Allen Fox needs some editorial feedback

[aferrante]

Allen Fox seems like a very knowledgeable person, but he is a frustrating writer. I'd love to know his insights into why a player loses emotional control, hear him describe and critique specific examples of such behavior, and read his thoughts on how to avoid these pitfalls.

But all I got from his article was the idea that players repeatedly fall into the same emotional traps because they don't try hard enough, or lack willpower.

That's neither insightful, nor helpful. (How helpful would it be for someone who is interested in losing weight to hear: "People gain weight because they eat too much and don't try hard enough to stop doing that." Oh really! Wow, that's amazing.)

His article felt like a repetitive, numbing series of generalizations. Please, someone, go in there on his next article and draw out his knowledge and insights: write things in the margin such as: "Allen, go into this more deeply please." "Allen, this is interesting, can you give some specific examples?" "Ok, Allen, you've stated this same problem in a number of similar ways. Now it's time to actually give some insight and suggest how you might help a player work on this problem."

Thanks!

[GeoffWilliams]

Players are addicted to endocrine levels caused by good shots or fun exercise. We are also addicted to the negative endocrine cocktails, such as: too much adrenaline, anger when we fail, miss easy shots, lose to pushers, or people we believe are not as good as we are! Why is anger addictive? The rush of hormonal secretions, into our blood stream, causes strong emotional responses, and strong physical responses as well.

Emotions and physical bodily response are locked together in all of us, and that's why we play, work, marry, etc. We don't want to lose the positive addiction, we want to lose the negative ones. We are all addicted to air, water, food, shelter, and love/approval, and, the feelings we have when angry and frustrated as well.... Just because it causes a strong rush of emotions/adrenaline, we are addicted? Yes. That's why we play games, and that's why we are losing a whole generation to video games, and part of the reason obesity is rising, and tennis participation/market share on TV is dropping....Not only are we addicted to winning, we are addicted to losing as well...

Fear of failure/losing, is a stronger emotional cocktail, than is joy in winning/succeeding. Every top player will tell you, "I hated losing more than I enjoyed winning matches/tournaments." : Jimmy Connors, ie., who won 109 singles tournaments...

Fox is telling us to get rid of, by will power, our addiction to emotional cocktails caused by results oriented matches. He is telling us to do this simply by deciding to, and it's that easy... Can you hit a pro serve by deciding to? No. Can you stop feeling emotional during matches if you choose to? Yes. It's a lot easier to do than hitting a pro serve! He's telling us to do this due to the roller coaster ride, physically resulting, from our emotions, played out in our performances. Look at Joker, and how emotional he gets. Look at McEnroe, and how emotional he got. (Horse steroids!)
Some of us play better with those emotions out front, as Joker did when double match pt. down against Federer recently, and hit out on his fh under huge pressure, and his emotions won the match, while, he also lost against Fed at a us open match, in a tight five setter, for the same emotions. Extreme anger causes spikes in us. Extreme joy also causes spikes. Who is to say, for sure, when it helps and when it hurts us? I cannot be sure about that. I can only speak for my own experience, and in the past, when anger was my fuel, I was able to beat many top norcal players. Now that I have controlled it, I have less testosterone, and less adrenaline, and I lose many matches that I would have won with anger as fuel, but I am less upset about it.
So it's a purely personal thing, to determine, whether the roller coaster ride, allows you to win or not, more often, than a Federer like calmness. When the adrenaline is racing, I play better, move faster, hit harder, run further, care more about the outcome, and get injured more often! And who is the most adrenalized player out there? Nadal, with Joker not far behind, and Davydenko bringing up the rear! Nadal is the king of adrenaline. Just watch him in the return stance, his eyes squinted, his feet machine gunning, his back bent completely over. His make up speed is insane. His grunt is intense. His psych jobs superb. Imagine the spikes in his blood stream. His uncle Tony once said, "I heard Jack Nicklaus say",
"First, learn to hit it far, then, learn to keep it in."

So, regarding the choice, and its journey, we all face, to use our will and dampen our emotions: "No matter how far I go on the journey, the horizon stays the same."

[johnyandell]

I didn't really get that--or its lack--from the article. He's talking about the role of the rational mind. I do believe that a lot of what goes on mentally/emotionally has to do with the rational decisions we all make. It takes some tough dsicipline sometimes to control what you think and what you feel.

This series is part of a book--the current article talks a more about actual player examples. And there will be more. Allen has written a lot for us over the years. This article might given you some additional direction:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...ompetitor.html

[GeoffWilliams]

His writing voice is smooth and listenable. That article is very good. Four stages: let the last point go, relax-visualize, psych up, and have a plan for every point.

[johnyandell]

The Jim Loehr articles might also interest you because they are more emo/psycho based. Personally I love both approaches and use them. Think we have two of the best if not best guys in the field between.

[GeoffWilliams]

I read all those. Loher used to be the top tennis psych expert, and now, Fox has taken his place.... How did that happen, Jim? I think we should have a tournament, for all the writers that contribute here, including John! Cronin, me, John, Fox, etc.... And video tape it for the site!

[johnyandell]

Well, Greenwald would win in a walk. No wait Pat Cash. OK good final. Geoff you could be seeded, but Kerry Mitchell is amazingly tough.

[GeoffWilliams]

Ha, HA. I talked to Greenwald at the btc, this spring, just before he won the tourny 2 and 1. I asked him about his article, and said, "I don't understand how you made the change in your serve right before a tourny match, and made that work!"

He said, "I guess I didn't make myself clear. You can't try too hard." For me, it's all been about trying too hard. Playing when I shouldn't, with injuries, with cramping, with crappy stroke changes going into a stressful situation, and with my weight, my equipment not right, etc. How can a normal person go into a match, make a huge change on their serve, and not "try too hard."?

[bowt]

I really love Allen Fox's artices the way they are