Mentally strong E-Book

Fabian Donsbach

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 341

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

"How important is your mind as an Athlete?" "Very important." "How often do you train your mind?" ..... It is no coincidence that men's professional tennis has been dominated by 3 players in the last 20 years. These players, in fact, all top athletes have certain characteristics in common. Without these personality traits, it's impossible to reach your maximum potential. You have to look beyond the obvious.

Leseprobe

Table of contents

Foreword

Chapter 1:

Introduction

Goal of the book

How is performance created?

What is possible?

The basic requirement

Chapter 2:

Understanding the basics

Understanding head and body

Chapter 3:

Key to success no.1: Willpower

What is the strength of will?

How is willpower created?

Increase willpower

The willpower of top athletes: obsession

Chapter 4:

Key to success no.2: Clarity

Vision

Goals

The autopilot

Chapter 5:

Key to success no.3: Self-confidence

Understanding self-confidence

Perseverance

Strengthen the self-confidence

Chapter 6:

Key to success no.4: Resilience

Why is resilience so important?

What constitutes resilience?

“On-Court” Resilience

The gift of failure

Chapter 7:

Key to success no.5: Energy

Energy management: Mental

Energy management: Emotional

Energy management: Physical

Chapter 8:

Key to success no.6: Trainability

Critical faculties

Curious and open

Social behavior

The environment

Chapter 9:

The training

The “What!” The training content

Quality!

Chapter 10:

The match

Emotions

The “Mindgame”

Before the match

Match day

In the match

After the match

Closing statement

Foreword

Sunday, January 29, 2012, Melbourne, Australia. Two of the best and most successful tennis players of all time enter the center court of the Australian Open. Djokovic against Nadal. The No. 1 player in the world against the No. 2. It should be a match that goes down in history. Two weeks of fighting in extreme heat are already in the bones of the two. From the outside, they look in a good shape.

Hours later, during the award ceremony, they will bring chairs to the two because standing is difficult… Showtime:

Set 1 to Rafa, sets 2 and 3 to Novak, set 4 to Rafa. It goes back and forth, every point is fought for up to the last one, the energy on the court carries away every one of the almost 15,000 spectators. 5th set, 4:4, “crunch time”. Already more than 5 hours of fighting. The groaning on the stroke sounds more like a scream. The drama, the match: world-class. After a rally of 31 shots, Novak falls to the ground from exhaustion. A little later, he looks up to heaven and prays. Pure emotion. The look on the faces of the two players shows absolute physical exhaustion. But the eyes reveal something else: a brutal will to win.

At 1:37 a.m. on Monday morning, after 5 hours 53 minutes, Novak Djokovic sinks to the ground again. With a forehand winner, he converts the Championship Point. Victory. He tears his T-shirt and shouts out all his relief with the last of his strength.

For both, it should not be the last final for a long time, but only the beginning of several years of absolute dominance of the “Big 3” (together with Roger Federer), in tennis. On this evening in Melbourne, the world saw one thing above all:

physical and mental peak performance!

But how is it that some athletes can achieve this incredible performance? What exactly makes the difference between “very good” and “absolute world-class”?

How much does “the mind” matter? “90 – 95%,” says Craig O’Shannessy, an ATP analyst and a member of Djokovic’s coaching team for several years.

Novak himself says, “Your mind is what makes everything else work.”

His ex-coach Boris Becker once said that “a tennis match is decided in the mind”.

And Toni Nadal also says that when training Rafa, personality was more important to him than technical aspects. What???

An interesting trend is this: The better the athlete himself, the higher he perceives the importance of “mental aspects.” So if the best of the best, players or coaches, see “the mind” as the most important thing of all, then there must be something to it. But what exactly is “the mind”? That’s what we take a close look at in this book…

Novak Djokovic: “In my opinion, you have to invest as much time, if not more time, to work on yourself. On your character, on strengths and weaknesses.”

Chapter 1:

Introduction

Rafael Nadal: “What separates champions from near-champions is mental strength.”

