YOU WANT TO BECOME A BETTER PLAYER !

Of course you do, and I am adding a series of articles to try to help you achieve that aim.

At whatever stage you are currently enjoying, there are a number of areas that I believe are absolutely essential to be able to improve, and this applies equally to other sports.

Each week I will be adding a new area in a step by step guide to help your tennis.

We start with Goal Setting.

John McEnroe once said about goal setting - make sure you do not make the goal too difficult in you period of thinking.

It is better to make you short term goal an easy one then you will want to carry on with the other medium and long term goals.

GOAL SETTING.

Perhaps you think that goal setting is not very important, well think again. A life of meaning and a career in tennis, or any other sport for that matter, needs goals and specific plans to achieve them.

Many of the top and wealthy men in the world lay their success down to knowing what they wanted and where they were going. Clearly defined goals and strategy are the single most important structure in the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of your tennis career. Goals need to be constantly reappraised, refocused and re-shared with someone, so that you have the opportunity to discus your progress; I would suggest this should be your coach.

The benefits of goal setting are neither imaginary nor vague.

* Goals establish direction for your tennis. If you never set a goal how will you know where you are going?

* Goals identify results. If no goal exists, how do you measure your progress?

* Goals challenge you to grow and improve. If you never set a goal how do you move out of your comfort zone?

* Goal setting gives you confidence. Your frustration is immediately lowered when vagueness and doubt are replaced by focus and concentration.

* Goal setting forces you to be specific. It is the first positive step to success. If for example, you were deciding to visit someone by car and you did not know the way, you would take a map and carefully plan your route. Setting your goals is just the same.

Consider this your very first step along the route to your tennis ideals. Success in any endeavour does not happen by accident. It is the result of deliberate decisions, conscious efforts, and immense persistence. A dream is just a dream until you write it down, then it becomes a goal. Written goals are the first step towards commitment, it means you are serious about its achievement. Written goals force you to think – to accept how realistic your goals may or may not be.

* Write your goal in specific, measurable and time limited terms.

* Write your affirmative goal statement. This is what you will be able to say once you have achieved your goal. write this as though you have already accomplished the goal.

* Identify the time period during which you plan to achieve your goal.

* No goal is etched in stone. Our goals change as time changes, as our our physical abilities change and as our personal circumstances change.

We break our goals down into three time periods, more will be said about this later:

Short-range Goals 1 – 90 days

Medium-range Goals 3 - 12 months

Long-range Goals 1 - 5 years

Analyse  your current situation

You must honestly identify your current strengths and assets as well as behaviours, limitations fears and weaknesses that prevent you from achieving your goals immediately.

Use the SWOT Analysis. Exercise:

Select a goal you would like to achieve and then complete the SWOT analysis.

Goal: …………………………………………………………………………

Strengths …………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………. ……………………………………………………………………………….

Weaknesses ………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………. ……………………………………………………………………………….

Opportunities ……………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………. ……………………………………………………………………………….

Threats …………………………………………………………………….. ……………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………

We are now almost ready to set our goals. people who set goals, generally achieve more than those who don’t. They focus your attention and set a routine which worked on daily – over a predefined period achieves more than not setting a goal at all.

See S.M.A.R.T. reference later.

There are two types of goals in tennis.

Performance goals - setting the short term requirements in order to achieve the final outcome goals.

Outcome goals - The result of all the work put in to achieve your Aims.

You should set long term goals and then break these down into medium term goals then into daily or weekly tasks (short term goals). Goals should be reviewed and adjusted regularly depending on the progress made.

You should use the goal setting forms at the end of this article and you should discuss your goals with someone else (probably your coach and perhaps also your parents).

SELECTIVE EXAMPLES OF PERSONAL GOAL STATEMENTS IN VARIOUS CATEGORIES HAVING TO DO WITH TENNIS AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT.

