Bigger Better Tennis - Paul Dale

Stop Chasing Confidence. It's Not Important By Paul Dale | The 3AM Method Bad week of practice. Lost your last two matches. Feeling shaky when under pressure in matches? Everyone's advice? "Start working on your confidence!" Yeah. But will that work? The Confidence Trap Here's the problem with chasing confidence: You've often been through periods when your confidence is high and you go into matches feeling as good as you've ever felt—but eventually the same problems in your game surface, and the downward mental spiral begins again. It's circular. "I'll perform well when I feel confident" → "I'll feel confident when I perform well." You're stuck. And those pre-match confidence checks? "Do I feel confident? Am I ready?" That's like checking if you're relaxed every five minutes. The checking itself creates the problem. What If Confidence Is The Wrong Target? Here's a different way to think abou...

Tennis Match Preparation:  The 4:1 Rule for Peak Performance By Paul Dale | The 3AM Method Your match tomorrow is expected to last approximately two hours. During the last few weeks, how much time did you spend preparing for it? An hour or two each day? You may have hit 4 times this week. But here's the ratio that separates those who complain about their results from those who consistently perform: 4:1. Four hours of preparation for every hour you'll be on court. Minimum. That two-hour match needs eight hours of preparation. Most players invert this completely. They spend 45 minutes, four times a week, getting ready for a 2-3 hour battle and wonder why they begin to struggle in long matches, or why things that were working in practice start to fall apart. The four corners Think of match preparation as a table with four legs. Remove any one leg, and the whole thing collapses when it is first used. Physical Sleep. Nutrition. Conditioning.  This is the leg everyone sees,...