The personality

Being at the top, being the best, people loving you, cheering for you. There is hardly a boy who has not dreamed of this. Be it a professional tennis player, a professional soccer player or anything else. Just kids. Okay, realistically, the vast majority don’t even really try. But even those who do try, they get into a squad, a selection, train in an academy, a sports boarding school, are subsidized, promoted etc. But the reality is:

The vast majority don’t make it! Not only do they not make it to the top of the world, but they don’t even make it into a field where you earn money.

Let’s take a look at a development squad at the age of 14, 15, 16. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in tennis or the boys from the young talent center in soccer. They are all really good! Why do some of them make the leap into professional sports and others don’t? Because you need the “total package,” as talent scouts like to say. Roughly between the ages of 16 and 20, athletes are in “transition”. In other words, they are making the leap from youth to professional sports. And this is where it becomes clear who was just a “talent” that didn’t make it and who has the total package, with all the qualities you need at the top!

Let’s imagine that we want to climb to the top of Mount Everest (the highest mountain in the world). If we want to have a chance to do it, we should be well-versed in mountaineering. We should be able to climb, have optimal equipment, oxygen devices, have a plan, know our route in advance, be physically and mentally fit. Every little thing counts! But if two days before reaching the summit, we realize: “Oh, we don’t have any food left. We miscalculated our ratios”. Then we have a problem. We will not make it! We may have done a lot of things really well. But we have not considered a decisive component of the overall package.

Whether it’s summiting, being a professional athlete, or something else. One thing is clear:

Rule No. 1: If I want to achieve great things and be the best I can be, then I must know the whole package. Every building block that is important!

Otherwise, it will be difficult to reach the end goal…

Michael Jordan, basketball legend: “The physical part is a little bit easier but the mental part is the hardest part. And that’s the part that separates the good players from the great players.”

What does the overall package look like? We can imagine it like a puzzle with 100 pieces. Each piece is a skill, everything must fit together. All the strokes in technical perfection, speed, strength, concentration, feeling for the ball, self-confidence, stamina and much more. With top athletes, the pieces of the puzzle fit together. If parts are missing, you might still recognize the picture, but it’s just not complete. And it is the same with athletes: They are good but not complete and therefore they do not use their full potential!

But why are some areas trained more than others?

There are skills, puzzle pieces, that are obvious. Stroke movements, for example. You can search for “Federer forehand” on YouTube and get great analyses. The same goes for fitness videos. Of course, that’s important, but not the only part. The other part is not so obvious. Because what happens “in the head” is not obvious at first glance. And that’s exactly why it’s hardly ever trained.

If something in the stroke movement doesn’t quite fit, a video analysis is made and the movement is optimized. But if confidence has been lacking in the tournament or the player has snapped, broken a club or otherwise had a head problem, people just say, “He still has to learn that.” Or “He still has to mature there.” But how? Most of the time, the right tools for the job are missing.

Novak Djokovic: “I’ve always had a very holistic approach to my life and career.”

“You need self-confidence, always believe in yourself”, “never give up”, “work hard on yourself”, “learn to deal with defeats”, “stay calm and keep your nerve”. Well-intentioned advice, of course. You’re always right, but can anyone put it into practice? Particularly for young people in the “transition” from youth to professional athlete, it is often the mental factors that decide whether the athlete makes it to the top or not.

That’s why a few years ago I decided to completely reappraise the entire topic of “performance”, beyond the scope of sports. In the research work, I have dealt with questions of how humans learn, learn movements, have incorporated the latest findings of brain research, genetics and psychology. I have analyzed the path from childhood to the top of the world of greatest athletes from many different fields. Talked to researchers, professors, psychologists, mental coaches, world-class athletes, elite soldiers and a war veteran. My goal in doing this was clear. I wanted to collect complex knowledge, structure it and present it in such a simplified way that even the 14-year-old athlete next door can use it to get the best out of himself.

