Your movements and stroke execution will be erratic and not fluid, your ball tracking ability will be hindered, you will not be able to read what your opponent is tactically doing to hurt you, and therefore you won’t be able to plan smart, tactical responses.

Tip #1 – Holding Your Balance until the Ball Bounces

The following ways of helping you calm down in tennis should be practiced by progressing from basket feeding or using a ball machine to free hitting sessions with your partner and eventually applying them in point play.

The first way to calm down is to practice holding your balance after you’ve hit the ball. Hold your balance until your ball has bounced on the other side of the court and then recover.

You will of course at first receive nice balls so that you can execute a groundstroke very comfortably, using one of the three most common weight-transfer/balance patterns.

If you hit a neutral stance forehand, then hold your balance on your left leg (for right-handers) while dragging the back foot on the ground and eventually resting it on the tip of your shoe.

In open-stance forehands you have two options:
• if the ball comes more at you or you move to the left, then you will start with your weight on the right leg, but you will transfer it to the left as you hit the forehand. So you will end up again on the left leg holding your balance.

• If the ball is further away to the right, you’ll need to move towards it; then immediately transferring your weight to the left is not a good idea, since you’ll pull away too quickly from the ball. In that case, you will stay on the right leg and hold your balance on it.

The same applies to backhands, although both one- and two-handed backhands are mostly played in a neutral or even closed stance.

Tip #2 – Slowing Down the Follow-Through

Tennis players tend to execute very quick follow-through actions in matches because they feel rushed all the time.

This mental state of panic and rush then shows itself as very quick arm movements during and after a stroke – that obviously cannot lead to controlled and clean shots.

We can counter that by deliberately slowing down the follow-through, which not only gives us better ball control but also calms down the body movements. And as the body movements calm down, so does the mind.

Use the same timing as before: slowly perform the follow-through in sync with the ball that’s flying towards the other side and stop only when the ball hits the ground.

When it comes to forehands and two-handed backhands which involve more body rotation compared to a one-handed backhand, keep on slowly turning the body as you follow the outgoing ball with the follow-through.

Tip #3 – Long Exhale until the Ball Bounces

The final way of calming yourself down is through breathing. Your goal is to exhale as long as the ball you’ve just struck flies until it bounces on the other side.

The duration of the ball flight is typically between 1 and 1.5 seconds – so that’s how long you should take to breathe out. Breathe out like you’re blowing out a birthday candle.

Putting It All Together

Practice holding your balance, slowing down the follow-through, and executing a long exhale first under easy conditions, ideally by having someone feed you balls from the basket or using a ball machine.

Really try to time all three methods to last as long as it takes the ball you’ve just hit to bounce on the other side; then you can recover and prepare for the next ball.

The next step is to apply all three methods while free-hitting with your partner. 

You may need to slightly shorten the duration of all three methods, since the ball will come back earlier than when using a ball machine.

But still pay attention to the ball leaving your racket and end the execution of balance, follow-through, and exhaling just before the ball hits the ground.

If you record yourself from the back, you should clearly see a pause or a distinct slowdown of your movements after you’ve hit the ball.

At some point during this practice you will start to feel the real benefits of calming yourself down through balance, follow-through control, and breathing.

That will help you think less and feel more, as you can just focus on the general sensation of calmness and body control as you move around the court.

Finally, you can consciously practice the three ways of calming down in point situations only if you are playing a practice match. 

That’s because consciously paying attention to your body movements and breathing will take your focus away from tactical thinking, which means you cannot really make smart decisions in the match.

So practice these techniques consciously only in matches that don’t really matter or focus on these three methods only for a few minutes at the start of a real match so that you can settle down.

Then shift your focus to reading what’s going on in the game and focus on making early and good decisions.

The final goal is to perform all three actions completely subconsciously in match situations. Just be aware that you will of course not be able to hold your balance, follow through, and breathe as long as in practice sessions, since match play is faster and more chaotic.

But if you again record yourself, you should notice a short moment of pause and body control with a long exhale almost every time after you’ve hit the ball.

With a calmer mind and more controlled body movements, you’ll hit the ball much better and be able to make quick and effective decisions that will give you the extra edge needed in a match to prevail.

One final tip: This technique of calming down using the three methods explained above is completely automatic for me and always present when I play tennis with my friends.

Every higher-level tennis player does this, although not many are aware of it; they just developed this over many years of practicing and playing tennis.

So don’t look at this approach as something that you apply here and there but as something that you will implement in your tennis game permanently, since it is the foundation of body and mind control in tennis.

In tennis, as in many other sports, we can work on improving our performance in 4 areas:

• technique (improving stroke technique for better consistency, power and accuracy);
• tactics (making better decisions, covering the court better, etc.);
• physical conditioning (moving faster, reacting quicker, having more stamina, etc.); and
• mental game (controlling your emotions, reaching and maintaining a high level of concentration, dealing with adversity, etc.).

If you have been competing for a while at a certain level – whether that’s local club tennis level, national junior level or international pro level – then it’s very likely that your technique, tactical knowledge and fitness levels are more or less of a similar level.

The key difference in most cases will be the mental performance.

What do you think is worked on the least when it comes to those 4 levels mentioned? Yes, it’s the mental game.

Players most commonly attribute their mental performance as the key to winning or losing, yet it’s the area of the tennis game that is worked on the least.

The sports psychology field is quite broad, and there are various approaches to improving your mental game, like arousal control, control of thoughts, improving concentration, attention control, visualization and others.

Apeak does not want to be a jack of all trades and a master of none.

