Tennis Podcast: Managing Perfectionism
May 24, 2009 by PatrickCohn
Welcome to session number twenty two of The Tennis Psychology Podcast. Dr. Patrick Cohn at Sports Psychology for Tennis, is a mental game of tennis expert and helps tournament players, tennis coaches and parents improve confidence, focus, and composure using sports psychology strategies.
In this week’s tennis psychology session, you’ll learn how to manage perfectionism on the court. Many tennis players have sound fundaments, but underperform in matches. They perform tenatively, try to avoid mistakes and become frustrated with themselves. Dr. Cohn teaches you the top mental strategies to manage your perfectionism on the court.
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Although you have brought this topic up time and time again, this does not make it any less important or less interesting.
Great technique does not guarantee a great player, the focus on technique has probably been pushed so much because that’s mainly the focus of tennis lessons.
Tennis instructors mainly make most of their money on teaching technique. Many players feel that since their parent’s spent so much money on teaching them strokes that they should be a great player. That is not always the case.
The three other foundations of being a great player is:
Fitness
Mental toughness/strategy
Practice (repetitions)
Most of the time with district level tournament players they have all have their own technique and repetitions. The only real way to get ahead in that zone is to play much more and have a purpose. Based on the player’s ambitions and life there is usaully a limit to the amount of practice they can get.
Because of that the largest distinguishing factor that I have found with that competitive level is fitness and mental skill. The fitter, mentally stronger player will win most of the time when there is not a huge difference between skill level.(based on practice/technique/skills).
Thanks for helping all of us out for (the often overlooked) mental side of the game.
Nick:
Thanks for the input. I agree with your totally on the lessons on technique. It’s the most controllable type of “training” parents can offer kids.
Patrick Cohn