How to Let go of Misses in Tennis

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How do you let go of being frustrated with missing hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cone. In this episode, I'm going to talk about how you can let go of bad shots and misses. You're listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast.

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Here's the question I received from Tammy. Tammy said, how do I let go of feeling so frustrated with missing shots? I'm a 3.5 player and I love the game. When others miss shots or hit unforced errors, I'm super encouraging and positive, but when I do it myself, I'm so hard on myself, which affects my performance on the court. Tammy, good question. And I received this a lot through the podcast episodes and also through the questions I receive@peaksports.com it's always, always about being more composed on the tennis court and not being so frustrated and upset. Let me begin with some background about this particular question. Often you're frustrated for a reason. You're being blocked from reaching an expectation or you're being blocked from reaching a goal that you have for yourself out on the tennis court. Often it's frustration based on high expectations and what you expect of yourself. In other words, when you miss a shot, what do you say to yourself? That's unacceptable. Should never miss a routine ball. Or I shouldn't miss that many shots in the match. So there's certain mental gymnastics that you're going through. My theory is the miss is just a trigger. It has no emotion. It's just a fact. When you put the emotion into it by your belief system, by your expectations, that's when it becomes frustrating. And this comes right out of the book of a famous psychologist named Ellis who talked about being able to manage your reactions to things that happen to you. And it certainly applies in tennis. So if you dump a ball into the net and it was a routine ball, you might be thinking to yourself, well, I should never miss a routine ball or that's awful, or I demand better of myself. That's ultimately going to lead to you feeling frustrated. Okay, so then what's the solution for you to be more composed out there? For me, there's two parts. Number one is you got to interject a little reality into the situation. In other words, is it so awful that you missed one shot? No, it's not. But you make it awful. It's just a fact that you dumped one into the net. It doesn't have emotion, as I said earlier, until you put the emotion into it. So the solution for me is to develop a different way of reacting to that miss that's going to help you play on and get unstuck. Remember, frustration is a response to not reaching an expectation, a standard, or certain rules that you have for yourself when you're out there playing. So the next step is to think about how can I think about that miss in a different way? That's going to allow me to have more composure. And it goes something like this. It's just one shot. I'm not perfect. I can still win the game. Let's move on. So it's a little bit about rationalizing with yourself why it's okay. You have to accept it in that moment to be able to move on and not be frustrated. But then there's another statement I like to use with my personal coaching students and I call that a move on statement. I can't get it back. It's in the past. Move on. That's water under the bridge as we say move on to the next point. I can't change what just happened. It's time to move on and focus 100% on the next point. So if you can rationalize with yourself why it's not so awful, if you can have more acceptance and then create some type of a move on statement, when you step up to the service line or return a service line, you're going to be way more focused on the next point and you're not carrying those negative emotions with you. Finally, I'll leave you with one other thought. Give yourself two or three misses per set. For some of you, it may be per game, but hopefully it's per set. Well, why? Because you're already accepting that I'm going to miss shots and it's okay. So having that mental preparation and having that notion of acceptance going into the match can help you move on quicker. Hope that helps. If you want help with your mental game, jump over to sportspsychologytennis.com where you can read articles, watch videos, and also subscribe to our podcast. You can subscribe to the Tennis Psychology Podcast at itunes or at Spotify as well. In addition, you can contact us about one on one Mental Game Coaching thanks.

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