Archives for June 2018

The mental aspect of injury may be the most overwhelming component for a tennis player.

Injured players have a multitude of negative thoughts that flood their minds:

• “I was finally on top of my game and now THIS!”
• “Why do these things always happen to me?”
• “How low will my ranking drop?”
• “How long will I be away from competition?”
• “Will I return to form?
• “What if I get re-injured?”
• “Is this the end of my career?”

Even though these negative thoughts are both common and normal, you must learn to manage these thoughts and be mentally ready to handle the unique challenges associated with injury if you are to effectively rehab from injury and successfully return to competition.

There are 3 steps that will help you successfully wade through the challenges of being injured:

Step 1: Understand the potential issues that could arise when injured.
Step 2: Understand there is a grieving process that each athlete goes through when injured.
Step 3: Understand that your response to injury will influence how long your layoff will be and how long it will take to get back up to speed and return to a high level of play.

By arming yourself with positivity and patience, you will return to competition better than ever.

The positivity aspect is knowing that there is some beneficial aspect to injury.

Injury is a tough pill to swallow but it can:

• Provide you a needed break to reignite your enthusiasm for tennis.
• Help to strengthen a weak body part that has held you back in your tennis game.
• Give you the time to improve your mental game.
• Afford you the opportunity to review your past matches to determine what is working for you or holding you back.

The patience component is a bit more difficult. If you recognize, ahead of time, that recovery is a process, it can help reduce the burden. =

Additionally, if you have a goal for rehabbing or improving aspects of your game, you will have greater patience through the injury process.

For example, David Goffin, ranked No. 12 at the time, suffered a freak accident at the 2017 French open.

Goffin injured his ankle when he tripped on the tarp placed at the end of the court behind the baseline while reaching for the ball.

The injury caused Goffin to withdraw from the tournament and forced him to sit out Wimbledon.

Goffin has fought back, improved his tennis game and broke into the Top-10 in the rankings. Just prior to the 2018 French Open, Goffin commented on the mental challenges that he faced due to his injury.

GOFFIN: “When you have an injury, the first moment and the first week when you’re injured it’s kind of – you’re happy because you’re a little bit at home and you have some free time with you family to rest a little bit… then after two weeks all of a sudden you want to come back but you cannot because it’s too early. You start to miss tennis a lot. And as soon as you come back on the court you want to come back as soon as you can but the level is not there, sometimes you’re still feeling your ankle but it’s not 100 per cent, so you have to be patient, and that’s the most difficult thing for the players with injuries, it’s to be patient. And also when you’re 100 per cent, your level isn’t there yet. The key is to be patient.”

Don’t allow injury to defeat you.

Look to stay focused through the rehab and re-entry process.

Not only will you have a stronger body when you return to competition, you will have a stronger mind as well.

Coach Kat’s Power Points:

Just as goal setting is important for hitting performance standards, set goals for rehab.

What do you want to accomplish?

If your goal is strengthening the injured body part, stay focused on your physical therapy without skipping sessions.

If you want to improve your confidence, research confidence-building strategies.

Well-defined rehab goals will help you stay focused on track to improve your overall game… but remember to be patient.

How hard do you train?

How focused are you in practice?

How prepared are you for soccer games?

If you are not giving full effort towards developing your game, mentally and physically and fully preparing for each game, then you are doing a disservice to yourself and your team.

Soccer is a team sport, so you owe it to your teammates to be at your best.

There is a saying, “The best ability is availability,” but availability means little without productivity.

How can you be productive?

The answer is by being physically prepared, technically prepared and mentally prepared. Only by being wholly prepared for each match, whether you play or not, are you contributing to your team’s maximum potential throughout the season.

A great example of consistent preparation is the career of US Women’s National Team forward Christen Press.

Press earned her 100th cap for the U.S. Women’s National Team in the June 12, 2018 match against the People’s Republic of China.

Press’ career with the US National Team has spanned five years.

Press has started about half of those 100 matches but has played minutes in nearly every game during her career.

Press has contributed 44 goals throughout her career which is 14th on the all-time WNT goals list.

Press commits to being fully prepared and ready to play, no matter what her role is for each game.

