What to do if You Take Mental Naps During Matches

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Do you find yourself taking mental naps during your match and losing focus and thus losing points? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohen, a mental performance coach at Peak Performance Sports Today. I'm going to help a tennis player that tends to check out from time to time and she doesn't really know why. You're listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast.

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Here's a question I received from an I recently noticed that sometimes I take micro naps to during points, especially when I hit the ball. Well, I reward myself with resting rather than aggressively preparing for the next shot. My guess is that because my conditioning isn't that good, so my body is constantly asking for a rest, this seems to happen at a subconscious level, leading to frustration. When my on court reactions are inexplicably delayed. How can I stay more focused on the court? On Great question. I doubt it has anything to do with your fitness level because your mental energy and your fitness level aren't necessarily connected. Now, higher intensity equals higher focus, but I assume you have the intensity that you need. If you love the game and you care about your game and you want to succeed in the match, then I would assume the intensity is there. Well, why are you taking micro naps? I don't think you're doing this on purpose. And once again, I don't think that you're doing it because you're saving energy. Mental energy is different than the physical energy. Now certainly at the end of a match where you get physically tired and you're mentally drained, that can feel like, well, that's more of a mental and a physical thing. And yes, those will happen. If you play a two, three hour match, then you can get drained physically and that can affect your mindset as well. But in this case, micro naps means basically you're getting distracted. Now you tag that with the notion that when I hit the ball, I go on these micro naps. So I'm thinking maybe you get complacent. You think that your skills are way better than your opponent, and then you can just rest because you can just ramp it up at any time and hit a winner or win the point. So that may be what's going on Is you just simply getting complacent, not feeling challenged enough in the match to focus your bet. But I'm going to assume that you simply get distracted from time to time and go through the motion. So how do you deal with that and how do you stay more focused throughout the map? Well, keep in mind, how long does the point last? What, 12 seconds? 15 seconds for a long point, 20 seconds for a crazy long point? I mean, the average point is less than 10 seconds. I think you can stay focused for 10 seconds at a time. We can agree to that. Then you have to think about your pre service routine or pre return of service routine. You have another maybe 10, 12, 15 seconds there. So all combined it's 20 seconds that you need to bear down and you need to focus. So the key when it comes to focusing is making sure that you have a specific routine when you're on the service line and when you have return of service. Those are two different routines for me and I approach those separately. But the key for you to get locked in is to separate that last point. It's gone, it's in the past, you can't get it back. And, and then get your mind 100% focused in the next point. And it starts with your tactics, your game plan and what you're going to do with your serve. So quickly review the tactics that's working for you, stick to those. If you need to change something up and problem solve, think about changing up and problem solving. But the key is you need to start with a plan. That's the first step to good focus. If you just step up there, go through the motion, I'm going to bounce the ball and go ahead and hit the serve. Then you're not focused, you're going through the motion. Have a plan of what type of serve you're going to hit. What's the location of the serve? Visual. Visualize the plan, see it clearly or feel it clearly. Step up there and bounce the ball. With that plan in mind, stay focused on what you want to do, either seeing the trajectory of the serve or the type of serve. And then go ahead and stay focused on the target when it comes time or the trajectory of the serve when it comes time to stroke. So that's the key to good focusing point by point. That 20 second routine with including the point, I'm sure you can stay focused for 20 seconds. The key is to click it back in. Don't get complacent after a good shot. As far as the return of serve, it's the same thing. Think about pre play those options in your mind. If it comes out wide, where am I going with it? If it's down the middle or down the tee, where am I going with it? If it's into the body, how am I going to play it? Quickly plan those serves and the location and then visualize those really quickly. 1, 2, 3 and then be in position to see the ball clearly and go ahead and react to the serve. You don't have a lot of time, especially in a first serve, to think about it, so you really need to pre play those in your mind so you're in a position to react. But it all starts with your planning for the point and you're planning for the return or the service. If you're just going through the motions, then you're going to be napping, as you say. All right, thanks for your question. If you want more information about mental training mental coaching for tennis players, jump over to peaksports.com and check out our coaching programs for tennis players. And if you want more free resources, jump over to Sports Psychology Tennis, where we have articles, podcasts and more videos over there for you as well. All right, thanks for listening.

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