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.




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