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THE SCIENCE OF MATCH DAY PREPARATION
PRE-MATCH WARM-UP RITUALS
Before each PGA tournament round, Tiger Woods warms up every club in his golf bag, just in case he needs it. In the high-performance tennis world, players who routinely warm up both their primary and secondary strokes have a major advantage in tightly contested matches. Grooving fundamentals before a match is important, but let’s go deeper.
A first-set tiebreak can often come down to a player executing a winning secondary stroke such as a swing volley or topspin lob. Confidently perform secondary shots at crunch time, without hesitation, stems from properly warming them up before the match. Players who neglect their secondary strokes have a very different mind-set when faced with the same exact situation. Instead of instinctively moving forward to hit the swing volley to take the tiebreaker, they hesitate and are caught thinking, “I don’t remember the last time I hit one of these? Can I make it? Should I go for it?” Now guess who misses the easy shot, gets upset and blows another breaker?
Obviously, any stroke has to be developed on the practice court long before tournament competition begins. Once developed properly, it should be placed into your match day tool belt and warmed up before competition.
“A smart tennis player has developed and then systematically warms up
every secondary stroke before competition.”
If your athlete is still holding on to the “old school” fundamental stroke warm up routine, I highly suggest keeping it for comfort’s sake but also begin to warm up in the manner that they are expected to perform. This includes, whenever possible, taking extra time to warm up the below list.
6 Different Forehands and Backhands:
1) Primary Drive Ground Strokes
2) High and Heavy Ground Strokes
3) Short Angle Ground Strokes
4) Defensive Slice
5) Drop Shots
6) Defensive Lobs
3 Different Serves:
1) Flat Serve
2) Slice Serve
3) Kick Serve
3 Different Volleys:
1) The Swing Volley
2) The Drop Volley
3) The Transition Mid-Court Volley
2 Different Overheads:
1) Stationary, Service Box Overheads
2) The Turn and Run, Overhead with Movement
The 2 Different Approach Shots:
1)Traditional Approach to Volley
2)Spot a Vulnerable Opponent and Steal the Volley
NOTE: Customize the warm up whenever possible. For example: If your athlete’s next opponent is a Moonball retriever, it might be wise to warm up their swing volleys, side doors and drop shots.
“Often, what separates two talented players is the time and
energy put into properly preparing for battle.”
PRE-MATCH VISUALIZATION AND IMAGERY
Warming up doesn’t stop at the physical. Players need to build up their “wall of defenses” in preparation for the continuous onslaught of mental and emotional challenges that competitive tennis encompasses. What we think about often dictates what we create.
A mental, emotional no-no is to obsess about the next opponent’s past success, ranking or seeding. Winning tough matches begins with a winning mind set.
“A winning mind set is a performance-based plan.”
In the nights leading up to a big event, a great way to preset a positive mindset is to re-live a past peak performance experience. Set aside 15 minutes a night for three nights in a row to allow your athlete to re-experience the feelings of coming through under pressure. This is known to calm nervousness and quiet fears. It also has been linked to motor programming the skills of applying the appropriate responses with little or no cognitive processing. It has been proven to improve the player’s physical, mental and emotional performance on game day.
Positive visualization includes the athlete imagining their strokes working to perfection, their tactics and strategies working like clockwork and their emotional state of mind calm and relaxed.
Pre-match visualization topics are unlimited, but some of the best visualization exercises include the following:
1) Perfectly executed primary and secondary strokes.
2) Top seven favorite perfectly executed patterns.
3) The three pillars of between-point rituals.
4) Successful patterns of play against the three main styles of opponents.
5) Preset protocols for common emotional issues. (Gamesmanship)
Ask your athlete to begin their pre-match visualization by arriving on site early enough to set aside 20 minutes to mentally rehearse the performance goals they’ve been rehearsing on the practice court.
Start this self-hypnosis by seeking out a quiet area away from other competitors and distractions- with closed eyes, ask them to take several deep relaxing breaths. Then create a vivid mental image of numerous tasks being performed successfully. Let’s call this your positive movie.
To build confidence and reduce pre-match stress, ask them to mentally re-run the “movie” several times to reinforce the positive thoughts.
“Positive constructive visualization actually trains a player to perform the skills imagined calmly, without hesitation.”