Olga Kalodzitsa on Pressures in Junior Tennis

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Hi. This is Dr. Patrick Cohn for the Tennis Psychology Podcast. Today I have a special guest. Her name is Olga Calduzza. Did I pronounce that right? Olga?

Yes. Hi. Hi.

Hi. How are you?

I'm great, thank you.

Olga was a junior, accomplished junior tennis player herself in Belarus in 2008. She was a national champion, and she also played for Armstrong tennis team in 2011, 2014. They were national champions in 2012 and 2013, and she did a short stage in on the WTA Tour as well. Today she's coaching tennis privately in Miami and she's a certified USPTA professional. So thanks for joining me today.

Great. Great Talking to you, Dr. Fatima.

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I wanted to talk to you because you have a lot of experience as a player and now as a teacher as well. And I know you're also interested in the mental game of tennis as well. Talk to me a little bit about when you were playing as a junior. Did you do mental training? Was there Sports Psychology to 2008, 2009? Was that a thing then?

Yes, it was a thing first. I think I was introduced to mental training kind of officially. It was when I was traveling to tennis academy in actually in Florida in Boca Raton. I used to practice here when I was 15 and a half, 16 years old. And for two months we were training at academy at that time, the guy who used to coach Andy Roddick, but the academy has moved to California, I think, right now. And yes, we used to do visualization and mental training. There were specific slides we were going through. We were going through the visualization, I think almost every other day for 30 minutes. We were visualizing our matches, how we were playing from the start to the end. Were we winning or losing? We had to imagine every single possible detail we could in order to like. Yeah. And then we. And then we were talking to the coaches about it.

Was that helpful for you?

Very much helpful, yes.

Okay. Do you do anything on the mental side today with the juniors that you.

Yes, I'm trying to, but it's actually not that easy. You know, everyone is busy, everyone is trying to find an excuse. But yes, I do. I do also I introduce to my students the visualization techniques, imagery. We're trying to have a journal, discuss the matches and what went wrong, what went good, and to kind of acknowledge it so in the next matches they can bring better results.

Do you find that it's. It's kind of a last resort for players today. In other words, they're going to do the physical training, they're going to do the agility training, they're going to work on their nutrition, they're going to do all the stuff that's more tangible today, but then they're only going to pay attention to the mental game when there's a problem. What I mean by that is when they go into a slump, for example, or they lose confidence or after an injury and they're having trouble mentally after an injury, do you find that so. Or do you find that there's really more acceptance that players acknowledge that it should be part of their regular training program today?

Yeah, I think it's slowly getting there. But still people spend more time on a tennis court, less on the physical and then you even less on a mental training. And I think it should actually have a similar amount of time you have to spend on everything in order to improve, you know, you becoming a better player. The more hours you put in in the beginning, the same. You have to learn how to visualize, you have to learn how to deal with your nerves on the court. I think it has to. We have tennis players right now and juniors have to spend much more time on mental training.

I think it is more accepted today.

Yeah, I think, definitely, I think it's more accepted, but I think like with my student, it's just slowly getting to that point. Slowly, unfortunately.

But we find that players tend to. They tend to wait until something goes wrong before.

Correct. Yes.

Adopt the mental training rather than, oh, well, this needs to be a regular part of your training.

Yes, exactly. It has to be.

What do you say are the biggest challenges in the juniors that you work with from the mental side, what are the biggest things they talk about or that they struggle with?

I think it's the. I think it's fears. Fears and fears of disappointment, of disappointment of their parents and judgment. Again, because parents put much, a lot of effort, a lot of money nowadays into the tennis or kids when they're playing, they feel that pressure. They feel the pressure, the parents talking to them sometimes negatively. And that also puts a lot of pressure on them. They expect to win and they don't want to lose. And you know, it becomes so obsessive that they lose what's important. That's to be there in the moment and play and enjoy. What else? I think it's just the fear of losing. The fear of being embarrassed in front of the parent, in front of the coach.

Yeah, it's huge. I mean, I talk about that all the time. Olga. We call it social approval. I call it, I have a word for it I've coined. It's called the payback syndrome. So the expectations the kids feel, is it because they're trying to satisfy the parents or make the parents and the coach happy, or is it more about they realize the investment. They understand that the parents are a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of equipment. They spend a lot of money on the equipment. So do you feel like it's more about that because parents are investing so much in their kids that they feel that they have to pay them back in some way, or is it more just about making the parents happy? What do you find there?

