The first place we want to look when it comes to why you play well one day but then you don’t play well the next day is your mental game.
Are you staying consistent with your mentality from one game to the next? That’s what we’re going to talk about in today’s article.
The Frustration of Inconsistency
This idea of playing well one day and then not playing well the next day — whether it’s from a practice to a game, a practice to practice, or a game to game — is incredibly frustrating.
An example of the way this works comes from a tennis player that I am currently working with. He’s explained to me how one day he’ll show up to practice and he feels great. All of his shots are going well. He feels confident. He’s hitting freely. Everything is working well.
But then the next day, for seemingly no reason at all, he feels like he can’t hit any shot well. He’s getting frustrated with himself. He is distracted. He’s less confident. Everything is working against him, it feels like.
For him, what this leads to is going to the court with a sense of hope — “I hope I play well today. I hope the good me shows up instead of the bad me.”
I can personally remember back when I was in college, I felt the same way, but mine was specifically focused on my confidence versus my anxiety.
Some days I would show up and feel really confident. But then the next day, I would show up and feel anxious and doubt myself. At the time, I couldn’t understand why I was showing up confident one day and anxious the next. That led to an up and down in my performance.
Why Athletes Play Well One Day & Bad the Next
This tennis player and I have been working together for about four weeks now — and we’ve been examining the mental differences between these good days and bad days.
We’ve examined what’s happened throughout the day leading into training or leading into the match. We’ve looked at what his mentality is like when he’s doing well and what it’s like when he’s doing poorly.
Then, we worked to identify some key controllable factors to him playing well that he can work to repeat moving forward.
Coming off of his last tournament, he has been doing much better at performing consistently. He won three out of five matches, and even the two that he lost, he still played pretty well — they were just against good opponents. His practices recently have been better, too.
What He Focused On
When we examined his good days, he was locked in to what he was doing in the moment. He was fully focused on the point at hand. He had a really good attitude where he was just thinking, “I can learn from that, I can fix that,” if he made a mistake.
He wasn’t thinking about who was there or worried about who he was hitting with. He was just focused on himself and the point he was playing.
In matches, when he was doing well, he was locked on to the point at hand. He wasn’t worried about the score or the opponent’s ranking. He was simply playing the way he needed to play — following the specific strategy we had outlined for each point.
The Bad Days Looked Different
But when we examined his bad practices and bad games, we noticed a huge difference.
The first big difference was the level of negative self-talk. When he was practicing well, he moved on from mistakes quickly. He told himself, “I can learn from that. I can fix that.”
But on bad days, because he already wasn’t feeling great, he nitpicked his mistakes — which then snowballed into more mistakes.
During bad matches, he was focused more on the opponent — thinking about whether or not he should beat them, or what other people would think if he didn’t.
He drifted from his strategy and became reactive, trying to win or not to lose, instead of staying neutral and focused.
Recreating the Good Mindset
As we examined his good and bad performances, we noticed a stark difference between his mentality and approach. What that told us was — if we can work to recreate the good mindset, we’re likely going to recreate good performances.
That’s exactly what he’s been able to do over the last few weeks, and it’s something we’re still working on.
How We Structured His Matches
The approach we took to matches was clear and consistent.
He had an objective — a strategy he wanted to apply for each point — and he didn’t change that strategy based on the opponent or the score.
We broke it down to determine what strategy gave him the best chance of winning each point, and that’s what he stuck with.
He also adopted a point-by-point mentality, focusing only on the current point. Between points, he used a thought statement to reset and refocus on the next one.
As he applied this, he noticed a more stable mental state. He wasn’t as reactive because we made him proactive — focusing on controllable parts of his game.
How You Can Play Well Consistently
If you notice your game going up and down — whether from practice to practice or game to game — sit down and reflect.
You can do this with a parent, teammate, or coach, or on your own in a journal. Outline the differences between a good day and a bad day.
Write out everything about a bad day — your focus, mentality, physical actions. Then do the same for a good day. Identify the differences, just like I did with that tennis player.
Once you’ve outlined what a good day looks like, you know what to focus on and how to think. And when you’ve outlined the bad day, you know what your main distractions are.
Then, take the good day and create two or three controllable objectives to focus on.
With the tennis player, I had him focus on a specific strategy for each point, a point-by-point approach, and a thought-stopping phrase between every point. Those became his main priorities. As a byproduct, he was in a good mental state.
Create Consistency Through Control
How can you take your good day and create simple controllable objectives to focus on in practice and games?
If you apply this exercise, you’ll be much more likely to be in a good mental state because you’re taking your mental game into your own hands. You’re taking responsibility for your mindset and focus.
Typically, when performance goes up and down, it’s due to our mental state — not a loss of physical skill. You don’t wake up one day unable to hit, throw, dribble, or shoot.
Of course, some days you’re off. That’s fine. But if you can have a better mental state on those off days, you can turn bad days into decent days — and that’s how you become a more consistent player over the course of a season.
Final Thoughts
Go through this exercise. Identify what your good days and bad days look like. Create your controllable objectives. Apply them to your practices and games.
When you do that, you’ll start to create more consistent performance within your sport.
If you’re interested in learning more about my one-on-one mental coaching program, click here to schedule a free introductory coaching call, or fill out the form below.
I’ve also created two online mental training courses for athletes:
And if you’re more of a reader, check out my books:
Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
