Learn To Overcome Your Greatest Opponent, Yourself

Competition can be dangerous. Competition can be dangerous for anyone, but it can be devastating to students under 10.  In my personal experience, when I was focusing on winning and trying to beat the opponent, I was tight, anxious, and usually performed poorly. Something shifted as I began to play more. I started to focus on little goals such as how many balls can I hit in a row or hitting specific shots.
        I am a firm believer in teaching students a healthy competition. So often I see in schools and youth sports having competitions against other students or classrooms to see who wins. The problem with this is that one student or classroom will always be out. I do not like to do any competition that has students getting out. One reason is I want all students to be totally engaged in an activity and if they are getting out than they are sitting around watching.  Teaching students ages ten and under, that can be dangerous. Giving this age group any idle time is a recipe for disaster. That is another article.
     In our lessons it has been more effective to teach students how to compete against themselves. We focus on developing an internal locus of control versus an external locus of control. Students are able to control how many shots they can lift over the net with correct technique, how many balls they can get in the green, and how many hits they can get in a row to name a few. When we start teaching students how to get points, we focus on how many points the student can get instead of a comparison.      Focusing on these little goals helped me to learn to over come my greatest opponent, myself. I learned how to have a healthy competition with myself and it made tennis more fun. It helped me develop a strategy to have more fun in life as well. I stopped comparing myself to others so much and just starting running my race.