QUESTIONS ON 'CONFIDENCE'





WHAT IS CONFIDENCE?

Although it is difficult to accurately explain exactly what confidence is, we certainly know when we have it… and we know when we have lost it!

Confidence is not an object or a piece of equipment.  You cannot put Confidence inside a box or hold it in your hand.  Confidence is a state of mind. It’s a condition we ourselves have created inside us.
We can be confident about our strokes, our ability to beat certain players, or our chances of winning on a particular surface. When we play with home town advantage and feel that support for us is greater we tend to do better. That phenomenon is even backed up statistically.

Similarly, we can lack confidence in our strokes, in our ability to beat certain players, our chances of winning on a particular surface, and when we play away from home where the support for us is less we can perform worse.

Confidence is also something many players and coaches strive to develop during practice because having confidence before you go to matches is deemed a good thing, and virtually ensures that you will play to the best of your ability.


WHY DO WE PLAY BETTER WITH CONFIDENCE?

The saying 'We are what we think', and 'Your perception is your reality' go a long way to explain why we play much better when we are confident. With belief, we have an inner confidence that what we attempt to do, will transpire.

Belief comes before Confidence

Our minds can be incredibly strong. If we believe something is true or will happen, there is a high chance that it will. Likewise, if we believe that something will or cannot happen, there’s a high chance it will not happen.

Confidence is a mindset, a belief within us. We can believe we have attained confidence, and we can also believe we have lost it!   

In order to be mentally strong in tennis, your self-belief needs to be rock solid, and, know that faced with problems in a match, you will react positively.  A mind that allows itself to become insecure in matches will most certainly not be confident!


WHY CAN WE LOSE CONFIDENCE SO EASILY?

Matches can be a roller coaster of playing with and without confidence. Confidence materializes within us whenever we have a run of great points and disappears within seconds after a few errors.

The problem for players, therefore, is in the belief that confidence exists at all. We have all bought into the confidence myth and must eliminate it from our minds.

By not accepting the existence of Confidence, and by not trying to depend on it so much,  we will no longer ride the 'confidence roller coaster' in matches.


If Not Confidence, Then What?
I believe the very act of training confidence might actually be taking us down the opposite path of where we need to go.

Here’s what I mean…

Most players like to train for matches by hitting hundreds of balls in an attempt to 'groove' their strokes. Players believe that they feel more confident and that repetition drills rid them of pre-match nerves. In my opinion, this repetitive type of training, or grooving of their strokes, is nothing more than a placebo effect. 

After hitting hundreds of backhands in practice your backhand begins to 'feel' better and therefore you're more confident. But look at what you have actually done. You've merely hit balls under a controlled situation, minus all the scary parts such as decision making and executing under pressure. Training that way is not aligned to real match-play conditions. You're experiencing a placebo effect.

In a competitive situation you will be required to:

1.  Anticipate where the ball is going
2.  Coordinate your movement to the ball
3.  Make decisions on where you want to hit the ball
4.  Make decisions on how you want the ball to go there
5.  Create a method of recovering to the next shot

That’s a lot of requirements your pre-match repetition drills failed to cover!

Many players spend hours hitting basket feeds, knocking from baseline to baseline, tweaking their strokes, and gaining confidence prior to competition only to find that in real matches the requirements are completely different!

As soon as these players get under pressure or start to make mistakes Their confidence evaporates and their game collapses. And the common reason given for the loss is that the player "lost confidence".

Try to eliminate your dependence on the placebo style of preparation before matches. The placebo effect will wear off within the match itself and leave you with nothing to fall back on. 

Turn your attention to a more reliable training foundation. Change your training to include huge doses of ANTICIPATION, DECISION MAKING, MOVEMENT, RECOVERY, and STRATEGY. These are the elements that if strengthened, will win you matches.

I deal with these topics in more detail and illustrate how to prepare for matches using a method called 'THE 3 AM THEORY.'


Click on the link below to go to this, and other topics explaining how you can prepare for match-play far more effectively in the future.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

KEYS TO THE TWO-HANDED BACKHAND

Image
This article aims to provide you with 5 ingredients to help simplify the  two-hander and give you more control and versatility.       1. THE BOTTOM HAND The bottom hand on the grip controls the length of your contact zone.  The further on top the knuckles of the bottom hand are positioned, the longer your contact zone. The further around to the front of the grip the knuckles of the bottom hand are positioned, the shorter the contact zone will be. The Djokovic bottom hand is positioned almost on  top of the handle.  This would indicate that he intends  to hit down the line.   Positioning the knuckles of your bottom hand on top of the handle makes it a lot easier to hit your down-the-line shots, while placing the bottom hand in the front of the handle makes it easier to hit extreme cross-court angles. Y ou  need to play your backhand in various grip positions on the handle. The important thing is not the position of your hands on the handle (grips); it's having complete control
Read more

BUILD YOUR TENNIS ON A DEFENSIVE FOUNDATION

Image
  You could be mistaken for thinking tennis is all about aggression. At the top level, players are pounding the ball at every opportunity. You'd be surprised then if you learned that my goal when coaching advanced players is to first have them develop a defensive mental foundation.   I'm not suggesting that I teach players to send up continuous lobs during the rally or for them to stand at the back fence to retrieve balls. My goal with advanced players is to change the internal mental dialogue all players experince before every stroke.  A PLAYERS INTERNAL DIALOG BEFORE SHOTS Every player has a continuous mental dialogue inside their head when they play a point.  "How aggressive should I be on this ball?", "Is this the ball to change direction down the line?" etc. The internal dialogue inside our heads drives our decision making There's nothing wrong with this type of internal dialogue, but there are better questions to ask yourself before each shot. So,
Read more

WRITING A PROPOSAL FOR TENNIS SPONSORSHIP

Image
When tennis players begin to compete internationally the expenses involved in traveling overseas to events such as airfares, accommodation and food are quite high and put a significant strain on most family budgets. Players and their parents often try to off-set some of this financial burden by looking for sponsorship.  Here are some important points to consider when approaching companies or individuals for tennis sponsorship. It's important to put yourself in the shoes of the head marketing person of a big company. He/she are busy and any proposal you develop should be clear in what you want to happen . Don't presume that they know what you want. You need to tell them in a clear and precise way. A sponsorship proposal that is vague and lacks a clear description of what you want and how you will use the sponsorship will not send the right message to a busy Marketing Manager The head of marketing has the responsibility of planning a yearly marketing campaigne that f
Read more