Melanie Oudin’s Weapon: Mental Toughness

Is 17 year old Melanie Oudin the real deal? Most experts, such as Brad Gilbert think so. Read on to discover her biggest weapon…

I’m sure you’ve heard about Melanie Oudin’s remarkable 3-set wins in which she made big-time comebacks against a few top players in the world.

How is she’s pulling out those matches? Is she that talented or skilled? Or is it sheer grit and determination?

To beat the top players, it’s all of the above. But I left out her most important weapon–and it’s not her ability to run down balls consistently–it’s her mental toughness!

“I think the biggest weapon can be mental toughness. It doesn’t have to be a stroke or a shot or anything like that. If you’re mentally tough out there, then you can beat anyone. I think that’s what I really did well today and I’ve done in my past matches. I’m so focused and I fight super hard. So it’s not going to be easy to beat me or I’m not going to back down at all,” said Oudin.

What is mental toughness in tennis?

Mental toughness includes the mental skills that help you stay focused, confident, and composed under adversity or pressure. Mental toughness allows you to realize your talent in matches.

I saw the opposite of mental toughness when Oudin beat Petrova in the 4th round of the US Open. Petrova was inconsistent. She wavered from moments of brilliance to plain choking.

Oudin definitely showed more mental toughness. Mental toughness can help you win when you and your opponent have the same skills or talent level.

Are tennis players born with mental toughness? According to Oudin, it’s a leaded skill…

“I don’t think I was born with mental toughness. But I’ve learned to do that. I mean, that’s how I’ve been for a long time. You know, all the years of training, my coach pushing me so hard, just getting through years of ups and downs and everything. I’ve learned to fight super hard,” said Oudin.

What mental game skills do you have to master to gain more mental toughness?

• The ability to be proactive with you confidence and keep it under adversity
• The ability to focus in the present and not get sidetracked by distractions
• The ability to play freely with expectation or pressure
•  The ability to let go of mistakes and stay confident, composed after errors
• The ability to accept that you are human and can’t perform perfectly
• Playing for yourself and not paying attention to what others think

If you want to learn these critical mental skills to improve your on-court mental toughness and many more, I suggest you grab a copy of my new Tennis Confidence CD program – at half-off only this week.

Get Tennis Confidence CD and Workbook program at HALF-OFF:

Tennis Confidence CD and Workbook Program

Your Tennis Confidence Coach,

Dr. Patrick Cohn

p.s. Be one of the first 25 people to snag my new CD program, and get a complementary membership to peaksports network. There, you can access over 500 pages of mental training videos, articles, interviews, and tips on the mental game:

Tennis Confidence CD and Workbook Program

Trust: Mental Toughness for Tennis Players

How much practice time do you think about technique and how to hit good shots? In Tennis Confidence video 1, I discussed the “academy mindset” and how young tennis players get trapped into a training mentality, which can lead to choking in matches. This mindset is OK for some of your practice, but not all of your practice time.

Two mindsets are important to playing to your potential in practice. The first is the training mindset, which you use in practice when trying to improve your game. The second is the performance mindset, which you use for matches when trying to perform your best and you are not worried about “how to” hit a good shot.

This leads me to a recent question that I received in my tennis psychology survey: “Why is it that I hit better when I don’t think about my technique? My shots are worse when I try too hard to think about how to hit.”

The problem starts in practice when you spend too much time in the practice mindset working on your strokes. Some of this is critical to your improvement, but you don’t want to get trapped in this mindset when you play. And that’s the mental game challenge. Can you trust in your skills learned in practice when you go play matches? You have to perform your best in matches, not hit perfect shots.

Let me digress for a moment. As you progress through the stages of learning a motor skill, the skill becomes more refined and more consistent. With overlearning – or a ton of practice – you can perform the skill without much thought. It just happens and you react to what’s happening on the court. At the advanced or expert stage of learning, your skills are well-learned, which allows you to play virtually on autopilot. This level of learning allows you to think more about strategy and targets instead of how to hit a good shot.

With a well-learned forehand, you can make a good stroke without thinking about how to make a good stroke because of your prior practice. But you get in your own way when you try to “coach” yourself through the shot (well-learned skill), thus reverting to an earlier stage of learning. You regress to a learning stage instead of playing shots based on instinct or practice. You get in your own way because you are giving your body too many instructions or “verbal commands” such as how to follow through properly, as Tim Gallewey would argue.

So your tennis psychology tip for today… You have to simplify your thinking on the court when you play. You have to trust what you have practiced. I refer to this as the study and take the test analogy: You study hard (through practice) and then take the closed-book test in matches. You test the effectiveness of your practice in competition – you don’t continue to study in competition.

One option is to perform with simple feelings or images instead of coaching yourself with verbal commands. For example, maybe you focus on tempo or balance only instead of all the “how-to” of stroke technique. Less is often better when it comes to how many thoughts and feelings you play with.

7 Reasons Tennis Players Choke in Matches

Do you have trouble performing as well in matches as you do in practice? Are you losing to players who you should beat? Or, do you get so frustrated after mistakes that it affects your game for several points?

Many players have asked me help them solve these mental game issues. And I’ve started to do this with my podcasts and videos at SportsPsychologyTennis.com.

If you are not playing to your real level in competition, your mental game is getting in the way of peak performance.

Knowing this is the easy part… The hard part is trying to find out how your mental game is hampering success.

Get this: if you are not getting it done in matches, you’re probably stuck in old, ineffective ways of thinking that hold you back.

Why would you play great in practice, but not in tournaments? I have seven big reasons to share with your today…

You might not perform as well in matches because:

1. You want to win too badly, try too hard, and focus too much on results
2. You are afraid to fail and thus tighten up and over control in competition
3. You are too concerned with others’ opinions or not disappointing others
4. You lack competitive self-confidence in matches and are overcome with self-doubt
5. Your high expectations cause you to feel frustrated quickly after errors
6. You focus too much on making perfect strokes and thus limit your ability
7. The pressure of match time causes you to become anxious or tighten up

To play to your potential in competition, you must first understand how your mindset limits your game. Here’s why: I take a different approach for all seven of the above scenarios when helping my students improve their mental game.

On another note… I promised more details today about my new mental toughness program for tennis players.

I’m gong to teach you how to overcome all the above mental game scenarios and more with my new program titled: “Tennis Confidence: Mental Toughness for Tournament Players.”

You’ll learn the top eight mental game lessons for tennis players – the same lessons I teach my personal coaching students.

How will you learn my top lessons? I’ve made it easy and effortless for you to improve your mental game. You’ll download all eight sessions from my website to your computer:

• Eight powerful 25-30 minute mental game lessons on MP3 audio
• Eight tennis confidence workbooks to guide your through the lessons
• Eight post-match tennis confidence assessments to measure your progress

As a bonus, you’ll also appreciate:

• Eight prematch mental preparation podcasts to tune up your mind prior to matches
• Prematch tennis confidence and mental preparation guide

You’ll be able to access my new Tennis Confidence program this Thursday, May 14 at 9:00 AM eastern time. And I’m going to do something I’ve never done before – only for my subscribers.

So stay tuned… You’ll get more details with week. Make sure you grab my tennis psychology report to help you stay focused between points and get weekly tips.