Psychology in tennis
Most people think that tennis is just about training yourself physically and being able to compete in long, physical matches using your strength and endurance etc. However, you also have to train yourself mentally in order to get through tough matches. Mentality is even more important in tennis than in sports like football or hockey as you are playing on your own, for yourself. This means that you have to pick yourself up when you're down and congratulate yourself when you're playing well, there's nobody there to do it for you.
Psychology is one of the most important parts of the game. You could have perfect technique but still lose matches to players who aren't as good as you technically, because your mentality towards the game is wrong. You need to have a filter in your head which keeps you calm when you get too frustrated or aggressive. However, you must allow yourself to get fired up or you will have no passion for the game and you will most likely lose. A good drill to train your psychology is to yell out (in training-not in a match!) what you thought of the last point straight after it finishes-don't take any time to think about it. After a while you will realise the things you are yelling at yourself are pointless and the negative thoughts will gradually stop.
However, it is almost impossible not to have any angry emotions or outbursts on the tennis court. The professionals have them and they spend so much of their time trying to keep themselves cool! To demonstrate this, the following is a link to a video of Rodger Federer, who is regarded as one of the calmest players in tennis losing it and smashing his racquet while playing Djokovic in Miami in 2009
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8YCg9JIIgw8#Psychology is one of the most important parts of the game. You could have perfect technique but still lose matches to players who aren't as good as you technically, because your mentality towards the game is wrong. You need to have a filter in your head which keeps you calm when you get too frustrated or aggressive. However, you must allow yourself to get fired up or you will have no passion for the game and you will most likely lose. A good drill to train your psychology is to yell out (in training-not in a match!) what you thought of the last point straight after it finishes-don't take any time to think about it. After a while you will realise the things you are yelling at yourself are pointless and the negative thoughts will gradually stop.
However, it is almost impossible not to have any angry emotions or outbursts on the tennis court. The professionals have them and they spend so much of their time trying to keep themselves cool! To demonstrate this, the following is a link to a video of Rodger Federer, who is regarded as one of the calmest players in tennis losing it and smashing his racquet while playing Djokovic in Miami in 2009
