Bring Your Practice Game to Matches

Welcome to the Tennis Psychology Podcast with your host, Dr. Patrick Cohn. Dr. Cohn is a mental Game of Tennis expert. Do you want to improve your mental toughness for tennis? Then join us on the Tennis Psychology Podcast sessions with Doc. In today's Tennis Psychology Podcast, I help a coach understand why her player plays so well in practice, but then gets nervous and shakes during most of her matches. Dr. Cohn Jenny, a tennis coach has the following I'm trying to resolve why a player who plays so well in practice gets nervous and shakes during most of a match. This does not occur in every match, only when other people are watching. Why does this occur for her? It prevents her from achieving better results. Improve your mental game quickly by visiting sportspsychologytennis.com today and claim a free tennis psychology report titled Six Unforced Mental Game Errors Tennis Players Make Between Points. Thanks for the question, Jenny. And I can pretty much say with confidence that this is a mental game issue. When players perform well in in practice or in practice matches or practice sets and then they go to an official match and they underperform, or they're tense or nervous or scared of making mistakes, or they play tentative on and on and on, it most likely indicates that there's some mental game challenges. What are those challenges? In many cases its fear of failure for athletes. In other words, they focus too much on the outcome. They focus too much on the consequences of the match. Maybe they worry about not beating a player that they are expected to beat, or maybe they worry about playing a difficult opponent. But the underlying issue is that there's a fear of failure. Now you mentioned that it only happens when other people are watching. So now we can narrow it down a little bit and we can say that your player has some form of social approval. In other words, your player focuses too much on what other people are thinking, the people that are watching the match, for example. So what you have to do is you have to sit down with your player and talk about things like what's so awful if you lose? Will you disappoint someone if you lose? Who in particular do you feel like you're disappointing if you lose? So you have to ask a few questions to get down to the bottom line of the fear of failure. What is that athlete most affected by or who is that athlete most affected by? Probably in this case its fear of failure related to some form of social approval and not wanting to disappoint others who are watching the match. So I hope that helps and you can make some progress there. If not, certainly contact me@sportspsychologytennis.com thanks for listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast with Dr. Patrick Cohn. Discover the secrets to superior tennis confidence. Visit www.sportspsychologytennis.com for practical mental strategies to improve your mental game of tennis.