Friday, March 16, 2007

Psychology of Tennis

Here's some food for thought on current ideas in sports psychology. In fact, we see the same ideas in general mental self-help practices.

Addressing the psychology of the game is clearly important and should be helpful. I am a big fan of Tim Gallwey's The Inner Game of Tennis and Tomaz Mencinger's Tennis Mind Game, among others.

But I say, "Woah!" at what sounds like self brainwashing to self delusion from some. It's easy to see where I'm coming from on this. For, if you check out my other sites, you will see that I have had experience with people who - shall we say - have a very positive attitude about themselves.


People who pass for normal but, when you get to know them, prove to be pathological.

What I'm getting at here is the idea that you should train your mind to think a certain way. To force your thinking a certain direction. The opposite direction.

The idea is that, to cure yourself of feeling that you're inadequate, just convince yourself that you're super-adequate. To get rid of the feeling that you can't do something, just convince yourself that you can.

But I ask, "Where does this stop?" Answer: nowhere short of believing that you can do anything. Anything you set your mind to.

Sorry, that is a fairy tale.

It's called "believing" in yourself. As usual, the word believe no longer means "be faithful to;" it has been switched into meaning "subscribing to a list of doctrines about something," in this case, about yourself.

You are to believe that errors are CAUSED by wrong thinking = you are capable of flawless play, because all you need to do is think right. The assumption here is that believing your shot will go in makes it go in. Rather like "faith healing."

It reminds me of the old bartender's trick: when the drinker is drunk, you can change water into wine by filling a glass with dishwater and handing it to him as though it IS wine.

You are to train your mind to psych yourself up into "the zone."

Now, the zone is real. But the proponents of self delusion/brainwashing don't describe it as merely a quiet, non-judgemental, and properly focused state of mind. They describe it as a state of mind in which you have NO fear, have NO doubt, and feel that you can do NO wrong - so whale away recklessly: the ball will go in.

Let's call that what it is - make-believing that you have virtually magical powers. Whether you acknowledge that or not, that's what it amounts to.

How is the mind manipulated to control thinking? Through visualization, hypnosis, sleeping with motivational tapes injecting in-formation (in the form of subliminal suggestion) through your ears. If I were an artist, I'd call these methods "waving a magic wand" to put someone under a spell in which they think they're a frog or the greatest tennis player in the world.

Now all those methods do have legitimate uses for legitimate objectives and can be helpful. But all too often they are applied toward illegitimate ones. Why should information have to be snuck into your head? Common sense dictates a healthy suspicion of that.

I'm not saying this psych job won't work. In fact, I have an uneasy feeling that we might be seeing it working in some players at the top of the game, especially some who have been a flash in the pan.

But what good does it do you if it makes you the No. 1 tennis player in the world but ruins your life? Your inner life? Your relationship with your (true) self? And the other personal relationships in your private life? All ruined, because this brainwashing has removed you from reality and put you in a fantasy where you are some kind of tennis god.

It's nothing but an adult reverting to childhood and playing 'Pretend.'

It isn't "positive" thinking at all. It's negative thinking, because it negates reality.

If you have the problem of negating your self worth by thinking you're a loser, there are two ways you can stop it.

One is by truly positive thinking: shoving those irrelevant, distracting, negative thoughts aside by replacing them with thinking about your tactics and strategy for the next point. That's positive. That's thinking what you can do to win.

The other way is by negating your negative thinking with negative thinking in the opposite direction: erase the thought that you are loser by repeating to yourself, "I'm a winner, I'm a winner, I'm a winner, I'm a winner, I'm a winner...."

You doom yourself when you brainwash yourself into thinking that, if you only believe in yourself strongly enough, you can whale away with reckless abandon and have the ball go in.

Inherent in that mental virus is the notion that you CAN make every shot. So, ideally you really SHOULD make every shot. Result: every error is a moral failure.

Tiny, perhaps, but they add up.

Make a few too many in any given match and - CRASH - your game evaporates. That is, the spell evaporates. Your magic is gone. You are dismayed.

It's rather like what happens to a big, swaggering dude with a gun...who is informed that it ain't loaded. Woops, he's suddenly Mr.-Meek-and-Wouldn't-Hurt-a-Fly.

It is better and healthier to face facts: Tennis is a game of errors, because it challenges the limits of perception, timing, speed, balance, and judgement that the human brain and body are capable of. Every nice shot is somewhat of a miracle. So, errors are part of the game. Nobody can make every shot. So, nobody SHOULD make every shot. Your errors are just errors, not moral failings to believe something strongly enough.

Now you have a healthy and sensible attitude. You view your errors as simple matters of fact, not something to condemn yourself for. You pay attention to them, correcting for them on the next shot. You surely don't whale away with reckless abandon. You formulate a game to minimize the effect of your errors on the outcome. To do this, you blend the right amount of aggression and error inducing tactics with the right amount of tactics to reduce your frequency of error.

The mind is our most precious possession. It's best not to play games with it. People who do believe in themselves, who are faithful to themselves, who are true to themselves, never lie to themselves. Because friends don't lie to friends.


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