The Quieted Mind | The Inner Game of Tennis

I am currently in the 3rd chapter of The Inner Game of Tennis, a book that teaches how to play and live in 'The Zone.'  Many great coaches like Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks praise this book, and some coaches like Steve Kerr read it at the start of each new season.

'The Zone' is the feeling that athletes get when they're are performing at their best.  In the book author W. Timothy Gallwey calls it 'Peak Performance,' and he writes that Peak Performance comes from a quiet and focused mind that just performs and doesn't overthink.

Overthinking gets in your body's way when it is trying to perform.  Practice, practice, practice, but when it is time to play, trust your body to do what it needs to do and get your mind and your negative talk out of the way.

Another thing that gets in the way of Peak Performance is the voices in our heads.  What we think and tell ourselves plays a big part in how we play.  The ultimate goal is to play completely without thought and to allow your body to do naturally what it was trained to do.

Another key point that he made is that we often over-talk and over-teach.  For most, images are more powerful than words, and thoughts and instructions can sometimes get in the way of performance.  Instead of talking through every swing on the tennis court and looking for ways to correct, he said that he had success by having a tennis player simply watch him correctly swing and hit a ball and then try to do what they saw, minus the teaching.  

The greatest efforts in sports come when the mind is quiet and focused.  When a player is in The Zone, they aren't thinking about each and every step, they are reading and reacting in real-time and just playing.  The player just seems to know what to do, can feel what to do, and doesn't have to overthink about what to do.