The Mental Toughness to FOCUS on WINNING – Two Types of Thinking

Mental toughness is all about focusing on something that is going to be effective to have you play well and win. But if your mind wanders or a million things pass though your head when competing, then your mental game and results will suffer.

SO, does your mind go crazy when you are competing? Are your thoughts all over the place?  Is there tons of stuff going on in your head?

If so, then that’s perfect because we are going to talk about that in this article!

Two Types of Thinking

The first thing to look at is that there are two types of thoughts and thinking.
The first type is the thinking that happens and the thoughts that come in your head randomly and you cannot control or shut them off. This is the thinking that goes on when you are driving, laying in bed at night or unfortunately, trying to be mentally tough. They also take absolutely no effort and bubble up randomly.
This first type of thinking has nothing to do with being mentally tough or winning. This is also the type of thinking that causes your mind to wander and focus on a thousand different things.  Bottom line: it is bad for your mental game.

Then there is the second type of thinking.  Have you ever done very difficult math, planned a complex event or done any other type of real hard thinking? Remember how this actually hurt a little?  You felt a burn like you feel when you are lifting weights or running sprints, but instead of your biceps, it was your mind. This is exercising your mental toughness muscle and you were feeling it! This second type of thinking requires effort, focus and intentionality. It even hurts a little bit. This is the type of thinking for mental toughness. Bottom line: it is good for your mental game.

Now What?

First, lets categorize the two types of thinking to make is crystal clear. The first type is bad for your mental toughness.  The second type is the type of thinking that it takes to focus and be mentally tough.

So what there is to do is to use the second type of thinking during the course of the competition. Use it to get yourself to focus on what it is going to take to win. It also takes not paying attention to the random thoughts that pass through your head, like what you are going to eat afterwards. Instead, you have to make yourself focus using the second type of thinking. When using your mental toughness muscle, you are unable to get caught up in the random chatter of your mind. You have to be focus and on to yourself the entire time and not let yourself indulge in the random thoughts that corrupt your game.

This is simple, but not easy. It may take practice and building your mental muscle to be able to do this, but in the end, you will have a huge advantage over your opponent and be able to focus on winning the whole time.

Peak Performance, Even While Playing in Front of a Crowd

Playing in front of an audience can be intimidating, distracting or down right nerve-racking. It is certainly a situation that can derail your mental game but also one of the times that you need your mental toughness the most.

If you have ever found it hard to focus when playing in front of others or wished the audience would just go away, then read on!

Playing in front of an audience, like any other distraction, it gets you off the hook from doing the hard focusing and concentrating that is needed to excel. But, this is not the focus of this article. For more about this, check out a previous article on avoiding distractions: Dealing With Distractions In Competitive Sports

The thing that derails our focus the most while playing in front of others is an innate human characteristic that pulls us to want to be admired, look cool and avoid looking bad. When playing for an audience, our focus can easily shift to ‘trying to look good’ for others. This is the mindset that sets in that causes tightness, lack of focus and for your game to be off.

Looking good can take many forms, including:
-Hoping you don’t mess up
-Worrying about what they will think
-Wanting to impress the audience
-Being afraid of letting someone down
-Having and overall desire for the onlookers to think you are awesome
Looking good and avoiding looking bad is also the reason people often dislike public speaking- it is an excellent opportunity to look bad with many people as witnesses. It happens in tennis as well.

When this is our focus, mental toughness, winning and fun go out the window.

As mentioned earlier, when the mindset of looking good sets in, we get tight and play to not lose. If you make a mistake or lose, not only will onlookers witness it, but all of the things that you think losing say about you (you suck, your worse than you thought, all your work was for nothing…), now the audience will think those things about you too. In light of this, it is clear why we play to not lose! Note: this ALL goes on in your head, not in reality.

When our focus is taken over by looking good, we often get upset more easily. Getting upset communicates to the spectators that you are actually better than you are playing. Getting mad lets them know this- you may even throw something to make sure they got the point.

These are all in service of having you be admired by the audience in some way.