There are many biographies of athletes who describe their way to the top. Each had a slightly different environment, different conditions and different training methods. Each of these stories is inspiring but not necessarily transferable because the circumstances are different. But if you take a closer look at these top athletes, it quickly becomes clear that despite their many differences, they also have a lot in common. And it’s precisely these common traits which represent the qualities you need to have in order to reach the top.

Michael Phelps, swimmer with the most (gold) medals at the Olympics: “I had proven to myself that I could set a goal and through willpower and being mentally tough, not only meet that goal but beat it.”

Two 15-year-olds, both equally good, one makes it into the professional game, the other doesn’t. Why? Is it talent after all?

Two 18-year-olds, one “living his dream”, the other at some point “burned out” because of all the stress and stops completely practicing the sport. Why?

One of the best-known top coaches is Günther Bresnik, who says: “Tennis at the professional level is the freest market economy you can imagine. One gets ahead, one is out. Pure Darwinism. Fascinating. And the best school of life I can imagine.” So when he talks about the school of life, it means that “sports education” is about much more than learning how to play tennis. And that’s exactly the crucial point. It’s about: personality development! Because sport shapes character.

There are scientific studies on extremely successful people. Self-made millionaires and billionaires. It is interesting that most of them were competitive athletes in their youth. These successful people have also learned qualities through sports that they could use these qualities in their professional life. Setting goals, working hard for these goals in the long term, even when things get unpleasant, asserting oneself, being fair, concentration, being able to deal with defeats, all part of a personality. And that is exactly what makes these people successful.

One can therefore state the following about personality development:

Rule No. 2: You need different personality traits to achieve maximum performance in sports!

Rule No. 3: Exactly these characteristics, these character traits are usually found in other “high performers”, no matter which field they are successful in!

And that is precisely why competitive sports are so valuable for children and young people. At a time when many young people spend hours every day sitting in front of the TV, smartphone or game consoles, competitive athletes develop physical skills, but above all mental ones. They shape your personality!

Christiano Ronaldo’s youth coach: “He was talented (…). But what impressed me more was his determination. His strength of character shone through. He was stout-hearted – mentally he was indestructible.”

Mental strength makes the difference!

What does “mental strength” mean? For a lot of people, it means that someone plays well at 5:5 in a tiebreak. In other words, being able to perform in tight, important match situations. That is certainly an important part, but let’s be honest. You don’t get into this tiebreak if your opponent plays 3 classes better tennis. So it’s about more: playing and physical qualities.

And that’s where, in daily training, the difference is made. Because mental strength is more than “staying calm” in important game situations. It is part of the personality. Let’s look at the best of the best. All of them had their own path, their own story, training methods that brought them to the top of their sport. Whether it’s Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Christiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Usain Bolt, Tiger Woods or Michael Phelps, everyone is individual in their own way. But it is striking that there are personality traits that they all have in common. Is that a coincidence? Of course not.

Certain traits ensure that these athletes have become extremely good at their sport, better than anyone ever has!

Michael Phelps: “How do you channel peak performance into championship performance? You have to be mentally tough, that’s how. How do you get to be mentally tough? You have to train your mind just like you train your body.”

Train personality traits? Mental training? Going to a (sports) psychologist where you lie down on a couch and talk about your life, problems and feelings? Totally uncool! Then it’s more likely to be inspired by motivational videos on social media. Let’s summarize:

Most ambitious athletes know how important mental strength is, but they don’t know what qualities apply to it and certainly not how they can train them. If you take a close look at the development of the top athletes, you will notice that the decisive qualities have all been trained. Some of them did mental training specifically, others unconsciously. Most of them had coaches who had extremely high standards, in absolutely every area. This automatically builds character. Others have inherited these characteristics from their parents. No matter how or from whom:

Rule No. 4: There are qualities that every athlete must have in order to reach the top. No matter in which sport. You have to be aware of them, train them and perfect them.

