Cristina Rolo and Dave de Haan co-founded Rolo Mental Coaching in 2005, and their coaching focuses on performance enhancement and quality of life. Both Cristina and Dave are internationally recognized experts in the area of performance psychology and mental coaching, especially in tennis. They have extensive experience at the elite and ATP professional level, and they co-authored the book, Mental Training in Tennis: Applied Strategies for Success. Interview Highlights: 1:27 - Crist...
Feb 16, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep 27•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Brian and Josh discuss routines and break down routines into three parts. First, they review pre-performance routines and how to prepare mentally and physically leading up to a competition. Next, they address during-performance routines, and specifically the "16 second cure" developed by Dr. Jim Loehr to help tennis players manage their time in-between points. Lastly, they talk about post-performance routines and how to systematically learn from competition. The 16-Second...
Feb 08, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep 26•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Brian and Josh explore the topic of mindfulness. They broadly define and discuss the importance of the topic and discuss how mindfulness can be trained for tennis players. Additionally, thoughts are provided on how mindfulness can be practiced in a number of ways including meditation, mindful walks, mindful eating, and choosing to "savor" the present moment. Lastly, Brian and Josh talk about their own introductions to the topic of mindfulness and their experiences practicing min...
Jan 30, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep 25•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Brian and Josh discuss how to handle playing against difficult opponents and cheating. They discuss the mentality needed leading up to the match to perform at a high level against difficult opponents, including having contingency plans and the ability to reset after a cheating incident. They also share anecdotes of situations from their own playing and coaching careers when they handled playing against difficult opponents in a better or worse manner. To learn more about J...
Jan 24, 2021•52 min•Ep 24•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Brian and Josh explore the topic of "mental toughness" and break the concept into key attributes and characteristics of mentally tough tennis players and athletes. Mental toughness is often cited as a differentiating factor between tennis players of similar playing levels, but defining the concept and outlining it's attributes/characteristics can be challenging. This episode includes Brian's outline of the character traits of mentally tough athletes, and Josh's outline of the at...
Jan 18, 2021•1 hr•Ep 23•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 22 of the Tennis IQ Podcast discusses senior tennis through the perspective of self-determination theory (SDT). We discuss autonomy, competence (mastery), and relatedness as critical factors for helping senior tennis players stay motivated. We also discuss the importance of training perceptual skills, decision making skills, and mental toughness as a way for players to continue to perform at a high level and even improve as a they get older. Links: Tips for maintaining your...
Jan 10, 2021•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jeff Greenwald is an internationally recognized sport psychology consultant and licensed therapist. For over twenty years he has been helping athletes and professionals around the world transform and take their performances, and their lives to another level through his personal coaching, seminars, book, audio programs, and online courses. Frustrated with his performance as a modestly ranked professional tennis player in his twenties, Jeff went on to earn Masters Degrees in clinical and sport psy...
Dec 20, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep 21•Transcript available on Metacast Nikola Milinkovic has extensive work experience in sport and performance psychology and leadership coaching across a variety of high-performing environments. Nikola works with team and individual athletes, currently focusing on elite junior, ATP and WTA tennis players. Nikola spent over a decade directing sport psychology programs in high performance tennis settings in the US and the Netherlands. He played college tennis, is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC) through the Associatio...
Dec 12, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Ep 20•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the Tennis IQ Podcast, Josh and Brian share their favorite books related to sport/performance psychology and tennis. With the holidays right around the corner, this is a great chance to look into getting these books for someone close to you or for yourself. These books vary greatly in terms of topic, perspective, and age, but all share valuable insights for athletes, coaches, and fans of tennis. Feel free to reach out via email at tennisiqpodcast@gmail.com with any books that ...
Dec 04, 2020•49 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast For the 18th episode of the Tennis IQ Podcast, Brian and Josh discuss visualization and imagery and how these tools can be used to improve performance. To begin, they discuss how visualization/imagery can be used off-court, and how tennis champions like Novak Djokovic and Bianca Andreescu have utilized these mental tools to improve their performance. Next, they discuss how visualization and imagery can be trained on-court and how coaches can help tennis players utilize these skills on the practi...
Nov 29, 2020•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast As 2020 comes to a close, Brian and Josh discuss how to review the year of 2020 and how to plan for the year to come. Despite how challenging of a year 2020 was, it is important to highlight accomplishments and milestones that were reached throughout the year. The development of healthy habits and process goals are discussed in order to achieve larger performance and outcome goals. Additionally, the importance of establishing a developmental plan and utilizing a training journal to track your pr...
Nov 21, 2020•59 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Stephen Walker has been involved in the sport and performance psychology field since 1983 when he began at the Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Colorado. He is board certified with the Association of Applied Sport Psychology and is a member of the United States Olympic committee's registry of sport psychologists. Over the years, he has developed mental training programs for several accomplished athletes in a wide variety of sports from professional and Olympic levels to high...
