The excess of information and overprotection are the two traps that we often meet in the development of a player. Logically, we try to give the best to our children or students, but there are times when much is little, and more is less. Even sometimes NOT GIVING is the best thing that can be done to train and educate a player. Therefore, today we are going to talk about one of the sections on how to create a suitable environment for the player to progress. We are going to talk about the best psychologist that exists in the first steps of development: Physical Training.
Not fit, but need a Psychologist?
Think of a child who has a 90% sedentary life and when he faces the moments of great emotional or physical stress during matches, we prepare pages and pages of theory and routines trying to make him understand things that he has never experienced before. We spend hours with mental training (sitting) to develop complex theories of how to control the nerves in a set-point or match-point, how to calm pulsations and concentrate after a 30-stroke rally or how to coordinate strokes in the third hour of the match.
I think that with all this we make a big mistake. I understand that we want to give the players the best of the latest advances in the multiple fields that surround the sport, but … why develop complex psychological schemes when a child ignores the functioning of his body in the realities mentioned above?
I will not extend much in this article and I will only think aloud about the questions of mental preparation and what I would advise everyone, to make progress in this regard, is the following.
Physical training
- The first step of mental development is strongly linked to physical development. This is why a growing athlete must look at working his body. When facing certain physical realities his mind and his emotions will discover new spheres to investigate. His experiences through the physical world and his body will teach him to act in multiple crucial circumstances of the matches (about which we talk so much) and I assure you that, when you trust your physique, you will rely much more on yourself as a player, as for now, we humans, have strongly linked the understanding of ourselves to our own material body.
- Then, later, when the player evolves and enters the professional world, the job will be to dissociate mind and body, to give the autonomy to each part and reduce the influence of body variables on the mind and action. But that is already one of the most advanced steps and the road must be done step by step.
That is why my advice would be to pay much attention to physical training since there is no better psychologist throughout the growth of a tennis player
P.S.
Besides, I would like to emphasize the importance of physical preparation for technical development. The work of polishing and mechanizing the shots are strongly linked with repetitions of each stroke, which depends on the physical capacity of the player, which has a limited number of repetitions that it can accomplish. If this number is exceeded, the overload begins which can subsequently lead to injury. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare the body and expand its capacity for repetitions since that allows us to perform suitable technical work. But on this subject, I will speak more extensively in another article.
