Tag Archive for 'williams'

How to manage the momentum according Maria Sharapova e Serena Williams

Some rules to achieve the excellence from two top tennis players.

Maria Sharapova

When you are in a competitive situation and you’re down, what do you do or say to yourself?
“I take my time in between in my service games. I walk to the baseline. I move my strings around. I do a little pep talk, and it’s very automatic. I think it’s more of putting my eyes onto my strings and having this repetition that it doesn’t matter if I won the point or lost the point. I’m on this this river that is going to get to where it’s going no matter what rock is in the way, no matter what storm is on the way. The water is, ultimately, going to go down the river. It’s a safe place for me because in tennis momentum changes so much, just like in life. One second, everything is positive, and you get bad news. You go from a great day to wow. I see those strings, and I see my fingers playing with those strings, and I think of being level headed and being not overly excited, not down. But being in this medium frame of mind.”

Serena Williams

My game is my mental toughness - “Just not only to be able to play, to win, but to be able to come back when I’m down. Both on the court and after tough losses, just to continue to come back and continue to fight, it’s something that takes a lot of tenacity.”

Practice under pressure -  Williams believes tennis is “70 percent mental,”, for this reason she tries to replicate match situations during the sessions. For instance: down 15 to 30 on her second serve. Competitive simulation is a  very efficient coaching method. P

Stay in the moment - many tennis players choke under pressure and tend to unravel when they are behind. It’s important stay there, using our mental strength to win. You reach this goal living the moment: “Even if you’re going through something in life, you can’t rush through it instantly. Take it one moment at a time. It’s the same on a tennis court. You have to take it one point at a time.” Live the here and now.

Forget the mistakes - “Another thing that makes me play poorly is if I’m thinking too much about my last match. I might have won it, but not happy with how I won it,” says Williams. “If you get really upset at mistakes, the best advice I’ve ever been given is to forget about it. You can’t rewind time, you can’t take back that mistake, but you can make it better and not do it in the future.”

 

 

In tennis is determinant to accept to lose

I am not a tennis statistician  but I got curious to know how many matches are won/lost in a career. I did this research onlychoosing few women tennis players, even though I hope that someone has done extensive studies on the relation between matches won and lost. The results found are interesting for me to understand the situations that tennis players find themselves living more frequently and to understand which could be the psychological implications.

tennis players   matches   lost    won    %

Camila Giorgi   322        193    129    59

Karin Knapp    519        314    205    60

F. Schiavone    902        526    376    58

Sara Errani      617        368     249    59

R. Vinci           843         520    323    61

S. Williams      764         650     114    85

M. Sharapova  672         535     137   79

It appears that with the exception of the firsts in the world and winners at least one Grand Slam tournament, as Williams and Sharapova, who lost an average of 2 out of 10 games played. For the others, although among the best in the world, the percentage of games lost is very high, on average around 4 out of 10. Tennis, perhaps more than any other sport also for the high number of tournaments played each year, requires the ability to know how to live the losses because they are a frequent  and repetitive occurrence. Only very few athletes in the world not fall into this category since they have a very high success rate, it’s necessary for all others recover immediately from a defeat at the risk of falling into a losing streak, given the high probability of losing is always present.

On the basis of these considerations it’s evident the need for the women tennis players to improve their mental reaction to failures, otherwise they run the risk of getting into a downward spiral from which it’s taken more time to get out .