Do you play to win? Or not to lose?

[Essential Tennis]

Greetings everybody!

I just put a podcast up today that I think a lot of you will be interested in. It's all about mental tennis, and the main topic deals with something that everybody struggles with at some time or another.

Do you play better in practice than you do in competition? Do you hit confidently and loose during drills, only to tighten up and get tentative during match play? If so you're definitely not alone, I deal with this myself as does every athlete who takes a sport seriously.

Listen to today's show as I'm joined by a mental tennis expert and we discuss how to overcome this problem! Podcast #80: Playing not to Lose.

http://www.essentialtennis.com/podcast/

Cheers,

-Ian

 

[ubermeyer]

Greetings everybody!

I just put a podcast up today that I think a lot of you will be interested in. It's all about mental tennis, and the main topic deals with something that everybody struggles with at some time or another.

Do you play better in practice than you do in competition? Do you hit confidently and loose during drills, only to tighten up and get tentative during match play? If so you're definitely not alone, I deal with this myself as does every athlete who takes a sport seriously.

Listen to today's show as I'm joined by a mental tennis expert and we discuss how to overcome this problem! Podcast #80: Playing not to Lose.

http://www.essentialtennis.com/podcast/

Cheers,

-Ian

not sure of the difference... but you're right, i usually play worse in matches. thanks for the podcast.

 

[NamRanger]

not sure of the difference... but you're right, i usually play worse in matches. thanks for the podcast.

Playing not to lose is to play percentage tennis, etc.



The usual stuff that you should be doing.




Playing to "win" so to speak, is what the professional players do. Offense has dominated the elite tennis land scape for many years now (especially on the men's side). Usually the player with the better offense wins.

 

[Essential Tennis]

Playing "not to lose" means that mentally you're not confident in your play or ability. It means that you're tentative with your strokes and strategy, playing shots that you know can make (as Nam said) but might not be very competitive. The result is nervous play, which at the very least leads to giving your opponent the opportunity to take the match from you with solid play. At the very worst it leads to choking, getting so nervous and tight that your quality of play can deteriorate a great deal.

The above is very different from playing "to win". A player who's playing to win is hitting shots confidently and at their full potential as a tennis player. They have a strategy and are using strokes that pressure their opponent.

Playing "not to lose" is survival mode. Playing "to win" means that you are dictating play, not allowing your opponent to.

At some point in this thread I expect somebody to talk about the types of players who play overly aggressive, hitting everything hard and going for winners with every other swing. This isn't solid strategical play either, it's taking "playing to win" forward to a fault by playing low percentage and reckless. This is definitely not what I'm promoting.

Listen to the show for a full explanation!

Cheers

 

[mtommer]

How about neither playing to win or lose but playing to see just what shots I can pull off or as a measure of what I need to work on?

 

[Essential Tennis]

How about neither playing to win or lose but playing to see just what shots I can pull off or as a measure of what I need to work on?

I think that's a great thing to do in your spare time, or during a practice session, but for those of you reading who compete on a regular basis experimentation during a match definitely isn't recommended

 

[Ad0ut]

Great site and podcast. Unfortunately, my productivity at work will drop even more since I'm going to have to check out some of the other casts.

 

[pvaudio]

I definitely play to win. I don't see the point in playing not to lose, you'll never get a chance to try out your best shots if you're too afraid to use them.

 

[Mick]

i would not mind losing if i get to play with a higher level player. this one guy i know cares so much about winning that he would only play with people he knows he can beat.

 

[Essential Tennis]

this one guy i know cares so much about winning that he would only play with people he knows he can beat.

That's definitely not the way to improve quickly! Way to put yourself out there, losing is just part of the process.

 

[plumcrazy]

I like that you brought this up. After every match I like to access my play. Not just strokes but my mental game too. I have found that I do a little bit of both during matches. At the beginning of each match, I, for some reason, play "not to lose". Then when I get behind I come back and even the score up by playing "to win". No matter who I play, below my level or above my level, it seems I always have really close matches. Every once and a while I'll get blown off the court or blow somebody else off the court. I'm trying to find out what I'm doing wrong. I've almost finished reading "The Inner Game of Tennis" which has been great so far. By the way, I REALLY want to 'play to win."

 

[Essential Tennis]

I like that you brought this up. After every match I like to access my play. Not just strokes but my mental game too. I have found that I do a little bit of both during matches. At the beginning of each match, I, for some reason, play "not to lose". Then when I get behind I come back and even the score up by playing "to win". No matter who I play, below my level or above my level, it seems I always have really close matches. Every once and a while I'll get blown off the court or blow somebody else off the court. I'm trying to find out what I'm doing wrong. I've almost finished reading "The Inner Game of Tennis" which has been great so far. By the way, I REALLY want to 'play to win."

I hear you Plum, mental hurdles like that can be really tough to overcome.

I highly recommend "Mental Tennis" by Vic Braden, excellent book that talks about pretty much every possible mental problem. Also, myself and the mental coach that I had on the show today have done 5 shows, they're all free for download. We've discussed a wide range of mental topics, I'm sure that some of it would resonate with you a great deal.

 

[firstblud]

i'll listen to this later. i generally play not to lose because i don't believe in my strokes at the moment :-\

 

[plumcrazy]

I hear you Plum, mental hurdles like that can be really tough to overcome.

I highly recommend "Mental Tennis" by Vic Braden, excellent book that talks about pretty much every possible mental problem. Also, myself and the mental coach that I had on the show today have done 5 shows, they're all free for download. We've discussed a wide range of mental topics, I'm sure that some of it would resonate with you a great deal.

