Tennis Archives - Virtual Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Defeating Negative Thinking

Negative thinking is easy to acquire and once it becomes a habit, requires consistent effort to change. Defeating negative thinking requires you to first become aware of what your negative thoughts and when they occur. Next, you need to make a list of the negative thoughts. Then, you need to come up with a “better” thought to “replace” the negative thought and practicing thinking and saying the replacement thought whenever the negative thought comes to mind. You must practice saying the new healthier thought STRONGLY and PASSIONATELY in order to get a change at the feeling level.

Defeating negative thinking requires systematic practice. Here is a mental exercise you can practice with: (I use this with tennis players, although you can see how easily it can be adapted to use with other sports or even in non-athletic related situations.)

Here is a list of common negative thoughts associated with playing competitive tennis. For each negative statement, write a more desirable positive statement.

1. Oh no. I have to play this opponent in the first round, I have lost to him twice before.

2. I can’t believe I missed that shot. What’s wrong with me?

3. I am down 3-0. I don’t have a chance.

4. That’s the second backhand I missed. My backhand is the worst.

5. I double faulted on game point. I really suck.

6. I should be killing this guy. I’m so much better and I’m down 3-1.

7. It’s unbelievable. That’s the second shot of mine that hit the line and he called it out. What a cheater!

8. I was ahead the entire set and now it’s 5-5. I’m terrible. I’ll probably end up blowing the set and losing the match.

9. My overhead was great in practice all week and now in the match I have missed 2 of them.

10. I can’t get over that bad call last game. It was such an important point.

Write any additional negative thoughts that are specific to your situation on the back of this page.

On a separate sheet of paper for each negative thought, come up with a more desirable thought to counter the negative one.

Now you have completed the first step in defeating negative thinking.

Resiliency

Resiliency, the ability to come back when behind, is a key mental skill to have both in sports and in life. A recent NBC show highlighted the resiliency of pro golfer, Michael Allen, who for most of his life struggled to make a living as a pro golfer.

Although he believed in himself, after 334 PGA starts without a win he called it quits. In an effort to better support his family, he tried other jobs. After several more years, with the support of his wife and the financial backing of friends he tried again.

His wife convinced him he had to do something different in order to have a better chance at a successful comeback. This time, he worked more on his fitness, hired a new “swing coach” and worked with a “sports psychologist”.

Resiliency combined with doing things differently paid off. After 20 years, Michael won his first PGA Senior tour and for the past 5 years has been a leading money winner, winning several other major tournaments.

The interview was conducted by veteran news reporter, Jayne Pauly. When asked by Matt Lauer of the Today Show, which of the changes she felt were most important in turning things around for Michel Allen, she said, the “sports psychology”.

As a sports psychologist, I live and work in Boca Raton,Florida, a Mecca for golf and tennis and home to numerous professional athletic events. In my experience, mental skills like resiliency and confidence are partly inherited, partly learned through early childhood experiences and partly improved upon through teaching, as are many life skills.

Through counseling and various types of emotional skills training athletes and non-athletes can learn to make changes and improvements in their performance both on and off the playing field.

The key is to get the help you need, make the necessary changes and put in the time and effort for things to come together.

Sports Psychology in Tennis: Getting “Hot” Isn’t Cool

Basketball great, Bob McAdoo recently shared his anxiety about watching his 15 year old daughter compete in tennis. Apparently, the 15 year old nationally ranked daughter at times fights herself rather than her opponent. The on-court outbursts interrupt her concentration and hurts her performance. McAdoo claims she inherited her temper from her mother. As a sports psychologist I don’t buy it. The greater likelihood is it is learned behavior that she has either observed in others or comes from her own overly perfectionist standards and unrealistic expectations of herself. It is also possible that she puts tremendous pressure on herself by demanding that she compete at the highest level as her father did. I have worked with a number of children of famous and successful parents that feel that way. Hopefully, she will learn how to channel her desire to win and become a pro one day, focusing more on “one day at a time” and “improving rather than winning”.

