Do You Play Tight And Scared During Matches?

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You typically perform relaxed and loose in practice, but when you go to tournaments, you feel tight, scared, and your nerves might be holding you back. Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn for the Tennis Psychology Podcast. In this episode, I answer a question from an amateur tennis player that has trouble taking his game from practice to competition. Here's the question that I received from this athlete. I'm not able to perform as well in tournaments as I do in practice. I don't know why, but I'm very scared when I'm playing in tournaments. My nerves hold me back and my swing starts to feel like I'm choking. I'm not able to focus on the court at all as I'm performing well in practices, but don't know what happens to me on the tennis court when I'm playing in tournaments with different players. I'm very afraid of losing a match. What can I do to overcome this problem?

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This is such a common scenario, and this is the number one reason why tennis players and tennis parents will seek us out to do mental coaching. Because when athletes know that they're working hard in practice, they're improving their game in practice, their strokes feel free, smooth, loose. But then when they go to a match situation, they feel like they're a different player altogether. That's the number one sign that the mental game is getting in the way and you may be in need of some mental coaching. So on one respect, this particular player says that the nerves are holding him back and that he's afraid of losing a match, but he doesn't know why he's choking in the matches. And it feels differently in the matches. Often the number one reason why players underperform when they go from a practice setting to a match setting is because of this fear of losing a match. We put it under the category of fear of failure. In this particular case, I don't know exactly what the fear of failure is. So that's the place that you have to start is what is it that I'm so scared of about losing a match? I often like to talk about the aftermath. So after you lose the match, how are you going to feel and how do you think others are going to perceive you or your game? Because nine times out of 10, it's often about the fear of embarrassment, maybe the fear of letting a parent down, the fear of disappointing a coach if it doubles, fear of disappointing a teammate, for example, or if it's a team play, it's fear of disappointing teammates. That's often the number one source of fear of failure for tennis players is it's not so much the fact that they're going to lose the match. Everybody loses matches, right? Even Djokovic, Federer, they lose matches. It's really the aftermath of what's going to happen. What is your perception after that match? Do you feel like players might look at you differently in some way or you lose the respect of parents or coaches, for example, this is under the category of what we call social approval. A lot of fear of failure based upon athletes need for social approval, or on the other hand, trying to avoid disapproval, for example, letting others down or feeling embarrassed or looking silly, for example, if you feel like you should have beaten this player easily and you didn't beat that player, so what can you do about it? It's really hard for me to say in this particular case, but the bottom line is it leads to what we call lack of trust in your skills. Often the fear of failure, not wanting to lose, for example, causes you to tighten up a little bit and now you're pushing the ball a little bit more or you're over controlling your stroke. So we know that that's a fact that players will lose trust in their stroke. So you're typically playing a more cautious, controlled style of play, which is the opposite of what you need to do in a match situation. You need to go out there and play freely and let it fly and swing freely, not in fear of missing shots. It's that that don't screw up, that causes you to try hard not to miss shots. And that's ultimately what undermines the trust in that particular situation. So the shortcut really is, can you swing out at the ball and swing freely in that situation, knowing that if you give up control, you're going to gain control of your performance? Certainly the other part of the equation is understanding what particular type of fear of failure that's getting in the way, whether it's fear of embarrassment or fear of disappointing someone in your life. And that's certainly a big part of the lack of trust. So you have to approach it from both of those angles, understanding the fear of failure, attacking that head on and being able to go out there and swing freely and continue to trust in the strokes that you use every day in practice. Hey, if you didn't know, we do personal coaching one on one coaching with juniors, college players professionals. If you need help learning how to play as well in matches as you do in practice, please contact us at 888-742-7225 or visit our website at peaksports.com or sportspsychologytennis.com thanks for listening to the.

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