How to Stop Over Analyzing Your Tennis Strokes

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Are you overanalyzing your strokes on the tennis court during the match and it caused you to be inconsistent? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn, and in this episode, I'm going to help a tennis player who analyzes his strokes when he starts missing shots on the court, and that just leads to inconsistent play. You're listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast.

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Here's the question I received from Ethan. Ethan said, how do I stop over analyzing my strokes when I begin to miss shots early in the match? I focus too much on fixing what's wrong and then I'm overthinking my strokes. This causes me to be more inconsistent when trying to make adjustments during the match. Ethan, great question. You don't really want to be analyzing, fixing, tweaking during match time. Well, what do I mean by that? Many athletes take their training mindset out with them when they're playing matches. What you really want to do is separate the training mindset from the playing mindset. And so if you're analyzing what's wrong with your stroke, oh, I'm not creating enough topspin on it, or I'm too close to the ball, or I'm too far away from the ball, or I need to bring the racket back here to hit better shots. If you're doing that, you're back in a training mindset. Okay, so here's my philosophy. My philosophy about the mental game is that when you arrive to the match court, your strokes are what they are. Doesn't mean they're perfect. Doesn't mean they're an 8 out of 10 or a 7 out of 10. Whatever it may be. They are what they are. So there's no sense really focusing on fixing your strokes out there because you really can. They are what they are. If you're in fixing mode and overanalyzing, then you're going to create inconsistent shots. One shot is going to be short, one shot is going to be long, one shot is going to be wide, one shot's going to be in. Why? Because you're thinking too much about the technique, about the mechanics, and therefore it leads to steering and guiding your strokes instead of just swinging out on the ball and swinging freely with the ball. So my recommendation is instead of trying to fix, tweak, adjust your strokes out there. Number one, don't analyze what just happened. Don't think back and say, what's wrong with my stroke? Because there's nothing wrong with your stroke. You just need to go back to the drawing board in your practice. Number two, instead of analyzing your strokes, I just want you to move on and say, okay, bad shot, let's just move on and it'll be good. Continue to trust your strokes going forward. That's all you can do. Now here's an advanced tip. Number three. One thing that you can do is if you hit a ball in the net and you start thinking about, well, why to hit it in the net, stop on your next point. Think about more margin over the net. Try to see a higher trajectory shot over the net and where you want the ball to land. In other words, give yourself a better picture of the shot and then just react to the picture that you have in your mind. That's an easy adjustment. Now there's some things that you can focus on that are helpful out there. Getting the ball early, setting up early, taking the ball early, swinging freely, swinging fully, seeing yourself, creating topspin on the ball, hitting the ball deep with topspin. But try not to get super specific with analyzing and judging your strokes and then trying to make adjustments in the middle of the match because that just will lead to that inconsistent play, as you've noticed. So go back to trust. Go back to seeing the shot you want and parking that, thinking about what's wrong with your stroke. You can analyze it after the match and then you can go back to the drawing board in your next lesson or in your next practice. Hope that helps. If you want more information to improve your mental game, jump over to sportspsychologytennis.com where you can watch videos, listen to podcasts, read our articles. You can also go to peaksports.com and learn more about our one on one mental training programs there by clicking on Coaching. In addition, if you have a question you'd like to submit for a future audio or podcast, please send it along by clicking on contact us. All right, thanks for the question and good luck.

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