Playing The Inner Game of Tennis
44FREE e-Book: Playing The Inner Game of Tennis
Discovering The Inner Game of Tennis
Quite a few years ago I discovered the power of the inner game of tennis while competing in an Inter-State tennis competition.
I was down 5-1 and trying to work out how to win my singles match. I decided that I had to do something different. So I concentrated on playing each point, ignoring the overall score.
I leveled the set at 6-6 but was very quickly down 6-2 in the seven point tiebreaker. Again I re-focused and went on to win the tiebreaker 8-6 and the set, My singles win was critical to our State winning the Inter-State competition.
This experience bought home to me the power of the inner game of tennis. I began to appreciate the tennis mind game and learned to develop my tennis mind strategy.
Another experience taught me the power of Tai Chi to improve my tennis game. I discovered that this mind and body discipline helped me to become more grounded, focused and balanced when playing tennis. My tennis volleys improved immensely.
Later on I learned some visualization techniques and how to use action research/ review to improve my tennis game on a continuous basis.
I cover what I have learned in this FREE e-Book:
Playing the Inner Game of Tennis
I also provide further resources, videos, articles and tennis tips on my Squidoo lens:
AJ2008 19 months ago
As a tennis player myself, I well remember doing something similar during a singles final against our club champion. I was 5-1 down in the first set and managed to force a tie break which I won. My problem was that I could not maintain the self belief and I lost the match and I still have this problem.
As you suggest I try to take each point as it comes, but I think for many people the wider picture of the economic realities of our lives tends to get overwhelming and has a negative impact on our focus. This is particularly true for those of us who are finding things tough through no fault of our own, whether it be through financial or health worries - or a mix of the two.
I have always said that in tennis, there's only one point that is important and that is the final point - it is the only point you cannot recover if you lose it. I should start listening more to "me" shouldn't I!!