Maintaining Confidence After Mistakes or Missed Shots

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.

Do you lose confidence easily during a match when you miss a simple overhead or a routine volleyball? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn and this is session number 76 of the tennis Psychology Podcast. Today I answer a question from a player who loses confidence quickly when not performing to her expectations or missing easy shots. Here's the question.

During a match, what is the best way to keep your confidence up? I often miss easy overheads or volleys because I have too much time to think about them. 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.

Okay, there's really two questions embedded in here or implicit in your statement. You're saying that you lose confidence easily after missing routine shots or shots that you think you should make on a regular basis. But at the same time you're saying you're overthinking your shots and not allowing your natural ability or talent to come out. So let's address that first, because that's what's leading to missing routine shots. And yes, you're correct. When you have too much time to think about a routine volley, for example, it's easy to overthink it. And you can overthink it in many ways. You can overthink your tactics. What am I going to do with this volley? I'm going to go down the line, cross court. I'm going to try to put this away deep, whatever. Or you can also overthink it in terms of your technique and your strategy. Okay, plant my foot. Plant. Get moving forward, get the racket up, point at the target. You can start overthinking all the technical aspects that you need to do with it. Finally, you could overthink it from a results point of view and worrying about results and hitting the shot out, missing your volley, hitting it off the frame, hitting into the net, all these negative results that can pop into your head. In any case, there you're thinking too much and not allowing yourself to just react. My suggestion for you is to simplify your approach in this situation and only think about a target that you want to hit the ball to allow your stroke, the volley to come natural in that situation where you're only thinking about the open court and a spot in the open court that you're going to hit it to and and then obviously you have to trust it from that point on. The other part of your question really relates to how do you keep your confidence when you're missing those easy or those routine shots that you feel like you're expected to make most of the time? Well, first of all, don't have expectations that you have to make every shot all the time. That's the first thing I want you to understand. Secondly, because you missed an easier or routine shot doesn't mean it has to affect your confidence. What affects your confidence is what you say to yourself after missing that shot. For example, the doubt or the questioning might start coming into play here. Why did I miss that easy volley? Why did I hit that volley into the net? That was an easy volley. I'm supposed to make those volleys. So it's that negative script in your head we call self doubt, the that eventually erodes your confidence. What you need to do in that situation is shore up your confidence. I am a good volleyer. I missed one. It is. Okay, let's get to the next shot. As simple as that. You have to battle your own inner demons, in essence the doubt and the questioning and get back to having what I call positive or self confidence enhancing statements with yourself. You have to blow off that mistake as it's part of tennis stuff happens. Let's get to the next shot. Thanks for the question and good luck with your game.

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