Taking Your Practice Game to Tennis 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.

Hi. Are you a young tennis player that tends to perform really well in practice, but then feels a little bit more controlled and tight in matches? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn. In this video, I'm going to talk about what causes tennis players to not take their full game that they're capable of to a match situation and what you can do about it.

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.

Here's what Arie had to say about his tennis game. I'm a competitive junior tennis player. Recently I've been having a lot of trouble bringing what I practice to tournaments. I'm playing a lot of tennis in my improvement shows in practice matches. Do you have any strategies that will help me perform more freely in tournaments? Aries A great question, and you hit the nail on the head is you're not performing relaxed and freely in your tournaments. So first step is to find out what's changing when you go from a practice match to a tournament match. Obviously, there's more importance on a tournament match for you. There's things at stake, maybe points or ranking or something that's really important to you, or maybe just pride. So just the fact that it's a more important situation for you can obviously heighten your emotions and your competitive drive. Often though, what I find when tennis players go from practice to competition is if you're not playing freely, that means you're playing tight and controlled. Often it's about fear of failure. And that fear of failure comes back to you as, oh, don't hit out on the ball, don't hit my full speed swing. Just, you know, dink it over there or push it over there or be really careful. Don't make mistakes. So often when you go into that tournament match, that's more important and you're not playing freely, it's because you're controlling your strokes. Now that leads to what I call lack of trust, your inability to swing out on the ball or swing freely and hit the same shot you're capable of in practice or in a practice set, for example. So step one, find out what's the source of the fear of failure. Are you afraid of embarrassing yourself? Are you afraid of losing for any reason like disappointing a parent? Are you afraid of disappointing a coach? You feel like you're working so hard and you want it to pay off in the tournaments. So find out what the source of fear of failure is and address that and attack that head on. Often I do that with many of my individual students that come to me. I'm an expert at finding out what's the underlying source of fear of failure. You have to address that because that's what's causing the lack of trust. Now once you get the fear of failure out of the way with and you figure that piece out, then it's a matter of understanding how to swing out on the ball. That means keeping your strokes simple, being aggressive, not caring about the outcome, or caring about missing or unforced errors, and just letting that racket go really, really important if you want to perform at your peak in tennis. Thanks for the question. Good luck with your game. If you want more tips, you want to listen to podcasts, see some more videos, check out sportspsychologytennis.com which is devoted to serious, competitive junior to professional tennis players. Thanks.

Thanks for listening to the Tennis psychology podcast with Dr. Patrick Cohn. Discover the secrets to superior tennis confidence. Visit www.sportspsychologytennis.com for practical mental strategies to improve your mental game of tennis.