* I am sharing this article I was asked to write for the ATP ‘Global Professional Tennis Coaches Association, the world's best tennis coaches on the ATP and WTA circuits, for their players.   Article © 2000 - 2035 Craig Townsend / Its Mind over Matter.  All Rights Reserved.

Coaches Article

Create a Success Formula for Your Players

 

I often like to refer to creating a ‘Success Formula’ for players – a system of pre-match preparation, containing all the physical, mental and emotional aspects that delivers the most success on court.

Once you have collected this information for each player – ie. the various routines, activities and emotional states that delivers their best performances - you simply add this information to that player’s success formula.

From that point onward, you simply repeat it from match to match, week to week, month to month – while adding small elements of change and experimentation here and there, to keep the routine fresh and interesting, and also allowing the formula to continue to grow and evolve.

When your player walks out onto court, it’s not just their body out there – it’s their entire being - mind, body and spirit – so it’s no secret that their success formula requires a strong recipe of physical, mental, and also emotional preparation.

This preparation means they will experience much less doubt on court, as they know they have done everything required, and left no stones unturned, in their match preparation.

Doubt is a kind of mental corrosion that can unravel a player’s game - and the only place you want doubt is down the other end of the court. But when your player is feeling a strong level of inner belief, their natural body language will convey this at the subconscious level, to their opponent - in everything they do out there on court – ie. the way they walk, talk, move and play.

As no doubt you will ensure your player is completely prepared physically, I will focus on mental and emotional preparation.

Peak Emotional States for Performance

The major key here is that the emotions come first – as 70% of the mental side can be achieved simply by ensuring your player feels reasonably emotionally happy and content.

Unfortunately mental strength (and physical skills) are often rendered useless if the player’s emotions are churned up, before or during the match (eg. having an argument) – but when they are reasonably relaxed and happy, they will usually feel strong on court. (However there is one catch to this – which I will mention shortly..)

Another important aspect of a player’s success formula is knowing their preferred peak emotional state going into matches – that is, the frame of mind that delivers their strongest performances, and puts them into the Zone most often, and most easily.

Some players prefer to remain as relaxed as possible before matches (so for these players, distractions can be helpful before competing - depending upon what they like to do – eg. computer games, reading, chatting with friends, social media, listening to music.. the list is endless), while other players find they need to hype themselves up with loud music to get the competitive juices truly flowing.

It’s also important to know (though not always as easy to deal with) that a small percentage of players actually perform better when they are angry. These kinds of players often come good after they lose the first set and begin getting upset with themselves – and they can often finish off the next two sets with a blaze of massive winners.

These players are often able to successfully channel their anger and emotional energy into their game as a kind of fuel, and inject it into their power hitting. However, this doesn’t work for the majority of players – where anger de-stabilizes their emotions, which in turn affects their mental clarity and decision-making, which transfers into erratic errors on court.

As every player is different, they each have their own unique mental state for achieving their peak level of play - and unique way of getting into that state. The only ways to discover this are through the player’s own self-awareness, and your keen observation skills as coach. Once you have access to this information, you add it to that player’s ‘success formula’ – the list of various routines, activities, mental states and other aspects that deliver the most success to your player on court.

The Mind / Body Connection in Tennis & The Zone

That’s the basics of the emotional side of match preparation, now onto the mental side. If your player is open to some form of mental training (and their attitude and open-ness to this is a biggie), mental preparation can make a massive difference to match performance and results.

First of all, it’s important to know that we all have 2 minds, not one – a conscious mind, and a subconscious mind.

Your conscious mind is the far weaker mind of the two, and we think of it as our normal daily awareness – ie. when you wake up in the morning and begin to think about what to do that day, that's your conscious mind thinking those thoughts. It makes your plans and decisions, thinks through problems and organizes your life.

While we're awake, our conscious mind is constantly thinking thoughts - in fact, every single day we think around 60,000 thoughts. Unfortunately, stress often affects these conscious thoughts, and the conscious mind is probably responsible for players’ worst performances on court.

Negative thoughts during a match are transmitted by electrical nerve impulses to the subconscious, and ultimately these negative thoughts are transmitted throughout the body’s network of billions of neural pathways, and appear in on-court performance - in the form of nervousness, lack of belief, anger, frustration, inconsistency, etc. So that is the process, and mystery revealed, behind poor match performances – and much of this process involves the stressed-out conscious mind.

