Mental Skills
“My consistency is based on my mental strength. It is basically impossible to break down my mental part these days. I think that is very important, because tennis is quite a mental sport." Roger Federer, 2005
As we can see from the above quote the mental side of tennis performance is extremely important. Yet mental skills are not ‘taught’ in a structured fashion in the same way as you might learn technical or tactical skills. This therefore places a large emphasis on the personality of the players themselves and their inherent ‘mental strength’, as well as the quality of coaching that they receive, in determining players’ ability to fight the mental battle.
As part of the Royston coaching programme, it is important for our players to learn to be respectful, cope with winning and losing, and develop certain psychological skills which will enable them to become 'winners' not just in sport, but in life also. The following mental skills, and mental skills techniques, have been identified as an important part of this development process:
- Motivation
- Confidence
- Purposeful Thinking
- Goal Mapping
- Attentional Focus
- Imagery
- Emotional Control