Well, I think it's both, but I think the first is prevail. Pleasing the parent. Pleasing. And I think it's also part of they want to, you know, they put so much effort and time and work in and they kind of put impression themselves like why I'm not performing well, why am I not getting the results even though I spent so much time on the court. Or, you know, they don't get why they're still losing. And plus, and plus the pleasing the parent and pleasing the coach.

Well, tennis would be easy if it's just about the amount of time you're spending on the court. Right. Then it would be easy. But it's not that easy. Right. So yeah, I find that kids feel a lot of pressure to pay back their parents for all the support that they put into the game, all the time they spend and in addition, they just want to make parents happy. I think there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but I think it becomes a source of pressure for them when they get in the match and they're concerned about that outcome. They're concerned about the car ride home, they're concerned about how the parents are going to react to them. Do you have any stories there in terms of some bizarre post match antics that you've seen from parents?

Well, yes, mostly when I was in Belarus and Eastern Europe, parents a little bit tougher than, let's say here in Eastern Europe, parents are really putting a lot of pressure. I think it's like lack of money and they give everything to their children. They try and, you know, so It's. It's even more pressure on the kids. So parents, if something goes wrong, they really go bizarre. They really yelling. They start screaming. Even. We had cases on my, on my Tour, on ITF Tour where the parents, I'm not gonna name it. Players are still playing on the tour right now. They were beating up like they were beaten up by their parents just because it's. They were going crazy that the kid didn't perform. They didn't. Didn't go to their. Didn't play to their expectations. It was a lot on the Tour at that time on it of parents were. And also parents. Two parents. They were going crazy between each other. They were competing with each other. I feel like parents were competing with each other. Not kids. I mean, kids obviously too. But it was going. We had a lot of crazy stories on ITF Tour. Yeah, yeah.

And here it's called bullying, right here it's called bullying. You can't look at your kids. You can't. You can't.

That's right. You have all sorts of rules, which I kind of. I didn't know they will exist once I started to coach and go to the tournaments with my players. You can't say here, I mean, whether, you know, on the tour in it, if you still somehow either make an eye contact with the player or you might say something like, come on. Or you can cheer your, Cheer your player up with a. Here everything is kind of prohibited and you know, like the referees and everyone is watching for that. And parents can complain. That's true.

So then can we say that your parents were tough on you coming up as well?

I would say my parents were disciplined with me. I'm coming from the sports background, family. My dad is a cyclist. He's still competing now, but among his age, he's doing masters cycling tournaments. And so, yeah, my dad gave me good discipline. So he told me he would not put pressure on me. But he would say, if you want to achieve results, you would be up at 6am and running. He would say comments like that. Meaning, like, he would make me feel that I need to do something in order to achieve success, but he would not put pressure on me. Like, he would not yell at me, but, you know, he would just teach me how to be disciplined in order to achieve results, how to have a goal and every day try to try to accomplish it. You know, you have to take little step before you can achieve big goal. So that's what he taught me. He. I wouldn't say he put pressure on me, but he definitely gave me Discipline. He was tough on. I remember I won the first tournament. And he's like, okay, that's a good tournament, but it's not national championship yet. And I was like, oh no, this is national champions. But it was only a state. But on the diploma it used to say it's like I won like a national tournament. He's like, no, this is not the national championship yet. When you're gonna perform there, then we're gonna talk about it. But he didn't, he didn't say anything bad about it, but he kind of made me more motivated to get to the national championship level and be a prize winner, you know.

Great. So, so then when you come over to the US and you're, and you're over here and you're playing and now you're teaching. So do you give advice to the parents of the kids that you coach? And if you do, what do you tell them? Are you more on the discipline side then the disciplinary side or are you more, more on trying to help take off the pressure that the kids feel due to those expectations from the parents?

