"When you have fun, it changes all the pressure into pleasure."
- Ken Griffeyn
Pressure gets a bad name. It's the ultimate lie detector. When its present, getting near to match point for example, it can be a positive force bringing out the best in you, or a negative one, being an excuse to quit. Some players will break through, while those less committed break down. Everyone feels pressure in competition, no one is immune. The court can seem like a playground or feel like a prison ground.
It can often start before the game begins. Players under pressure become internally self-conscious rather then externally task-conscious. Worrying about miss-hit balls will usually cause you one.
Recall a time when you felt pressure. Remember what you were doing, feeling, saying. Where you excited or nervous? Did you expect failure or feel a desire to win? Did you let all kinds of negative thoughts come into your mind which may have been influenced by personality or environment factors?
Excessive mental pressure often produces mental blocks. Then anything recently learnt in training, be it tactical or technical may well be forgotten. Some situations can be embarrassing or humiliating, especially in front of spectators, creating a further negative performance experience. These experiences may lodge themselves in the mind and body showing up as performance problems either right away, or lying dormant for days, weeks, months before raising their ugly heads.
Demands on pro tennis players is higher than ever before. Sponsorship, TV exposure, fans, money, they all increase pressure. Become mentally tough, look at pressure as a challenge to drive yourself that much harder.
Pressure and stress creates muscle tension, causing over-tightness, generally in the neck and shoulders. The heart rate goes up, breathing quickens, skin perspires. Some feel their stomach churn. These are all physical early warning signs. Mentally your mind starts racing and negative thoughts float into your mind.
When you're tense, you want to get your task over with as soon as possible. The more you hurry, the worse you will probably play, having the ball land short, or sail to the back fence, this creates even more pressure in your mind and greater muscle tension, so wasting more energy. Consider this. Stress is strictly internal, it does not exist outside of your mind. Match conditions do not become anxious, only players do.
Stress kicks in whenever you are threatened in any way, even a threat to your ego. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) pumps more adrenalin and cortical into your heart, along with extra blood and oxygen to your muscles for the fight or flight response which helps you combat or escape from danger.
This is balanced by your parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) when your blood pressure drops and you relax, which helps you to digest your food amongst the other benefits. Both the SNS and PNS work in balance.
When you are stressed the SNS does too much and the PNS is not employed enough. The nervous system cannot tell the difference between a real or an imagined event, so if you are suffering an emotional threat, you are still producing the same stress chemicals as your body needs to fight or flee.
As those chemicals have been pumped into your system in response to thoughts you cannot fight or flee from, your body has no way to get rid of them and over time, if it becomes a regular occurrence, the build up of these stress chemicals can later cause illness and disease.
Poise under pressure is admired by many. They wonder how you do it. Its important to realise tennis creates a certain amount of stress in every serious participation. It is useful to recognise and become familiar with your own unique mixture of emotional reactions and physical tendencies that appear during stressful times during matches. Increased heart rate, muscle tension, loss of appetite, sweaty palms, impatience, irritable. How do you cope with it?
One effective method is simply to write down specific stressors. The simple act or recognising and recording a behaviour you wish to change leads to improvement in the required direction.
Use travel time to listen to inspirational audiotapes or CD's. Hearing someone you admire or respect can have a positive impact on your mood. Upbeat music can make the miles fly by, or play something soothing to keep you calm en-route.
Stop reading this article right now and do the following breathing exercise. Close your eyes and take a deep breath down into your abdomen. Count to three as you inhale through your nose and count to five as you exhale through your mouth. Do it five times. Notice, if you pay close attention to your breathing and counting, you should, after five breaths, begin to feel more relaxed.
You can even enhance that deep breathing technique by remembering a time when you were on top of your game. As you breath and focus on the memory, say to yourself a word or phrase that can represent the relaxed feeling. "Steady" or "easy" might do it for you. Play around and notice what works. Psychological research has shown deep breathing while reciting a simple word or phrase weakens even severe stress considerably. You can do that anytime.
There are some more keys to remaining calm. Think about your best performances, past achievements and successes from using your skills and the good feelings they created. Stop any negative thinking as soon as you are aware of it and use your imagination to think about your strengths and resources. Remember good moods and the things that make you smile. Focus on pleasures, physical activity, problem solving, improving relationships in and off the court.
Bad Breath DetectorPaul M. Maher invites you to learn more about sports psychology and to maximise your sports potential by visiting http://www.mindtrainingarena.com. You will gain access to invaluable eBooks focused on tennis, cricket, soccer and bodybuilding psychology.