Success

Before we dive deeper into the topic of success and performance, perhaps a few important words beforehand. To be successful! Who doesn’t want that? But what is success? Everyone can define that for themselves. Some want to be in the national soccer league, others want to be in the top 100 in tennis, others want to participate in a Grand Slam or in the Olympics or World Championships. Some want to be the best in the world. For others, reaching the semifinals of the district championships is a complete success. For some, success equals money. Others actually seek the recognition of others while others want to better themselves. So it’s clear:

The demands, the goals and the motivation behind it are different for every person. And that’s a good thing because everyone has slightly different prerequisites. What are the strengths? What are the weaknesses? What is the training environment like? What is the support of the family like?

No matter what the situation is now, competitive sports is about making the most of your potential! If what you achieve matches your own expectations, then the athlete is successful. So we see:

Rule No. 5: Everyone decides for himself what success means to him!

Whatever it means to you, one thing is clear: being successful is good! Because: Scientific studies prove that “success” is directly related to quality of life. Of course, there are exceptions:

Rule No. 6: Successful people are on average happier, healthier and also have a longer life expectancy.

It is worthwhile to think about success and the way to it! Especially with competitive athletes, it’s often about: Performance! Winning! Being the best! They don’t want to be average, they want more! “Why do you always want more? Can’t you be satisfied for once?” one might say. People who say such things are usually not particularly successful themselves. They are often those who have little self-confidence. They don’t believe that great achievements are possible for them and have therefore decided, “I don’t want or need that.” But every person is different. Wanting “more” is okay! Pushing your own limits, the urge to get better. If you want to get to the top in sports, you need this attitude!

Novak Djokovic: “I want the same thing that I’ve wanted since I was 7 years old. I want to be No. 1.”

And one more thing: “Wanting more” does not mean that you are unhappy right now just because you have not yet reached the goal you set. You can be very happy and grateful and still work hard for hours every day on your vision.

How successful people think!

To be successful. So, if that is the goal, it makes sense to take a look at: What do the “successful” have in common? Whether in sports or in other areas: What characteristics make these people stand out? There are various scientific studies on this subject. It doesn’t matter whether they are athletes, musicians or entrepreneurs. Successful people cannot be categorized by gender, origin, ethnicity, age. Only by personal characteristics, their way of thinking. Some also say: Mindset.

Think differently, act differently? Many of these “super high performers” think and do exactly the opposite of what most other people do. They have a different “attitude to life”, character traits. That’s why many top athletes say: Success starts in the head! And if the head is set right, then success is not a stroke of luck, but pre-programmed, a logical consequence!

Let’s take a look at what the science says in general. What can we learn from top performers? What are the traits that make people successful?

High demands on

oneself. Many people unconsciously settle for mediocrity, both professionally and privately. This is often due to the environment. That is not an option for successful people. They simply want to be extremely good and win. At work or even in their hobbies: the standard is high. This characteristic is firmly anchored.

Stable personality.

This is about different qualities: self-confidence, courage, happiness, dealing with stress and many more. Success doesn’t just happen overnight. Perseverance and consistent, hard work are required.

“Dreamer with vision”.

Anyone who wants to achieve something great first needs imagination. He has to believe that his vision, i.e. the final goal, is feasible. Of course, this also requires a certain amount of optimism. But if you don’t have a dream or don’t believe in it yourself, you’ll never get there.

Aversion to mainstream.

They don’t care about the norm, that is, what others do. What others say, do, want, the (unspoken) rules are not what successful people direct themselves to. They follow “their own compass”.

Work ethic.

Work. For many people, it has a negative connotation. Something you must

do

to earn money. The view of many successful people is different: “I want to work (train)”. Work is something that is fun and “makes sense”. Something that brings me closer to my goal, my vision. Even if there are difficult times, the attitude towards work and the willingness to achieve something is on a completely different level than with most other people.

Active learning.

Constantly getting better. No matter what field someone is in; if you want to get the maximum out of yourself, you have to work on yourself, your skills and your knowledge. The urge on the one hand to “think outside the box” to understand the

big picture.

