there are four main causes of errors in tennis the first one is going to be technique the second
one is going to be footwork or in other words positioning the third one is going to be shot
selection and the fourth one is going to be your overall mental game now when it comes to
the question of why you play worse in a match versus a practice session its the mental game
that's responsible for that but the interesting thing is that your mental game affects the first
three calls of Errors so your mental game affects your Technique in a match situation your mental
game affects your footwork and your positioning in a match and also your mental game will very
often affect your shot selection as well and I'm going to explain to you why your mental
game affects these causes of errors in a very bad way and I'm gonna also tell you what you can do
at the recreational level to get rid of this to start start playing more like the pros because
fact is that players at the recreational level have more of a problem with this transition from
practice to a match compared to high level players and especially Elite level players and there's a
reason for this which I will get into later on in the video so make sure you stay tuned all
the way to the end but see what happens to your Technique when your mental game is affected by the
difference of just practice and a match situation is that you get tight and when you get tight when
you get stiff when you get nervous when you get anxious all this stuff is caused by the difference
between a practice session and a match session and naturally when you experience this your Technique
is going to get affected so most likely you are not going to swing out on your Strokes your
Strokes are going to become shorter because you're tense because you're tight and you're going to be
careful with your shot this is something that's very common at the recreational level so it's
going to be easy to say hey just finish your shots don't hit it so anxiously and so tight but you
know from experience that this is something that's easier said than done the solution is going to be
in your mind you have to get rid of the tension get rid of this anxiety and then naturally your
Technique is going to change back to the normal way and you are going to be able to finish your
shots the normal way so how do you do that how do you get rid of the tension well there's going to
be three things that you can do number one you have to move more because one common trait of
players who are anxious who are tight is that they don't move this is a biological thing that happens
to animals when they're scared they don't want to be heard or seen by the predator and they stand
still we have some of this as well so this is a natural thing that happens and you have to bypass
this Natural Instinct that everybody has and you have to start moving around even if it feels
uncomfortable you have to start bouncing around in between the points but that's not enough you also
have to make an effort to move more inside the point as well another thing that you can do to
get rid of anxiety and tension is to start taking more time between the points one common trait of
players what tight is that they start rushing through points they start speeding everything
up and the reason why they do that they want things to be over with quickly they have a general
discomfort with being on the court so they don't want this to take forever they want to get it over
with quickly and you have to bypass this Natural Instinct that everybody has and you have to start
taking your time not only between the points but also between the first serve and the second serve
at the recreational level and at the junior level a common mistake is when players miss their first
serve and they rush and do a second serve right away and a double fault very often as a result
of it so in order for you to lose the anxiety lose the tension you have to start taking more time and
thirdly another thing that you can do to get rid of the tension is to start breathing see naturally
when we're anxious and we're tight we're going to start breathing faster and another thing that
happens that's more specific to tennis is that we're gonna hold our breath when we hit the shots
and this stems from an angst from an anxiety to miss the ball so a lot of players will hold their breath
when they hit the shot then this will make this stiffness and the tightness of the body even more
pronounced so it's very important that not only do you breathe between your points you take deep
breaths you take your time you make a concerted effort to take deep Long breaths while you're
taking your time but also on your shots inside the point don't be afraid to breathe out when you hit
your shots I made several videos about grunting I don't teach anybody to grunt but I teach everybody
to breathe when they hit the shots I don't want anyone holding their breath now if a sound happens
to come out when you exhale during your shot in other words you end up grunting I don't have any
problem with that and you shouldn't either a lot of players at the recreational level as especially
the ladies they're embarrassed when they start making sounds when they play and that's another
reason why they hold their breath and end up making The Strokes very stiff for that reason
so I want everybody to be okay with grunting you should not care what other people say there's a
bias against grunting at the professional level but there's also a bias against grunting at the
recreational level some people have this thing where they want to make fun of people that grunt
I get this on a daily basis people make fun of my grunting all the time I couldn't tell you
how many comments I received when I show myself playing matches or practicing and of course I
grunt because this is naturally what I do people often write horrible things about my grunts so
stop grunting while you're making a horrible sound do you think I care do you think this is
gonna lead to me not granting anymore no because I know that I don't play my best when I don't grunt
I end up holding my breath which is terrible and what happens with me is that I don't do a grunt on
purpose this this is something happens naturally intuitively it's just a sound that comes out of
me and this is the funny thing when I don't grunt it is a really bad sign it happens sometimes that
I don't grunt and here's when it happens when I'm tight when I'm anxious when I'm nervous
maybe in the beginning of a match and if I don't hear myself grunt I know there's something wrong
with my game I know that when I'm grunting this is my normal game and I'm performing at my best
so we covered how the mental game can affect your Technique how tightness anxiousness nervousness
can affect our shot making but it can also affect our footwork and therefore our positioning and
this is something that I want you to understand it doesn't matter how good your Technique is if
your positioning is bad if you're in the wrong place on the court you're going to be forced to
improvise and your Technique goes out the window so I already covered this in the technique part
what you got to do is force yourself to move more you just gotta get those feet to move don't
allow yourself to be flat-footed and your heels touching the ground this is something that I see
super frequently at the recreational level this is sometimes a sign of laziness and low intensity
I'm not gonna lie to lie to you there are some players who are just lazy or maybe there are some
players who just can't move they have physical limitations I got no problems with that but also
what this can be is a sign of nerves where players are on their heels and they're not moving simply
because they're tense so the simple thing that you gotta do you have to make yourself move not only