We will not examine each particular aspect of the focus called “looking good” that can so easily take over when playing in front of people, but we have hit on several common ones. What would be really useful is to think to the last time you played in front of an audience, it does not have to be a big one, and think of the ways that looking good hampered your focus. Get to know these well.

Now that we have discussed all of the junk going on in our heads when we are playing in front of an audience, what do we do?

What there is to do is to notice this happening in your head when playing. It will still come up, but now you have the choice to pay attention to it or not. Do NOT pay attention to it, do NOT buy into it and not DO get stuck in it!

So what do you pay attention to? Focus on your game plan, strategy, how well you can play, being aggressive, dominating…. Something that is effective and powerful while playing tennis.

I say this in about every article I write or podcast I record, but mental toughness requires a developed mental strength. It takes practice, intention and attention to get good at it. The stronger your mental game, the faster and more effectively you will be able to regain your focus and get back in the zone in situations where there are people watching you play.

David Groemping
Gemini Mental Toughness Training
Sports.GeminiExecutiveCoaching.com

Dealing With Distractions In Competitive Sports

This article was written in the context of tennis, but is applicable to any other sport and even business situations where you may become distracted.

Often times, we are not playing tennis, or any other sport for that matter, in a vacuum. There are things going on that can serve as distractions, making it harder for us to focus and play well.

I am often asked, “how do I focus despite XYZ distraction?”

If you have ever asked this question, this article is for you!

First, lets name a few common distractions:
-People on a court next to you
-People yelling or talking near you
-Objects coming on to your court
-The weather
-Noise or noises
-Body pain
And there are certainly more!

In this article, we are not going to get into the distraction/challenge of focusing while people are watching- this is a whole different can of worms which I will deal with another time. Here, we are dealing with stuff that is happening around us that can derail our focus.

Now that we have a few of our most likely distractions on the mat, lets talk about how to play great in spite of them!

First off, lets lump the things that can cause us to be distracted into a category called “circumstances.” These are things that can happen or go on, that we may or may not have control over. It is actually likely that we do not have control over them.

In whatever we are doing, we always have a focus, whether we are aware of it or not. A lot of times when it gets windy, the player on the court next to you is having a tantrum or you have a blister, this circumstance becomes your focus. And you start complaining to yourself about it. Having a circumstance be your focus is not being mentally tough because you cannot focus on this circumstance and how to win at the same time. IMPOSSIBLE!

So the first part to realize is that your circumstance becomes your focus and it is ineffective for winning.

What there is to do is to shift your focus from your circumstance to your strategy, game plan or something else that actually does have something to do with winning.

For some of you, this may be easy, for others, it is harder. That is OK because next we are going to get into what keeps your focus stuck on the circumstance so you can get it unstuck.

The first thing that has us get stuck is thinking about how this particular circumstance is bad/wrong/should not be. What goes hand in hand with this notion is we start to resist the circumstance being there. The more you get mad at the circumstance, think about how bad it is and the more you resist it being there, the worse your mental toughness will be. Giving up the notion that it is bad/wrong and resisting it is the first step to more easily shifting your focus to something productive. Getting mad at the circumstance and resisting it will not change it anyhow.

The second is that focusing on the circumstance is a way to get off of the hook from actually focusing and being tough. Focusing is hard and takes a degree of intellectual effort. It is easier and lazier to blame a circumstance for having you lose focus and play badly than actually be mentally tough to focus and win. You have to give up letting yourself off of the hook from really focusing by blaming the circumstances to be mentally tough in dealing with distractions.

We often have the view that the particular circumstance is making us get distracted and we have no choice in the matter. Wrong. The circumstance is happening and then we allow ourselves to get distracted.

Another useful thing to remember is that for many distractions such as the weather or noise, they are happening to the other person too, not just you.

Distractions happen and make it tougher to focus. But to play well and win, you have to use mental toughness to surmount them. Mental toughness is a muscle like any other and it takes using it to force your focus away from circumstances and towards what is going to help you win. If being mentally tough and winning were easy, everyone would be doing it!

