How to Stop Pushing and Play Offensive Tennis

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Have you won a lot of matches pushing the ball but now want to transition to playing more offensively? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn, a mental performance coach at Peak Performance Sports. Today I'm going to help a tennis player who wants to transition from being a pusher to playing more assertively or aggressively. You're listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast.

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Here's the question I received from Lucy I've won a lot of matches pushing the ball and driving my opponents insane. Now I finally learned to hit a forehand and have more complete game. But when I compete, I go back to my default mode of pushing. I know I can win pushing, but I can't beat the top players doing that. How do I change my mindset from from defense to offense in matches? Great question, Lucy. I see this a ton in junior tennis. I mean, I've witnessed many matches. My daughter has superior strokes, but then she plays a pusher who get the ball back every single time. Very, very frustrating for the person on the other side of the court. Pushing does win up to a certain point. As you identified, you're not going to be able to beat the best players or better players continuing to push. They're going to figure it out, they're going to come in on you, they're going to take swinging volleys, and eventually you're going to lose those matches to better players. The challenge here for you is you've always been a pusher and you've won doing that. And now you're trying to change your tactics or your game plan. So it's going to start way before you get on the court. Well, what do I mean by that? One of the things you want to do prior to the match is you want to start visualizing or mentally rehearsing how you want to play in that. So instead of hitting moon balls, obviously you're going to see yourself hitting more flat balls down the line cross court. So it's really about seeing yourself the way you want to play on the court. That's going to be the start for you. Even before you step on the court, you're going to have to orient yourself to your game plan and make that an objective for you. Well, what do I mean by that? You can think about. I want to close out the point in as few balls as possible. That gets you into the aggressive mindset. I want to go to the net one out of two points that will cause you or force you to be more aggressive. I want to hit more winners. Make those aggressive objectives part of your match tech. Now, the next part of that is when you do get on court, you default back to the push, probably because you're just comfortable with that. So it's going to take some time for you to get comfortable transitioning from pushing to being more aggressive. The second part that I want you to know is before the point starts, I want you to visualize your game plan and what you want to do to be more aggressive. Do you want to go to the net? Do you want to come in with a swinging volley, for example? You want to think about trying to hit down the line or cross court. You want to think about moving your opponent around. So each and every point you're going to have to remind yourself of what would be the most aggressive way that you can play that point and then go ahead and try and carry that out. Sometimes it's going to feel uncomfortable for you until you're able to execute that with ease because you can win points pushing. But. But if you really want to beat those good players, then you're going to have to think more, prepoint about your specific tech and make those objectives or what we call process goals for yourself. Close out the point quickly, come to the net more often, take more swinging volleys, thinking about going down the line and trying to control the match that way. All right, thanks for your question. Hey, if you want more information about mental coaching or mental training, jump over to peaksports.com and check out our mental training programs for tennis players. We work with juniors age 12, all the way up to professional athletes. In addition, if you want more resources, you can jump over to sportspsychologytennis.com where you can read articles, listen to podcasts, and watch more videos. And there you can download a free report as well. All right, thanks for listening.

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