5 Tricks to win all your matches by Vicente Cuairán

Can you imagine that there were infallible tricks with which you could ensure you win all your matches?
I’m sorry to tell you that doesn’t exist. And yes, you may have read somewhere that so-and-so have the perfect recipe so that whatever you do, the result always falls on your side.
Fortunately the result is something that no one can control.
Before a match it is impossible to be absolutely certain that the score will end up on your side.
And I say, fortunately, because if someone had that power, the rest would be doomed to eternal defeat. It is fantastic that no one can be sure of victory and that quite often the one who was supposed to start with the least chance ends up defeating the one who was supposed to be the winner.
We see all of this recurrently in all sports, in all teams and in all players.
So if someone assures you that they are going to teach you the path of victory and that yes or yes you will be a successful winner, be sure that they are lying to you. No one has these kinds of tricks or these kinds of capabilities.
What you can learn is to become a more competitive player with better tools that give you more chances of victory.
Because the result is a matter of probabilities and your work has to be aimed at obtaining more chances of obtaining that victory that your rival also wants and that he is going to dispute with you and for which, like you, he has also prepared.
So let’s see three (there are many more) of the qualities that for me are essential and that will help you become a more competitive player and, therefore, a player with more chances of winning. These three qualities are: acceptance capacity, focus and internal dialogue.

ACCEPTANCE CAPACITY.
For me this quality is fundamental and non-negotiable. If you are not capable of accepting that not everything is going to turn out the way you want, that you are going to be wrong a thousand times and that you are going to lose another thousand, it is impossible for you to be in the right attitude that gives you those chances to win.
Being accepting is proportionally inverse to seeking perfection. I don’t understand that absurd idea (in my opinion) of wanting to be and do everything perfect. I do not understand this glorification of perfection that some people advocate as if it were a desirable goal to be achieved.
Wanting to be perfect is the worst business you can embark on because it prevents you from accepting the INNEVITABLE defeats, difficulties and mistakes that you will make along the way and, as a consequence, you will become a frustrated player unable to manage the slightest difficulty and on top of that it will prevent you from learn from your mistakes. Excellence yes, perfection no. What is the difference? The first seeks constant improvement, accepting that along the way there will be things that will get better and worse, and in which one focuses on what one can control to correct and improve it.

FOCUS.
They even put the issue of the result in our soup.
Life is focus. The way we respond to situations has to do with what we focus on. And we can basically focus on two things in a match, on the result and on making everything perfect (we have already talked about this before) or on our performance and how we want to play and solve the difficulties.
The good thing about focus is that it is something we can control, that it depends on us and that we choose when we get on the track. Nothing that happens during the game is going to determine where we focus. It is a free choice that we make (sometimes not so much because we are influenced by the environment) and that will determine the quality of our performance and the chances of success.
Without an effective focus it is very difficult for us to perform at a good level and therefore end up winning.

INTERNAL DIALOGUE.
As with the focus, the internal dialogue that we have with ourselves is something that we can control and that depends on us. Well, sometimes we can’t control it because we have it so automated that we say “we’re very bad” without any kind of voluntary control.
But what we can do is transform this automatism to go from “I’m bad” to “Come on, don’t worry, hit it later” (for example) and automate it.
Life is situations and our little mind has that mania (sometimes a bit bloody) of giving meaning to the situations we live in because the emotional and behavioral response we have will largely depend on that meaning.
The internal dialogue is the way we think and interpret the situation and the situation can mean “thousands” of different things depending on how we interpret it.

Let’s take an example:
Situation: I make a mistake at the net on a set point.
What can it mean?
Internal dialogue 1 (DI): How do you miss that ball?
OF 2: “You are so bad”.

OF 3: “Why upload if you are unable to play on the net.”
OF 4: “You miss just this ball, which is a very important point.”
OF 5: “Easy, stronger on the wrist next time.”
OF 6: “Nothing happens, you are in the process of improving your volley. Keep practicing, it’s a matter of time.”
OF 7: “You have lost set point. It doesn’t happen, keep working and focused on the next ball”.
And so we could continue indefinitely.
As you can see the situation is always the same, the only thing that changes is the interpretation we make of it. And the emotional and behavioral response we have in that situation will depend on the interpretation we make.
It will not be the same to say to yourself and interpret the situation as: “calm down, stronger wrist next time” than “you’re terrible and you don’t put one in”. And as we have said before, you choose or learn to choose what you say to yourself in each situation.
Thus, whoever knows how to learn to better interpret the situations of the match, will develop more performance and therefore have more options for victory.
Do not expect tricks and magic formulas with which to ensure victory yes or yes and do something even better which is to transform yourself as a player to have more options to achieve that victory.
Not only will you have more chances, but you will also enjoy your game much more and you will feel like a much more accomplished player.

Vicente Cuairan.
Titan Academy Director
Company specialized in the training of tennis players.
www.academiadetitanes.es
@adtitanes / @vicentecuairan