On the other hand, to understand in

depth

everything that seems important to you, that is what makes most successful people.

Rule No. 7: Successful people think differently than most other people.

Think differently? In science, it is said that people have an average of 6070 thousand thoughts per day, most of them unconscious. 90% of these thoughts are the same as the day before. Simply because we humans need habits and routines. Thoughts lead to emotions and actions. This forms our personality! And when successful people “think differently”, it affects every single day and their whole life.

Interesting types, these successful people. So the character traits already show where this goes. Of course, this characterization is still quite general. In the following chapters, we will look at the whole thing in more detail and in relation to athletes.

Goal of the book

Novak Djokovic: “Especially in an individual sport, it’s important to be prepared for everything.”

What is the goal of this book? Let’s make it clear by using a simple example: A beginner in tennis wants to learn a serve. That is his goal. What does he need to do?

An idea of movement so that he knows what to do. This service movement must then be practiced a lot and constantly improved (reflected). This makes it better and better. The serving motion is already relatively complex, at least if you want to be able to do it perfectly. This book is not about technical aspects, but about the basics of performance! What does someone need to know in order to make the most of his possibilities?

And there is a lot of dangerous half-knowledge in the process. We have already talked about the fact that there are obvious aspects in tennis: Does the player have a “clean forehand”? You can quickly see that. But it’s the important qualities that a player needs and that you can’t see directly that we focus on: How much self-confidence does the player have? How strong is his willpower? How well can he concentrate? It’s all about personality and mental strength!

And for players to build that strength, the first thing they need to do is understand what matters:

Before someone starts going full throttle, he should perhaps understand several things. He should have a general plan. And that’s what I want to help with by writing this book. Understanding what matters in elite sports. Understanding what the big picture, the puzzle of qualities looks like. Understanding what tennis players need to get to the top!

Because if you don’t know the way, you’ll probably never get there. And the more a player knows, the better he can coach himself. This can be seen in all top athletes: a huge understanding of what they’re doing. It makes them their own mental coaches! A big step in that direction, that’s what this book is!

How is performance created?

Novak Djokovic: “If I want to perform at my best as a player, I can’t compromise.”

The iceberg

This is an iceberg:

There is a smaller part that you can see above the water’s surface. The much larger part is under water. We don’t see this one for the time being.

When looking at the top players, we see the performance they can deliver. Awesome rallies, serves, forehands, returns, stops, fast legs, power, etc. So that’s the obvious.

What we can see, is the tip of the iceberg.

Everything we see there we can divide into four areas: Technique, Strategy/Tactics, Coordination/Conditioning and Mental.

We will dive into the four areas in more detail later. At this point, the overview is sufficient. The brain in the middle symbolizes that all areas are controlled by the brain. The connection of the eye-brain-central nervous system is a decisive factor here. More on this later as well. This performance, which the player can bring in the match, must of course be built up. This happens while training.

In the area of training, there are 3 factors that are decisive: What is being trained? That’s the content of training. How much will be trained and what will the quality be like?

1. Training content

What will be trained! The better the player, the more the training goes into detail. With each piece of the puzzle, we try to get the maximum out of it. Perception training, speed of action, complex motor skills training, running and stroke movements, regeneration, and balance training. On and off the tennis court. The puzzle has many pieces.

2. Quantity!

Clearly, if you want to get the maximum out of yourself, you must train a lot, a whole lot! The question here is: How often do you train? For how long? What is the training density, the ratio of load to rest?

3. Quality!

Not every training is the same. The quality makes a huge difference. What is the intensity? How high is the concentration? If the body tension and the concentration are perfect, then the player learns faster! So: The higher the quality of training, the greater the training success. Poor training quality is a waste of time!

Train for many years, (almost) every day, many hours, with the highest quality! That is extremely difficult! The vast majority of people can’t do that. You need the right “attitude”, the “mindset”. You need a certain personality! And this can be summarized in 6 keys to success.

