Experience - How crucial is it?

Good morning. Good day. Good evening, wherever in the world you are. I’m coming to you from Wimbledon where we've had a pretty successful week with Liam Broady making the third round and taking out the number 12 seed in the process.My reflections on the tournament come down to what we can teach and what we have to learn through experience. Liam played back-to-back five set matches. Whilst he had done all the training in order to be able to play with that intensity for over four hours, twice in three days with a three-hour doubles in between he still didn't know if he could truly trust his body to carry him that far without feeling fatigue that would affect performance. Now that he has been through this experience, he can truly trust his body to cope with the stresses and strain that these matches produce, and no one could teach him this. He had to learn it through going through the experience. As parents or as coaches I think it's so important to understand this aspect of life so that you don't think that your kids or students are automatically able to cope with different situations without having the experience of living through them. Last year, Liam went through the experience of over four hours and still didn't quite have the confidence because he felt cramp and struggled with the relentless intensity that a great player brings. He had to go through it again to learn if he could ever do it without struggling to that extent and cope when he's feeling stressed that he might cramp. This year, he proved he could cope with two five set matches both over four hours and one of them against one of the fittest and most successful 5 set players in Diego Schwartzman. It was an exact replay of the second round of the 2021 Wimbledon and this time, not only did he cope but didn't have any of the problems that he had last year. Nothing can replace experience in certain situations. You can only give students a glimpse and an insight into what is to come, but people so often must go through it themselves to truly understand what they can and cannot do. I hope this makes sense and the message is to allow people to have experiences which maybe they need more than once or twice to get truly confident in those situations. In fact, sometimes it takes many times and many years because some things in life just must be felt. Speak to you again next week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices