Progress Is Not Linear. If you compete long enough, you will learn one of the hardest truths in sport: you are not going to feel like a great athlete every day. There will be days when your game feels effortless, your confidence is high, and everything you have worked for seems to come together. There will also be days when you struggle, lose, doubt yourself, question your preparation, and wonder whether you are actually getting better.
Both are part of becoming a better competitor.
Competitive athletes often make the mistake of believing that progress should look like constant improvement—better results, higher confidence, fewer mistakes, more wins. But real development doesn’t work that way. Progress is rarely a straight line. It is a series of peaks and valleys, breakthroughs and setbacks, momentum and resistance.
The difference between athletes who continue to develop and those who become consumed by the process is often their ability to understand what the valleys actually mean.
A difficult stretch does not erase your development. A loss does not invalidate your work. A lack of confidence does not mean you have lost your ability. Sometimes the most important development is happening when the results aren’t showing it yet. The more you understand this, the less emotionally dependent you become on your most recent performance. You learn to appreciate the peaks without becoming entitled to them, and to endure the valleys without becoming defined by them. There is an old principle worth remembering:
“You cannot be devastated by misfortune if you were not first deceived by prosperity.”
When things are going well, enjoy them—but don’t assume they will always feel this easy. When things are going poorly, don’t assume they will always feel this difficult. Your job as a competitive athlete is not to avoid the valleys. Your job is to learn how to move through them.
Here are some honest truths—and some perspective—to help you navigate both.
What coaches are looking for
- Physical Ability
- Intelligence
- Character
- Drive and Determination
- Coachability
What coaches cant Accept
- Excuses
- Lack of Respect
- Lack of Effort
- Poor Listening Skills
- Poor Character
Basically, here’s the deal…
– Coaches have heard every excuse –
– Coaches have seen every scenario –
– Coaches have been through it all –
– Quit whining, Quit complaining –
– Open your ears, Close your mouth –
– Get comfortable being uncomfortable –
– Its going to be very hard –
– There will be setbacks –
– Resiliency is the answer –
Through the struggle, we are revealed.
There Is No Shortcut. There is no way around extremely hard work. If you want to become the kind of tennis player who competes at the highest levels, you have to accept what the journey actually requires—not what you wish it required. It means putting in the hours when nobody is watching. The early mornings. The long practices. The extra fitness session. The endless repetition. The travel. The losses. The injuries. The setbacks. The uncertainty. The sacrifices. The tough coaching. The uncomfortable conversations. Being pushed beyond what you thought you could handle—and choosing to come back tomorrow and do it again.
Talent can open a door. Hard work determines how far you can walk through it. The highest levels of tennis demand a willingness to do things that are difficult, repetitive, uncomfortable, and often unrewarded in the short term. You will have to sacrifice comfort for development and convenience for consistency. And that’s the part many players don’t fully understand:
You don’t get to choose only the parts of the journey you enjoy.
You cannot want the ranking without wanting the work.
You cannot want the confidence without earning the evidence.
You cannot want the big wins without being willing to endure the losses.
You cannot want the destination while continually resisting the road required to get there.
The players who separate themselves are not necessarily the ones who always feel motivated. They are the ones who have developed the discipline to do what needs to be done—even when they don’t feel like doing it.
If you want an uncommon level of achievement, you have to become comfortable with an uncommon level of commitment.
You have to be willing to do what most won’t, for as long as it takes, to give yourself a chance at what most never reach.
Warning! Tough times ahead…
Setbacks
No matter what competitive sport you’re involved in, injuries and physical setbacks are inevitable. However, with the right coaching and guidance, you can learn to navigate and overcome these challenges. Don’t let setbacks hold you back. Remember, the comeback is always greater than the setback!
Players and parents tend to cater too much to soreness. Being sore is the result of pushing your body! With the correct warm-ups, recovery, and maintenance you should be able to play through easily. If you find yourself deep in a tournament you have to be willing to perform “sore” and by default that means you need to practice through soreness.
You have to train to be tough. You have to know your body and your mind. Is your body giving up, or are you? As coaches we see the softness more and more, yet the demands and challenges of players today are the same. Do not get me wrong, being tough doesn’t mean playing through injury. You have to be smart. However it does relate to how you handle these things, and react to them. All problems can remain objective. Part of the toughness is to remove emotion out of the equation. Take away how you feel about it and solve the problems.
Hard Coaching Builds – Soft Coaching Kills
Setting high standards for athletes is the job of the coach. To teach, pass on information, and often times extract great effort. The extraction is often uncomfortable, but necessary. It is not our job to coddle or pamper our players. Rather, we hold them accountable to meet our expectations and strive for excellence. That doesn’t mean that there won’t have endless great times that we get to motivate and take different approaches to get the results everyone is looking to achieve. We also expect our parents to be on the same page and support their children in meeting the standards we set. The coach’s focus on education and player development should directly reflect the commitment to helping young athletes reach their full potential. The parents should echo everything that the coach has planned. Remember, raising a tennis player is different than raising a normal kid. If off court lifestyle and conversation is not congruent with the on-court, then it creates confusion. Together, we can work towards creating a winning and successful team on and off the court.
Finding coaches that speak the truth, whether how brash or brutally honest, is a gift. Too many coaches want to keep clients happy, and don’t want to lose the money they are paid. The amount of times this has failed is staggering. Initially the player will find comfort in a coach that provides a lot of padding and tells fairytales, but in the end the truth will always show itself. Especially when the player does not reach their goals. Great coaches just coach. They are honest and they tell you what you need to hear not what you want to hear. As a player, and parents, you have to get tough skin and you need to know that the only reason youre getting tough coaching is because it’s good for you and you deserve it. It’s not personal! Close your mouth, listen, work hard, and then do that again.
You can make every excuse, you can complain, you can point fingers, and you can create narratives that fit the stories you tell yourself as to why you are not at a higher level. The reality is, nobody cares! So neither should you. Feelings have no place in a highly competitive training environment, and the more you get rid of needing to “feel good” the better off you’ll be.
Focus on Yourself
Comparing yourself to others is a natural thing to do, and sometimes has its necessary place. However, its important not to forget that YOUR story is YOUR story. You’re on YOUR timeline, YOUR measuring scale, and YOUR journey. All players grow and develop at different rates, whether it be biologically or their mental prowess. Use other players careers to help guide you in a positive way, and get information to learn from. But remember, STAY IN YOUR LANE!
You cannot move on to the next chapter in your tennis life until you stop rereading the one you’re on. Coachability is a major cornerstone of player development. If your coaches are telling you the same things over and over, you might just have a “YOU” problem. Your mind should be rooted in growth and problem solving. You will grow at a much faster rate the more coachable you are, and the more adept you become at problem solving.
Tennis is HARD. Players and parents today want success without discomfort. There is no way around it, you have to put in the work. You can’t buy it. You can’t force it. Time + Effort = RESULTS. You will have to manage through the toughest times, adversity in every capacity, and have the ability to endure it all. Every tough position you are put in is a chance to grow. Allow life’s lessons to toughen up the “figurative armor” that it will create, if you let it.