Are pre-match jitters ruining your game?

Anyone playing tennis long enough to pick up a racquet knows exactly what it feels like to get those pre-match nerves. The shaking racquet in your hand is strung at half the tension that you are, and when the butterflies start dancin’ and shakin’ in your stomach, it feels like you’ve just consumed half the espresso shipment from your neighborhood Starbucks.

There have been so many articles written and lessons given on how to avoid those pre-match jitters, you’d think it’d be covered in Friend At Court. A Google.com search of “tennis” and “nerves” yields more than 43,000 results. A search of Google for “McEnroe” and “tennis” yielded just 28,000 returns. Some prominent sports psychologists have made a career out of curing tennis players of their high-strung ways.

But not all pre-match nerves are bad for your game. How can you tell if you’re too amped up to succeed? Read on.

We enlist the help of several “experts” in the field of pre-match jitters, or as it’s known in the field of Sports Psychology, Precompetitive State Anxiety.

Our panel includes:

Richard Benvin, former ATP tour pro and WTA tour coach, current Team Colorado coach;

Eduardo Provencio, head tennis coach, Metro State College in Denver;

Norman Lowery, licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist in Boulder; and

Michael Mesches, PhD specializing in behavioral neuroscience at University of Colorado Health Science Center.

For more information about how to combat Precompetitive State Anxiety, consult your local tennis pro, psychotherapist, or friendly neuroscientist.

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CT: What exactly are pre-match jitters, and how do they affect tennis players?

Provencio: Pre-match jitters are a very real and natural response to the expectation of performing at a high level in high-pressure situations. In my experience, the difference between a competitor and a champion is the ability to relinquish that feeling very early in a match, perhaps even before the match even begins.

Mesches: Pre-match jitters are a normal response to the anticipation of having to perform at a high level. The basic physiology behind “nerves” or “jitters” is the activation of one part of your nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, which is involved in preparing your body for situations requiring increased levels of activity.

The sympathetic nervous system is activated, i.e., adrenalin is released, whenever you are in a fight or flight situation, which includes competitive tennis. It does many things to coordinate your body to respond to whatever situation you are in. Among other things, it gets your heart rate and blood pressure up, it decreases blood flow to your internal organs (stomach, intestines, etc.), and increases blood flow to your muscles.

The jitters occur when your sympathetic nervous system is activated prior to starting play, when your body is still at rest. The release of adrenalin prduces the trembling muscles and the “nervous” stomach that we call “the jitters”. Once you start match play, the activity is redirected and the jitters usually go away.

CT: Does this happen to competitors at all levels, or just inexperienced players?

Provencio: In four years of coaching at Metro State, I have yet to come across a player that isn’t affected by the anxiety felt prior to the start of a match.

Benvin: During my professional career, there were only a few times when I didn’t have at least some of the symptoms of nervousness prior to or during a match.

Lowery: Before a match I was a nervous wreck. Some of the symptoms were thinking I forgot to bring something (drink, sweat band) - and ironically, not bringing something I needed - feeling anxiety in mind and body and dwelling on winning or losing. I walked on the court at a tension level of 6 on a scale of 10 and a bad call or missed shot or two, easily bumped the stress level to a 7 or 8, where nerves and choking took over.

CT: Are pre-match jitters always a negative thing, or is there some benefit to being a little on edge?

Mesches: No, prematch jitters are not always negative. There is quite a bit of evidence suggesting that these symptoms actually help athletes get psyched up for competition. For example, in hockey players as their level of somatic anxiety increased, their psycho-motor skills improved. In other words as the hockey game approached and they became more and more “wound up,” their reaction speeds and fine motor coordination improved.

CT: So these jitters are good for your game?

Mesches: Yes, absolutely, but only to a point. If you look at the studies that have been performed with elite athletes, there is a certain degree of anxiety prior to competing that produces optimal performances, too little or too much and they don’t perform as well. Researchers use the Yerkes-Dodson Curve to demonstrate how arousal, or nervous energy in athletic competition, can be both facilitative and debilitative.

