Resilience
Coming back, at every scale
Resilience is the ability to recover — from a point, a game, a match, a season, or a stretch of your life in this sport that did not go the way you planned.
In tennis, resilience is measured in time. How long does it take you to be yourself again after a bad miss? After a bad call? After a loss you are still carrying on Tuesday?
The player who resets in two points and the player who resets in two games are separated by a skill, and skills can be trained.
Every competitor gets knocked down in this game. Resilience decides how much of the match, the season, or the career gets spent on the ground.
Why Resilience Matters
Tennis is built to test this. There is no clock to run out, no lead that cannot be lost, and no teammate to carry you while you gather yourself. Whatever happened on the last point, another one starts in twenty-five seconds.
Resilience is also what keeps players in the sport. Most players who leave tennis do not leave because they lack talent. They leave because a hard stretch arrived and nobody had taught them how to come out the other side of it.
The players who last are rarely the ones who were spared adversity. They are the ones who got good at recovering from it.
What Resilience Looks Like
It looks like the same routine after a double fault as after an ace.
It looks like your shoulders staying up when the set slips away.
It looks like competing at the same level at five-two down as at five-two up.
It looks like showing up Monday after losing on Sunday.
It looks like finishing a match you cannot win with the same effort you started with.
It looks like coming back from injury without rushing or hiding.
It looks like a bad month that does not become a bad year.
Resilience is a skill. It is trained in the small moments long before the big ones arrive.
How To Build Resilience
Build one reset routine and use it every single time, so it works when you are not thinking clearly.
Build one reset routine and use it every single time, so it works when you are not thinking clearly.
Time your recovery. Notice how many points it takes you to return to yourself, and work to shorten it.
Practice from behind. Play sets starting at love-three.
Separate the result from the review. Feel it first, then look at it honestly the next day.
Keep one standard that has nothing to do with winning, and hold it on the worst days.
Talk to someone after the hard losses instead of carrying them alone.
Resilience grows with every recovery. Each time you come back, the distance between the knock and the reset shortens.
Player Reflection
How long does it take me to reset after a mistake?
What do I do with a loss in the twenty-four hours after it?
Do I compete the same way when I am behind?
What is the hardest thing this sport has asked of me, and how did I come back from it?
What helps me most when things are going badly?