Mental health, among the keys to Rafael Nadal’s success | Other Sports | sports

Rafael Nadal’s mental strength gave a new example of why he is one of the most successful tennis players of all time. This last Sunday he was able to come back from an almost impossible match, being two sets down. But it was not just any dispute, but the one that allowed him to reach a record, published daily ACE from Spain.

With the award of the Australian Open on January 30, 2022, Nadal is the first tennis player to win 21 Grand Slam titles. But it is not his only relevant fact, because it must be remembered that he has 13 titles of the same Grand Slam (Roland Garros), like no one else, and in 2010 he has triumphed in these competitions on three different surfaces, which is also historical.

We are not forgetting the 36 Masters 1000 titles he owns, tied for this number with Novak Djokovic. What is the secret of him? Is it just physical exercise?

We must look to mental strength for one of the pillars of Rafael Nadal’s career. And we will delve into that.

The importance of mental toughness in sport

Nadal has a mental strength that is responsible for training, just as he does with his muscles. It is no secret that the importance of psychology in sport is being recognized more and more.

From various scientific studies we know that setting goals before competitions is very helpful. They allow to clarify the path and increase concentration while a match or a race is taking place, for example.

To do this, there are coaches who use meditation techniques and mindfulness. Mindfulness has been shown to have an effect on various areas of human behavior, including exercise. Through a focus on the present, the here and now, professional athletes are able to prolong their endurance and delay fatigue.

Several of the final effects that lead to success are explained by the increase in self-confidence. An athlete who is confident in his condition and feels fit to face challenges may respond more accurately to stress.

The connection between mind and body influences sports disciplines. In tennis, in particular, factors such as the length of the matches, the strong muscular demand and the need to pay attention to precise movements that come from a small ball traveling at high speeds must be assessed.

All these circumstances contribute to tennis players being mentally exhausted. The history of the sport has shown it with people who lost games that seemed won.

Mental toughness and tennis

Elite coaches and sports psychologists devise strategies for training mental toughness in tennis. These plans coincide in some general points that we analyze below:

Management of emotions: competitive sport can be understood as a space to promote the best of one or as a place of confrontation with successes and failures. The pressure on the back plays a key role that is capable of exhausting mental reserves.

Increased confidence: as we already anticipated, self-confidence has been shown to improve sports performance. Tennis players who cultivate it before matches arrive at competitions with a better chance of overcoming adverse results.

Focus: the stimuli that are received during a tennis match are many. Especially when they are competitions with the public. Not even the deathly silence requested by the referee is capable of eliminating all distractions. A tennis player must be able to focus on the game and only the game.

Training of mental resources: just as there are physical sports resources, there are also those that are mental. A tennis player must train the gestures of his sport with the racket, but he must also review in his consciousness how to breathe, how to reduce anxiety and how to focus, for example.

Rafael Nadal Academy by Movistar: focused on mental strength

Rafael Nadal’s academy is a space created by the tennis player to motivate and train promising young tennis players in physical aspects and mental strength. This preparation institute has clear among its principles that the development of a strong mind is as important as adequate muscles.

According to the information it offers on its website, the academy has 5 pillars:

• tennis training
• Physical training
• mental preparation
• Nutrition
• Competition

This is why a team of psychologists are part of the training process of the young people who participate in the academy. They guide them through the decision-making process, reduce anxiety, and withstand pressure.

In itself, it is a training of mental skills to overcome the circumstances of a match or a tournament and reach superior performance. That superiority makes the difference between giving up when everything seems lost or coming back from a final. (D)