Mental Toughness
Tennis Midlands’ Mental Toughness Programme combines developing vital on-court behaviour and holistic life skills.
The Programme has the following components:
• Weekly group sports psychology sessions for players;
• Emailed monthly Mental Toughness newsletter for all players;
• Tennis Midlands training and match log books (pre session/match
goals and post session/match feedback from player and coach) for all
players. Prizes for best maintained book of the term and highest scoring
player.
Off-Court Programme
Our holistic tennis education service focuses it’s energies off-court
on:
• Goal-setting. Coaches and players set goals 3 times a year.
• Detailed analytical player reports. All players receive termly
player analysis reports outlining their progress and highlighting priority
areas of work.
• Periodised tournament planning.
• Periodised training syllabus.
• An on-site academic study group.
• A schools liaison programme. We help parents negotiating with
schools for time out of lessons to pursue The High Performance Programme.
Our team here understand that developing elite tennis players can be
a sophisticated and complex process. Therefore we believe strongly in
our philosophy of -
‘Developing the player by developing the individual’
When identifying tennis talent we look closely at 2 key areas:
• PERSONALITY
• ATHLETICISM
We feel that players with a genuine aspiration to be world-class performers
need to be outstanding in one of these areas and preferably in both.
Developing athletes takes place on the court, on the track, on the stretching
mat, on the masseuses table and in the gym. Developing personalities
is a far more cerebral process. Our strategy involves:
• Developing strong COMMUNICATION links with the families of our
players. We all need to be a strong team with common objectives. We all
need to be understanding of world-standards and the training demands
necessary to achieve them. We all need to know where a player is both
physiologically and emotionally in their journey towards adulthood;
• Helping our players to develop one of the most important talents necessary to achieve excellence – APPLICATION. Without genuine application, the ability to self-motivate and diligently strive for personal improvement, our players stand no chance in the rough and tumble of elite tennis. We find that many players and parents rest the responsibility for a young athlete’s success on the wrong doorstep – the coaches. Coaches are not magicians. Rather we are guides on a journey that ultimately must be driven by the player. Our role is indeed significant, especially when our players are very young, however it should recede as players reach their mid to late teens;
• Helping our players to develop greater levels of INDEPENDENCE. Tennis is a global sport requiring its players to travel extensively. Many players at the start of their careers cannot afford to travel with a coach and only those with robust personalities and an independent spirit survive. Only a combined effort from coaches and families can cultivate this spirit in our players;
• Developing INTELLIGENCE in our tennis players, outward looking athletes who absorb information on and off the court. The tactical requirements of tennis demands that players are problem-solvers who notice weaknesses in their opponents and act on them. This intelligence is born from a coaching style that encourages and rewards it.
• Developing EMOTIONAL CONTROL in our players. Tennis is perhaps
the most mentally demanding and emotive sports for its combatants. Only
those with bullet-proof self-esteems and deep-rooted confidence can survive
its many blows. Our programme deals with this fact both on and off the
court.
