How Expectations Can Lead to Pressure for Junior Players

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Welcome to session number 73. I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn, and in today's session I address a very common challenge for junior tennis players, and that is the pressure that players feel when they're expected to win a match or beat a particular opponent who might not be as good.

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This is a very common problem with junior tennis and juniors that pay attention to the seedings in the tournaments and pay attention to the rankings, etc. There's like a pecking order that's created in junior tennis and some players you think you should beat, whereas other players maybe you think you can't beat based upon this seeding or ranking. The problem starts with the expectation that you have to win or you have to beat this player that you're supposed to beat, right? And those expectations can come from two places. The expectations can come from yourself saying, I beat this player before, or I'm ranked higher than this player, or I'm seated higher than this player, or they can come from other people, like a parent or a coach or someone that you train with thinking that, yeah, you're going to win this, you're a better player than them. And so that creates additional pressure on you when you think others expect you to win the match because you're the better player. Well, you know, I don't know if it really holds in junior tennis because I see juniors that get better. I see juniors that don't get better. So things change a lot in tennis where, you know, one month you're better than the other player, one month maybe you're not playing better than the other player. The next year you're a better player. The next year there's someone else that you've beaten before that's a better player. So you really can't make those type of assumptions. First of all, and my main point here is to not have any expectations about how you're supposed to play the match and who's supposed to win. What do we call that? Focusing too much on the outcome or result? Oriented thinking, which it doesn't work. So Your question was, how do you get refocused? Well, you can't be concerned about who's winning the match. You have to play each point one at a time, not making any judgments, not having any expectations about who's supposed to win the match. Right. You're not into the process, you're not into a point by point mentality if you're thinking that way. So if your mind races ahead to think about, oh, what if I lose this match? You got to stop yourself and you have to refocus on the next point and only think about playing the next point to, to the best of your ability. So it really is set up, the mindset is really set up prior to the match by not worrying about who's supposed to win. And then once you're in the match, if you start to focus on that, I'm expected to win this match and I'm down right now, you have to stop that type of thinking. It's not going to do you any good. And then refocus back on the current point that you're playing and try to do your best. You each and every point and what you're capable of. Don't change your plan for the match just because you're supposed to beat this player. Go out, play your style of tennis, play aggressive tennis, try to control the points like you normally do, and play with confidence. Thanks for the question and good luck with your game.

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