Click the title below or the book cover to learn more about, Infinite Tennis.
Infinite
Tennis
"Unlock and Unleash
your Hidden Potential to Play Your Best Tennis Ever!"
Click the title below or the book cover to learn more about, Infinite Tennis. Infinite
Tennis
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The Mayhem and Magic of Beliefs © 2001, Roger Haeske Belief Changing Technique 1.The first thing you need to do is to observe your current beliefs about your tennis game. What do you believe are your strengths? Weaknesses? Write them down. Do you have a great forehand? Then write it down. Do you believe you have a poor serve? Then write it down. Do you currently believe that you choke under pressure? Write it down. Use this technique for a few days. Observe yourself while playing and try to notice your expectations and beliefs. Do you expect to hit great topspin forehands? Do you feel you are only an average athlete? You need to make a deep analysis of your belief system because your beliefs set the limits of your achievement. Now keep in mind just because you believe something, does not mean that it is true. What we want to do is to ferret out your false beliefs. These beliefs set the top and bottom limits to your success. Unless you change your beliefs about what you can accomplish then you will never get appreciably better. Beliefs control your mechanics and athletic ability. Your beliefs about yourself are the major controlling factors as to how good you can play and compete. Almost every single tennis player has false beliefs about their game that are holding them back. I am amazed myself at all the false beliefs I've uncovered in my own game. I may never find them all because there may be no limit to how much one can alter their beliefs to improve their games. Beliefs do not necessarily have to conform to logic. These beliefs developed through your experiences. But what if you are the type of person who tends to focus on your negative qualities? Whatever you focus on magnifies. So if you focus on the negative then you will get more and more negative results in your life. What if reality is simply what we imagined it to be and nothing else? All the great tennis players had a vision of themselves becoming champions. Is it their talent or their vision that brought them to great heights? Probably a little of both. But you need both to succeed. Talent by the way is something that can be developed, learned and improved. Almost any area of sports performance can be improved and is not preordained. You can get stronger, faster, develop greater endurance, develop quicker reflexes, learn to track a ball better, improve strategy, learn proper mechanics, etc. Now not everyone can become the number one tennis player in the world. But I know from teaching hundreds of tennis students, that most people are under performing their capabilities, even within their limited amount of practice time. What I am saying is that you could be a much better player and still practice just as much as before. It just depends on what you believe about yourself and what you constantly visualize or subconsciously expect from your tennis game. All of my tennis students initially have false beliefs about stroke mechanics. That is why they come to learn the proper way to hit a ball. But some students don't believe something even after I tell them. Here is a specific example that has happened many times. I was working on improving this student's serve. For some reason he believed that if he fully reached up on his serve that it would send his serve long every time. So he developed a serve where at contact the ball was maybe 6 inches over his head at most. This way of serving at least got his serve in with a little slice. Then I showed him that it wasn't the height of the toss but the angle at which he hit the ball with his racquet that caused his serve to go in or out. Unfortunately this student is stubborn and is still hitting his rinky-dink serve. He doesn't want to learn a better way to serve. Maybe he is satisfied with serving like this. Or maybe he believes that he can't learn the better way of serving. Maybe after a few tries he has given up. But it just goes to show you how false beliefs strongly influence the way your tennis game develops. By the way this stubbornness happens mostly with students who have their parents paying for the lessons. Once an adult pays for their lessons they are usually more willing to try whatever the instructor wants them to do, though not always. It's funny but in general I've found that younger people are much more stubborn and stuck in their ways than older people. Maybe it's that a stubborn older person would never waste their money in taking a tennis lesson because they know they wouldn't bother trying to change their game anyway. I know for myself that I was much more stubborn and closed minded when I was younger. It may be no coincidence that I didn't have any confidence in my learning ability in my teenage years. When I was young, from around 7 to 12 years of age, I had irrational beliefs about my athletic ability. I always believed myself to be the best. Even without practicing. At an early age I didn't practice sports. I just wanted to play and win and never thought of actually working at any particular sport. But most times I was the top athlete or one of the top 3 athletes in school or camp. As I got into my teenage and adult years I caught myself having more so called rational beliefs. I've thought I need to practice a lot to be much better than I was. But I've discovered that the only thing I need to practice is my Imagination. I needed to see myself playing from a professional level. It's not logical to assume I should be playing at a pro tour level with extremely little practice time. But just changing my belief lifted my confidence and playing level immediately. What I am trying to say is that if you limit yourself to step-by-step improvement by only learning new mechanics or strategy, you may be shortchanging yourself. Talent is tied in with your beliefs. Change your beliefs and you instantly change your talent level as well as your ability to learn and to succeed. Success is not rational it is imaginal. Here is the rest of the technique to change your beliefs. 2. Ask yourself, Are these beliefs about my tennis game absolutely true? What if I pretended to have a great serve, would I start developing a great serve? The key here is to question the validity of your beliefs. Do you believe that there is a limitation that all players face? Ask yourself if any pro player can do what you think is impossible. For years I thought there was a certain limitation on the one handed topspin backhand. Then I watched Pete Sampras up close practicing. I saw he didn't have that limitation. Then I saw other top pros and they didn't have that limitation either. Then I even noticed players I played against and they didn't have that limitation. So while I watched Sampras I copied his technique and within one day I dramatically improved my backhand. Now my topspin backhand is much better and I can use it in more situations. 3. Remember any time you had hit a good or even a great shot on the stroke you believe you are no good at. You can use that as proof to yourself that you do have the capability inside of you to hit that shot great. Let's say that you want to improve your serve. Even if you had hit the serve great accidentally, that proves that you have the capability to do it right. It was your body that did it, and it could do it again. (Of course this is my belief system. Maybe you don't believe that and that belief in itself could be holding you back.) 4. Just before you go to play spend 5 minutes with your eyes closed visualizing yourself playing great and hitting great shots effortlessly. Picture that serve going in over 100 miles per hour and with great spin and accuracy. You have to visualize it first to be able to achieve it. Try it, I guarantee it will work wonders in your game. 5. While you are playing you must continue to believe and visualize great shots. Pretend you are your favorite professional tennis player. How would that person be hitting? Keep visualizing yourself as that person and you will very quickly move in that direction. Your improvement will start happening right away. You may not be in pro form that first day. But I can tell you that this is the fastest way to improve. You must see yourself not as you are but as you want yourself to be. Don't be realistic, because if you are you'll never get any better. Plus it's much more fun to pretend that you are a great player than just plain old you. 6. Never get frustrated. If you mess up, don’t worry about it. Just set your mind back to the image of success that you want. See it in the present moment. Not some goal that you will someday hit. Live from your goal in your imagination. Use any ideas or feelings you get to help you improve. If you feel you need to read a tennis book then do so. If you need to take a lesson or lessons then do it. I'm not saying that beliefs and imagination replaces everything else. Knowledge of how to do something correctly can save you years of frustration. But with the proper beliefs and imagination you will learn much more quickly, and bust out of plateaus that you may have been stuck at for years. You will easily go beyond any level you had previously attained. |
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Copyright © 1999-2005 Roger Haeske
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