We will discuss these six qualities in detail in this book. They are the foundation of all successful athletes. There can be no top athlete who lacks one of these six characteristics. Of course, there is a lot of overlap, because in personality the different characteristics are interrelated.

In summary:

Rule No. 8: Through certain characteristics of the personality, it is possible for athletes to perform extremely well at trainings performance. And they then can use this performance in the match!

Michael Phelps: “(…) the single most important factor in anything we do (…) was this: What is your attitude?”, “Attitude, Action, Achievement. That was the order you could expect things to happen.”

Do! Implement!

Okay, so now it has become clear how the power is created. But that is only the theory! That is the first step. A very important step, of course, but only half the truth. The real change, the improvement, that happens only when the theory is IMPLEMENTED! On the tennis court, in the weight room, wherever: It’s all about DOING! And that brings us to the second problem.

The first problem is the understanding problem. When the big puzzle is not clear. When players, coaches, parents are not quite clear what qualities are important and how to train them. The second problem is the implementation problem:

There are many people who consume information for hours a day. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, TV and so on. They consume, but do nothing, do not react, do not implement anything. There are studies that show that a human only

Retains

20%

long term, of what he

hears or reads

(With the kind of media consumption these days, I think it’s significantly less than that).

50%

of what he

sees

, so if something is pictorial.

And it retains up to

90%

of what he

makes

.

Rule No. 9: If we want to achieve something, we have to get into “doing”!

Understanding the content of this book should not be the problem. I have deliberately simplified even complex topics as much as possible. Therefore, the understanding problem should be solved. I hope that it does not come to an implementation problem!

That’s exactly why there are assignments throughout the book. Mostly, these are questions that you can answer for yourself. First and foremost, it’s about reflecting on yourself. The question that automatically comes up as a result is: Are you using all of your potential in this area? Yes or no?

If yes, great. If no, then it makes sense to ask yourself:

What can I improve?

How can I implement this?

There are athletes who write a “training diary”. Goals, milestones, “to do’s”, thoughts, training planning (content, focus, results), tournament planning, routines, rituals, motivational aids. Everything that gives you orientation, you can write down there.

Some athletes make their own vision board, possibly with photos. Whether that suits you, you have to know yourself. Creating a certain structure for yourself to plan and see your own progress is very helpful for many people. Everyone knows for themselves what suits them best.

What is possible?

DNA vs. training

Rafa: “By nature, I’m not particularly well coordinated.”

How much influence do we actually have on what we end up doing? There are the genes, after all. And I don’t have any influence on them, do I? Don’t I need “natural talent”?

Reporter: “So, theoretically, anyone could make the top ten if they just worked consistently enough?”

Günther Bresnik, ex-coach of more than 20 top 100 players: “According to my theory, yes. We consider people to be talented as people who do less and still achieve more. And that simply doesn’t exist. That doesn’t exist in any profession, and certainly not in sports. In the end, the best are always those who train properly over a longer period of time.”

“One has talent, the other doesn’t”. “One is just good, the other is not”. That’s how people used to judge. That’s just the way it is! There is nothing you can do about it. In the meantime, there are some new findings in brain research and “talents” have also been better researched in various studies.

But you still hear today: “He was born with it! This is a talent, a talent of the century! He’s a prodigy!”. If you look closely at these kids, you usually find that it’s no wonder they are so good. They have simply trained thousands of hours by this point. This starts in babyhood, unconsciously of course. Even here, the first clear differences in body tension become apparent. Why? Because some babies “train” and others don’t. Whether and how much the motor development of children is promoted depends partly on the parents, of course, and partly on the interests of the child.

Let’s make it clear with an example: Leo and Max, two 6-year-old children come to a trial lesson of tennis training for the first time, both have never played before. Leo is clearly better than Max. Now you might instinctively say: It’s because of talent, because of the genes. Where else would it come from? After all, they are both playing tennis for the first time.

