Episode #40 Season 24: Shaun Boyce & Justin Yeo

Why do some players show too much energy on the court? In today’s conversation, Shaun and Justin discuss how extreme positivity, high-energy displays, and adrenaline surges can sometimes hinder a player’s performance. Using insights from the world’s top players, like Rafael Nadal’s routines for lowering adrenaline or Roger Federer’s calm, collected demeanor, they highlight how different players approach energy management to maintain peak focus and performance.

Episode Overview

This final episode of the year takes a deep dive into a topic that affects tennis players at every level: managing positive energy. Can too much energy or extreme positivity actually hurt performance? Shaun and Justin discuss how players can find a balance, sharing insights from iconic players like Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. They break down the benefits of staying positive but also caution against the risks of “over-hyping” each moment, which can lead to mental fatigue, errors, and even loss of control.

In this conversation, you’ll learn the subtle art of channeling energy in ways that boost performance rather than detract from it, how players can use specific techniques to control adrenaline, and the importance of keeping a steady mindset to tackle every point with focus.

About Our Guest - Justin Yeo

In this special episode of "10 Minutes of Tennis," we’ve invited Justin Yeo, a globally recognized tennis pro with years of experience coaching and competing. Justin is known for his deep understanding of the mental game, which he applies in working with players of all levels. Based in Puerto Rico but with roots in Australia, Justin brings a unique international perspective to this episode’s topic: finding the right balance of energy and calm on the court.

What You’ll Learn

• Positive Energy without Burnout: Learn how to use positive energy constructively without it overwhelming focus or causing mental fatigue.
• Top Player Techniques: Explore routines from tennis legends like Nadal and Federer on controlling adrenaline and staying in the optimal state for each point.
• Managing Emotional Control: Understand the unique challenges that junior and amateur players face with high-energy emotions and pressure on the court.
• Healthy Ways to Release Frustration: Discover constructive methods to handle frustration without breaking the rules or racking up penalties.
• Pressure Management: Why younger and amateur players struggle more with high-stakes emotions and how they can cultivate resilience.

Exclusive Community Insights

Incorporating questions from our community, this episode includes an Instagram question about handling negativity on the court. Shaun and Justin address ways to release pressure without destructive actions, emphasizing the importance of maintaining sportsmanship and respect for both the game and fellow players. Justin also offers insights into the pressure young athletes face from family, coaches, and peers, providing advice on how juniors can navigate these challenges without sacrificing their mental health or sportsmanship.

Actionable Tips & Techniques

• Stay in the Zone: Specific breathing and mental exercises to keep your energy balanced after each point.
• Emulate the Greats: Emulate techniques from players like Federer and Nadal for sustained focus and controlled intensity.
• Mindful Recovery: Learn quick recovery tactics between points to avoid burnout and maintain optimal focus.
• Handling Stress with Grace: Insights into respectful ways of managing frustration on the court—essential for players, parents, and coaches.

Real-Life Applications

This episode isn’t just for players; coaches, parents, and fans can gain insights into how to support athletes, whether on the court or in training. Coaches will find valuable tips for helping players develop a balanced mental approach, while parents can learn to better understand the pressures young athletes face and how to encourage them to stay calm and respectful, even during difficult moments.

Join the Conversation!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on finding the right balance of energy in tennis! Do you think extreme positivity can hurt performance? What are your favorite ways to stay calm under pressure? Reach out on social media, and let us know what topics you’d like us to cover in the new year!

YouTube Replay

Shaun Boyce USPTA: shaun@tennisforchildren.com

https://tennisforchildren.com/ 🎾

Justin Yeo: https://www.instagram.com/yeocoach/

Bobby Schindler USPTA: schindlerb@comcast.net

https://windermerecommunity.net/ 🎾

Geovanna Boyce: geovy@regeovinate.com

https://regeovinate.com/ 💪🏼🏋️

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[Music]

Welcome to the Atlanta Tennis Podcast.

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We talk with coaches, club managers, industry business professionals,

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We want to have a conversation as long as it starts with tennis.

[Music]

Hey, hey, this is Shaun with the Atlanta Tennis Podcast,

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Also, let us know if you have questions or topics you would like us to discuss

and we will add them to our schedule.

With that said, let's get started with 10 minutes of tennis.

[Music]

Someday, every tennis player at the end of their match is going to say,

"Nice match, you played well, may the courts be with you."

[Laughter]

That's going to be it. It's going to be a thing.

I'm making it a thing.

[Music]

May the courts be with you. That's what it's going to be.

But good morning. This is Tuesday morning,

sometime during the year. We don't even know because I don't have a Santa hat on or

there's no fourth of July celebration. We nobody knows at all what's going on because when you

re-watch this, it doesn't matter. I was going to put a little Santa hat on the version.

