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One of the biggest questions I hear from junior tennis players and parents who have not had mental training is, "why is their training and hard work not transferring into more wins?"

At a time when college tuition is going up annually and tennis scholarships are becoming harder to come by, many players are feeling more and more pressure on whether or not they have what it takes to earn a scholarship to a university. This built up tension and worry often seen carries over to their performance on and off the court and in many cases changes their mentality and their enjoyment for the sport. To players and parents, thoughts about winning become more and more apparent and losing becomes defined as a representation of failure.

Bruce Lee said it best when asked about failure: "Defeat is a state of mind; no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality."

One of the essential lessons that every tennis player learns at SPMI is that there are only two outcomes to competing: winning and learning. The learning experience (a.k.a. Losing) is where tennis players improve the most. It is when their newly-learned approach to failure is fully accepted. The mistake that most tennis players make is that when they fail they quickly try to forget every detail about the event - never discovering the hidden factors that will ultimately lead them to their desired destination.

Last year, one of my athletes, who competes internationally in martial arts, faced a competitor who was ranked Top 10 in the world. Needless to say, he did not achieve the result he wanted. In fact, he lost badly. However, at the end of the fight he approached the competitor calmly and asked him to would relate what he needed to work on and what he saw in him that was a weakness.

A little less than six months later the martial artist had the opportunity to compete against the same fighter again. Not only did he win, but his competitor barely scored against him! I later asked my athlete, "Would you have figured out what you needed to work on had you not have asked your competitor how you can be better?" His answer was, "No way! I would've assumed it was something completely different."

This SPMI athlete learned one of the most important lessons that many athletes still do not embrace: losing is a learning experience for those who strive for the bigger picture.

SPMI is a premier mental toughness training company that has trained hundreds of tennis players throughout the world, helping them maximize their mental game and achieve their goals in tennis and in life.

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