What Should I Do To Get Back My Confidence?
Below is an email from a Badminton Secrets Mini-course subscriber, and my reply that I hope will be of some help to people.
It's from Von, who is 13 and from Singapore:
----------------------------------------------------------
Dear Robert G. Johns,
I believe in the things that you have said, and I agree with them.
However, something that keeps bothering me is my confidence.
I lose confidence easily and always miss my shots. Sometimes I lose my temper and throw my racket and want to break it.
What should I do to get back my confidence?
Yours sincerely,
Von, 13, Singapore
----------------------------------------------------------
My reply:
----------------------------------------------------------
Dear Von,
Thanks for your question!
This is a very common problem in badminton, when one or two shots go wrong, causing someone to start playing badly and get angry with themselves.
Remember that you ALWAYS have lots of confidence within you.
It never actually goes away, all that happens is that something comes along (like a bad shot) that triggers an emotional response, such as anger, that then takes over.
What we need to do is to stop that response from causing us to play badly.
The way to do this is to follow this 4 step process:
1) When you feel like you are going to lose your temper, stop, take a couple of deep breaths and count to 5.
2) Resist the urge to SAY anything out loud.
3) Try to replay the bad shot in your mind, imagining it going right.
4) Actually physically do the action of the shot going correctly.
The reason for each step is...
By breathing deeply we are slowing down the negative emotions, so that they are less pronounced and won't interfere with the next shots.
Counting to 5 uses a different part of the brain (the left, logical side) to the one that causes the anger (the right, where emotions come from). So again, it stops you from feeling the anger as much, because the brain can only do one of these at once.
By not saying anything out loud, you will be stopping the little voice that is in your mind and keeps 'reminding' you of all your bad shots, and how it went wrong last time, and how you'll miss the next shot.
Replaying the shot first in your mind (which may take a bit of practice!) and then physically, causes your mind to associate the correct actions to the bad shot that you actually played.
So next time you do a bad shot, your mind will start toautomatically think about how it should have been played, instead of focussing on what went wrong.
This stops the self doubt from coming back, and hopefully stop you from wanting to break your racket!
But above all else, remember that it isn't a bad thing to make a mistake. If you can treat all mistakes or bad shots as neither a good or a bad thing, just another step along the learning process, you'll find yourself not losing confidence when they happen.
I hope that helps, and the best of luck!
Regards in badminton,
Robert
----------------------------------------------------------
It's from Von, who is 13 and from Singapore:
----------------------------------------------------------
Dear Robert G. Johns,
I believe in the things that you have said, and I agree with them.
However, something that keeps bothering me is my confidence.
I lose confidence easily and always miss my shots. Sometimes I lose my temper and throw my racket and want to break it.
What should I do to get back my confidence?
Yours sincerely,
Von, 13, Singapore
----------------------------------------------------------
My reply:
----------------------------------------------------------
Dear Von,
Thanks for your question!
This is a very common problem in badminton, when one or two shots go wrong, causing someone to start playing badly and get angry with themselves.
Remember that you ALWAYS have lots of confidence within you.
It never actually goes away, all that happens is that something comes along (like a bad shot) that triggers an emotional response, such as anger, that then takes over.
What we need to do is to stop that response from causing us to play badly.
The way to do this is to follow this 4 step process:
1) When you feel like you are going to lose your temper, stop, take a couple of deep breaths and count to 5.
2) Resist the urge to SAY anything out loud.
3) Try to replay the bad shot in your mind, imagining it going right.
4) Actually physically do the action of the shot going correctly.
The reason for each step is...
By breathing deeply we are slowing down the negative emotions, so that they are less pronounced and won't interfere with the next shots.
Counting to 5 uses a different part of the brain (the left, logical side) to the one that causes the anger (the right, where emotions come from). So again, it stops you from feeling the anger as much, because the brain can only do one of these at once.
By not saying anything out loud, you will be stopping the little voice that is in your mind and keeps 'reminding' you of all your bad shots, and how it went wrong last time, and how you'll miss the next shot.
Replaying the shot first in your mind (which may take a bit of practice!) and then physically, causes your mind to associate the correct actions to the bad shot that you actually played.
So next time you do a bad shot, your mind will start toautomatically think about how it should have been played, instead of focussing on what went wrong.
This stops the self doubt from coming back, and hopefully stop you from wanting to break your racket!
But above all else, remember that it isn't a bad thing to make a mistake. If you can treat all mistakes or bad shots as neither a good or a bad thing, just another step along the learning process, you'll find yourself not losing confidence when they happen.
I hope that helps, and the best of luck!
Regards in badminton,
Robert
----------------------------------------------------------
posted by Badminton Secrets at 9:40 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home