Bring Your Practice Strokes to Tennis Matches

You're listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast with Mental Game of tennis expert Dr. Patrick Cohn. Do you want to improve your mindset for tennis? Then join us on the Tennis Psychology Podcast.

How do you play just as well in your matches as you do in your practice matches? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn. In this episode, I'm going to help an amateur player be able to take her strokes from practice to competition. You're listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast.

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Here's the question that I received from Michelle. Michelle said, why can't I play as good in matches as I do in practice? What can I do to consistently play as well in matches as I do in fun matches or in practice? I tend to have more tension in my strokes in matches and I don't know why. How can my strokes be just as fluid in matches? Michelle, great question. And it's a number one reason why tennis players underperform is because their game changes on the court. The first step is to understand, well, why is your game changing? All you know is or all you feel is that your strokes are more tense in matches and you're not swinging freely, as I call it. You're not trusting your strokes. Well, why would that be? Well, maybe the importance of matches ramps up because your scores might be posted somewhere. For example, maybe there's fear of failure if you're playing in a doubles match where you don't want to disappoint your doubles partner. Maybe if you're a young athlete or a young tennis player, you worry about letting down a coach or letting down parents. Often it's about fear of failure and worrying about the outcome in the end result, which causes you to tighten up in the moment. So this is super common. And this is the number one reason why athletes come to us for mental training and mental coaching at peak performance sports. Because they look like a star in practice or they're performing freely in practice, but then when they go to matches, it all unravels for them. Call it a choke, call it loss of focus, loss of confidence, loss of trust. So in this case, it's all about being able to trust your strokes. So step one for you is you have to stay in the moment and not worry about the outcome. If you're worried about what your partner thinks, if you're worried about what a parent thinks, worry or what a Coach thinks. Then you have to let go of that worry and start playing for yourself instead of playing to make others happy. And that's what you're doing. You're playing to make others happy or not disappoint others, most likely. Well, why is that relevant here in this case? Because that's causing you to tighten up on the tennis court and not swing out on the ball or swing from freely. So the first step I like when I work with tennis players, I ask them, in your warmup, how does it feel? Well, it feels okay in the warmup. I'm hitting it pretty solid and pretty decent. Then what changes when you go from your warm up to all of a sudden on court? Well, now I'm pushing it more or I'm short stroking it. I'm not releasing the racket. Okay, well, then we have something to work with. Then you have to get the feeling of what a full swing feels like to finish and you have to take that out from your warm up into the match for you. So if you can do that just for a game or just for the first set, that's an improvement. But ultimately you have to think about swinging out on the ball, being more aggressive with your shots, letting it happen instead of making it happen. The mind goes, whoa, let me take over and make a good stroke. And that's what creates tension, is you go back into what's called the training mindset. And then now you're not swinging freely because you're trying not to hit the ball out or you're trying not to miss your serves. So really, there's two big components here. Letting go of the ultimate fear, whatever that may be, and then having that objective where you're going to go out and swing out on the ball no matter what and let it happen. Play for yourself. All right, thanks for your question. Good luck with your game. If you want more resources about the mental game of tennis, jump over to our tennis site@sportspsychologytennis.com There you'll find articles, podcasts, videos, and if you want information on our one on one mental coaching, it'll also be@sportspsychologytennis.com thanks for your question.

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