Well, I definitely try to give advice to take off the. Take, take, take the pressure off the kids, you know, and it's, it's a lot of pressure on them already with all these private schools, with the, with the, they trying either to go professionally or to get into college. It's a lot of pressure. They not only have to take to work physically hard, but they have to work in school hard. And it's very hard to combine. It's not enough time. It's pressure from different sides from this and that, from parents to get into college or to get on the tour. It's a lot of pressure. And you have to combine this with school. So at least what parents can do, it's like they have to, I think they have to talk sometimes and discuss what the goals are, are. And you know, they have to leave them alone to work to achieve that goal. Not to put every single day pressure or you have to, you haven't done this, you haven't done this. You know, I think if the kids wants, he would do it by himself, by herself, you know, So I think they should kind of motivate them to be on their own, you know, to get into that conclusion by themselves instead of, instead of giving them advice. So it's kind of like they have to help them to realize that it's their own work, you know, that can get them to the results.

Right. They have to be self motivated. They have to want to do it for themselves.

Correct, correct. But I think it has to be some guidance from the parents as well. You know, if the parent don't care, the kid can sense it as well. You know, the parents should, should care and they should acknowledge their kids results and you know, and they have to give them appraisals because the kids need it as well. Because if the parents doesn't show any involvement, it's not good either, you know.

So I want to talk about another phenomenon that I see quite a bit in tennis and that is players, you know, before they go and they play a tournament, they always look at the history of the player they're playing, the utr, the ranking, the seeding and they tend to get psyched out. I think that creates expectations about oh well, I'm going to lose big or I'm going to win big or this is going to be a tight match. Do you see that in your work with some of the juniors that they pay too much attention to the other players ranking and seeding?

Plenty. I have this, I'm struggling with this all the time. Yes, they always look it up. They see what their utr, oh, this is that one. Or either they're, they have low expectations going in or high expectation, you know, it's either way it's bad. You know, sometimes they come unprepared, sometimes they come scared. And what I give, I give an advice not to look it up. Not to look it up any, any ranking, any. I basically try, I'm telling them if you're familiar with the name, look it up in your notes if you ever played them and make a plan out of it if you haven't played. What do you want to achieve out of this match? But without knowing who they have beaten before because it's a, you know tennis, it's especially women's tennis, it's really unexpected. Sometimes you can beat high ranking player and the next day you can lose with somebody who is much worse than you. So you can't base your expectations on how somebody played like a month ago. So yeah, I usually give advice not to look at up utr, not to look it up ranking. If you're familiar with the player, if you know they recognize the name. Definitely. If you have it in your notes based on your performance before making notes and have a plan against the player. If not, you know, you just have to perform your best tennis on that particular day.

Yeah, I tell them, you know, what's relevant to that player. The only thing that's relevant is tactics. I think strategy tactics. Your Opponent's weaknesses and that. And that is relevant if you have notes on that or if you've seen that player. But seating, ranking, utr, all that becomes, I think, irrelevant.

Correct.

Yeah. And so I tell players, hey, you have to treat them as rank list, nameless, numberless UTR lists, etc. It's just another player that you have to apply your tactics that's going to work the best for that player. And I give them the same suggestions. Stop looking up the history and who that player is beaten and what they're ranking and seating and all that stuff. Yes. It's hard for them not to pay attention to it because they all know each other out there.

It's true. It's true. Well, if they know, you know, I think if they ever seen them play, it's nothing wrong with that. So you could, they can, like, have a little plan in their mind what they can do, what their weaknesses of that player or what they don't like to do, what they like to do. But if they, you know, like, if they don't know the player but they know who they played with or, you know, it's hard. It is hard, but I think the player should focus on how they want to play, what they want to achieve out of them, not how the player will be playing, how the other player will be playing, what they want to do, because it's up to them what they're going to do. You know, it's. The other player can interfere with their strategy and. But it's up to them. Like, it's up to them to have their plan against the player, to stick with the plan and not to get distracted by the trophies of that other player they won or who they are. You know, they have to stick with their own plan and what they want to achieve out of that match.

Great. Well, it's been a pleasure to speak with you today. So I've been talking with Olga and you can find her at Instagram, simply at Olga Tennis. Do you have a website today?

No, I'm not. I'm actually very soon, I think by the end of this year. I don't know. Unfortunately for us, we're going to move to Australia to Melbourne with my husband. Yes. And over there, I'm planning to start my own practice. So soon, hopefully it will be a website, but I think it's going to be in a different location.

Well, good luck to you and your teaching.

Thank you so much, Doctor. Thank you so much, Patrick.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

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