The Ideal
Performance State
Jim Loehr
Playing competitive tennis is at least 50% mental, maybe up to 90% mental in some match situations.
That's what top pros say. Of course, you need technical skills, but in close matches, when players are
often physically equal, mental toughness is the determining factor.
As a player, you've probably put significant time into developing and trying to improve your game. You've practiced, invested in new racquets, and taken lessons. But how much time have you spent developing the mental skills that are critical to playing your best, loving the competitive experience, and fulfilling your real potential?
Of the thousands of hours most competitive tennis players devote to the game, only a fraction are spent developing the mental game.
Players dream of hitting forehands like Andre Agassi or serving like Pete Sampras. But the most important key to winning--consistent mental toughness--is within any player's reach.
In this Tennisplayer.net series, we will train you to develop the same mental skills as the top pros to play winning tennis. More importantly, these skills will allow you to enjoy the game and the competitive experience in a way you might not have known possible.
The Ideal Performance State
The key to mental toughness is understanding how to create your own Ideal Performance State. The Ideal Performance State, or IPS, is a highly specific internal emotional climate that is associated with consistently high levels of performance. And it can be trained, just a surely as a topspin forehand.
What exactly does it take to achieve IPS?
It has been well established that top athletes actually play their best when they are enjoying the game the most, when it is the most fun.
Playing your best tennis should be an almost intoxicating experience, characterized by great energy, enthusiasm, pleasure, and confidence. There is a feeling of calm in the center of a storm. Your muscles are relaxed and your strokes are free and powerful.
Playing your best tennis should feel pressure free. Great players perform so well in big matches because they literally are not feeling the pressure the way the average player does.
Early on, my research with elite athletes in many sports showed a direct correlation between their best performances and these characteristics. The conclusion? Performance is directly related to how you feel inside. In a literal sense, emotion runs the show. And learning to create the right internal mental climate is the key to playing winning tennis.
Time after time I found athletes reported feeling some or all of the following:
- Physically Relaxed
- Physically Relaxed
- Effortless
- Mentally Calm
- Automatic
- Low Anxiety
- Alert
- Energized
- Mentally Focused
- Optimistic
- Self-Confident
- Enjoyment
- In Control
The top players seem able to create this unique feeling climate on a regular basis, virtually on demand. Achieving this state of physical, emotional, and mental balance is the key to success in pro tennis, and it can become the key to winning tennis for you, too.
What you say, you've never felt anything remotely like the characteristics of IPS in the middle of a tough match? No matter what you may have heard or believe, mental toughness is not something you are born with, it's something you learn.
In these training articles, you will learn a series of simple, proven methods that will allow you to create
your own Ideal Performance State, to overcome choking, to learn to love the competitive battle, and to
play the game with a sense of real fun.
The emphasis is on the word training. It's not a matter of just understanding how you should think and feel. It's a matter of actually thinking and feeling that way. These articles will present a series of specific physical and psychological techniques that, when practiced with discipline over time, will give you the ability to literally shift your internal chemistry.
Mental toughness is nothing more than this ability to consistently create IPS, and this state of physical and mental harmony naturally leads to your best tennis whenever you are on the court.
The result for you will be the same kind of mental toughness we see in the world's best players. The ability to win more matches, to beat the players you want to beat, and enjoy the process of playing competitive tennis.
Over the last 20 years, I have worked with thousands of players, published books and articles, and produced instructional videos. Yet it still amazes me how many players are unaware that these established training techniques can give them the mental and emotional tools to reach their competitive goals.
Almost any player from the 3.0 level up can argue the theory of how to hit the forehand or the serve. Most of them are completely unaware of the importance of training the mental dimension.
The 16 Second Cure
As a case in point, the first two articles examine how you spend the time between points. Most players are unaware that the time between points actually accounts for the vast majority of time in all competitive match. They are equally unaware that this between point time plays a critical role in creating and maintaining the Ideal Performance State.
We'll see how you can use the between point times to become the mentally tough player that you really want to be.
I call this process of learning to use the time between points "The 16 Second Cure." I'll present a detailed explanation of how the pros use this time to stay mentally tough. And then I'll show you step by step how you can develop the same ability.
I'll also take the opportunity to respond to some of the criticisms of "The 16 Second Cure" voiced by another TennisPlayer contributor, Dr. Roland Carlstedt in his article "The 8 Greatest Myth of Sports Psychology." Stay tuned.
In future articles I'll address the other major elements of the mental game, including the following:
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