Psychological Support for Tennis Performance
Performance Nerves and Your Inner Critic-understanding the gremlins and goblins and vanquishing them to play your best tennis.
Two books: The Inner Game of Tennis (W.T Gallwey)
The Chimp Paradox (Prof S Peters)
Two apps: Headspace
Sorted: Mental Health
(previously called Feeling Good)
(Article by Ali Parrish)
I don’t think I am alone when I admit that over the years, especially when playing a match that is of no real significance but feels crucial to me, I have battled with performance nerves and a self-critical voice.
It is very annoying and debilitating to be hijacked by a physical anxiety that starts as an uneasy feeling in the tummy and spreads to a feeling of shaky legs, weakness in the arms and stiffness of the muscles. The more you tell it to go away, the more it digs in and the more it affects the flow of your game. You can have conversations with yourself and say things like ‘This is only a game, it doesn’t matter, just enjoy yourself’ but the nerves seem to have a mind of their own. Simply put, your emotions are not always under your cognitive control.
Then there’s the negative or critical voice that’s either internal and private or out loud and can be heard all over the courts with people saying things like ‘that was absolute rubbish’, ‘I’m useless’, as well as various other self-directed, fruity profanities.
When things start to go wrong with unforced errors, double faults and a score that is stacking up against you, defeat starts to look like a certainty. For some people things can go from bad to worse with feelings of dejection and anger turned inwardly and sometimes expressed outwardly with self-defeating behaviours.
Why do we feel and behave like this?
Where does the competitive-self and the need to win come from?
Why can it feel so horrible to lose?
Why do we have a self-directed critical voice?
How can we think differently and establish healthy behaviours that get rid of these troublesome issues?
I am a massive fan of exploring the mind and our psychology and of building a tool kit for managing the difficulties we face along the way; developing styles of thinking and behaving that settle us down so that we can enjoy life and the simple things like a game of tennis.
I have spent years looking for and researching expert resources and have found some new habits that have really helped me. I wondered if others would be interested in some of the positive mind sets I've found. Here are four recommendations that may help you get the most joy out of your tennis.
Helpful Books:
(Personally, I get more from listening to the audio version of non-fiction books, I get quite bogged down if I read them.)
The Inner Game of Tennis by W Timothy Gallwey (1974)
Timothy Gallwey is an extraordinary person from California, now 87, in his youth he was a successful junior competitive tennis player. He gave up competition as a young man to study English at Harvard then became a high school English teacher. Some years later he returned to tennis to become a player, coach and writer. His ‘Inner Game’ philosophy applies Zen principles to performance, focusing on achieving ‘effortless effort’ by quieting the mind. He advocates a non-judgemental awareness to achieve flow and your best performance and trusting Self 2, the body and muscle memory, to perform without interference from Self 1, the conscious, self-critical mind. He coaches by showing and watching rather than telling and then encourages practicing without trying too hard but relying on the body’s ‘knowledge’. He suggests mindfulness approaches to improve focus and still the mind such as watching the seams of the ball and saying bounce and hit inwardly every time the ball is coming to you, Dena's been sharing these helpful mantras with us for years. He also recommends training yourself to focus on your breathing between points or games.
Unlike most self-help books which often start well then just keep repeating their message, I found this one got more interesting in the last few chapters when he talks about his personal journey and philosophies about the meaning of life and happiness, our competitive natures and where our self-esteem comes from.
The Chimp Paradox by Prof Steve Peters (2012)
In his book, Peters has created a simple but big metaphorical model to explain how our minds operate and how to understand and manage thinking to be successful and enjoy life. Prof Peters is another polymath who after uni, taught maths at secondary school, then later studied medicine and became an NHS psychiatrist. He is a medal winning runner and he mind-trained the gold medal-winning GB Olympic cycling team.
In his model of the mind, he describes a brain of three parts:
The rational Human (frontal lobe), the emotional Chimp (limbic system), and the Computer (parietal lobe/habits). The core concept is managing the impulsive ‘inner chimp’ to stop it from hijacking logical, emotional, and behavioural responses, thereby improving mental health and performance. He explains how our inner chimp is responsible for our sudden, sometimes angry or anxious responses to situations or perceived attacks. He says we all have an inner chimp that’s five times stronger than our human mind. Our inner chimp can seriously derail our lives and damage sporting ability, success in life and our happiness. His book explains that we can learn how to exercise, contain and reward our inner chimp allowing our human, reasonable self to triumph. Sounds quirky? I loved it, its deeply thoughtful, fun and full of all kinds of wisdom.
Helpful Apps:
Headspace
Headspace was co-founded in 2010 by Andy Puddicombe. He grew up in Bristol and started studying Sport Science at uni but after the tragic loss of a friend, he left the UK to live in Tibet and spent 10 years training to become a Buddhist monk. He returned to the West with a mission to share the joy of what he had learned about mindfulness with the masses (us).
The Headspace app describes itself as the leading everyday mental health companion, helping people care for their minds anytime, anywhere. It delivers personalised support — from meditation to mindfulness, coaching and therapy all designed to fit seamlessly into daily life. Their aim is to help you build resilience and feel better in a busy, complicated world.
The app has multiple courses for you to follow for all manner of issues and goals. I recently did the 10-day Sport Competition course in the run up to an away match. I feel it revolutionised my performance anxiety symptoms which I was able to manage really effectively.
I first heard about the Headspace app about 12 years ago at a GP training event and have been using its guided meditations on and off ever since.
Stilling the noisy mind by focussing on the body and breathing has helped people over thousands of years. The Headspace app has helped millions of people worldwide in recent times.
I think it’s amazing, but I would say it’s not a quick fix, meditation is like attaining any other skill such as learning a musical instrument or playing tennis, it requires practice to get good at it. The good news is you only need to spare a few minutes a few times a week to get going. It’s really helped me over the years with lots of stress personally and professionally.
The Headspace app offers a Free 14 day trial or 30 days if a paid up user shares a guest pass, then if you want to sign up, its £49.99 per year or £4.16 pr month.
It’s quite likely that you have stopped reading by now but in case you are still interested here is one more great resource I have used and recommended successfully to others.
Sorted: Mental Health App (Previously called the Feeling Good App)
The Foundation for Positive Mental Health with a Positive Mental Training Approach was started by psychologist Dr Sheila Rossand and GP Dr Alastair Dobbin in 2006, later the app was launched. Its aim is to help people increase wellbeing and resilience to stress using Olympic sports mind coaching techniques. It offers specifically developed audio tracks, incorporating breathing, positive reappraisal and visualisation techniques. If you want to learn self-hypnosis and develop internal imagery, this one is for you. You can create an inner mental room, an immediately accessible safe space that is always there when you need to take refuge.
The Sorted: Mental Health app Costs £3.99 - £4.99 monthly or £34.99 - £49.99 anually.
….and finally
If anyone has discovered a really useful resource that they would like to share please email me with the details at Crablands1912@gmail.com
Looking forward to seeing you on court