Right there. Hang on. Hang on. I can do it right there.

A little Santa hat. All right. Maybe next year.

But yeah, we're coming to the holidays. My name is Sean Boyce.

We are talking with Justin Yeo, World Renowned, tennis pro in Puerto Rico from Australia.

And I am with the Atlanta tennis podcast and go tennis atlanta.

We are in our 10 minutes of tennis. This will be our last

live of the year. Super excited. I love saying that. Super excited to have this conversation today.

And I would say maybe I'm overly excited. Am I too excited? In that case, am I wasting my energy?

Oh my gosh. What a transition. Justin, since I'm talking about wasting energy,

yeah, see what I did. All right. No. It's one of those mornings. All right. So Justin, the topic

today in our 10 minutes of tennis. And we only have 10 minutes. So I will stop running my mouth

so you can run yours. The extreme positivity. We all know that positive body language.

And confidence, self-talk is a good thing. There's a fist pump. There's a let's go. It's there.

But some ask and I would even ask. I'll pose to you and say some of these players are overly excited

at times. Not just overly excited in that Jimmy Conner's once a match gets all jacked up and excited.

Like we were talking about earlier. But every point that they win seems to be the greatest thing

that's ever happened to them. And my question to you is, can that become a waste of energy?

These guys just never run out of energy. They have an infinite battery at 25 years old.

Or is it really just a thing that maybe more like Novak get all excited. But then once you get back

to that next return of serve, get your act together. Yeah. Well, we can't cover late an amateur or a

developing tennis player or anyone compared to Jimmy Conner's wrapped you out of the dial and know that

you're talking about. This is an example. It's not. You're coming up with some pretty solid mental

ability examples who know what being jack feels like and can seem to still how they manage it. But

the concept of being over positive or extreme positive of being jacked all the time can actually

have reverse effects. If everyone can study this a little bit into the science, which now we are

into the science part of the sport. You know, where where players are understanding their heart rate

and where their premium heart rate is. If the heart rate is too low, then possibly errors happen.

Footwork slows down. Mental perception, cognitive, all that stuff changes if the heart rate is too low.

On the other hand, if the heart rate is too high, which usually at the end of a long point or a big jack,

y'all come on fist bump. If it goes too high, the brain sends a message to the body to slow down.

So when we're too jacked or too positive, the science of shown in graphs, they're commonly people

who either make an error or they'll make a silly decision or things will slow down after a big point.

And so commonly, I mean, I can't. The best player that I've seen, they continue to play well jack

is Raphael Madagascar. But if we notice his patterns, he's extremely good at going after a short point,

the one corner for the towel, one towel. If he has a long point, he goes to both corners and gets two

towels. And advantages of that is that he's taking a little bit longer to allow the adrenaline and the

heart rate to come down back into a spot where he's optimally going to play the next point well. Because

you're only as good as winning the next point. If you can be a big point and get jacked and lose

the next two, but then what was the big jack point worth? And so you used a good example before we

came on air, was Roger Federer or Roger Federer would stay calm. But mainly because if he got jacked,

he didn't like the way he presented himself. So if he used to be a rapid smasher, I mean, people don't

remember that because he wasn't on national TV doing it that much. And then he started to figure out

that if I don't keep myself here, then that's the possibility that we happen. So Mr. Cool Conn

collected the biggest legend we've ever known. Yes, he had issues and he had to keep himself here.

So he would only get pumped every now and then. We've wanted him to be pumped more because he

hit more winners I felt like, but unfortunately he knew where his range was. And if he went too far,

Jack, he felt it was hard to control the neutrality, control the pressure. Some people like the pressure,

some people just go obviously because we're seeing a lot more rapid smashers. The racket smashing,

again, people don't understand it's just a release of pressure. Patrick Marrow-Togrew talks about that

all the time. It's just a release of pressure. And it's the first thing they look at, it's the first

thing that happens and it comes out. It's either that or you're going to be here on the camera,

which they know they can't do. So they do it the other way. But anyone understands that pressure.

It's a junior as an adult. The juniors have more pressure than adults as far as I'm concerned.

Because there's this, you know, don't disrespect your coach. Don't disrespect your parents.

The parents have just done all this stuff for you. Careful, you do this, all the kids will all

your peers will look at your shirt in white. So the juniors have a ton more pressure. And they're going

through the rollercoaster themselves of teenagers. So they're not as good at, they don't have the

practice. And Federer went through that teenager thing and he just said, I can control myself, but if

I'm a 12 year old, I don't have the practice of managing myself. But also cognitively understanding.

I know for, I can't say for a fact, I want to say I know 100% Nick Kerios does the math when he goes

to smash a racket. He knows what it's going to financially cost him. And he decides if he can afford

it before he smashes that racket. A goal doesn't have the concept of what is this going to cost him.

