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Managing Performance Anxiety In Tennis

by Dr. Andrew David Peden PhD

96 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #07-0484; ISBN 1-4251-2080-6; US$19.33, C$22.23, EUR15.07, £9.99

If you worry before matches or feel anxious and tense on court, this book will give you the psychological tools to cope and play better tennis.

About the Book

This book is aimed at managing performance anxiety in tennis from a sports psychology perspective. Have you ever found yourself worried and tense about a game you were due to play? On court, have you ever felt your breathing becoming laboured, your legs heavy and butterflies in your stomach? Have you cursed your inability to play simple shots, either under your breath or out loud? In a match, do you ever miss shots that you make consistently in your coaching sessions or practice games? Do you double fault at crucial points?

For most of us, many of these descriptions will sound familiar. Would you like to understand why you have experienced them? Would you like to do something to prevent them happening again in the future? If the answer to any of these questions is 'yes', then this book is for you.

This book is unique to the market. Whilst there are several books to help with the general mental side of the game, none focuses specifically upon managing anxiety in order to help improve tennis when it matters most - in a match.

The book is organised into two parts. Part one is theoretical. It explores the meaning of anxiety, how anxious thoughts and feelings can lead to behaviour which inhibits performance, how individuals differ in their propensity to feel anxious and how we respond differently to stressful situations, such as playing in front of an audience.

Part two focuses on specific psychological techniques to manage tennis anxiety. It is full of practical advice on matters such as deep breathing, relaxation, distraction, positive self-talk, visualisation, body language and coping with pressure. If you read this book and put into practice just one or two of its suggestions, your game will improve; if you practice all of the suggestions, your game will improve further still.

About the Author

Dr Andrew Peden is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of The British Psychological Society (BPS). He has an Honours Degree in Psychology, a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology and a PhD in Health Psychology. He has completed post-graduate trainings in Family Therapy, Group Analytic Psychotherapy and Individual Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. He lives and works in Manchester, England, where he is in a full-time private practice as a Consultant Psychologist.

Dr Peden provides psychological services to individuals and groups across the age range and consults to a variety of agencies and institutions; but his greatest interest and passion lies in the application of psychological theories and techniques to sport in general and tennis in particular. His maxim is that tennis is a sport played on a court but a game played in the mind. His greatest hope for this book is that those who read it will find something in it of relevance and value that they can apply to their unique situation in order to improve their game and move closer to their tennis playing potential.

Excerpts