Repeated studies have shown that athletes need a certain amount of nervous energy to reach their optimum performance potential. But there exists a point at which nervous energy no longer has a positive or facilitative quality. At that point, players get so jittery that it has a negative, or debilitative quality. The Yerkes-Dodson Law states that as the level of arousal increases performance increases, but only up to a point. At a certain point the level of arousal becomes too high and performance drops off. The key question for all athletes is at which point on the curve does that individual athlete reach their peak performance. And, what to do once you’ve gone beyond the optimal level of arousal and have entered into the region of stress or anxiety. They are important questions, and the answers vary from individual to individual. In fact, they’re likely to also depend on the other stressors, physical and mental, that are occurring in the athlete’s life as well.

CT: What is the best way to deal with pre-match jitters?

Benvin: It wasn’t until I told myself that it was quite normal to feel this kind of energy, that I began to not only overcome pre-match jitters but also to use this energy to my advantage.

The key to relieving my feelings of nervousness was to change the way I perceived it. I simply re-labeled the feeling as excitement - the reason why I was playing competitive tennis! Changing the way I perceived the energy from a negative view to a positive one made me relaxed and ready for the match or a particular situation.

Also, I used positive visualization to remove this self-doubt. I imagined myself playing some great tennis. I pictured myself hitting powerful serves, smooth backhand winners and crushing inside-out forehands. Many times before a match I would listen to some inspiring music to get me pumped up and psyched to win my match!
Having a game plan would always help build my confidence and relieve some of those pre-match nerves. I would try to have a good, long warm-up before my match and make sure my strokes felt grooved. If I knew my opponent I would formulate a rough plan of attack and take into account their strengths, weaknesses, and game style.

Lowery: One important step I undertook to remedy my nerves was to reduce tension before the match. If I knew if I could walk on the court at a stress level of 1-2, a jolt of stress of 1 or 2 would not have an effect. There would be a “nerves buffer”.
In preparing for a match I used a relaxation technique, Focused Relaxation, to bring tension down. My mind would wander to negative thoughts between points and games, causing tension. Knowing the mind can only think of one thing at a time, I developed a positive, confidence reinforcing ritual between points and games, not allowing the mind to wander.

The above, plus several other skills, have made a huge difference in my level of match play and enjoyment of the competitive nature of tournament tennis.

CT: How did you help your players overcome their anxiety?

Provencio: There are two components that I speak about with my teams to erase the pre-match jitters early or even before a match:

1. Focus on what you can control
Too many times, we are so worried by what our opponents are doing on the other side of the net that we lose focus on what is going on with our own games. The only part of your game you can control is what happens within that three foot radius around you where you are making contact with the ball. There is no reason to dwell on things you can’t directly affect.

2. Be task oriented, not results oriented
I have never asked my team for wins. I ask them only to focus on the components of their games that we devote weeks of practice to throughout the year. These tasks could be footwork, stroke production, mental strategies, etc. Success generally comes to those who are efficient in achieving their tasks.

Lowery: I teach the people who attend my “Tenacious Tennis” clinics to have a confidence reinforcing ritual during all stopovers and between points. This helps keep their focus on the task at hand.

CT: Bottom line, what should players come away with from this article?

Benvin: Change the way you think about being nervous, use positive visualization and have a game plan to make a big difference in your performance.

Provencio: Remember, focus on the journey, not the destination. All of these strategies need to be practiced as often as you would practice your forehands and serves. Once you get comfortable with them, you will find that success and satisfaction with your tennis game will be inevitable.

Mesches: Just remember that these pre-match jitters are normal and with a positive outlook can be used to your advantage. But if you feel that you are too nervous there is a simple technique you can perform that has been shown to activate physiologic processes that counteract the effects of the sympathetic nervous system. Deep abdominal breathing, a common yoga technique, is effective and can be performed at anytime, before or during match play.

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