Does Confidence Come From Belief in Skills or Results
Confidence in tennis is the belief that you have the skills to hit your shots, stay mentally tough, have strong agility, and the physical conditioning to accomplish your goals.
Yet, confidence is the most common area that tennis players identify as lacking in their game.
The most common theme in our mental game of tennis surveys is confidence, in particular how to build the necessary levels of confidence to get to the next level in the sport.
One tennis player said he’s frustrated with his lack of confidence and how it is holding him back from reaching his potential:
“I get very frustrated after losses. I lose confidence and, then, I find my way into a slump. How can I regain confidence, and a belief in myself, after a continuous losing streak against opponents of the same caliber or those I have beaten in the past?”
Instead of thinking about regaining confidence, consider working towards maintaining the confidence you have. Here’s the difference between regaining confidence and maintaining confidence…
Regaining confidence implies you either have confidence or you don’t have confidence. This type of confidence is solely based on your immediate performance.
When you win, you are confident. When you lose, you are not confident.
Performance-based confidence is problematic. Since success requires confidence and you have lost confidence due to losing, it becomes extremely difficult to break the low-confidence, bad-performance cycle.
Maintaining confidence is less affected by outcomes. Maintaining confidence is a proactive approach designed for you to continually build confidence. When you proactively build confidence, you take responsibility and seek ways to improve your confidence on a daily basis.
Winning or losing can impact your confidence to some degree but it is not the only factor that helps you maintain a certain degree of confidence.
Tennis great Roger Federer understands both the need for confidence and how to maintain high confidence through the highs and lows over the course of a career.
Federer has maintained strong confidence through the better part of his career despite losses and early exits from tournaments.
FEDERER: “I learned that there would always be another chance after each defeat, even cruel ones… That sums up our life as tennis players. At one point, nothing works. And suddenly everything is back to normal. That’s why you should never stick your head in the sand.”
The lesson to be learned from Federer is that yesterday’s loss is in the past and the past has very little bearing on the next match.
Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. To go even further, sometimes you can play your best tennis and still lose and some days you can have an unusual amount of unforced errors and still pull off the victory.
How Maintain Your Confidence:
If you base your confidence solely on outcomes, you will never have the stable confidence necessary to play with confidence on a consistent basis.
Instead of focusing solely on wins and losses, focus on the skills and talents you have, such as speed, quickness, anticipation, tactics, etc., which do not go away even after losing a set or match.
Focus on the skills you have going into the match rather than the outcome of the last match or worrying about the next match. You develop confidence from belief in your skills, not win/lose percentage.
Learn Proven Tennis Mental Game Strategies To Perform Your Best On The Court!
Are you (or your players) performing up to your ability in competition?
Do you bring your best and most confident game to matches?
I often hear players complain about the following problems when they play in matches…
“I get so tight or tense before matches that I can’t think straight or have any rhythm in my game.”
“I get so frustrated with hitting bad shots or with errors and it snowballs.”
“I expect so much when I play that I unravel and lose confidence when the match does not go as planned.”
“My confidence seems to disappear when I go from practice to matches and I don’t know why.”
Successful tennis players have learned how to perform with ultimate confidence in tournaments.
If you are ready to improve your mental toughness and perform with ultimate self-confidence in matches, Tennis Confidence: Mental Toughness For Tournament Players can help you do this!
- Players: Learn how to take control of your confidence, focus your best, and win more close matches.
- Parents: Help boost your junior tennis player’s confidence for tournaments. Just load the program on your player’s IPod!
- Coaches: Boost your team’s confidence using simple, proven mental strategies.
- Instructors: Learn how to give your students the mental game advantage.
Use Tennis Confidence to help boost your mental toughness in tennis and discover powerful and proven mental game strategies that have helped professional athletes win!
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