Your tennis game can improve with more practice, but if a woman adds these five mental exercises to her routine, the improvement will be significant. Tennis is clearly a very physical sport, but the tennis game begins in the mind.
Here are 5 mental exercises that will help your tennis game improve.
1. Control your thinking
Negative thinking has more effect on tennis players than they might realize. Negative thinking affects the body in two ways: being overly aware of your abilities (feeling tension) and being unaware of your abilities. Negative thinking creates negative emotions that can cloud judgment and thus affect one’s abilities.
By becoming alert to what she is thinking, a player can change her thinking to more positive thoughts and to thinking of solutions. Becoming aware of thoughts is challenging but necessary in playing tennis well.
2. Build confidence
Self confidence enables a female athlete to play her best. Confidence in her ability to play tennis gives her an edge over the competition that may not be as confident as she. When a tennis player is not confident, she will hesitate before making critical decisions. She will also be afraid of taking any risks. She will usually miss a shot by a fraction of an inch. Her doubt in her abilities will show up as small misses that happen too often.
Confidence always leaves a player with hope even when a big challenge shows up.
3. Find and conquer limiting beliefs
Limiting beliefs are the hardest things to find in a woman and the hardest things to conquer. That is because they reside deep in the psyche. They are such a part of the woman’s thinking that she does not realize they are limiting her abilities in some way.
An example of a limiting belief is a tennis player who believes she never wins a tie-breaker, so she makes sure every time she is in a tie-breaker that she does not win. She will sabotage herself every time.
If a woman has no limiting beliefs, she then totally accepts anything and everything that happens as not having anything to do with her abilities. Events have absolutely no meaning for her. She is better able to cope and deal with circumstances.
4. Improve concentration
Even though a player can start out a game with good concentration, she sometimes loses her concentration because of events that can happen during a normal game. She may feel pressured by the close score or because she is a little intimidated by her opponent. She may have an emotional reaction to an unfair call or because she missed an easy shot.
A player needs the ability to shake off anything that may distract her and make her lose her concentration. Emotions should be kept in check as much as possible.
5. Use visualization
Visualization, or the ability to use imagery, is a key ability to use in all aspects of tennis. Visualization can help a player improve her technique, physical abilities, and strategies in the game of tennis. She can use visualization when she makes a mistake by missing a shot and then immediately sees in her mind how to hit the ball correctly the next time.
