Tennis Podcast: Embracing Mental Training
June 7, 2009 by PatrickCohn
Welcome to session number twenty four 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 get kids interested in mental coaching. Many tennis players don’t buy into mental training. Dr. Cohn teaches you how to educate tennis players about the mental game.
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You made some good points here and the best one was about how you can prove the importance of the mental game by watching pro players.
It’s interesting since you can identify so many mental game errors that either are caused by or are influenced by unforced errors.
Each player’s mental state and toughness is often the deciding factor in pro matches. Especially whenever there is a close match. (great example was S. Williams and Kuznetsova in the Semi.)
Another main problem with trying to teach players the mental game is simply the fact that it is catagorized as “training”. Most players do not find this as “fun” as rallying for the baseline or playing matches. That is probably the reason why many juniors do not want to partake in it.
The problem with trying to get a student or child in the mental game is that although you can present them with reasons why they should do it, it’s ultimately their decision. It’s difficult to force children to do activities that they do not find “fun” or want to do.
The best approach would be to attempt to make all aspects especially “mental training” be fun. That is one of the most important aspects of instructing tennis.