Compete successfully in matches - use the “big picture” and analytical thinking to achieve greater success

After our mental expert Stephan Medem you important tips in his last blog post "Training World Champion and Match Loser" to successfully take your good performance from training into the match, today we will concentrate on the match situation itself. How you can manage not to tense up in the match Steph explains in his latest video blog that you should concentrate on your strengths, analyze your mistakes constructively and ultimately complete the match with more joy and success

It's "JUST" a tennis match - enjoy and have fun!

Many people are actually afraid of a match. Fear of losing, fear of not being able to achieve one's (good) training performance, fear of I don't know what. Steph gives you almost "philosophical" advice here by saying that a match is just a game, the outcome of which has absolutely no impact on world events.

Keep this “big picture” in mind to correctly classify the importance of a match. If you have this “big picture” in mind, the importance of the match is put into perspective. This should automatically reduce the fear of losing and give way to the joy of the game.

Why do we think negatively so often in matches? 

So much in advance: the so-called “ball-in-time” duration is just 23% of the total time you spend on the tennis court during the match. Conversely, this means that you spend 3/4 of your time in the match “thinking”.

And if we are honest with ourselves here, this thinking is very, very often negative and emotionally influenced. You now replace this thinking with analytical, constructive and performance-enhancing thinking . Analyze why you hit the forehand out of bounds before, instead of negatively influencing yourself with sentences like "It's clear that I'm going to hit the forehand against the fence again..." and start the downward spiral.

So use the time between rallies constructively by analyzing your game both tactically and technically.

Do you have any questions for Steph? 

Then simply use our form and get an answer from our expert.

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