Tennis Players Who Get Frustrated

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Do you want to learn how to enjoy your tennis more and be less frustrated on the court? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn. Today I'm going to talk about how to manage your emotions and specifically frustration so you can have more fun on the court. You're listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast.

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Here's the question I received from John. John said, I would like to enjoy my tennis more and and stop the anger that overtakes me during USTA matches because of my lack of performance. I practice well, but I can't seem to carry it out to matches which frustrates me and makes me angry. It's the stupid or the weak shots I make or miss that trigger my anger. In short, I am my own worst enemy on the court. John, thanks for your question. Yes, this is a very common issue that we deal with with juniors and adult athletes alike. They tend to get frustrated with their performance and then it's no fun out there. The challenge with getting frustrated is that you start to rush your performance and you leave out critical decision making skills. I know when I watched my daughter compete in the juniors when she was playing here in the state of Florida, I know she would get frustrated very easily and very quickly. And what she would do is she would just start rushing the shots and the point and she would hit out, trying to hit the ball harder and harder past the opponent. Especially if she was playing a pusher, eventually she'd be so frustrated she's just swinging for the moon. And obviously the ball is going to sail on you. So you have to recognize the signs of frustration. When you get upset out there, what happens to your thinking and what happens to your performance? Often you're going to, like I said, you're going to rush your routine, your service routine. You're going to rush the points. You're going to try to hit that winner too early, for example. And none of that is going to be helpful for your game because you're not sticking to your tactics and your game plan. In addition, mentally when you're frustrated, you're dwelling. You're dwelling on the past shot, you're dwelling on the past point. Whatever it is that double fault or missing having an unforced error to in the point and then you're going after you have that unforced error. Now you're in a mode of just thinking about it over and over again. I call that the split focus. If you're focused on the past point, you're focused on the past game, whatever it may be. Now you're trying to think about what you did wrong, and then you're trying to play the next point. It just doesn't work. You can't have a split focus out there when you're trying to play tennis. It has to be 100% focus on that current point. All right, so how do you specifically let go of those bad shots and not become so frustrated? Number one, it starts with your expectations. You probably have very high expectations about taking out your best practice game to competition with you, and that's somewhat unrealistic. You'd like to think you can be a gamer and take out your best game every day, but. But that's just not the way the human body is set up. Some days you're not going to perform at that peak. So those expectations about hitting every ball clean, hitting every ball deep, hitting every ball with pace probably isn't helping you. So let's start there. You have to throw that away, that every shot is not going to be perfect or clean for you. Next, my recommendation is what are the top five triggers that set you off? Remember, making an unforced error is just a fact. It's a trigger. It doesn't have emotion. You put the emotion into that trigger. So what are your push buttons? What are your triggers? Unforced errors, double faulting, missing into the net, missing an easy volley, for example. It could be anything. Maybe a trigger could be your opponent cheating, for example, or your opponent yelling. Whatever it may be, it's different for different people. Write your top five triggers down. Let's talk about, first of all, the unforced error. You had a clean ball sitting in the middle of court. You had a sitter, you tried to put it away and you missed. Why? Right. So what's the thought process that you go through when you're trying to evaluate that miss that leads to the frustration? Remember, misses are not frustrating in and of themselves. You make it so. Well, how do you make it so? I should never miss an easy short ball in the middle of the court for a winner. That's an example of the expectation that's getting in the way, and that's what ultimately caused you to get frustrated. So what's a better reaction or what's a better response that's going to allow you to play on? Let go of that. It may be I'm not perfect. Even the pros miss easy shots. I'm not a professional. It's okay. Move on to the next point. That's the critical point. If you can move on without dwelling and you let it go. Easier said than done, certainly, then you're in a better position to keep playing aggressively and have more fun. Because I understand what when you're frustrated half the match, it's really, really hard to have fun in tennis. So I hope that helps. If you want more information about our one on one mental coaching programs, jump over to peaksports.com and click on Contact Us or click on our mental coaching programs there. Also, we have a new program out. It's called the audio and workbook program Tennis Confidence 2.0, which you can also check out there as well. And and don't forget to check out sportspsychologytennis.com and you can read articles, listen to podcasts, and watch videos there as well. If you have a question for the podcast, please contact us and send me a question and I'll include it in a podcast. All right, thanks for your question and good luck.

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