We all make mistakes on the court. However, I have learned that what matters most is not the mistake but how we learn from them.
we all make mistakes
I work with a lot of players that are very hard on themselves. ( I will admit I am in this category as well.) I was working with a player recently that during practice matches kept saying “no more mistakes” over and over again. While no one wants to make a foolish mistake, there is a difference between playing not to make a mistake and playing to win. The truth is we all need to take some risks to realize some rewards. We need to make mistakes to keep challenging ourselves as players to get better and better. There is no better time to do this than during a practice match.
ask Yourself
I want to encourage you to take more risks than you would normally would during practice games. When you make an error ask yourself:
- Was it a forced or unforced error?
- Too often we scold ourselves for missing a shot that was truly a 1 in 1 million shot.
- Was the risk worth it?
- It is possible that we made a mental mistake rather than a physical one. Perhaps we were trying a nearly impossible shot when we were in a defensive position.
Get to know your mistakes. Sometimes we get stuck in a mistake and make it over and over again. We need to stop and analyze what happened so we can fix the problem the next time.
get comfortable with your journey toward mastery
As we have learned our journey toward mastery does not follow a straight line. As we work to improve, there are areas of our game that will actually decline for a bit. But I don’t want to forget to work on the parts of my game that need improvement just to avoid a bit of embarrassment. I will be ok missing a shot if I was trying to do it the right way. My goal is to learn something from each mistake.
