Are you Restless and Anxious Before Matches?

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Are you a junior tennis player that gets restless or anxious before matches? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn. Today I'm going to answer a question from a junior player that tends to give his parents the cold shoulder before matches.

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Here's what Ram had to say. I'd like to know why I'm so restless or not so calm before and during a match. I find myself showing too much anxiety on the court and I lose focus. In the present moment. My parents observed that I'm very difficult to talk to or even be around before or during matches. I don't want my parents cheering for me or even watch my match. Why am I acting this way before matches and what do I do? Well Ram, thanks for the question. I want to point you to a couple important issues that you mentioned in your question. One is you feel restless or you don't feel calm and maybe you're anxious before and during matches. So there's a couple parts to that. One part is what I call the pre match jitters which every players get before they go play. That's normal when you feel the butterflies or you feel excitement or feel you feel pumped up. The other side, which is more detrimental, is when you're feeling anxious or scared to underperform or to lose a match, maybe that you think you should win. So that's more along the lines of the performance anxiety. But then the second part of your question was that your parents said you're very difficult. You don't want to talk to your parents, you don't want them around, you don't want them watching the match. So if I put two and two together, that means you're primarily anxious because you want to perform up to your parents expectations. You don't want them there to judge you in some way if you make mistakes or you get behind in the match or whatever. So the outcome is really important for you. But I think the outcome is important for you is because you think your parents expect a certain outcome. Now look, everybody kind of goes into their own cocoon or their own bubble before competition. I know I did when I competed in high school and college. You go into Your zone, your bubble. You try to get mentally prepared, and that that's kind of normal. I know when my daughter played junior tennis, she was the same way. She didn't want anybody to really talk to her. She just wanted to, you know, calm down and get focused on the match, which is fine. But to be scared, to have your parents watching, that's a whole nother issue. And we put that under this category of social approval. You're worried about your parents feeling disappointed with your game. So you have two options. You have to learn how to let go of what others think, in this case, your parents, and know they're not really judging you out there. Or the other thing is ask them to not attend your matches. And then you got to ask, well, is that fair to your parents that they can't watch because you're nervous that you're going to disappoint them in some way? So there's a lot of factors going on here. But the bottom line is if you can go out there and play in the present, not worry about the consequences, play one shot, one ball at a time, put a bubble around the court, not even know who's watching, not even care who's watching, then you're going to be way more task focused. I think you're going to have more fun and be more relaxed. All right, thanks for your question. Good luck with your game. Hey, if you want information about mental training with us, we do mental training with athletes 12 and up, some cases younger, depending on the athlete. Please contact us at sportspsychologytennis.com or peaksports.com click on contact us, shoot us an email, and we'll give you some details. Thanks.

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