Tennis is all mental and that is good!

In my previous post, I focused on the physical benefits of playing tennis mentioned in an article from Tennis Industry magazine. However, there were other topical areas included in the article. This week I would like to focus on the mental benefits. Some of the ideas presented in the article are included below:

• Tennis develops your mind. The sport requires critical thinking and problem solving. Tennis keeps your brain active. When I play, my mind is totally focused on the game trying to determine how to win the match. There is no doubt that my mind is active while playing tennis.
• Tennis helps develop a work ethic. By improving through lessons and practice tennis reinforces the value of hard work. This is absolutely true. It takes a significant amount of time to develop your game and a large number of repetitions is necessary to improve.
• Tennis develops self-discipline. Regular practice keeps you disciplined in your approach to improvement. In this way, playing tennis is similar to learning a musical instrument and students learn that there is no easy way to success.
• Tennis helps in managing mistakes. Being able to move past mistakes is critical, whether in tennis or in life. Like the good salesperson, tennis players need to put mistakes behind them so they can move on to the next opportunity.
• Tennis helps in problem-solving and managing adversity. Players need to figure out the angles, geometry and physics, while adjusting constantly to match conditions. To those who have not played, tennis seems simple. However, after a significant period of time with the game, players soon realize the complexities of match play.
• Tennis helps to manage and reduce stress. With the physical, mental and emotional challenges tennis presents, you’ll increase your capacity to deal with stress. Tennis has pressure points and learning to deal successfully with these situations can offer benefits within the game and in the rest of your life.

I believe that the benefits mentioned are true but I don’t think that people play tennis to develop their mind. I think that these benefits are by-products of playing the game and add to the list of reasons to start or continue the sport.

Tennis can be a very frustrating sport and I think that one has to work at enjoying the game. I continually see individuals who berate themselves at a missed shot or suffer with a loss. The challenge in tennis is to learn to enjoy yourself when you play while working hard to improve all the aspects of your game. The ultimate question we have to face is how we use tennis to make ourselves healthier and happier.

To me, one of the beauties of Tennis (and other sports) is that I am able to immerse myself in the game and divorce myself from the rest of the world. I think that this is healthy for both my mental and emotional states. I don’t have any concrete evidence to support this contention but it seems reasonable to me.

However, just because this seems reasonable to me doesn’t make it so. If you have thoughts on this matter, please share your opinions.

Okay, that is it for today. I will be back next week with more thoughts on this topic. If you have comments or questions, please reply so that we can all contribute to this conversation.