How to Perform Well Under Pressure During Matches

Welcome to the Tennis Psychology Podcast with your host, Dr. Patrick Cohn. Dr. Cohn is a Mental Game of Tennis expert. Do you want to improve your mental toughness for tennis? Then join us on the Tennis Psychology Podcast sessions with Doc.

Does the pressure of playing a match cause you to make many more mistakes than you normally would in a practice situation? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn, and this is session number 79 of the tennis Psychology Podcast. In today's session, I answer a question from a player about how pressure is affecting her game and how to play well under pressure. Here's her question.

Whenever I'm under pressure, my game fails. I can't seem to do anything right and everyone seems to be focused on my mistakes. How do I get rid of the pressure and make sure that my game's always at top form? Improve your mental game quickly by visiting sportspsychologytennis.com today and claim a free tennis psychology report titled Six Unforced Mental Game Errors Tennis Players Make Between Points.

Well, some people, like Billie Jean King, would say that pressure is a privilege and that you want pressure to be able to challenge yourself and your game and to be able to come through. And so pressure isn't all that bad. I don't want you to look at it completely as bad because pressure can help you prepare, it can help you practice more, it can help you elevate your focus at times. At least the top athletes in the world, when they have that pressure to try and win a major, for example, they thrive under that pressure. They use it as a way to help them. The first tip I want to discuss is that you have to understand that pressure comes from within and not necessarily from the specific match or situation that you find yourself in most of the time. Pressure is a reaction to can I cope with this situation where you feel like you don't have the coping resources or the confidence or the skills to deal with a particular situation. Now, with that said, you have to look at the specific type of pressure that you're putting on yourself. Based upon your question, you said that everyone is looking at you after you make the mistakes, and that's uncomfortable for you. And so to me, the pressure that you're putting on yourself has to do with this concept of social approval, which I've talked about in previous podcasts. In other words, there's two different types of social approval. One is you want to avoid embarrassment, avoid pain, avoid losing friends, etc. Or the other type is you're trying to gain respect, you're trying to show others that that you're a good player, you're trying to get approval from others. So they're the same thing, just two different sides of the same coin. One is about avoiding something like embarrassment, and the other one is trying to gain approval. In either case, those do form the basis for what I call fear of failure. It's a form of fear of failure because you're so concerned about what others are going to think or what others are going to say and if you mess up the match. So with that knowledge now, you can start to address the pressure that you're putting on yourself. The bottom line is I don't want to fail because then others are going to look down upon me, aren't going to respect me. I don't want to embarrass myself. Now, I'm just guessing in your case, but it sounded like that from your particular question. What? Once you identify the specific fear or the pressure in this case that you're putting on yourself, not embarrassing yourself, then you can deal with that head on. My recommendation is you have to stop focusing so much on what other people think, what I call mind reading into what other people think, and instead focus on your goals and what you you want to accomplish in tennis rather than playing for the support of others or not embarrassing yourself. Thanks for the question and good luck with your game.

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