Maybe Leo unconsciously played a lot with balls or balloons in kindergarten and at home. Maybe he climbed trees, rode a bike, went swimming, was outside a lot, ran, threw and caught balls, went to children’s gymnastics, soccer, handball, etc. Of course, he didn’t consciously practice, especially playing tennis. Nevertheless, he has done a few thousand hours of intensive coordination, motor skills and conditioning training.

Not only the entire musculoskeletal system (muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, joints) but also the central nervous system was thus very well trained. This means that when it comes to movements (like tennis), he can draw on a huge wealth of experience. And that already at the age of 6!

Michael Phelps: “It would be ridiculous to say that I was a world-class talent from the very start.”

Leo and Max are now on the tennis court. Leo is generally very interested in sports. This makes him more attentive and concentrated, simply because it’s more fun for him. Now let’s assume that Max learned to play an instrument while Leo was “training”. Or (in the worst case) he was watching TV. Of course, Max can’t keep up then. But are these the genes, which one has got from the parents? Probably not!

Jannik Sinner is 7 years old when he stops playing tennis. He plays soccer, is a very good skier and becomes Italian champion in giant slalom. He plans a professional career on skis. At the age of 8, he starts playing tennis again, as a hobby. Only at the age of 14, he takes off with “professional” tennis training. Of course, other players of the same age are clearly ahead of him. Only 5 years later, at the age of 19, he wins his first title on the ATP Tour. “Jannik Sinner is a candidate for No. 1,” says Toni Nadal. We wait and see…

Studies dealing with highly talented children, in sports and also other fields, often show that the level of performance is usually directly related to how much the child has trained. For example, even the “so talented” Roger Federer dreamed of Wimbledon victories as a young boy and played the tennis ball against the garage door for hours.

Rule No. 10: Children’s performance is most often directly related to practice sessions.

In the past, talent scouting often took a “snapshot”. In other words, they looked at how good the child currently was. As a result, youngsters were written off and sorted out who subsequently became very successful. In some cases, these children later overtook and beat the “talents” after they had caught up with the amount of training.

Boris Becker: “What is talent? Is talent also the ability to struggle? Is talent also the ability to travel and be away from home?”

Excellence is complex. There are many examples in both directions. Talents praised who never made it. There are also examples like that of Jannik Sinner. So what does it come down to? Training? Genes? Nobody can answer that 100%. But what do the top players themselves say?

Nadal: “Federer is more talented than I am”. But whether Federer has become so good because of his genes? His parents are rather small in stature and not exceptional athletes. But his mother Lynette says: “We always played soccer, table tennis, squash with Roger (…). We always had a ball with us.”

Andy Murray: “I don’t believe you are born with talent. I think it comes from how you grow up, how much natural ambition you have. You have to push through. You can only do that if you work hard.”

Günther Besnik writes in his book “The Dominic Thiem Method”: Genius is 1% talent and 99% hard work. I can confirm this sentence of Albert Einstein 100%. He says about Dominic: “He didn’t have more feeling for the ball, he wasn’t faster, and he didn’t learn new things right away. He had only 2 decisive advantages: He loved tennis and he didn’t lose anything”. Let’s take a closer look at the genes…

Carlos Moya on Nadal: “To be honest, I didn’t get the impression that he was more talented than other players his age. It just struck me that he was combative.”

Genetics/ Epigenetics

Marketing boss Adidas (Impossible is nothing) on Lionel Messi: “In this case, Leo tells his life story: that of an elevenyear-old boy with the physique of an eight-year-old, but who didn’t let that be an obstacle to success.”

We have a few thousand genes, but science is not in complete agreement about exactly how many. Many assume that there are about 20,000. All of these genes are located on our DNA strand.

Almost like a blueprint. We cannot change this blueprint and it is built differently in each person, except in identical twins.

Of course, these genes have been researched: of all the genes, about 200 are associated with athletic performance, about 20 with top athletic performance, only 2 genes have been proven to definitely promote performance: 1x structural protein, also called “speed gene”. 1x “endurance gene”, which ensures increased oxygen uptake into the blood.