So I'm laughing, but you know, back to that is, say, well, if I'm getting it far down one, I'm

almost doing a mole. He got his bag of money on that one. Because he was like, well, I'm just doing

a bowl. That's your money's worth. Absolutely. Maybe get the team cup, you know, he smashed every

every plum. It says, all right, I got one left. Let's say I'm going to win this one. You know, so

that's the opposite because that's the release of pressure on the eight. I say extreme negative

energy to be able to let it go. And that's that one thing that can, I say this to my wife a lot

while we're watching tennis. And she just looks at me, I'm going, why does he have to smash his

racket? I said, you watch, he wins the next three games. Yeah, because he needed to let that out.

And yeah, it's going to cost him, it's going to cost him 10 grand or whatever the fines are these days.

But he's going to win the next three games you watch. If it cost him 10 grand, he wins 50 on the

match. I mean, he's a mess. I don't know. I'm worth it. You know, and then he's got all the pressure

of sponsors and everything else. But going the other way, which one of the extreme positivity,

I've seen sometimes parents and I mean adults and kids, you know, bouncing on their toes the whole time.

They can be a lot of energy that you're trying to get things going next pool. But find a point

where you're trying to get the rev. And then just as the point starts, try to find yourself down

and feeling the power into your legs again. I find that people once they start bouncing and bouncing

bouncing, they're actually quite vertical when they're hitting the ball instead of staying down.

And so extreme positivity too can draw a lot of energy and if you're already fatigued and the fatigued,

it's what's causing the negative energy, then being extremely positive to wear that down even more.

So you've got to find ways of just staying positive, but the word calm is still a big one. Because

you've got to stay in the zone or you're, you're, you're, where's all this energy going? It's not going

to any good for you. And so I'm constantly talking to the kids when I was in junior development a lot of

that. You're going to got three levels of mental state. You know, the first one is I'm like, no,

ah, second line, it gets higher. By the third one, you almost have to go and shake the players hand

because there's no recovery from that. So I say that positive is absolutely the way to go when

you're playing tennis. And you're always trying to keep a very strong perspective, but just be careful

not to take it up too high. And understanding that every time you want to point, if there's a big

fist bump, I find teenagers, especially or kids going growing up, you'd be careful where the hype

happens because if it's on a double fault or faults in between or, ah, you know, the player

dug it out and they just missed the last ball. No, just be careful where the big hype's out because

it will also represent you as a, as a player that's just, you know, not very respectful of the other

player and their efforts as well. So along those lines, I got one question. We'll go one minute past

our 10 minutes. I got it. I got a question from Instagram that says, is there not another way?

The side smat, now we're not talking about the positivity. We're talking about the negative

here. Is there not another way besides smashing your racket to let out that negativity, to release

that pressure? There's got to be another way. Yeah, I mean, there is not teaching kids. We're not

teaching kids to go smash your rackets to release the pressure. Well, there is another way and that

is step into the chord, play a little more extreme and just try to get, you know, try to get some of that

pressure out into the ball. I used to say it's a little time, you know, because maybe you're

going to blow the next game anyway because you just kind of seem to get it out. So why not use it?

Use it to your advantage. Like step up on the service line, take a few returns right off the bat

and come to the net and see if you can just get some of the pressure out by being erratic a little bit.

And it might turn the whole tide around and use it to your advantage, you know. The other way is to

go all the way back. You know, six, seven, eight feet behind the bat sign and just swing all

mind and try to get release of that pressure by actually getting a lot of balls. That's combined.

I like that. Maybe that's kind of a Raphael Nadal kind of scenario where he's unishing himself

physically, right? Without smashing or because Nadal really smashed a lot of backends. Yeah.

And he would step back and say, you know what? I'm going to make myself miserable playing the next game.

And I'm just going to hang back here and torture myself. Yep. I'm not getting any code violations.

I'm showing the kids. You can do this without smashing rackets. Yep.

That really is the point of the question. Yeah.

I'm going to Instagram, like I said. And we've got to have another way to do it.

And Alcomptonis is not going to smite me on the bottom off. It's been missed by David. So,

we're going to be back. There we go. Justin, you know, thank you so much. This has been 10 minutes

of tennis. We will see you guys next year. 20, 20, 20, 24 to come guys. We're going to keep it going.

We'd like to hear more engagement. Come on guys. Throw us questions. Let me know what you want to hear

about because I'm still connected to a lot of people all around the world and love to hear more

what we can do. We'll get the answers. I'll log it. Thanks, Justin. Have a great rest of your year.

Well, there you have it. We want to thank reGeovinate.com for use of the studio.

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