How to Keep Your Opponent Down When They Get There So You Can Win

In this article we are going to go over how you can take advantage of your opponent throwing their racket, getting down or having a tantrum so you can ride the match out and win.

First!

The first thing to start to consider is how do you usually react when your opponent(s) get upset, yell, scream, hunch over or do anything else indicating that their game is off?

Really think about this for a minute. Do you get tight?  Start to do the same as them? Worry if you can keep it up? Feel sorry for them?

If what you are already doing is not working out so well, then keep reading. And if what you are already doing is working, keep reading too!

The main key to keeping the other player down is that you have to keep playing well and avoid letting them back in the match, which takes avoiding playing badly yourself.

But how do you do that?

One trap that we can fall into when our opponents start to get down is thinking that it is going to be easier for us now and we can relax a little. We can take our level of play down too, have it a little easier and still win. No way!  When your opponent is down, you need to turn up the heat even more to keep them down.

We have already discovered how we react when we notice the other player is down.  I am going to draw a fine line here. What is really going to help you be mentally tough and keep your opponent down is to not react to what they are doing at all, but simply notice it. Notice that they are down so you can turn up the heat and take advantage of them playing badly, but do not get sucked in and have your own reaction.

Don’t feel sorry, don’t be nice, don’t think you have it easy or have any other REACTION possible. This will only give the opponent a window to get back in the match.

Now that you know what not to do and what to avoid, it is time to focus! On what?  On turning up the heat to keep them down.  Here is a mental image that I like- you have finally gotten them to lie down, and it is time for you to pretend you are a sumo wrester-tennis player and sit on them for the rest of the match, and not give them any wiggle room. You don’t give them wiggle room by keeping on playing awesome tennis yourself by focusing on what it takes to win.  What exactly do you focus on?  A game plan, strategy or how you want to be on the court will all get the job done, but the most important thing is avoiding the pitfalls above!

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.

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