A Winner’s Mentality: It Takes Practice

April 21, 2016 | By Lonnie Mitchel
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I have been working full-time at an academic institution. In my fifth year, academia has done something that I could never envision when I took on a full-time role as head tennis coach at SUNY Oneonta. I am exposed to great thinkers, doctors and professors from many fields on a daily basis. I attend lectures and symposiums on a variety of topics that have little to do with tennis. However, without the burden of having to study every day like my student-athletes, something happened to my awareness as my cognitive skills began to heighten. I started to crave knowledge and part of my brain that I am embarrassed to say simply required more stimulation was not getting it. I began to desire learning much like I crave hitting a crisp volley. The reward for hitting a crisp volley for a winner for us tennis players is something that we identify with, and when the outcome is a winning point for you, there is a faint rush of adrenaline. Tennis players know that feeling and there is nothing better! I tapped into the same adrenaline rush as I started to learn new things about exercising my brain in new ways since my days in college. We as tennis junkies need and want that great tennis experience several times a week, and are not happy unless we get that fix/tennis rush much like runner’s high. I have augmented my tennis desires with a cerebral exercise that quite frankly gives me another rush. My brain loves the exercise as much as I enjoy that great workout or tennis hitting session … I got to have it! The brain is like a muscle. It gets stronger with practice. Scientists have been able to show just how the brain grows and gets stronger when you learn. Scientists have shown that, when people study hard and learn new ways to study, their brains change and grow.

Bridging these experiences to the tennis courts was easy once the light bulb went off in my head. Eighteen- and 19-year-old young men and women’s brains are still developing and maturing, therefore if you have a willing student we can contribute to their winning thinking. I now have a better understanding why great coaches like Nick Bollettieri, Vince Lombardi and John Wooden would tap into their players thought patterns and repeat the positive thinking process over and over. They wanted their players to think like winners. What I also realized is that you cannot think like a winner from one moment to the next. The brain must be massaged and exercised where those cognitive impulses come from. Rather than just hit tennis balls in the quest to practice perfectly for perfect results, I started to research how to exercise the brain at practice so that players have more of a winning mentality. It’s ultimately skill and desire that will contribute to great performances on the tennis court, but putting one more thing in our corner was another variable that might put an extra win or two in the victory column.

Players are asked every day to think like winners … not just on the tennis court where we still hit plenty of tennis balls, but also in the classroom. My goal is to exercise that cognitive portion of the brain that helps them think like winners. I asked some great coaching colleagues in the world of tennis and matched it with several psychologists on campus who practice Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and saw that just practicing and exercising the brain with a winner’s mentality thought process can be a huge benefit. This thinking takes practice much like hitting a forehand and backhand in repetitious fashion.

There are many books, sports psychology books and material on the Internet available on the topic. So maybe I did not discover life on another planet or a cure for the common cold, but when you learn about this topic and embrace it, you will see the results first-hand. The attitude of players has incrementally been changed, their perseverance is heightened, the ability to think more positively on the tennis court and become single-mindedly focused on winning is changing . So too was their attitude about grades, as I meet with the players regularly monitoring their academic progress.

However, winning matches all the time is impossible, but thinking like a winner is very possible and learning from losses is a tremendous asset. I found that I can simply accelerate effort and cultivate a drive to win on the tennis court and in the classroom by creating an atmosphere where they can exercise their brains with positive thoughts and cognitive winning habits. Every time you think a thought, feel an emotion or execute a behavior, your brain changes. The good news is you can take charge of this process if you are willing to. You must be willing to practice it.

As I write this article, we are preparing for our opening match against St. Lawrence University, a team that has beaten us three consecutive years in a row. Before and after practice today, each player will be given a piece of paper to read before we even strike a tennis ball about a winner’s mentality. As a coach, I am trying to take any history of losing to this opponent out of the equation and think single-mindedly as a winner. The result though, for me as a coach, will not be the win or the loss, but the overall improvement of each player at each position, thereby opening the door for little victories incrementally. We can then look critically at ourselves as a team and embrace victory in a number of ways, not just the win in victory column, but gaining a win even if we have to tally a team loss. By doing this, we can ensure victory and a winner’s mentality. Each player must take ownership of that goal. We won’t like a team loss, but we can still leave with a winner’s attitude because we will go back to practice and know what we have to work on … we win! A win tomorrow won’t fool us either into thinking we are great and turned around a lopsided loss the year prior, but will show us this thinking contributes and we will learn from the win in order to improve—we get two victories after the match. The win in numbers and the opportunity to learn and augmenting the winner’s mentality.

I hope you are reading this and now know it’s possible to always think like a winner. Take a book out on the topic, embrace it and you will find results. Parents, juniors tennis players … I dare you to change that thinking. It begins with your willingness.


Lonnie Mitchel

Lonnie Mitchel is head men’s and women’s tennis coach at SUNY Oneonta. Lonnie was named an assistant coach to Team USA for the 2013 Maccabiah Games in Israel for the Grand Master Tennis Division. Lonnie may be reached by phone at (516) 414-7202 or e-mail lonniemitchel@yahoo.com.

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