He just seems to have been born to play the game. His physique – his DNA – seems perfectly adapted to tennis … You get these blessed freaks of nature in other sports too. (Nadal and Carlin, 2011, p. 13)
Category | Contributing words and phrases |
---|---|
Mental | Resilience, coping with pressure, sports psychology, supreme confidence |
Physical | Conditioning, rest and recovery |
Childhood | Where you grow up, rich mix of different sports |
… that are being used are strengthened … You can think of it a bit like pruning a rosebush. You prune away the weaker branches so that the remaining, important branches, can grow stronger, and this process, which effectively fine-tunes brain tissue… is happening … during adolescence. (Blakemore, 2012)
My definition of a winner is basically ‘a loser who has evaluated themselves’. This relates very well to a study that looked at the golden generation of Swedish tennis players. Back in the 80s and 90s Sweden had 5 of the top 10 best (male) tennis players in the world (e.g. Bjorn Borg et al) and the research showed that almost every one of them were not in the top 5 in the country as youngsters. It’s interesting because those who start out with a big advantage or talent as youngsters don’t make it; it can be a disadvantage to be too good too early because you kind of feel entitled. Whereas a lot of these young Swedish tennis players had to struggle, they had to think about ‘how can I improve?’ and ‘why is this important to me?’ and ‘am I willing to do what it takes?’ So they all had an evaluation mentality and that is what made them winners. (Ankersen, 2016)
He [Chris] was never up there but he just kept plugging away. You’ve seen other kids who were winning all the time and when they get beaten they don’t like it so they stop what they’re doing. As long as they’re enjoying it and they’re doing pretty well, there is not a lot between first and second. (Hoy, 2013)
thinking coaching through, and using a genuine critical attitude about what we do, there has to be evidence, there has to be science and reasons for doing things; coaching is dominated by tradition, sometimes this is harmless but sometimes it does harm and holds athletes and coaches back. (Bailey, 2015)
I think there’s a place for volume but there’s also a place for quality. And I don’t always mean quality is faster, I think quality is about quality technique, quality is about purposefulness, intention, the relationship to your racing event. (The Documentary, 2014)
The saying practice makes perfect is untrue [emphasis added] when it comes to preparing for a match. A game of rugby is chaotic, not structured. You have to be able to react, make decisions and work out where you went wrong. The old way of training was nice and slow, everything done methodically, but that is finished now because rugby is not like that any more. (Rees, 2016)