(By Larry Hodges) If you think of yourself as an Olympian when you play, you’ll play better than if you think of yourself as some scrub at a club. But how can you psychologically pretend to be an Olympian, and how does that help? Great question – and here’s The Twelve Core Psychological Characteristics of Olympiansfrom […]

By Larry Hodges The first four are psychological, the rest are tactical ideas. 1.      Remember the mentality and feel of a great match you’ve played, and get back into that mode. 2.      Take ten seconds to stare at something in the distance to clear your mind. 3.      With nothing to lose, relax, have fun, and just play. 4.      Ignore […]

By Larry Hodges One of the things coaches stress is that you should be aggressive against deep serves. (A short serve means that, given a chance, the ball would bounce twice on your side; a long serve would only bounce once.) Against a short serve, you can rush and angle the server by taking the […]

By Larry Hodges These are both great incentives in practice. Some want to win so badly that they’ll practice, hour after hour, to achieve their goals. Others hate losing so much that they’ll use it as incentive to train forever to avoid it. A little of both often helps. The problem comes when you have […]