Bigger Better Tennis - Paul Dale

  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,

If you feel like your tennis is not going anywhere, but you practice super hard every day, here are my suggestions to get you out of your tennis slump.  PUT THESE THINGS IN YOUR PRACTICE IMMEDIATELY! Mental pressure... Whatever you do during practice put pressure on yourself to do it as best you can.  Take the warm-up as an example. It's easy to arrive at practice and begin your warm-up slightly unfocused. You've warmed up a thousand times before and you probably think you don't need to focus much anyway, you think the warm-up can be performed in automatic mode.  But you're wrong. By focusing more during the warm-up you are awakening your brain and preparing it to work at a higher level when you do start hitting balls. It's also important to focus any time you're in the gym, because you'll get more benefits from a focused gym session than an unfocused one. Another time to increase the mental pressure on yourself is when you're drilling or playing points.

I attended a tennis event during the weekend with a team of college players. On the first day of matches, we had some disastrous starts. In several matches, we went down by 5 games before we began playing at our normal level, but often it was too late to save the game. Here are 4 ways you can avoid slow starts in your matches: THE WARM-UP IS 90% MENTAL The most significant difference I see between the top professionals and college players is players at the top only have one mental "gear". They're always focused. Whereas college-level players think it's ok to warm up in a different mental "gear" than the one they use in the match. Your body and your mind like doing things habitually, meaning anything you repeat enough times will become the norm. If you ask more from yourself in practice and matches, your body and mind will adapt to that new normal.  This matters most during the morning warm-up before matches. If you're not focused or you’re clowning aroun