David Groemping
Gemini Mental Toughness Training
www.Sports.GeminiExecutiveCoaching.com

EssentialTennis.com Users Seek the Competitive Advantage and David Gives Them Some Mental Toughness Secrets

David Groemping of Gemini Mental Toughness Training was featured on EssentialTennis.com again to talk about sports and tennis mental toughness. Last time David spoke on the topic of Mental Toughness to Avoid Choking and Finish a Match.

This time he answers questions posed by some of EssentialTennis.com’s podcast listeners.

Increase Your Mental Strength, Download it Here!

Q:
We have all dealt with that “not so easy to deal with” player on the court. You know, the cocky, bad line calling, laugh when you miss a shot, type player. Evil.

These guys for me are the hardest to deal with. When I am on the court, I try to be as gracious as possible in regard to line calls, etc. There is a guy that shows up to our round robin play on Fridays that is unbearable. When you miss, he lets out an audible chuckle, when he hits winners, he does the fist pump and “woo-hoo’s” and stares directly at you. I kind of think its funny sometimes, but to me it can be a bit un-sportsmanlike. Besides wanting to kill him, any other tips would be great.

David:
There is a simple answer- you have to not let him get to you. You probably know this already, but you probably do not have a whole lot of access to having that happen.

The first thing you want to acknowledge is that this type of player is a threat to your concentration or having fun or winning and certainly poses a challenge for you mental toughness.

Then, what there is to do is to give up thinking he is a jerk, or an a-hole or whatever version of wrong or bad or evil that you think he is. You may want to think specifically of what you accuse him of in your head. This is the first thing to let go of because thinking this stuff poisons you and your game.

Also in getting upset with this guy, you are ultimately getting yourself off the hook from stepping up and playing well. Give this up and you will have a whole lot more access to ignoring him.

So once you have given this garbage up, what there is to do now is to really flex that mental muscle, and it really is a muscle, to make yourself focus on mastery, or excellence or your game plan, or whatever it is that you keep focused on during your match.
Side note- if you do not have anything that you keep in mind when you are playing or anything to focus on while playing, I highly recommend you do.

On top of that, they guy is going to do what he is going to do and you cannot control him and you can’t change him. I promise. And no matter what you think about him, how he should or should not be, he will still be the same. Same as you can get as mad as you want at the traffic, but it will still be there. Same with this type of player- and this goes for any type of player that annoys you- grunters, pushers…. All of them
Just accept that he is going to be this way, you cannot do anything about it and focus on what YOU can do to win, which starts by keeping your head in the game.

Q:
When people talk about mental strength, they usually mean coping with nerves. You know you should play better, and yet, you’re afraid to lose, and you play worse. But there’s another aspect. Ian discussed this in his blog on “paying attention.” Mental strength is trying to maximize how you play and not let nerves cause you to play worse than you normally would. However, sometimes people blame a lack of mental strength when they don’t realize there are technical deficiencies. For example, when playing a pusher, they may find they can’t hit hard shots if their opponent doesn’t hit hard shots (they need pace to create pace).

How do you make a judgment that it’s a technical problem that’s causing your problems vs. just plain nerves. And if you decide it is nerves, how do you get less nervous as the match is being played?

David:
This question hits on playing as well in competition as you do in practice.
The best I can tell to be able to judge if it is a technical problem or your mental game is: if you can do it in practice and not in competition, then it is mental. Or if you can do something technical in one type of playing environment and then not in another, then I would say it is mental. I am talking on a consistent basis here.
There is a little more.
A pitfall that a lot of players find themselves in is blaming their technique for a deficiency in performance. It is amazing how your technique can go downhill fast if your mental game is off. My point is that a lot of times, players will point to a technical issue where really, it is an underlying lack of mental toughness that is at the source of the technical issue. This can cause confusion in judging if it is a lack of technical or mental ability.