Mechanical

To improve the accuracy of my first serve

To increase the percentage of my first service return

To get more depth oin my groundstroke rallies

To win more first points in a game

To improve my fitness so that I can perform fully in long matches

To add variety to my second serve

Mental

To relax better on important points

To become more disciplined oin preparing for my matches

To remain focused in between sets

To become more disciplined in my approach to losing points *Select no less than three or four goals and no more than six or seven at any one time.

S. M. A. R. T. GOALS

You should tell someone else about your goals, it helps to focus on them.

Perhaps your Coach or Sponsor- your Parents (Or do you have a Mentor?)

S pecific - You (and your mentor) know exactly what the goal is!

M easurable - your progress towards the goal can be measured by yourself and others.

A ttainable - you are able to make progress and attain the gioal.

R elevant - by attaining the goal, you will have achieved your desires, the GOAL is relevant to your development.

T ime frame - you have a clear understanding of when you expect to attain the goal.

You should also establish a “benchmark” to know where you started so you can begin to measure your progress.

Know where you are now.

Example of goal setting.

GOAL SETTING EXAMPLE.

We are now going to look at a theoretical look at how we should approach our goals.

Scenario. -

We are an average player in our tennis club and it is our aim to become club singles champion.

We normally reach the third round of the championship and then are knocked out. Before we set our goals we need to do some investigating to know what is ahead of us. We need to look at the standard at the top level in the club and perhaps feature the 3 or 4 best players, certainly the previous recent winners.

We need to know –

What is their style of play?

Are they all court players.

Are they baseline players.

What are their strengths:

Do they have a big serve.

Do they have a weapon – such as a strong forehand.

What are their weaknesses:

Are they poor at the net!

Are they slow around the court. and so-on.

Once you have found out these facts about your potential adversaries, you now need to lay out your own styles of play (whether you will need to change it) your own strengths and your own weaknesses.

At the end of this exercise, you should have a pretty good idea of what you need to do to prepare yourself to achieve your goal. This will have to take into consideration all of the opponents who are currently better than you.

But it may not only be technical and tactical ability, perhaps the current champion is very strong mentally – so this is another area you may have to work on.

You will need to consider all of the possibilities set out in my programme – training – periodisation – fitness etc., etc. So our long term goal is to become club champion, at this stage we will put this down to a 2 year goal – this is an outcome goal.

We now need to consider what we need to do to achieve this goal.

At this stage we will say that we need a more consistent server- we have a good forehand but need to improve our backhand. Our fitness is a littler suspect over a three set match and we need more match practice. Quite a lot to be getting on with in the next two years.

So lets look at just one of our goals for this exercise – Improving our serve. It is probable in each of the sections mentioned, that we would need some advice from our coach as to what we need to do in each category.

For the serve I am going to advise you to work on getting a 75% hit on your first serve and at least 90% on your second serve – this is a target to aim at.

You will need to work on pronation and power for your first serve and to get a topspin serve for your second. (The latter is an area where you are particularly poor).

We can now break this down into our short term goals before looking at the medium term, much will depend on what you are trying to achieve. The reason I say short term first is that you must concentrate for a while on obtaining the technical skills for improving the first serve, whether it be flat or slice and also get the correct technique for the topspin serve.

We should set small time scales for improving these points, and might even have to revise our goals from time to time (this is always necessary in goal setting as you might get on faster than expected, or meet obsticles to delay us, such as illness etc.,).

We should set our goals for improving our percentage of in serves and this would indicate how much work we need to put in, perhaps serving 10 baskets of balls each day. Again you need to talk this through with your coach. You should now have an idea as to how to set your goals and should then show these to your coach and discuss them in full. I cannot be over specific here as I have not seen you play.

Although there are no exact rules to follow in goal setting, here are some guiding principles which have been effective in maximizing performance:

This is from the Bolletteri handbook

Set specific, measurable goals, with a target date to completion

Set both long- and short-term goals

Set difficult, yet attainable goals, that will push you toward your limits

Set performance goals rather than outcome goals

Re evaluate goals periodically and adjust them when necessary

Set goals for practice as well as match play

Set goals that will lead to a steady progression of improvement