Do you often doubt yourself when you are playing matches? Do these statements often pop out in your head? "Today is so windy, I am not going to serve well." "My opponent is the seeded player, I am going to lose for sure!"

Having self-doubt certainly can erode confidence if left to run wild in your mind during matches.

Today, you'll learn from Dr Patrick J. Cohn, a Sports Psychology Expert, on how to stabilize confidence by managing this top confidence killer

How to manage these doubts and banish them from your mind. It's a simple concept called cognitive reframing. This simply mean viewing your tennis game in a different light and finding an alternative way of viewing situations.

Follow these three steps for reframing doubts:

1. Think back to a recent match when you doubted your ability. List the self-doubt you had at the time.

2. State each doubt above as if you are thinking out loud. Here's an example:

Doubt: "I'm unsure if I'll serve well today because of the wind. I don't serve well when it's windy."

3. Reframe and/or challenge each statement. Turn each doubt into a statement of confidence:

Reframe: "I've worked hard on service game years. I had great serving days in the past. I can serve well in any conditions."

Here's an advanced strategy:

In your mind, practice rehearsing your new statements of confidence until they are well learned and easy to remember.

You'll want to apply this strategy to your practice and matches to make it take hold:

When you first notice that you are doubting your ability, use this reframing strategy to challenge the doubt and embrace confident self-talk.

This mental game strategy will help you stabilize your confidence by reducing the amount of time you allow doubts to run unchecked in your mind!

Sounds easy? I always feel that mental training in tennis is equally important in skills training or physically training. Yet most of the coaches choose to focus on the latter. My suggestion is to allocate at least 20-30 minutes of your training session to practice the mental game strategies.

Tennis is all about situations. You need to practice the situations on court AND in your mind as well. So go ahead and practice the mental game strategies today.

Committed to your tennis,

Joel

Founder, www.improve-your-tennis.com