Mental Skills Toughness for Tennis

When sports announcers talk about mental toughness in individual players, they usually speak in generalities as if mental skills was a single attribute or skill, which it is not. Mental skills refer to a variety of attitudes, behaviors and coping skills which are usually taught and not inherent to the individual. Just as tennis skills consists of various shots along with strategy, foot speed and endurance, mental skills consists of techniques like relaxation and emotional regulation, concentration and imagery training and a host of other skills and training methods which might borrow from hypnosis, cognitive therapy and counseling.

Sports psychologists help athletes to identify their mental strengths and weaknesses and develop a systematic plan to strengthen skills essential to success in competition. In this way the sports psychologist is like a mental coach or mental trainer and can support the work of the individual or team coach. In today’s highly competitive athletic arena, mental toughness often determines the outcome more than raw skills. Working with a competent mental conditioning coach give the player and the team, “the winning edge” when it counts most.

Egg Your Way to Better Tennis

Tennis legend Martina Navratalova talked about the importance of “soft hands” in becoming a good player. Since tennis is a game of “feel”, the ability to create softness in the hands translates to improved shot control.

As a sports psychologist who works a lot with tennis players, I am constantly looking to create effective ways to teach mental skills to my students and those who participate in my mental toughness training seminars. I recently found that holding a raw egg automatically creates a sense for holding the racket lightly. Too much pressure and the egg breaks.

Practice holding an egg in your hand for a few minutes each day for a week. Once you get a good feel for the degree of pressure, try to bring up the same feeling in your hand and racket grip when playing and notice the impact it makes on your shots.

Famous Quotes on the Mental Game of Tennis

Match the quote with the tennis champion who said it:

1.Tennis is 90% mental.

2. It’s not whether or not you choke, but when you do how you respond.

3. I never looked back or dwelled on my defeats. I always looked forward.

4. The softer the hands the better the player.

5. The most important point in any tennis match is always- the next one.

A. Martina Navratolova B. Chris Evert C. John McEnroe
D. Jimmy Connors E. Andre Agassi

To improve your mental game, reflect on what these quotes really mean and how you might apply them to yourself. Recognize that mental skills, just like physical ones need to be practiced many times in gradually more challenging settings to become natural, automatic and effective. As you develop your “outer game”-strokes, strategy, conditioning, leave time to work on your “inner game” – beliefs, attitudes, body language, thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Answers: 1.D 2.C 3.B 4.A 5.E

Overcoming Tennis “Jitters”

Feeling nervous, to some extent is a normal and even a positive aspect as performing well. However, when nervousness escalates, performance declines. This is especially true in sports like tennis and golf, where optimal levels of arousal tend to be in the lower ranges.

Tennis “jitters” result in increased muscle tension, bad decisions and distractibility. Ultimately, this leads to increased errors and a greater number of lost points.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in a typical doubles match among intermediate level players, especially while serving in a critical point of a match.

As a “sports psychologist” and active competitive tennis player, it is easy to observe this. When the score is 40-30 and the server misses his or her first serve, the second serve is often just “lobbed in” to avoid the dreaded double fault. In reality, attempting to lob the ball in rather than attempting to hit a reasonable second serve with spin, pace and a margin for error, is probably no more reliable and results in the same amount of double faults. On top of that, a ball that lands short and softly allows the returner all the time in the world to place the ball wherever they want. In short, you end up losing the point anyway.

The cure for tennis jitters is to care less about making the mistake in the first place. Rather than worrying about the double fault, losing the point, caring what others may think, take a deep breath, visualize the second serve as being successful and just go for it! Whatever happens, happens.

When I work with my clients, whether face to face in my Boca Raton, Florida office or over the phone, I go into the process of effective coping in far greater detail and often teach and incorporate other strategies to overcome these and other long term negative habits.

The beauty of tennis is it is a game for life and you can improve some aspect of your play and performance throughout your playing career.

Cheating In Sports

Cheating in sports sadly occurs from time to time in virtually every sport and every level of competition. The drive to win at any price or cost stems from a lack of morals within a particular individual and a sports culture which places an over emphasis on winning above playing fairly and by the rules.

