About Tennis Matches

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Thinking During A Tennis Match - Serial And Parrallel Processing Of The Mind

Human mind is capable of serial and parallel processing of thoughts.

What we call subconscious mind is actually the mind that does parallel processing of thoughts and makes us act accordingly.

At the same time, what we call conscious mind can only think and do one thing at a time. This is called serial processing.

For example, reading a book is more or less a serial processing as we can only read pages one by one. Even if 20 pages are laid out before us, we cannot read all of them together and understand the whole story.

On the other hand, walking is done through parallel processing. All the muscles move together and not one by one, we also can keep aware of the direction and pace of walking. This is possible because the subconscious mind takes over once we decide to walk.

In a tennis match under pressure if you start to think about the quality, placement, pace, spin and power of your shot while thinking about the body size, height or movement abilities of the opponent, you will tend to confuse your mind as your thinking is processed by conscious mind and it cannot handle so many aspects at the same time (remember you have just few seconds to think and act on all these). All such things can be thought about in practice or practice match and slowly you can train you subconscious mind to take care of most of these things during a tournament match.

You should only do little thinking / analysis in the match when you are hitting the next stroke or playing the next point. This would keep you focused on the job at hand i.e. hitting the next ball and playing your best tennis.

Basically you should only think of two/three things like placement and, recognizing a weak ball doing what is required to finish the point. All other aspects like spin, pace, power, opponent's capabilities will all be processed by subconscious mind if you keep your conscious thoughts simple.

The best way to practice this is to think of a few match situation and then have a written notes for you to read which will only mention one or two things to think. As soon as you read these thoughts, you should think that the point is over.

A good way of practicing this is to ask your coach to speak loudly two or three focus points during your practice. After some practice, you should also speak these points loudly and then speak these points silently in your mind.

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