The subconscious is our inner intelligence, running much like a computer - which automatically operates every process within our mind and body – breathing, movement, vision, circulation.. thousands of processes per second, for your entire lifetime. Needless to say, when our subconscious is allowed to run our tennis performances, this is when we play in the Zone. (I will come back to the Zone in a moment).

The very first-ever computer was modelled directly on the subconscious – because they work the same way, running programs and allowing its software to drive performance. Unfortunately, it takes its commands from our weaker conscious mind, and acts on them, regardless of the command.

This works fine when the conscious mind is relatively relaxed, as it allows our subconscious mind the freedom to efficiently run our tennis performances (otherwise known as being “in the Zone”). This is when our senses are running on heightened awareness, yet we have virtually no conscious thoughts going on whatsoever – just a calm, peaceful mind running at peak efficiency.

But when the conscious mind becomes stressed, things can deteriorate quickly – as it begins barking incessant, countless commands to the subconscious mind – which means the body begins receiving confused, jumbled neural messages – and performance suffers.

As the conscious mind is generally responsible for the worst performances, it’s handy to learn to override the conscious mind and allow the subconscious more freedom to operate our game. As Jim Courier once said “tennis is the least cerebral thing I do – because when I play my best, I don’t have a thought in my mind”. This is the Zone he is talking about.

The Power of visualization to Influence Performance

visualization is the easiest and most effective method for mental preparation, as getting your player to regularly mentally picture themselves performing exactly the way they want, in all the important ways – strokes, tactics, mindset and movement – helps to set a mental ‘blueprint’ within the subconscious, for the body to follow on court.

visualization has been shown to work amazingly well with the computer-like subconscious – and scientific tests have shown that when a player vividly imagines playing a future match, their subconscious will send the very same electrical impulses to their brain that it would send if they really were playing.

The subconscious is so computer-like, it literally can't tell the difference between reality, and something that's been programmed into it through vivid imagination. Better still, visualization can be used in a multitude of different ways:

 

• Reinforcing tactical or strategic plays that they intend to use in their next match

• To handle specific conditions they know they will be dealing with – eg. a large, noisy or partisan crowd

• Accelerate the mastery of a new technique, stroke changes, grip changes, etc

• Specific imagery to ‘exaggerate’ the power, speed, control or efficiency of one’s own game, shots, or movement (a powerful method for improvement)

• And countless other ways to customize their mental images to their exact requirements – such as programming in various subconscious triggers to use on court when required – eg. for accessing more energy, greater concentration, motivation, etc.

This leads us to important aspects required for successful visualization:

• Relaxed – the subconscious accepts the mental images more easily when the player is relaxed, with their eyes closed – this shuts down some of the constant, incessant chatter of the conscious mind.

• Realistic – making the images as vivid and realistic as possible helps create a more powerful impression within the subconscious.

• Music – can be used to help create a more powerful emotional connection with the mental images of success on court.

• Regularly – the most important aspect of visualization, of all. This sets up a regular rhythm of mental training where one session flows into the next - and eventually your mind automatically begins to relax and anticipate the visualization session, even before you begin.

Last of all, there is also a percentage of players who find that thinking too much about a match, or even visualizing it, actually makes them more nervous - and so for them pure relaxation or meditation work better for them, because they want to remain calm and simply don’t want to think about the match until they are walking onto court.

Relaxation clears the mind of stress and allows for greater mental clarity which, while you get this from visualization as well, contains no thoughts about the match which suit some players better. And some will simply prefer distractions before a match, without any real form of mental training.

So to recap – creating a success formula for your player allows you to create a system of pre-match preparation that delivers the most success on court. From there, it is simply a matter of continuing to tweak and evolve the system according to your player’s needs.

Outside of physical skill and fitness preparation, a player’s emotional happiness and contentment is a high priority, as this maintains the vital inner balance required for both physical skills and mental training to be their most effective on court.

Knowing your player’s peak emotional state can also be handy for enhanced match preparation, and then further improved using visualization, relaxation skills, or otherwise, simple distractions that will keep the mind busy from thinking about the match.

Last of all – as every player is unique, keen awareness, observation and experimentation are required to keep your finger on the pulse of your player’s constantly changing and evolving needs - from day to day, and year to year. Go forth and conquer.

 

"The Mind controls the body, and the Mind is Unlimited"

The best of success, Craig Townsend

 

"The Mind controls the body, and the mind is unlimited". Craig Townsend

Article © 2000 - 2035 Craig Townsend / Its Mind over Matter. All right reserved