How to Deal with Match Anxiety
Dan Travis
Co author of ‘The Art of Winning Tennis’ and creator of The Art of Winning Tennis Community. Director of the Preston Park tennis courts project.
Don't let this happen in your Tennis Match
American Collegiate Player - Logan Burgess Hayes - Discusses his experience of Match Anxiety
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Part of the problem in dealing with stress and anxiety is that our culture tells us to do everything to avoid both. We need to avoid stressful situations and anything that might cause anxiety. There is a picture that is often painted of the individual that portrays us as essentially quite fragile. We are often told that we cannot cope with stress and that any exposure to it for a prolonged period of time will cause us permanent damage.
It is, however, the ability to deal with and not to avoid anxiety that means our players will be successful. They have to learn to deal with anxiety and not run from it. A central part of Mental Toughness says that we need to 'convert' anxiety and use it as a fuel. Before we do this we need to look at a particularly dangerous form of avoiding anxiety and one that is far more damaging than exposure to anxiety.
The problem that players have in response to stress is that they compromise with the stress and 'Check Out'. In Mental Toughness terms, checking out means that you mentally withdrawal from the competitive situation. There are warning signs with check out but it tends to creep up on you and pounce without you noticing. Your player needs to develop a 'radar' for the sort of stimuli that causes Check Out. You literally need to place a guard in your head to spot the problem.
What occurs with compromise is a change or switch of thinking. The big shift comes when you move from dealing with the present to thinking about the future. In the case of checking out, your thinking moves to what will happen once the match is over. You start accommodating with a future loss, preparing your list of reasons and excuses. This process starts to occur without you noticing. As well as occuring in cognito, Check Out can happen at anytime during the match. Check Out can occur when your player is being heavily beaten or it can occur while they are ahead. It can occur after losing the first set on a tie-break, or it can occur after winning the first set. It can occur at 4 - 4 in the second set or at 3 - 1 in the 1st.
All Check Outs share the same cause. It is a switch in thinking in response to stressful situations where you want the anxiety that the situation is causing to go away. To put this another way, it is a defence mechanism deployed to respond to stressful situations.
Once your players' thinking has changed and checkout has occurred they will lose the match. Thinking is so powerful that it is almost impossible to change it back during a match. It is impossible to change because you so not have time in a match. Once you have checked out, you cannot check back in again.
As part of your player's Mental Toughness training, you need to be able to:
1) Identify when check out occurs
2) Introduce a different response to match based stress
3) Be able to distinguish between 'Checkout' and 'Downward Spiral'
- With Checkout, the player seems positive. They are energised, happy and enthusiastic and appear to be in a good frame of mind. They can be quite talkative. They want to play again as soon as possible.
- With Downward Spiral the player is angry, wants some justice or retribution and looks dejected and resigned. They don't want to talk and have no enthusiasm to play again.
It is interesting to note that both players have lost but because of the emotions and thinking on display we treat Downward Spiral as a far bigger problem than Check Out. This is what makes Check Out so dangerous. The disposition of the player who has checked out does not seem at odds with our cultural approach to competition and what we value. The player who has checked out is a 'good loser' and is playing in the spirit of the game. The player seems in control andn happy. By contrast, the Downward Spiral Player is a bad loser and quite probably in a very bad mood. As a coach you need to identify when a player is checking out regularly. It is very likely that if they have checked out once they will do so again and that it has become almost habitual.
It is a change in the player's thinking that causes check out. When they are confronted by some form of resistance from their opponent they start to change to a different narrative about themselves. The player will start to tell themselves the following:
"Relax, it is only a game"
"This may not be your day today so just try your best"
"I may not win today but I am going to train so hard next week"
" My coach will be happy that I have tried so hard"
"I'm going to serve and volley as much as possible"
"I am going to attack me opponent with more winners"
"My dad will be happy that I have tried so hard"
In Mental Toughness we can change this process. Technically, we say a change in the immediate narrative leads to a change in the current narrative. In other words, it is an almost simultaneous change in thinking that gives relief from stressful situations. The problem is compounded by the fact that it is almost impossible to point out to the player that they checked out and that this was a mistake. The player seems happy and willing to train harder and work on certain tactical, technical and physical things. The problem that the player faces, however, is mental, it is to do with their thinking.
This is why Mental Toughness training is so important. The problem of Checking Out can only be dealt with on a psychological level. The starting point is to see
What can the coach do?
The coach needs to work on converting his players nerves and anxiety into high performance play. The player needs to convert their nerves into a focused and intense energy so they can perform at their best. This is explored in more detail in 'Dealing with Anxiety' part of Mental Toughness RPT level 1.