It was 18’s Clay-court Nationals and Eric was in a tight match. His opponent was the #1 seed and one of the top junior players in the United States. Eric, a 17-year-old from Texas, was unseeded and his ranking was well outside the top 100.  

 

It was a hard-fought battle, with the score close the entire match. The two National players had split sets, and now it’s a third set super-tiebreaker. With a potential upset brewing, a lot of people were watching now, including college coaches interested in how this match was going to play out! 

 

How would you, as a parent, be feeling in this situation? How would your son or daughter be feeling? Would you be relaxed? Or would you probably want to close your eyes or leave!

 

 

What about your kid? How does he or she normally act out in these situations! Do they become nervous, like you? Do they usually play tight, even holding back, instead of being relaxed and letting their training kick in so they can perform their best? Do they consistently have trouble closing out the tight matches? 

 

Yes?  

 

Well, the bigger question is… what are they doing about it? 

 

At Complete Performance, we’ve developed mental training tools that help the athletes that we personally work with have greater success in high stress situations. Mental training techniques that build their mental toughness so they can shake off the lost points/games more easily and so a bad shot or lost game doesn’t freak them out! They can regroup and perform their best under pressure.

 

Every athlete wants to bring out their best performance in matches, and play big on the big points. Unfortunately, most athletes have their best performance in practices. They don’t usually save their best performances for match competitions, when it counts.  

 

So, what exactly is that elusive “ZONE” and how do you get in it?

 

Well, staying as simple as possible… your zone is a state of mind, when your conscious mind, or your thoughts, are quiet. In this mental state, you’re not “over-thinking” and all the previous good training already stored in your subconscious mind, which contains the muscle memory, can more easily flow into your match play. 

 

Now, quieting the conscious mind or your thoughts and finding your ZONE is not an easy task. This requires training, just like getting your muscles stronger requires training in the gym. 

 

The predecessors to getting in to your ZONE are learning how to breathe properly, physically relax, and mentally relax. In fact, for starters if the athlete isn’t able to breathe and relax it will be difficult to quiet their mind and it’ll be very challenging to find their ZONE.

 

A great place to start to work on breathing, controlling thoughts, directing thoughts, and learning to relax both physically and mentally, is by meditation. Meditation is something that just about every professional athlete does. It allows the athlete to master their self-talk, so they can enter their ZONE and consistently perform their best, under pressure.

 

I know that it can be very challenging to meditate. It’s so easy to get distracted and tough to even know what to think about? This is why CP created a guided meditation product specifically designed to help athletes give their best performances in competitions, even under pressure. It’s called “In The ZONE." 

 

In the ZONE has 6 progressive Steps and each Step builds off the previous one! Each Step has its own guided mental exercise, where the athlete will put on headphones, go to a quiet place and train, listening to the exercise. The first 4 Steps help the athlete get into their ZONE through a series of breathing exercises and physical and mental relaxation techniques. 

 

The athlete will progressively advance to Step 5 and Step 6 meditation exercises, which guide the athlete to break specific negative patterns, caused by specific scenarios that cause them to tighten up. These barriers to performance can be anything like playing a seeded player, a younger player, a sectional or national tournament, or 3rd set tiebreakers.

 

Oh yes, speaking of 3rd set tiebreakers… back to the match.