Mental Toughness in Tennis

One requirement of winning tennis is mental toughness. Your tennis game will improve dramatically once you focus on developing your mental tennis game as much as your physical tennis game.

All tennis players lose confidence in their abilities every once in awhile. Situations like losing to someone you usually beat; losing break point opportunities; missing easy shots; being physically out of shape; being very nervous during a match; and even bad calls by the umpire or your opponent can cause you to lose focus.

The good news is that all of the lack of focus that shakes your confidence in your tennis game can be minimized or even eliminated with proper conditioning.

Your mental tennis game is a major factor in how often you win at tennis. It can support you through stupid mistakes and distractions while the lack of mental toughness can totally destroy your game and self confidence.

Without proper mental toughness conditioning you could go either way depending on how you feel any particular day. Without discipline it is far easier to melt under pressure.

The mental game of tennis requires real mental strength and endurance – and this takes conditioning. Mental toughness keeps you in the moment and focused on every point through the entire match no matter what you did on the last point, no matter how tired you are, no matter how hot it is on the court, and without regard to who is on the other side of the net.

When you come back to win the second set after losing the first one, for example, this is a demonstration of keen mental toughness. Losing a set can actually increase your desire to win a match after you have trained yourself to play in THIS moment and block out everything else.

There are four basic components that make up “mental toughness”. All combine emotional, physical, and mental characteristics, so mental toughness requires more than cerebral function.

• First is strength. It is not enough to be physically fit to play a good mental game of tennis. You need the ability to concentrate for long periods of play. You need to observe your silly mistakes but move quickly past them emotionally.
  
  
• Next is agility. Flexibility allows you to move with ease in the physical realm just as it allows your mind to refocus and adjust quickly.
  
  
• Third is responsiveness. Your well-trained physical body responds without hesitation when your mind is focused entirely on what is happening at this moment in time. You don’t linger over hurts, instead you watch and respond to what’s coming next.
  
  
• The last component of mental toughness is resilience. This is what keeps you going ‘no matter what’. You bounce back quickly with minimal effort. You can handle losing with grace. You recover quickly mentally, physically and emotionally.

There is a great historic quote attributed to Julius Caesar, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” (“Veni, vidi, vici.”) This describes mental toughness as it demonstrates that being there is not enough. Seeing the court is not enough. Playing to win is dependent on attitude as much, if not more, than being in the best physical condition possible.

Mental toughness is a requirement of successful living just as much as it is a requirement of winning tennis. It’s far easier to give up and give in to your internal weaknesses than it is to condition your mind to be your success partner in all things at all times.

You don’t have to give up anything of value to gain mental toughness. You just have to be willing to take responsibility for where your mind travels while you are doing something that requires total concentration… like playing your best tennis.

Good luck on the court!

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