In many sports there are breaks between points. There are in fencing, shooting and shooting, tennis and table tennis, but also in team sports such as volleyball. Often, however, athletes do not make good use of these moments, viewing them as suspension phases and not as moments that are integral to their performance. When this belief is dominant, pauses are experienced as a waiting time before the actual action begins. In general, it can be said that only elite athletes make good use of these moments to reduce stress and refocus on what is about to happen. And yet it is not uncommon to see breaks misused even by athletes who are in the top 100 in tennis and table tennis, hence professionals.
Many athletes are unaware of a simple rule and that is that the before determines the after. They do not know that what they do during the break will determine the quality of their performance at the next point. In competition they become prey to their worries, they put doubts in their minds and think about the result. They are convinced that just being fit is enough to deliver an excellent performance; they do not think that it is their beliefs before the action that will enable them to perform the next point in the way they are capable. On the other hand, many young people do not train to handle breaks, so how can they do something in competition that they never do in training?
I don’t want to get into how to train breaks and how to use them in competition, I’m interested, meanwhile, in stimulating coaches to teach their athletes what to do during breaks and for athletes to practice this approach in training for the purpose of stabilizing their own routine, consistent with the different phases of competition and scoring.
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