Do You Plan When To Visualize Before Your Tennis Match?

Performers and Achievers Daily with Raj Gavurla

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Show Notes:
The most important characteristics of performers and achievers with relevant and relatable stories and examples to bring out your authentic gifts, talents, abilities, and skills.

Do You Plan When To Visualize Before Your Tennis Match?

1.  Visualize your tennis match environment

2.  Use the BALL method

     B is for breathing (what type(s) of breathing?

     A is for affirmations, instructional self-talk, motivational self talk

     L is for look back to a previous match or practice

       Use your experience, knowledge, skills, five senses (sight, hear, smell, taste,             touch), feel, breathing, physical sensations, and intuition. I guide my                           customers in their visualization on a video (Zoom) call or in person.

     L is for look forward to your next game or practice

        Use your experience, knowledge, skills, five senses (sight, hear, smell, taste,              touch), feel, breathing, physical sensations, and intuition. I guide my                          customers in their visualization on a video (Zoom) call or in person.

3.  When to visualize during a match (serve, change over)

4.  When not to visualize during a tennis match.

5.  Tennis serve routines of professional tennis players:  https://youtu.be/h6Q9btG0d6I

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Performers and achievers, welcome to Performers and Achievers Daily with me, Raj Gavrla. In today's episode, we will continue to do my mini-series on visualization. It's important if you've listened to my previous podcast on visualization. It's important you plan when you visualize. If you are at a meeting, if you're just walking through the grocery store, etc., and you see yourself playing tennis, today's episode is on tennis, etc., then that's not visualization. All that is is something that's out of control. Uh, it's a little bit uh like fantasy, and it actually is putting more cognitive load and pressure on yourself. So there's a dedicated time for when to visualize. Now you can visualize in tennis, like most sports. You can visualize in tennis when you're not at the tennis court and when you're not playing, so you're at home or maybe in the clubhouse, you can visualize then. Or you can visualize on the court. Now, when you're on the court, there's only specific times that you can visualize. However, when you're off the court, you can visualize. And when you're off the court, it's good to visualize using the ball method, which is the same method that we've used in the other sports that I've covered. And that is to breathe. So you want to first do your breathing, and this can be different types of breathing: box breathing, box breathing with uh with uh instructional self-talk, or with motivational self-talk, or a motivational complementary self-talk, or this can be six to eight breath. So there's different types of breathing. You can breathe solely through the nose, or you can breathe through in through the nose and out through the mouth. So that's important, and then after that, you want to go with your instructional self-talk, a motivational self-talk, or complimentary motivational self-talk, or just positive self-talk, and then you want to look back, and when you look back, what you want to do is you want to look back and look back on your successes. Okay, where are your successes? And those are the ones that you want to relive in your visualization. Now, obviously, we also want to correct things that aren't successful when we're on the court, whatever it may be. Maybe you uh do not uh remember to step into your volleys for whatever reason. And therefore, you don't have the weight transfer, you don't have the good control of the ball coming off your racket, and you're not able to put away the volley. So, in that case, since this is some place where you're learning to make progression in, then you visualize the skill. And so I just now gave you a few tips there uh as far as instructional self-talk. So one of them could be step into the ball. Okay, one of them could be step into the ball and hit it away from the opponent, okay? So step into the ball, hit it away from the opponent. So you visualize yourself doing these, and as you visualize yourself doing this, you notice your breathing, you notice where you're looking, you notice you how you're feeling. What's the performance cue you're feeling? Do you feel the ball come off the racket strings, or do you feel when you step in, you feel your weight shift? Do you see feel the energy transfer? Do you uh feel it some other place? That's your performance cue. So wherever that is, uh you're feeling that. And then, of course, before that, you're seeing, right? You're seeing. Um, and when we're in the zone, we're seeing things in slow motion, although they're at regular speed. So uh seeing becomes dilated, and that's very important for you. And so before the seeing, though, what did we have? We had the critical thinking skills, right? This is where you're controlling your response or your critical thinking with instructional phase phrases like step into the ball, hit it away from the opponent, or hit it away from him or her. And then uh you can even have a motivational complimentary motivational self-talk, good shot. So after you hit it, you say to yourself, good shot. Um, or you can also say, uh, for example, uh something positive, something like, Well, I I learned how to hit a forehand and backhand, so similar, I'm learning to hit a volley, be able to hit a good volley. So that's one way to visualize. So that's visualizing off the court. Now you can do this for and then obviously you look forward. So looking forward in this case with the volley was you visualizing yourself doing it the right way, volleying good, volleying right. And so you'll need someone to help you sometimes because it's hard for a person to know what to think and know what to do, uh, sometimes uh, because there are some other factors in there that only a mental performance coach like me would be able to bring out of you to help you in your volley, for example. Now you can do this for your first serve, you can do this for your second serve, you can do this for your forehand, your backhand, your overhead. Okay, so that's very important. Now, here's another way to do this as well is you can do this for your preparation routine. So, in the when you're before you're playing tennis, do you have everything laid out? Do you have your water bottle, your your tennis bag, you got the clothing there? So you can change clothes, you got everything you need ahead of time, or are you running trying to grab those things so you can make your tennis match? Well, if you're running trying