Improve Your Mental Game

Improve Your Mental Game

Tennis requires a huge amount of mental toughness: the ability to keep your head in the game and not zone out. The best players have the strongest mindsets. They are the ones who stay at the top of the ATP rankings at all times. It doesn't matter if you are a complete beginner, mental toughness applies to everyone. Here are some tips to keep your head in the game no matter what.

• Bouncing Back: The biggest problem for most players is that they start living in the past or the future. For example, if you win the first set, you might start thinking about winning the whole match instead of the next point. If you lose just one point, you lose focus on the present, and start dwelling on that one mistake.You can continue doing this, or you can learn to bounce back. The key to bouncing back is to focus on finding the lessons in your game, and the positive aspects.

• Learning from mistakes: You have probably heard this one millions of times, but I still think that it’s important to include this. Learning from your mistakes is an extremely important aspect of your mental game. If you mess up, you should not just shut down, or zone out, you should evaluate your mistake, figure out the reason you lost the point or match, and learn what to do next time.

• Don't make excuses: This one is pretty self explanatory, don't make excuses. If you make a mistake, own up to it, don’t pretend that it wasn’t your fault. Making excuses keeps you from changing the situation you are in a very important aspect of mental toughness.

• Stay focused: Staying focused is the most important part of tennis, but the hardest one to achieve. Many people often find themselves completely zoning out, or losing concentration in a match. When you are on the court, your focus should solely be on the match, your eyes should be on the ball. The best way to do this is deep breathing. Deep breathing has been found to help with concentration, it is a great way to keep focus after winning or losing a point. 

The mental side of tennis is the most important part of the sport. I hope that these tips will help you improve your game in future matches.