To some degree, cheating in sports mirrors the larger attitude of society which elevates athletes to the hero level and at times extols the virtue of the robber if he/she is clever enough to get away with it.

Cheating in sports takes many forms. In a tennis match, it might be a player calling a ball out that he knows was in. In football, it might be holding a players helmet or shirt to slow them down. In other instances, it might mean taking a “banned” substance to become stronger or perform faster.

The most recent scandal surrounding cheating in sports involved one of the world’s greatest endurance athlete’s of all time, Lance Armstrong. Armstrong, winner of seven Olympic Gold medals in bicycling, was stripped of all of them after it was found that he had be using illegal substances to improve his performance.

Sadly, when athletic heroes are cheating in sports, it sends a message to the hundreds of thousands of young athlete’s that this is what is expected of you if you want to become great in your sport. This results in a new generation of “cheaters” and the cycle is perpetuated.

Let’s hope that parents, teachers and coaches will teach ethical behavior and moral development and that sports officials will enforce rules for cheating with immediate and significant penalties. In these ways, cheating in sports will hopefully be kept to a minimum and even have a positive impact on the larger society in general.

The Mental Skills Report Card

The mental skills report card is a self assessment of mental skills that individuals complete at the end of a game, match or important situation where they “should” have used one or more mental skills to help them perform to their potential.

Mental coaches and cognitive behavioral therapists use self monitoring tools to help individuals stay focused on training and evaluating new mental skills that are taught and then incorporated into the individual’s life.

Typical mental skills to enhance performance of all kinds include: confidence, concentration, calmness, communication, managing mistakes, performing well in pressure situations, recovering from adversity, etc.

Depending on the needs and goals of the individual, the psychologist teaches strategies to develop each of the mental skills. Once learned, the individual starts to incorporate them into their personal circumstances, then self rates their implementation of the mental skills and how effective they felt they were in using them.

Self recording of mental skills helps the individual and the mental coach evaluate the effectiveness of the mental skills training program and fine tune things as needed.

Regularly recording one’s mental skills reinforces the important of using mental skills and provides a more accurate evaluation as to their usefulness.

A mental skills report card can be a simple index card with the skills written on them and a checklist or rating scale that looks at frequency of use and effectiveness of use or it can have individual questions such as:

I remembered to breathe slowly and deeply for up to 5 minutes before giving my presentation (or at the beginning of my game).
When I missed a shot I immediately forgot about it and pictured hitting it successfully the next time.

By regularly reviewing and recording your mental skills progress, the skills eventually become a habit and you find yourself using them without even thinking about it.

Should You Run for Every Ball

Perhaps one of the most famous and best known tennis coaches wrote an article entitled, “Go for Every Ball No Matter Where it Lands”. He quoted the advice that Richard Williams, father of tennis greats, Venus and Serena, had imparted to them at an early age.

As a sports psychologist I am trained to look at advice in a systematic way: What works best for which person in which situation, under what circumstances?

The benefits of going for every ball even the ones that are very far out is that you may actually get some of them that both you and your opponent felt were impossible. It can build your confidence, speed, anticipation etc. It also sends a message to your opponent that they can’t let up or assume they have hit a winner. By going for everything, you may put pressure on some opponents to try and hit better shots which may result in them making more mistakes.

The risks of going for every ball, even the ones that are clearly way out of reach and those that are far out of the court are that you may get injured by being over stretched or hitting a ball from a very awkward position. You may also tire yourself out, especially if it is a hot day and/or you a playing a long match or matches. In these cases, you are likely to make any number of “fatigue” errors that outweigh the benefits of running down EVERY ball.

A smart player needs to balance risk/reward in running for shots and learn how to play efficiently. For example, if you are ahead 5-0, 40 love, NOT risking running into a fence to retrieve a great top spin lob your opponent just hit over your head might be a good mental strategy at that time!

The take away is, “no one size fits all”. Think of advice in a “general “ way and apply it to your needs and situation.