Do You Lack Trust In Your Tennis Skills?

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Do you tend to not trust a part of your game in matches such as volleying or overheads or return of serves? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn and today session I answer a question from Linda about the problem that she's having at the net and not being aggressive. Here's the question I received from Linda. I'm a 3.5 tennis player in doubles. My problem is that I constantly let balls pass me at the net. I don't understand why I don't go for them as they're usually closer to me than my partner. What do I tell myself in this situation or do I just go hit 100?

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Well, thanks for the question, Linda. Going and hitting 100 certainly can be effective for working on your strokes or working on your confidence in practice, but I'm not sure that's going to be the solution in this case. For example, if you feel like you already have a good volley, that you have good reaction at the net, you have good technique at the net, and you're able to have good placement with your volleys, then it's a more of a situation of you lacking trust in your skills or in your volley skills rather than going and hitting another hundred in practice to build your confidence. So a lot of players get confused between the difference between what we call self confidence in tennis and having trust in your skills. Self confidence is a belief in your ability to execute a shot. If you have a strong belief in your ability to execute a shot, that's obviously going to help you on the tennis court. Trust, on the other hand, is trusting in those skills enough from practice that you can go and you can hit it instinctively, you can hit it automatically, you can see the ball and hit it to your target. So trust happens during execution when you're not Overthinking also includes this idea that you're going to be decisive in your planning on the court and in your reactions and not second guess yourself. And I would also think it extends this idea of being able to risk. It sounds like that you're having trouble risking now. What that means is instead of you going for the volley and calling the volley yourself, that you hope that your partner is going to get it when maybe it's your play. And so that means that there could be some fear of making mistakes embedded in there and that you don't want to risk the mistake. So you're not willing to go for volley that's within your reach and you rather let your partner play the shot from the back court or play it from the net, whether you're two up or not. So that's my analysis of what's going on is certainly working on your technique and your confidence in practice can help you, but ultimately it's about you feeling comfortable enough to go ahead and risk and not worry about missing that volleyball. So what you need to do instead is I like to give athletes real specific goals about what they should do in this situation. Certainly you need to be more decisive what that means when the ball's in your area, you need to go after it and you need to make that quick decision that you're going to take the ball. So part of that is wanting the ball, understand wanting that ball to come to you. So I think there's a mindset with some players where they're playing at the net, but they don't want the ball to come to them, whereas other players are, you know, dancing all around, you know, at the net and wanting every ball that's around them, maybe being too aggressive that they're going to go and poach every single time, regardless of the outcome. I'd rather have you that attitude is you're going to take every ball that's near you and just make that decision and give yourself that as a goal ahead of time so that you've already made the decision that you're going to go for it, that you want the ball, you're going to go after it. And finally, like I said before, you can't care whether you miss the volley or not, whether you miss your target or not. You just have to go for it and accept whatever happens in that scenario. Not be embarrassed, not feel like you're letting your teammate down, for example, but just go ahead and playing that shot without worrying about the consequences of the miss. Thanks for your question and good luck with your game.

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