think less, play better tennis
I’m going to tell you the secret to playing great tennis and winning more matches and it’s a simple 2 step process…
1. Get a few lessons, get your strokes perfected, and then practice them until they are consistent and automatic.
2. Turn your conscious mind off and let your subconscious mind control your matches.
Simple, right? We wish! But how many times have you heard a sports announcer say something like, “he’s in the zone”, “she’s playing out of her head”, “he’s unconscious!” Obviously all the pros have done step 1. It’s when they accomplish step 2 that they have stellar performances. We play our best when we turn off the part of our brain that worries about the future or dwells on the failures of the past. Even if it’s the failures of the past 10 minutes. Our subconscious mind has the muscle memory and instinctual movement covered. Ideally, all we need the conscious mind to do is keep up with the score! Actually, a focused, but calm conscious mind can implement and analyze strategy…but you have to be careful. The more input you give the conscious mind, the more it takes over…judging your performance, assigning more importance to outcomes, and generally interrupting the flow of the subconscious mind and body.
Check out our page on Mental Tennis. We will have more next week on the right way to getting your conscious mind involved.