TeamOB
Professional
A trend I see almost universally in high-performance academies and junior development programs is coaches discouraging all shows of emotion on court. The standard coaching mantra seems to have become: "Turn your back to the opponent, fiddle with your strings, go through your rituals etc.". It seems like coaches are trying to turn their students into a bunch of emotionless Sharapova-clones. Students that show some emotion (talking to themselves, swearing under their breath, tossing their racquet etc.) are criticized, labeled as having a "crappy attitude", and sometimes punished with laps, pushups or other physical activity. The problem I see with this is that the poker-face ice-man attitude does not work for everyone. In fact, I think that it only works for a small minority of especially stoic people. For the average Joe it is counterproductive to keep their anger or frustration pent-up like this. I see many kids (I am one of them) that play much better after releasing some of their accumulated anger. I think that as long as they are not totally out of control, coaches should encourage their students to do whatever they need to keep their emotional balance. As long as their behavior is not a code-able offense in tournaments (ex. yelling obscenities, breaking racquets, hitting balls over the fence etc.) coaches should allow or even encourage it. What do you think about this issue?