Press’ off-the-field preparation, doing the little things to improve her game and contribute to the overall success of the team is something she takes great pride in on a daily basis.

PRESS: “I have been available for every single National Team game. I haven’t played in every single one, but I’ve been available since my first cap and I do think that’s different. Most players on this team have gone through some sort of injury or something. I work very hard in my down time to do my recovery and strengthen and make sure I’m available in those games and I take a lot of pride in that.”

If you are committed to improving your game and level of preparation you need to ask yourself several questions:

1. What do I need to do to improve my physical game preparation? Your physical game includes conditioning, agility, speed, flexibility, rehab and strength training.
2. What do I need to do to improve my technical and tactical preparation?
   These aspects include all the skills associated with top players and include your soccer IQ or tactical aspects of the game.
3. What do I need to do to be prepared mentally?
   The mental aspects of performance affect every single component of your game, including: pushing past comfort in training, learning new skills, rehabbing injury, anxiety management, confidence building, management of game-time emotions, mental toughness, goal setting and the list goes on.

Preparation is the key to confidence, consistence and peak performance.

What will you do to be better PREPARED for your NEXT game?

Coach Kat’s Power Points:

Commit to improving one aspect of your game each day.

Ask yourself, “If I improve this one aspect, how will it benefit my performance and contribution to the team?”

If you act on improving little aspects of your game, you will be better prepared to play at your peak.

Be your best… You owe it to yourself and your team.

Lose your fight, lose the game.

When adverse circumstances strike, and there is no doubt they will, you must be able to keep up the fight.

The reality is no matter how skillful you are or how talented your team is, without a “Keep Fighting” mindset, often times referred to as mental toughness, you are doomed to inconsistency and under-performance.

Often the difference-maker in soccer matches is your mindset and degree of mental toughness.

Look no further than the US Men’s National Soccer Team to see how mindset affects performance.

As the 2018 World Cup is set to get going, the US Men’s Team is left to ponder the reasons they missed the opportunity to compete in the biggest soccer tournament. The USMNT was eliminated when the team suffered a 2-1 loss to Trinidad & Tobago.

The US squad merely needed a tie to advance and earn a trip to Russia for the World Cup.

The US team had qualified for the previous seven World Cups and were playing against Trinidad & Tobago, a team that had already been eliminated from contention and a team that the US had lost only once back in 2010.

One former unidentified player pointed to a lack of fight or mental toughness as the reason for the USMNT’s poor showing in the qualifying round…

“When we were in Trinidad, we needed better fighters. We didn’t necessarily need better players. That’s what we’ve lost. We’ve lost how to fight, how to battle to get results.”

After an accidental goal on themselves, the US allowed a second goal 20 minutes later that deflated the US squad in the first half.

US midfielder Alejandro Bedoya attributed the team’s loss to a lull in effort and mental toughness.

BEDOYA: “There was complacency. You could see the way we were going about things. We had a game plan, and we didn’t really stick to that game plan. We were losing easy balls in the middle of the field when we wanted to attack them out wide and that stuff. So it felt like maybe there was a little bit of complacency.”

The US team had proven their ability to compete on the world stage in the past. The issue that affected the team most was mental toughness.

Talent is useless if you don’t have “fight”.

No matter the circumstances, you always can control your attitude, focus and effort. These characteristics are the heart of mental toughness.

So the $1,000,000 question is:

How does an athlete gain mental toughness?

It all boils down to developing those three major components of mental toughness:

1. Attitude – Attitude is your view of your circumstances. By choosing to look at tough situations as challenges you will be positive and motivated to overcome your circumstances.
2. Focus – Focus is what you pay attention to. Staying focused in the moment affords you the opportunity to make a difference NOW!
3. Effort – Effort is the intensity you put forth during a game. When you commit to putting forth 100% effort, you give yourself a chance to change the game.

With mental toughness, you will keep your “fight”, stay mentally in the game and give yourself a chance for positive outcomes.

Coach Kat’s Power Points:

Mental toughness is not something that comes to you, you need to go out and get it.

Be proactive and take 15 minutes each practice to advance your mental toughness.

Start with your attitude.

Challenge yourself when practice is difficult rather than going through the motions.

Remember, mental toughness is a habit that grows each time you ‘keep up the fight’.