How do you get less nervous as the match is being played: We could have a whole series of podcasts for this question. I will give you 2 things to help with that:
1) Think about what you are really committed to with tennis. Getting great exercise, releasing stress, giving a good fight, pursuit of mastery, be a fierce competitor or having fun or all of these. These are just some examples. Think of why you actually, really play tennis and you may need to spend some time thinking about this.
Then, try on that you playing tennis has nothing to do with you, winning or losing and everything to do with what you are committed to (which we talked about a second ago). Then what it takes is completely giving up your interest in winning or disinterest in losing and completely focusing on your commitment there in the moment, FULLY. What makes you nervous is that you are focused on winning and losing, and what there is to do is focus on your commitment now, and allow winning or losing be a by-product of how you played and what you are committed to.
This is by no means a complete answer, but a darn good start.

2) This is homework- take 2 pieces of paper. Write at the top of one: ‘winning’ and at the top of the other ‘losing.’
For losing, write a long list. I mean long, listing everything losing means to you and about you and what is the worst thing that can really happen.
For winning, write a long list. I mean long, listing everything winning means to you and about you and what is the best thing that can really happen.

Then- realistically ask yourself, is anyone really going to remember if you won or lost in a week? Month? Year? Can you remember all the matches you won or lost a month or year ago- doubtful- so chances are that it will continue this way.
Also- truthfully evaluate the validity of the lists you made- like is this stuff really true. When you get down to it, when you won or lost, all that it really means is you had more or less points than the other person.
The point of this is that we add a ton of inflated significance to winning and losing that isn’t necessarily that big of a deal and a lot of times isn’t even in the realm of reality

There are a million ways to deal with nervousness and a million causes of it, and these are two pretty simple ways that I thought would make a difference for the majority of people listening without actually being able to speak with them.

Q:
Tennis is SO MENTAL, agghh! I played in a singles match yesterday and I wonder what the Mental Training Coach would say about this: I was off to a good start, 2-0, when my opponent changed things up by coming into the net and putting away my high ground strokes. Now she’s up 3-2. Nerves are not my problem at this point. My problem is I start thinking about the SCORE, worrying about winning the next point because the SCORE is so important, agghhh! I start berating myself, “you should be beating this girl”, etc. She was up 5-2 when I told myself to settle down and treat the next points like a drill. Pick a target and hit every ball there. So I had a three shot plan, for instance I’ll hit every ball to the ad side deep 3 ft in from the baseline. Now when she came into the net I had a plan, I drove it passed her down the line. No changing my mind and throwing up a weaker shot, I stuck to my plan. Of course if I had a opening I’d hit it cross court or get to the net and put it away but on the whole I stuck to my plan of picking a side (usually her weaker deuce side) and I turned it around and won the next game. I lost the first set 3-6 but won the next set 6-1. Pretending that I was drilling took my mind off the score, which MENTALLY gave me confidence and turned my match around. I hope the Mental Coach talks about ways to not worry about the flipping score!”

David:
How to not focus on the score-
Sounds like you did it yourself! Here is what worked so you can repeat it.
You cannot think of the score when you are really focused on something effective, like being aggressive and relaxed, for example, and you id this.
And from time to time it takes giving up worrying about the score, because it will pop into your mind, and then you have to pop it right out and focus on something effective again.
What really worked that you did is you got tough on yourself, made yourself focus on something effective- in this case a strong game plan and didn’t let your mind go to focusing on the score again.
All it takes is doing this from the start of the match, not just when you are losing.
One pitfall is telling yourself to not think about the score. What happens when you tell yourself this, you are thinking about the score. Just quit empowering the thought and focus on something effective, like a game plan or what you are committed to with an iron clad intention to focus on that and that only.

Q:
I have a related question for the Mental Training Coach, and this was sort of touched on during your first podcast interview. I tend to play better when I am behind in a match. How do I maintain the same focus and mental toughness when I am ahead ?

David:
Don’t wait until you are behind to get tough and proactive. Bring the same mentality when you are behind, which you may need to think about what that is for a few minutes that has you play well, and generate that mentality for the entire match, from the start, without waiting to be behind. It takes being strict with yourself. You can do it when you are behind, now just do the mental lifting to get yourself to do this when you are ahead- you are completely capable. It would also make a big difference to do the exercise I talked about earlier regarding winning and losing.

David Groemping
Gemini Mental Toughness Training
www.Sports.GeminiExecutiveCoaching.com