terms of the four types of player we discussed.

What type of personality are you? Which category would you fit into? Understanding these four types of players, would this help you to fit your game into a better practice and playing schedule?

Technique Change vs Time-Tennis

Change is most often difficult. I like to get into a pattern I feel comfortable in and stay there. That goes for tennis as well. I like to hit the tennis ball the way I want to. What happens when that way of hitting the ball is taken advantage of by my opponent and I end up not enjoying myself due to my inability to counter act my opponents strategy?

Technique

I started playing tennis late – in my mid teens. I learned from a book written by Bill Tilden, ‘How to Play Better Tennis’. I followed everything in the book to a fault practicing against a backboard from 4-7am as many days as I could. The only thing I couldn’t copy properly, even though I thought I was, took place in the serving motion. I even won some tournaments with the improper motion. While I thought I was dropping my arm into the ‘back scratching’ position I was, in reality, hitting my serve with my arm completely straight (similar to bowling in cricket). It wasn’t until a touring pro came through and gave a clinic that I was told I wasn’t dropping the racket down behind my back to generate more power and rhythm in my serving motion. Obviously I wanted to change this to become more proficient at the game. This desire to change my technique propelled me to spend more time on exercises to change my muscle memory and allow my ‘throwing’ motion to become ingrained. A player’s desire to do this is dependent on the drive they have within them to make the necessary change. It does not happen over night.

Change

I didn’t realize it at the time but the time to change my technique took myriad hours of exercises and drills (many of which I would make up off court as well as on). Years later I chose a vocation of a tennis director. Working with students over 40 years of teaching I applied the time principle of changing technique, or forming a new habit. I found the average time was three months. This was only the physical (muscle memory) change. To take the change into a competitive situation took even longer. After the initial three month period a junior player would then begin to play tournaments again. It would take an addition 2-5 months for the change to enter their competitive game and they would become totally comfortable with it. An interesting factoid was when Bill Tilden, in the mid 20’s when he was dominating tennis, lost the first two joints of his middle finger due to gangrene setting in from an infection gone bad. He took three months off – relearned his backhand from underspin to topspin and came back to dominate again.

When I was Orange Lawn as their tennis director we had a pro tournament there for some years directed by Gene Scott. It never ceased to amaze me how many world class pros came to play, some with considerable faulty technique. With just one or two changes in their technique I could see how it could improve their win/loss results. However when a player has achieved that status in the world it is almost impossible for them to change psychologically. They feel they have to give up to get and because they have worked so hard to get where they are they are not able to handle it psychologically, even if it means in 2-8 months achieving even a higher ranking in the world stats.

If you are contemplating a change in your technique I hope this article will help you to understand the end result is worth it, if you will have more fun playing the wonderful game of tennis.