How to Manage Stress or Anxiety When Playing Tennis

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.

Do you get really bad anxiety and feel stress when you play competitive tennis and you're thinking about quitting because of it? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Hohn, mental performance coach at Peak Performance Sports. In this video, I'm going to help a young tennis player that's wondering whether she should switch sports due to feeling too much anxiety and stress in tennis. You're listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast.

Want to quickly improve your mental game for tennis? Visit www.SportsPsychologyTennis.com today and download a free ebook titled Six Unforced Mental Errors Tennis Players make Between Points.

Here's the question I received from Jenny. I get really bad anxiety and stress playing tennis. I do enjoy playing it and practicing it, but I don't enjoy the competitive side because all the stress it gives me. Instead of doing tennis, I was maybe deciding on doing track instead. I'm pretty good at that too and not scared. It's fun and I enjoy it. I'm just scared that I might regret doing track in the future and not tennis. I would just really like some advice. Jenny, thanks for your question. I have a lot to say on this. I'll try to keep it brief, but number one is sometimes when you have pre match jitters, it feels like anxiety. So I'd like to know is this stress and anxiety, is this just pre match or is it actually on court when you're playing your third, fourth, fifth game? Pre match jitters will go away after the first couple points of the first game. Performance anxiety, which you mentioned, anxiety and stress won't go away. You'll feel anxious, you'll tight stroke it out there. You'll play very safe and tentative tennis if that's the case. So you have to determine this stress and anxiety. Is it real stress and anxiety or am I just feeling the butterflies and my heart rates pounding before I go out on the court? And you're interpreting that as stress. That's the first thing I want you to consider about next. This is where we come in with athletes. We feel like it's not a great reason to question quit playing a sport because of performance anxiety. Well, why? Because you can get better with that. You can improve your ability to manage the stress and manage the anxiety and guess what? That's going to relate to life skill. If you can overcome the anxiety and the stress you're feeling if it's real anxiety and stress, as I mentioned at the top of the video, then that's going to help you in life when you have to do interviews or you're in a stressful position at work. I feel like learning skills, mental skills in tennis is going to help you be more focused, confident when you go in life skills, basically. So there's a big advantage to being able to tackle this in tennis because if it's happening in tennis, it might happen in other performance situations. Now, I know it doesn't happen for you in track. You feel like you can enjoy track. My question is, what's the underlying fear for you when it comes to tennis? Often it's about fear of failure, which means you're afraid to fail. You're afraid to embarrass yourself, yourself. You are afraid to let down a coach or you might be afraid of letting down your parent. We find that the number one reason why athletes get anxious, tense or worried is they're worried about the outcome of that match and what it means to them. So you have to address and assess what's ultimately going on there that doesn't allow you to enjoy tennis. Obviously, there's some pressure that you're feeling to perform well in tennis. Maybe you've invested more time, your parents have invested more money, maybe they're being more serious about your tennis. You need to look at all of that, of where your interpretation of the pressure is and how that's creating the stress. My recommendation, if you can stick with both, if you can stay with tennis, get help on the mental game of tennis and use track as your so called fun sport. I think that's going to benefit you in the future by being able to tackle the anxiety and the stress you're feeling in tennis. And that will help you later in your life, no doubt. All right, if you want more information on mental training or mental coaching, jump over to peaksports.com and check out our Mental Training for Tennis programs. In addition, if you want some free resources, jump over to Sports Psychology Tennis. There you can download a free report and also read our articles, watch more videos, and certainly listen to podcasts there as well. Thanks for listening.

Thank you for listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast with Dr. Patrick Cohn. Discover the secrets to superior tennis confidence by visiting www.SportsPsychologyTennis. com for practical mental game strategies to improve your tennis game.