Mental Toughness

Mental toughness, how can I improve it? What is it? What defines it?              There are a lot of books written on the subject. While spring training at Hilton Head with Salve I ran met Matt Curraco, head of the Ivan Lendl mental toughness department at Lendl’s tennis and golf academy on the island. Ivan, one of tennis’ hardest workers and toughest competitors of all time told Matt one simple thing to keep in mind.

“What’s that,” I asked. Tell us the secret I’m thinking.

 "90/10, he said." Control your 90% of the court and your opponent controls 10%. So many players and coaches focus on their opponents and not enough on themselves. He then took us through a workshop on mental toughness asking each of us to write down what their ideas where on what competition means to them.

Answers on competition ranged from skill matching, relaxed aggression, playing your best, giving your best effort, mixing it up, etc., etc., etc. And then we needed to define our games (baseline, all court, attacking, retriever, etc.). After defining your game you then need to do rituals that keep you mentally and physically ready.

Physical rituals include jumping up and down before starting a point, shadow swinging a correction, quick feet before the point starts and then a split step when your opponent strikes the ball, holding the racket loose in your hand so you can react faster with more racket speed, taking in water on breaks, and so on.

Mental focus includes staying in the moment, not over-loading your brain with commands, playing your game, hitting your targets, staying aggressive, and allowing yourself to play so that you get the most out of what you do.

The team gained much by thinking of the 90/10 rule. It’s simple, easy to apply and frees you up to be yourself. When that happens you truly are competing. You are not giving yourself tons of commands and admonishments. Each shot gives you feedback that your unconscious can process far better than your conscious self. Ask yourself to make an adjustment, visualize it, feel it and then trust yourself to let it happen. You’ll be amazed when you role play yourself as confident, fast, consistent, etc. Even if you don’t believe it, if you act it, you start to believe it. Funny, that reaches far beyond tennis.