Thank ET
I started listening today at work but got busy. I'm going to try again 2morow. thanks

 

[SourStraws]

Not to lose...If I dont want to lose I'll fight harder...I never thought about "surviving" until you posted that but thats a good way to look at it...Maybe I've been subconsciously been doing what you've suggested all along...Good post E.T.

S.S.

 

[raiden031]

To me there are four types of games I play:

play to improve strokes under pressure - this is where I practice strokes that I lack confidence in or don't get much opportunity to practice outside of match play (like service returns) so that I can learn to hit them under match pressure. I reserve this usually for practice matches that aren't recorded or someone I play with frequently.

play to go out with a bang - this is when I'm losing bad and trying to avoid a bagel or double bagel. I will blast all my first serves and start S&Ving and chip & charging in order to end points as quickly as possible because I can't win the baseline rallies. I actually used this strategy a couple times this year and it won me a couple games. I would never do this if I had a chance of winning with my A game.

play to win - play my A game where I'm aggressive and on a bad day will miss alot of shots. If my strokes are having a good day I seldom lose to people near my level of play.

play not to lose - I reserve this type of play for when my opponent has break points on me and I just don't want to take risks. Also this is when I stop hitting my flat serve and hit more spin serves because I can't get my first serves in.

 

[GuyClinch]

I am with Raiden for the most part. Quite honestly at my level the mental game is a tad overrated. I have mechanical flaws with my strokes and footwork that I concentrate on executing properly.

So most of the time I am playing to improve my strokes - or my stroke combinations. For example most players i hit against have a dink second serve. So I concentrate on hitting an approach shot off of that and then cover and finishing volley.

It's that shot combination that I am working on. If I happen to win the points as well - that's swell. But I try not to get caught up in dinking to win.. It's a real bad habit.

I feel tennis players love the idea of being mental side of the game but ignore obvious footwork or stroke issues and like to chalk everything up to the mental mumbo jumbo..

If your strokes are good that most of that will be taken care of.. I see people shanking shots and blaming it on mental issues all the time. Most of the time its they weren't in the right spot to hit the ball or took the wrong kind of swing at it.


Pete

 

[LanEvo]

I play to keep the ball in, then win.

 

[mtommer]

I think that's a great thing to do in your spare time, or during a practice session, but for those of you reading who compete on a regular basis experimentation during a match definitely isn't recommended

Actually, one thing that I think would help every beginning player is to watch a pro match or at the very least a very high level college/junior match. While the pros can hit hard balls without a doubt, they don't hit every single ball 100 or even 90 mph. What you see is a lot of getting balls back with placement that won't let the opponent unload themselves and hopefully maybe cause them in turn to hit a ball one can unload on.

I think this is important because it's easy to misconstrue just how hard pros rally and one can fall prey to the "power is everything" mentality. This of course is high risk tennis that can easily break down if one is even a little off on their timing, we're talking fractions of a second and millimeters. The pros are a great example of playing not to lose (defense) and then switching to playing to win (going on the offensive) in the course of only one played ball (of course overall that IS playing to win). Chase Buchanaan did this very well at the Nats final last week.

 

[mtommer]

I see people shanking shots and blaming it on mental issues all the time. Most of the time its they weren't in the right spot to hit the ball or took the wrong kind of swing at it.

I see this too. I also see them hit the a ball well in identical situations. While they may be in the wrong spot, took the wrong swing, etc. often it's because they had a drop in mental focus, let theirself get lazy or misjudged the ball, so the problem is in fact mental in many ways. Of course this isn't so for everybody but I do see it more often than not.

 

[GuyClinch]

I see this too. I also see them hit the a ball well in identical situations. While they may be in the wrong spot, took the wrong swing, etc. often it's because they had a drop in mental focus, let theirself get lazy or misjudged the ball, so the problem is in fact mental in many ways. Of course this isn't so for everybody but I do see it more often than not.

Well coordination and movement patterns are "mental" at some level of course. But people like to blame straightforward mechanical stroke flaws on not having the right "mindset" or 'strategy".. This is the issue i was talking about..

 

[raiden031]

Well coordination and movement patterns are "mental" at some level of course. But people like to blame straightforward mechanical stroke flaws on not having the right "mindset" or 'strategy".. This is the issue i was talking about..

I agree with you. I know that sometimes I have mental issues, like when I'm trying to close out an important league match or when I'm down break points, but thats only a few moments during the match. Some days my strokes are so off that I can't play my best the entire match. I think this has more to do with the fact that my strokes are under-developed and not consistent.

Its not like once you learn the proper technique you can automatically repeat it over and over. Even though you figure it out, your muscle memory still doesn't have a good grasp of it so you might come out the next day and you can't hit that perfect technique you were hitting the day before because you have to show yourself what it is again and again. Its not like it takes 10,000 hours for pros to learn how to hit all the shots, but they can't execute those shots they already know day in and day out without thousands of hours of repetitions.

So yeah a 3.5 player missing all their shots is probably more because of their lack of practice than a mental breakdown.

 

[mtommer]

But people like to blame straightforward mechanical stroke flaws on not having the right "mindset" or 'strategy".. This is the issue i was talking about..

Ahhh.....gotcha.

Personally I never do that. For example, the last time I hit a ball into the net you know what the problem was? That's right, somebody went and put a net in the middle of court. The nutters! :mrgreen: