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The dangers of being over-motivated Part II

How to deal with over-motivation during a match




This is our second post on how to deal with over-motivation, this week focusing on what the symptoms of over-motivation are during a match and how you can deal with them.

Check out Part I: How to deal with over-motivation before a match for more on how to make sure you are balanced mentally before the match.

Signs of over-motivation during a match

Symptoms of over-motivation can include:

  • Silly mistakes
  • Nervousness or lack of conviction in hitting the ball (most commonly players who are over-motivated won’t follow through long enough and will cut off their swing early)
  • Swinging through the ball too fast or without control
  • Attempting to win the rally very early or when the chance of hitting a winning shot is very slim
  • Nervousness or lack of conviction in shot selection
  • Erratic movement and/or positioning – often getting too close to the ball
  • Poor temperament (especially if a player’s temperament is worse than usual)
  • Overreacting when hitting a bad shot or when things don’t go as planned
  • Focusing too much on the score

As previously mentioned, all of these are relative, and what you are really looking out for is if you are doing one or more of the above more than usual.

How do you handle over-motivation during a match?

Personally, I think this is perhaps one of the most difficult mental challenges to overcome mid-match. It’s very easy to lurch from over-motivation to anger, or another destructive emotion.

You need to hit reset as quickly as possible, and you might have to wait until the end of the game to do this properly. I would go away from the court and go to a corridor, changing rooms, toilet or other area that is removed from the courts. Breathe deeply, and try to ground yourself in the moment by focusing on the feeling of your feet in your shoes and the feeling of the ground beneath them.
Once you start to calm down, focus on what you want your new goal or target to be. When over-motivated, I find it is best to focus on removing the pressure from yourself. You can do this by acknowledging to yourself that all you can do is your best, and even if you play your best, you cannot control the score and you still might lose. Tell yourself to focus instead on something you can control, such as making sure you get back to the T-Position as quickly as possible or doing your best to volley as much as possible. Your new focus could also be about desire and mindset, telling yourself to think of the next game as a best of one or of doing your best to prevent your opponent winning two rallies in a row.

If you can grab a quick bit of fresh air – make it quick if it’s cold and don’t ruin your shoes! – that can work wonders.

I also find changing my shirt is a great way of refreshing myself, and always try to have a spare one. If you can change your shirt, do that too.

As we said last week, you need to take all of this advice and apply it to your personality and style. You will need to adapt some of our tips to work for you, and perhaps even disregard some bits altogether if they don’t work for you. The key is to experiment and pursue what does work for you through trial and error!

Best of luck from The Squash Company in keeping it together!

For more thoughts on how you can improve your mental game, click on the word ‘Mental’ in the ‘Tags’ section below – or click here – to see all of our posts on the mental side of the game. 




Filed Under: Mental, Tactical Tagged With: concentration, focus, match, Mental, Mental preparation, motivation, over-motivation, under-motivation

The dangers of being over-motivated – Part I

How to deal with over-motivation before a match

Like too much of anything in life, too much motivation can be bad for you. Being under-motivated is rarely good for you but being over-motivated can be worse. People in an over-motivated state are often more easily swayed by their emotions and their temper, which only makes the situation harder to turn around.

Motivation is different for everyone and is relative to each individual. For some people, they play their best squash when they psych themselves up before a match, whilst others perform better when they relax. These players will have different thresholds at which they become ‘over-motivated’. What might make the player who prefers a more relaxed pre-match atmosphere over-motivated might barely register with the player who works themselves into a frenzy pre-match. However you prefer to prepare pre-match, being over-motivated is still a danger.

Before the match is the best time for keeping an eye on your motivation levels, as you have time to make a difference.

Key signs to watch out for include: 

  • Being more energetic or excitable than normal
  • Mind and thoughts are racing
  • More intense feelings or thoughts about results or performance – particularly expectations
  • More intense feelings of nervousness than normal



If you are prone to being over-motivated and have some of the symptoms above, you might want to design a pre-match routine for yourself. Even if you aren’t particularly prone to over-motivation, it might be worth building pre-emptive habits into your preparation.

To handle over-motivation before a match, try to:

  • Relax in the build-up to a match by doing something completely non-squash related, and ideally not in the club or centre.
  • Avoid thinking about the result or potential outcomes.
  • Not start preparing for a match too early. If you start listening to music to psych yourself up hours before your match, you may find you mis-time your mental peak and arrive on court off-kilter.
  • Develop mental cues in your pre-match routine – we talk about this in a lot more detail in ‘Getting in the zone’ – in the way you get dressed or pack your bag, your warm-up routine, or getting on court early to hit the ball a bit to help your rhythm.

Everyone is different and something that may work for me, or another person, may not work for you. All you can do is realise the situation you are in and acknowledge it, and then experiment with different things to see what has the best effect for you.

Look out soon for Part II: How to deal with over-motivation during a match.

You can see all posts on our site about the mental side of the game by clicking on the ‘Mental’ tag below next to the ‘Filed Under’ heading. Other related posts you may want to look at include:

Knocking-up with purpose – Part 2: The Mind
‘Win’ the warm-up in squash
Fear of failure
Getting in the ‘zone’
Belief 



Filed Under: Mental, Pre-match Tagged With: Mental, Mental preparation, mindset, motivation, over-motivation




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