pressure performing under

Can Your Students Trust in the Moment? Help Build Their “Trust” Muscle

Dr. Peter Scales, USPTA Professional

At the biggest moments in your students’ matches, do they trust themselves and accept any outcome? Or are they doubtful and cautious and make the very mistakes they were afraid of making?

As coaches, it is our job to talk to them and help them find an honest answer to these questions.

An athlete only becomes the champion of their own game when they can trust their own self, regardless of outcomes when playing others.

Building that “trust muscle” is like building a relationship—you must risk enough real, authentic moments where you could lose and get emotionally hurt. Players need to be reminded that, for most of us mortals, we can never do that 100% of the time.

Have your players ask themselves in what percentage of these big moments they’re able to let go and trust themselves. How often are they accepting the reality of both potential loss and victory? Is there something holding them back from feeling that trust and acceptance? If you can help them increase that trust percentage by even 1-2%, it can make a big difference in the quality of their play.

Though the particulars for building self-trust are different for every player, students of every level must be willing to risk losing and they must actually lose.

It doesn’t count if they only let go in practice. They must gradually work letting go and trusting their game in their matches. This means your players might mess up at first and lose the point or a match.

You also must teach your players how to visualize letting go and trusting themselves in the big moments. Start with having them visualize success, and then have them visualize losing the point and how they’ll react to it. How quickly can they learn from the mistake and let it go in order to trust their game on the next point or in the next big moment?

Have them prepare for the point with quality breathing exercises and relaxation techniques while promising themselves they will trust their game. With that prep—making a promise, visualizing, breathing and relaxing—then they can try this four-step progression to help them build the trust muscle.

Have students promise to trust their game:

1-3 times a set: Start with points like 30-0 for them or their doubles team, or when up in a tiebreak. 1

Once per game: On the same kinds of scores where your student or their doubles team have the scoreboard advantage. 2

At least once per game on points when they’re tied or behind in the game score or tied or behind in a tiebreak. 3

On all game, set, and match points, whether for them or against them. 4

Take your time to work through these progressions with your students. Help them get instinctively comfortable with one step, even if they are not totally successful at it, before challenging them to the next level.

Repeatedly making your players take enough risks to lose, and learning from it, is the only way that trust muscle gets built well enough to hold up under big pressure.*