Andrew David Peden

Managing Performance Anxiety in Tennis Andrew David Peden

This book is aimed at managing performance anxiety in tennis from a sports psychology perspective. Have you ever found yourself worried and tense about a game you were due to play? On court, have you ever felt your breathing becoming laboured, your legs heavy and butterflies in your stomach? Have you cursed your inability to play simple shots, either under your breath or out loud? In a match, do you ever miss shots that you make consistently in your coaching sessions or practice games? Do you double fault at crucial points?

For most of us, many of these descriptions will sound similar. Would you like to understand why you have experienced them? Would you like to do something to prevent them happening again in the future? If the answer to any of these questions is 'yes', then this book is for you.

This book is unique to the market. Whilst there are several books to help with the general mental side of the game, none focus specifically upon managing anxiety in order to help improve tennis when it matters most ­ in a match.

The book is organised into two parts. Part one is theoretical. It explores the meaning of anxiety, how anxious thoughts and feelings can lead to behaviour which inhibits performance, how individuals differ in their propensity to feel anxious and how we respond differently to stressful situations, such as playing in front of an audience.

Part two focuses on specific psychological techniques to manage tennis anxiety. It is full of practical advice on matters such as deep breathing, relaxation, distraction, positive self-talk, visualisation, body language and coping with pressure. If you read this book and put into practice just one or two of its suggestions, your game will improve; if you practice all of the suggestions, your game will improve further still.