Playing Out of Your Mind!
What does playing out of your mind mean? You compete at 100%, leaving everything on the court and focus on playing out of your mind versus focusing on the thoughts going through your head. Playing out of your mind means to take all the learning that happened in practice and unleashing all of it!
Part 1 to playing out of your mind
When you are on the court you want to take all the explicit learning: clearly developed or formulated from practice and use it as implicit muscle memory: unquestioning or unreserved; absolute! Practice is for learning, making adjustments and getting great. Matches are using all of that to the best of your ability without allowing your demons to sabotage all your hard work.
Part 2 to playing out of your mind
Develop mental muscle memory. What’s that? Your brain is like a muscle. New research shows that, as with muscles, the more you use a part of your brain, the larger it will get. London taxi drivers have very large hippocampi – the part of the brain that deals with spatial mapping. Also like muscles, as you use a particular part of your brain, more blood is pumped to that area to provide energy. Finally, as with muscles, the more you use your brain, the better it works.
Aha so this means what? The more you practice learning how to use your brain in a way that facilitates being present and mindful in practice the more it will be able to do that in a match. The more your brain is able to deal with adversity: stress, doubts, fears, etc. in life the better your brain will work for you on the court.
Part 3 to playing out of your mind
Whether you’re an amateur or a pro, on your best day, you could make dozens of mistakes during a match: double faults, passing shots that wind up in the net, and lobs that land out. Given this, it’s essential that you understand, mistakes happen. Learn to deal with mistakes positively. Yeah, sure they suck but you can’t go back and change it. You stay present and mindful for what’s happening in the moment so that the chances of that mistake happening again are minimal.
Take a minute to think about what playing out of your mind looks like. What does it take?
Happy week!
Dr. Michelle
Photo credit: www.dailymail.co.uk