Instead, the app focuses on the visualization and reflection process that has been scientifically proven to be one of the most effective ways of improving our mental performance.

If you start your research into the positive effects of visualization, then you can find not only plenty of scientific studies but also many interviews and quotes from famous people like Novak Djokovic, Phil Jackson – the legendary coach of the LA Lakers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Phelps, Lindsey Vonn and many others who used visualization and mental rehearsal techniques to help them achieve the highest level possible in their chosen sport.

The Team Behind Apeak

Brian Park, the CEO of Apeak, has a master’s degree in sports psychology and has been working as a mental performance consultant for 16 years.

He saw the potential in sharing his experience with more than just the few players he worked with at a time, so he gathered a team of IT experts to help him build an app that can help many more players improve their mental game.

While the Apeak app has been available only for a short time, it has already been used and endorsed by many high-performance and professional tennis coaches like Greg Patton, Dr. Dave Porter, Peter Smith and Marcos Ondruska.

How Apeak Trains You For Peak Performance

The Apeak mental tennis training app has an edge on other tennis and sports psychology apps – namely, their AI and the growing library of mental and tactical visualizations.

When you sign up for Apeak, you’ll be asked to do a self-assessment based on 9 key areas of the mental game, such as confidence, staying in the present and how you deal with adversity.

Based on how you rate yourself in each of these mental skills, the AI will schedule an order of mental skills to work on.

The first mental skills you’ll work on are the ones where you rated yourself lowest and the ones that are easier to acquire.

Step 1: Each day that you choose for mental training starts with initial visualization based on the main topic that Apeak suggested as the top priority.

These initial visualizations typically last around 6–8 minutes.

After that visualization, you’ll go play your match and do your best to implement what you mentally rehearsed.

Step 2: After the match, you will reflect on what happened and input your feedback in two fields: what you did well and what you can do better.

Based on your keywords in these responses, the AI will again activate and suggest possible topics for you to work on.

While the Apeak app keeps you on the main topic for about 15–18 sessions (with several different visualizations), it will still suggest different topics for daily visualizations based on your reflections.

By repeating the same or very similar visualizations over a longer period of time, you are gradually reprogramming your mind and making it work in your favor without constantly struggling with it.

You can, of course, always find different topics to work on by using the Visualizations and Meditations tabs, depending on what is important to you at the current stage of your tennis journey.

For example, you could be working on your Confidence in the long-term Apeak program and schedule of visualizations, but today you played a match and got really upset about a bad line call (like in my example above).

You can find a specific visualization for such a situation under the Visualizations tab in the bottom menu. There, you can search for specific topics either by Situation, Match or more general Mental Skills.

There’s also a Meditation tab, where you gain access to various visualizations that are not so match-specific. These are more general ways of calming and centering your mind, dealing with anxiety if it arises and knowing how to deal with adversity, among other topics.

The final tab is called Resources, and it’s the one you can use to make your sessions more interesting but also inspirational.

The impressive thing about the Resources section is that the Apeak team will select specific parts of an interview or a YouTube video where a top pro or an article discusses visualization and how it helped them achieve their goals.

If, for example, Novak Djokovic’s interview on YouTube is 20 minutes long and he starts to talk about how visualizations helped him play better in adversity at the 4:45 mark in the video, Apeak will start the video exactly at that time in order to really highlight the power of visualizations.

Summary

A smartphone app like Apeak that specializes in tennis sports psychology is something that has long been missing in the online tennis community.

While there is a massive amount of information on tennis technique, tactics and even conditioning, there has not been a specific smartphone app to help you improve your mental game.

I am glad that Brian and his team have started such a comprehensive and science-backed mental tennis training project and made it convenient and affordable to tennis enthusiasts and professional tennis players.

Brian has shown me many more features they’re working on in one of our Zoom meetings, which means the Apeak app is going to keep improving in the near and long-term future.

Pros:

• science-backed mental training process
• visualization is the most effective sports psychology method
• the mental training is customized for you – your current mental skill level
• wide variety of topics including many match-specific situations
• wide variety of tactical visualizations
• constant updates in the Resources section linking to current tennis events that point out the effectiveness of visualization and continue to inspire you
• convenience of a smartphone app that is constantly updated in the background
• affordable (compared to hiring a sports psychologist)

Cons:

• visualizations could be longer (although you can always pause the visualization and work on it as long as you want)
• would be great to have a coach–player(s) version of the app so that the coach could monitor the player’s progress (planned feature for the future!)

Aside from hiring a sports psychologist, I can’t really think of a more effective way of working on your mental game on your own than by using Apeak.

One last thing – mental training only works if you work on it.

If you’re considering investing in monthly payments to Apeak, then make sure you also commit to the program. You will need to regularly listen to visualizations and always input thorough feedback into the app when you’re asked to.

Mental tennis has always been one my favorite parts of the game, as improving in mental tennis skills also builds your mental skills and character for life.

So, I invite you to head over to apeak.com and take a look at their presentation of the app to see if that’s something that you would like to take part in.

So next time when you miss the court by less than 41 cm (1.35 feet), know that you made an error of less than one degree on your racquet which was probably a result of mistiming your shot by less than one hundredth of a second.

Do you really need to get down on yourself after missing a shot or can you perhaps be more understanding see that it’s not always your fault but that the game of tennis is somewhat difficult…

P.S. If you know a physicist or a mathematician, please share this post them and ask them to contribute their thoughts to it.

(Note to webmasters: feel free to embed this infographic on your tennis blog and help your readers understand the difficulties of the game of tennis.)