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A Productive Friday Despite Rain At ATA

 
While Friday was a wash for any outdoor practice, the ATA athletes met in the Fitness Center for some mental training exercises and a physical circuit workout.
 
Coach Jack Newman started practice by explaining and handing out four different worksheets, to be filled out one at a time.
 
“Part of being a Certified USTA Training Center is having access to all of the USTA’s mental skills and drills,” Coach Jack Newman said. “While Coach Lucie, Coach Davis and Mrs. Cahill are in California today representing ATA at the RTC Coaches Symposium, we are making good use of our USTA materials.
 

 

The first sheet, titled Total Tennis Performance Profiling, asked the athletes to rate themselves, from weak to very strong, in 7 mental toughness areas: Relaxation, Focus/concentration, Imagery, Communication, Optimism/positive attitude, Confidence, Control of body and emotions, and Decision making.
 
Sheet two, titled Mental Skills of a Champion, asked the athletes again to rate themselves in various areas as compared to a description of an elite players rating, in order to identify where more practice is needed. The areas were: Motivation and commitment, Optimistic and positive, Positive perfectionism, Ability to focus, Tennis intelligence, Ability to manage stress and cope with adversity, and Mental toughness. 
 
 

The third sheet, titled Sources of Stress, is designed to determine what stressful situations are occurring in a players matches. It offered 19 different Sources of Stress, and asked the player to rate the level of stress from Always to Never.

The fourth sheet, titled Self-Confidence Awareness, asked the athletes to rate their level of confidence, in general, in areas like Serving, Volleying, Dealing with a bad line call, Staying calm under pressure, and others. The athletes rated themselves in each area from 1, no confidence, to 5, very confident.

The second hour of rainy day practice was spent with Coach Strecker, doing a circuit workout. Coach Strecker set up about 30 various stations around the Fitness Center, with the athletes moving through each station for a given time. 

 

 

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