to grab those things so you can make your tennis match on time, then you're not mentally prepared properly. So you can visualize your preparation routine. You can also visualize your in-competition routine. So when you're playing, like during your serve, what is your routine? Your in-competition serve routine, and then from here, that would be something that I would help you with develop and and and build that. Uh, it's too complex, really, to be able to do it right here because every player is different, everyone has different things that they think to themselves. Some of them may overlap, but it's all it's different because it's highly individually customized to you, and so that's very important to remember. Now, remember also to keep in mind that when you visualize, you are still you're not moving, you're still, and you're visualizing yourself. And so you can do this, and this will definitely help you, benefit you, work for you to make your tennis progress. And uh that's uh important so that you just enjoy uh accomplishing that, making that progression. I think everyone likes uh something like that to happen. Now you can also visualize when you're on the court. Now, when you're on the court, you can only visualize at certain moments, not not many, actually. You can visualize between the changeovers. So when there's a changeover, you can visualize. So you prepare for the next game. And when you do visualize, maybe you have yourself visualizing yourself how you're gonna serve that game. Like you're gonna go to the forehand on the D side, you're gonna go to the backhand on the ad side, uh, you're gonna go into the body, etc. So you can sort of have that and visualize that. Uh, you can also visualize your serve when you're playing because you're stationary. Remember, visualization occurs when you're stationary. When you're moving, what occurs is you're seeing the ball. You're seeing the ball. So when you're ready to serve, you visualize your serve, and then you start your surf routine, you're in competition surf routine, and when you start that, you are now seeing, you're feeling, you're hearing, you're moving, right? You're thinking also, thinking starts before that, and then the things that you do know about serving, and then the things that you need to think what's going through your mind when you're serving. And of course, the more you do this and the better you're at it, uh, obviously, the less the thinking part will be, and it will be in your muscle memory. However, you'll still be making those little adjustments, fine tuning. And in tennis, that's like any sport, is that fine tuning is uh what makes that point uh a good shot is the fine tuning. So that's when you can visualize during an actual match, other than that, there's really no other time that you can visualize in tennis because you're moving, you're moving all the time. The only time in tennis that you're not moving is when you're about to serve or right before you serve, and then during the changeover, and so that's what I have for you today with the ball method, right? Breathing, then affirmations or instructional self-talk, motivational self-talk, complimentary self-talk, where you compliment yourself with like good shot, and then you look back so you can look back to a success you had so that you can repeat that success or fine-tune it a little more, or you can look back at something that needs to be corrected, and then you can correct it and look forward to the next time that you're playing what it will look like. So that's how you use the ball method to visualize. Now, again, my customers, when they come to me, we visualize, and I'm able to customize it for them because I'm able to ask them the right questions and I'm able to bring out the key points that need to come out. And again, I emphasize every person is different, they have a different approach, it's just that way, and so some of the things are similar, yes, however, they're different, and I can give you an example. For example, one is uh when second serving uh slice it like butter is one of the instructional self-talks, and to some people there, if I were to say that to them, they'd be like, What? But what that's referring to is that when serving that tennis ball and hitting a second serve, the racket strings and the racket comes through the ball like I'm slicing butter. So that's what their instructional self-talk is. See, to most people, they'd be like, What do you mean slicing butter? So that's an example, and so you'll have your own, and of course, you'll have things that are again common tennis things, like step into the ball, put the shot away, or hit it away from them. I mean, those are some of the common ones. However, sometimes even the pros, uh you know, they they revert back to something like this, it'll be like see the bounce, because you they're they're you know mistiming the ball just a little bit. And again, it's this fine tuning that separates it. Okay, it's the fine tunings that separates it. So for example, if you're in a sailboat and you start sailing, and then you're off by one degree over time, that one degree becomes in further off direction, and you end up in a different destination, right? Just that one degree. And so in tennis is similar, it's that fine-tuning that you're doing is what makes that a good shot, whether that's your serve, your first serve, second serve, forehand, backhand, your overhead, your backhand volley, forehand volley, your drop shots, forehand drop shots, backhand drop shots. So that's uh very important for you to realize. And that's what I have for you today. Your bonuses again, you can listen to this, and a lot of people do, and you won't benefit unless you actually go out there and implement the learning and have someone like me, you benefit more. Well, it'll be much more helpful and supportive for you to have someone like me to be able to customize it for you. And so I do these sessions by Zoom, and uh so you can be located, I guess, anywhere in the world as long as you got a computer and access to Zoom, and we can do these sessions over Zoom, or we can do them in person at my home office, or I even go out to the tennis court a lot of times, which I like to enjoy doing as well, because then you get to see it actually occur in real time as well. So we'll take the visualization and then we'll actually go to the tennis court and we'll do it in real time, where you're actually implementing it right in front of me, and you're making tangible, beneficial results, and you're seeing those results in real time. So that's what I have for you today. If you like my podcast, like it. Those of you who are interested in my private, personal, professional, confidential services and programs, visit my website, RajGavrla.com, fill out the brief form, and we will contact you as soon as we can. Enjoy your day.