Previous: The Mental Game | 🏠 Famous Coaches Home | Next: The Return Mentality
The Mind Game
Comprehensive unified tennis knowledge base — Fundamentals, Stroke Analysis, Reference Library, and more
The Mind Game
Ean Meyer
In Western sports athletes experience tremendous pressure, fear, and anxiety generated by an overwhelming desire to win. We learn this frame of mind from early childhood. Coaches, teachers and parents are obsessed with winning and some simply cannot tolerate failure. Athletic pressure spills over into other areas of performance including into the academic and corporate worlds and can undermine the very core of our integrity and values.
The president of a famous college said: “Its hard to teach integrity in pursuit of knowledge or how to live a life of purpose and service when an institution’s own integrity is compromised in pursuit of victory on the playing fields”. This is true not just for large institutions, but also for ourselves.
The Western approach to sports has given rise to questionable ethical and moral means of competition. The use of performance enhancement drugs, violence and dishonesty reflect the “win at any cost” attitude. This approach is also responsible for creating a number of dysfunctional behavior patterns in athletes:
struggling for external recognition rather than internal satisfaction;
measuring self worth solely on performance in sport, job or relationship;
seeking unattainable perfection;
holding unrealistic expectations that result in frustration, disappointment and distraction;
blaming others when things go wrong; and,
not dealing well with setbacks or mistakes.
Eastern philosophy teaches that sport is a spiritual journey combining both physical and mental activities. The journey has no final destination. You will be evolving and transforming throughout the journey and constantly considering new ways to perform. In Eastern philosophy, athletic games are microcosmic dramas with the same emotions, successes, failures, joy and sadness that confront us in the macro cosmic drama of life.
Ean Meyer, a professional tennis coach since 1987. Over the years, I’ve worked with every level of player from beginner to professional, coaching tennis for over 25 years and have worked with many different levels of juniors and adults. In this time I have worked at high performance academies including Bollettieri’s, Seguso-Bassett, Evert Tennis Academy and most recently, the Harold Solomon Tennis Institute. I’ve been published in tennis magazines in Brazil, Venezuela, Italy, South Africa and the U.S. and have conducted seminars for coaches in different countries. My coaching philosophy is very simple: Develop strong Fundamentals in 4 areas – Technical, Tactical, Mental and Physical.
Visit his website at: https://eanmeyertennis.com and https://tennis.pro/
Source: tennisplayer.net archive — The Mind Game.docx (John Yandell teaching library, 2002-2022). Extracted and rendered as HTML for Tennis Future Lab.