This means that top sprinters and top endurance athletes need the appropriate gene to achieve top performance in their discipline. Athletes and tennis players also need to be fast and enduring, but not to the same extent. And the missing gene doesn’t mean that you can’t be very fast or enduring. It’s just that peak performance is not possible in that area. So for game sports, these genes are not necessarily needed. It has been proven that two top athletes in the same sport have a completely different gene composition.

Rule No. 11: The “perfect genes” do not exist.

Genes cannot be changed. However, the research field of epigenetics has discovered that we can have a great influence on genes by activating or deactivating them. In other words, not by exchanging them, but by activating or deactivating them. So we are not puppets of our genes! Even if we cannot change our eye color, for example, we can influence some genes. How?

Through “environmental influences,” as science calls it. Specifically: nutrition, exercise/sport, regeneration/sleep, psyche. Because the way we live affects our hormone balance. And that is the decisive key! So let’s hold on:

Rule No. 12: We can influence the activity of our genes.

If we pursue the question of how important genes actually are, then of course we have to look at the “stress profile” in tennis. So what demands does tennis place on our bodies? And precisely because the sport is so complex and versatile, the central nervous system and the brain are especially challenged. And how well can this be trained? Very well! Because:

Rule No. 13: The brain and nervous system are extremely adaptive.

So playing tennis can be trained relatively well, better than other sports. But tennis still offers an advantage for players who have minor “weaknesses”. Because the sport is so complex, weaknesses in one area can be compensated for by strengths in another. And that’s true even among the world’s top players. We’ll take a closer look at that, too.

Bresnik: “It is always diligence that ultimately translates into success: Practice makes perfect. Not talent.”

The dodge effect

Of course, there are also genes that we cannot influence, such as size. Being “tall” is an advantage in many sports, including tennis. Over the last few years, the average height of the top 100 ATP tennis players has gone up, over 1.85 meters. Different angles, a longer reach! This naturally gives advantages, especially in the player opening.

So advantage yes, but not a criterion for exclusion, at least not in tennis. In some positions in basketball or, as mentioned, in the 100-meter sprint, an athlete of 1.70 meters would simply have no chance! But in many other sports, there is the so-called “dodge effect”. What does that mean? The athlete trains in other areas and becomes so good at them that he makes up for his deficit.

Lionel Messi is only 1.69 meters tall. This means that he is naturally inferior to his opponents in various respects. He doesn’t tend to win headers, and he’s not very physical. On the other hand, he has an incredible feel for the ball, is agile and has an extremely good understanding of the game. He can exploit this advantage.

Lionel Messi: “Because of my small size, I’ve just learned to keep better control of the ball on the ground and be more agile and faster than the tall players, so I can claim the ball.”

What is it like in tennis? What is the dodging effect in tennis? Let’s stay with size and take as an example the Argentine Diego Schwartzmann, 1.70 meters tall. Of course, his serve is not as feared as that of a 2-meter man. But he makes up for that: Very high return odds, very good anticipation, very strong play from the baseline and extremely good footwork. In addition, he can do what almost all smaller players can do: Fight!

Another example: running speed in 2016. While Novak Djokovic’s maximum speed was measured at 36 km/h, Federer’s was only 26. So in terms of running speed, Federer is probably slower than other players. Of course, some of these are also 20 years younger than he is. What is his dodging effect? He specifically keeps points short, serves very well, returns aggressively, takes balls early and thus tends to avoid the long runs. So he makes up for the deficit in running speed with outstanding anticipation, reaction and eye-hand coordination.

Rule No. 14: Some physical deficiencies can be compensated for by training, strategy and tactics.

Summary

Of course, the question of “natural talent” cannot be answered 100%. From all that is known scientifically and from what top athletes say, it can be summarized like this: To perform at the highest level in tennis (or any other sport), you need a certain base of motoric skills.