inside the point but also in between the points you remember Sharapova she used to bounce around
before every serve I know Novak Djokovic made fun of her for this but I actually like this she was
one of my favorite players her attitude on the tennis court was absolutely phenomenal and what
you would often do is bounce around before her first serve and before her second serve and a lot
of players you'll see them bounce around before their returns and this is something that you can
copy you can start moving a lot more outside the rallies as well and guys last but not least shot
selection is something that's a problem across all levels of the game even the high level or
the elite level you see bad shot selection at times and it is not always a mental problem so
in other words the fact that you're anxious and tight and nervous might not necessarily affect
your shot selection you might just generally have bad shot selection there are players like that but
it is fact that being tense being nervous being tight can influence your shot selection in a
very negative way and it stems from the following thing a lot of players want the point to be over
quickly they are so uncomfortable that they don't want to be in Long rallies so for that reason what
you will often see when players are tight is they will attempt super low percentage shots
maybe they will overhit their second serve they will go down the line when the situation doesn't
present itself to do that that would be too far behind the Baseline and go for these crazy winners
maybe they are hitting a lot of Drop shots this is a very common thing that I see especially at
the junior level when players want to tap out of the point they will attempt a drop shot and
this is not something that you want to use too frequently so the key is you have to bypass this
natural thing that is happening to you why you're choosing these horrible shots because you want the
point to be over so quickly you have to bypass this by staying in the point longer even though
it's going to feel uncomfortable to do so aim for the middle of the Court get that ball higher over
the net and get into a 10 ball a 20 ball rally and something fascinating will happen not only
will this help to warm you up properly you're going to get out of breath it's going to move
you around more naturally when you're in longer rallies but also the fact that you're making
shots will increase the confidence in your shots because remember I talk often about confidence in
tennis being the following thing confidence is your perceived probability of success which is
based on a successful history so if your history is missing a lot of shots you're not going to have
confidence in your shots the only way to regain confidence in your shots is to make a a ton of
them and the best way to do that is to extend the rally as long as possible what you will see
is that not only will the tension disappear but naturally your shot selection will change because
I'm not saying that you should always play 20 ball rallies this is maybe not your game style maybe
you're an aggressive player but you will lose this horrible anxiety and uncomfortable feeling you're
going to start playing your game and your shot selection will improve tremendously as a result
of it and now let's talk about why your mental game is altered when you play match versus just
practicing and hitting the ball and I'm going to give you one example that maybe you've experienced
this is something that everybody has experienced at some point in time imagine yourself practicing
your serve and normally you practice into an empty box maybe with Targets this is something
that I encourage people to do it's a great way to practice your serve and now all you got to
do is put a person there now this doesn't have to be a match this person doesn't even need to hold
a racket in their hand just put a person there and plant them right on the Baseline and then
serve what you will see is that your mind game is completely altered simply by the fact that now all
of a sudden the person is standing there on the Baseline and right away some tension will creep in
and you might start making more mistakes I've done this test with hundreds of players and everybody
is exactly the same this tension is something that happens as a result of the person standing on the
Baseline and your mind game is altered because of that all of a sudden you have this pressure
why it's not an empty box anymore a free feeling and all of a sudden there's something there and
it's causing a little bit of a mental block now imagine if that person is holding a racket
in their hand all of a sudden the tension is going to be even greater and now imagine the
person stand there holding the racket is Rafael Nadal what do you think the tension will be when
that's the case okay now I want you to imagine that the person standing there is Rafa Nadal
but you're not just practicing serves you're on a Center Court at Wimbledon and what do you
think would happen to you when you would be put in that scenario you would be unbelievably tight
unbelievably nervous so the answer to the question why do I play worse in practice versus a match is
a super complex answer to that question I mean it depends on many many variables what I just talked
about being put on Center Court that's just one variable guys there's many other ones how about
you're the opponent that you're playing maybe you're playing against somebody who you really
dislike who's generally somebody that cheats you or maybe it's a very arrogant player and
you just feel super uncomfortable and tense when you play that person of course someone like that
might make you nervous but other people might be made nervous by other opponents with other
personality traits so it gets very complex another way players get nervous is to play
somebody I really don't want to lose to in other words they'll be embarrassed to lose to somebody
that's maybe just slightly below their level and would be really embarrassing to them and of course
they get very nervous to play somebody like that so there are tons of variables why players get
nervous but let me speak in a very general way and tell you that if you are a recreational player who
hasn't been exposed to a lot of match play and hasn't played a lot of tournaments what's going
to happen naturally when you start playing matches when you start playing tournaments
whether it be a ladder or a team match you are gonna get nervous and what's going to happen
naturally if you remember in the beginning of the video said that Elite level players they
get nervous as well but their game doesn't really get affected as much as at the recreational level
so the reason for that is that they have played thousands of matches and this is where you have
to realize the more matches you play the more circumstances you expose yourself to the less
nervous you're gonna be does it mean that All the nervousness and all the anxiety is going
to go away no that is the part of tennis that can't be stopped certain things will make you
more nervous but fact is the more more matches you play the more tournaments you play the less
nervous you are going to be so guys a super complex topic don't feel bad everybody is
going through this this is a thing that happens to every tennis player even the elite players
that you watch on TV yeah they played in juniors and they experience exactly the same things you're
experiencing they got super tight and that game went away so the things that I talked about in
this video this is things that you can apply right away but understand that this process
will take time and I don't want you to look for a quick solution you have to get these experiences
under your belt to be able to perform the same way you do in a practice compared to a match