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Over-Confidence Vs Under-Confidence
“Under-confidence in match play is often a result of
false confidence in preparation.”
Let’s look deeper into a pre-tournament conversation with our friend Cocky Craig:
Frank: “Craig, Did you review your audio tapes/mental rehearsals?
Craig: “Nah…, I’m good.”
Frank: “Craig, Did you play your practice matches this week?
Craig: “I forgot to call-em in time, and they already had plans.”
Frank: “Craig, Did you do your off-court cardio routine?”
Craig: “No, I’m sore from last Mondays hit. I didn’t want to get injured.”
Signs of Over-Confidence in Athletes:
- Avoids Pre-Match Preparation
- Avoids Off-Court Training
- Lacks Secondary Strokes
- Avoids Playing Sets
- Unrealistic Outcome Goals
Signs of Appropriate Confidence in Athletes:
- Grit
- Relaxed Breathing
- Millisecond Problem Solving Skills
- Perseverance
- Resiliency
- Determination
- Smiling
Signs of Under-Confidence in Athletes:
- Choking/Panicking
- Shallow/Heavy Breathing
- Impaired Memory
- Anger/Indifference
- Tight Muscle Contractions
- Impulsive-Irrational Decision Making
- Pessimism
Confidence fortifies… but overconfidence and
under-confidence destroys.
Confidence Bias: The False Reality
“Pre-match over confidence leads to match day under confidence.”
Athletes and parents often have skewed opinions of their competitive skill levels. Is it because Molly, once held her own against a much higher level opponent in a practice set in 2019? Or maybe because Mrs. Johnson watches her son Zack hit beautiful groundstrokes while his coach feeds balls right into his strike zone for the entire lesson. These false leaders cause skewed opinions from parents and athletes.
Confidence bias leads to an inaccurate belief in one’s true competitive skill sets. The concern with over-confidence is that the athlete is positive that they have all the skills necessary to compete supremely without actually ever training those skills. False reality result in devastating losses and blame games. The opposite, under-confidence, bias also wreaks havoc under pressure. Some well-trained athletes suffer from their lack of confidence in competition; harboring unjustified negative beliefs or nurtured undermining pessimistic viewpoints. Either way, their lack of self-esteem seriously affects their performance.
The good news is that with proper software development, false confidence from both the parents and the athlete can be re-wired. Re-routing inner dialog through self-coaching is a great start. Athletes who suffer from confidence bias would be wise to trade in some of their hours grooving groundstrokes and replace them with solution-based software sessions.
Preparing for pressure includes the awareness of the athlete’s confidence bias. Allowing false belief systems leads to future anguish.
Come tournament day false confidence sabotages.
