[tennisbiz] Re: fighter spirit

Peter, you ask an interesting question. Some people might say, "you are
either born with it or you're not!" I am not in this group, however, there
are very few Jimmy Connors or Chris Evert's whose talents are not at least
partially innate.
Other people might say, "fighter spirit comes when the physical, mental and
emotional knowledge and abilities in any athlete come together to raise the
athlete's ability to a point where the athlete will not give up." This could
be called confidence.
This confidence allows straggly looking champions like Arthur Ashe to be
winners both on and off the court.
Peter, I recommend three tapes. The first two, one of which may be out of
date, are MENTAL TOUGHNESS by Dr James E.Loehr. This one is 47 minutes long
and dates to 1984 copywrited by PEAK PERFORMANCE in 1995. MENTAL
TOUGHNESS-Training for Tennis, also by Dr Loehr dates to 1989. I have used
this second tape with many students at the high school and college level with
good to great success.
My third recommendation is for one of Vic Braden's tapes, "Who am I? Who are
you?" This Braden tape is for analyticals. The tape involves going way beyond
basic personality styles of analytical, amiable, driver and expressive. My
guess is that few, perhaps very few teaching pros, go this far into
attempting to define their players psyche and how it affects their
performance. My further guess is that Vic, the roly poly 70(?) plus year old

Southern California tennis guru, may have gone over the heads of many folks.
As an analytical expressive myself, I like Vic. I am ,however, still trying
to figure out everything in this last tape. That as I see it is the joy of
teaching, experimenting and trying new things.
May the Loehrs and Bradens and others continue to give us new food for
thought.
It's the digestion that takes the time.
For better tennis and more new tennis players,

Bill Thompson
President
Worldwide Intelligent tennis Services ( WITS )
"In tennis as in life you must always keep your wits about you!"
20220 13th ave nw
Shoreline, Washington 98177-2124
email:fintenpro_at_aol.com


 
Received on Mon May 07 2001 - 10:23:11 CDT