Nov 13, 2020•1 hr 24 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast For the 15th episode of the Tennis IQ Podcast, Brian and Josh discuss motivation and the importance of having a clear idea of what motivates each individual as tennis players and as performers. The academic concepts of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, as well as self-determination theory, are covered in relation to improving your motivation for tennis. Brian and Josh also reveal their origin stories - how they started playing tennis and were subsequently motivated to pursue the sport in...
Nov 06, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Ep 15•Transcript available on Metacast Sean Brawley is a former Top 150 world ranked tennis professional who competed at the highest level of the game including Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. After the tennis tour, Sean met and began working closely with Tim Gallwey, the author of The Inner Game series of books including the classic, The Inner Game of Tennis. Sean is the first certified Inner Game coach in the world. He has facilitated numerous Inner Game of Tennis and Golf workshops in the past 20 years. In 1997, Sean helped Gallwey r...
Nov 02, 2020•1 hr 22 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast Coach Bill Tym was an All-American at the University of Florida where he won 2 Southeastern conference singles titles, and is also in the UF Athletics Hall of Fame. He went on to compete on the professional tour where he won 10 national and international titles. As a coach, he is a USPTA Master Professional and past USPTA president, and a member of the USPTA Hall of Fame. He was named USPTA Professional of the Year in 1982, College Coach of the Year in 1989 (Vanderbilt), and Touring Coach of the...
Oct 22, 2020•2 hr 34 min•Ep 13•Transcript available on Metacast The 2020 French Open has concluded with Rafael Nadal winning an astonishing 13th French Open title and record-tying 20th major in the mens championship, and Iga Swiatek winning her first French Open and major title in the womens championship. We review the Nadal-Djokovic and Swiatek-Kenin final matches and offer insights into the factors that determined the outcomes of each match. Additionally, we discuss the common links between the two champions and their ability to stay in the moment, even in...
Oct 15, 2020•54 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Judy Van Raalte is a Professor of Psychology at Springfield College, a Certified Consultant (CMPC) for the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, and is listed in the United States Olympic Committee Sport Psychology Registry. She has presented at conferences in 18 countries and published more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health, the NCAA, and the International Tennis Federation. She served as president of th...
Oct 09, 2020•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast Bob Dallis is in his 19th season as the Head Coach of the Dartmouth College Women's Tennis Team. Prior to Dartmouth he was the Head Men's and Women's Tennis Coach at Colgate University and was the Head Men's Tennis Coach at Boston University. He was a four-year member of the Boston University Men's Tennis Team and played on the professional circuit. Bob completed his doctoral degree at Boston University in Sport and Exercise Psychology where he completed his dissertation on "The Design and Imple...
Oct 02, 2020•54 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast Tennis is generally considered an individual sport because of the emphasis on singles, especially at the professional level. However, doubles in tennis is extremely popular and prevalent in the game. And unlike singles, it is a team sport that has its own set of challenges. In this episode, Josh and Brian discuss the various components of team dynamics in doubles that many players struggle with such as how to form an effective team, implementing successful communication strategies on and ...
Sep 24, 2020•49 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast William Boe-Wiegaard is in his fourth season as Head Men's and Women's Tennis Coach at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. Prior to Sacred Heart, William was a highly successful professional player on the ITF and ATP tours and collegiate player at Bates College. William played on the ITF and ATP tours for 13 years and in 2014 he reached a career-high ATP singles ranking of 1,002 and doubles ranking of 900. He was a five-time All-American selection at Bates College and won the 2006...
Sep 17, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast The 2020 US Open is reminding us once again that even the best players in the world are human and they can struggle with mental toughness. At the same time, there are also reminders of how incredibly tough and resilient these great players can be. The first 10 days of the Open, have given us a lot to talk about in terms of mental toughness. In this conversation, Josh and Brian discuss the exit of Novak Djokovic, the Stefanos Tsitsipas vs. Borna Coric match, and Serena Williams' quest for major t...
Sep 11, 2020•48 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast Coach Jorge Capestany is our guest for Episode 6 of the Tennis IQ Podcast. Jorge is one of only eleven people worldwide that has earned the distinction of Master Professional with the USPTA and International Master Professional with the PTR. Jorge is also a certified Mental Toughness Specialist through the Human Performance Institute based on the life work of the legendary Dr. Jim Loehr, and he holds a USTA Sports Science certification. He has coached three US national champions (Gold Ball winne...
Sep 02, 2020•1 hr 15 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast For episode 5 of the Tennis IQ Podcast, Josh and Brian address their first listener question: How can tennis players improve their ability to handle emotions? As we all know, tennis players often get frustrated and show negative emotions when things arent going well on the court. And this often leads to performance issues. To address this question, Josh and Brian discuss how expectations and perfectionism can lead to anger when things arent going well on court, and how players should go into com...
Aug 26, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast Jeff Bearup and Tim Donovan are the guests for Episode 4 of the Tennis IQ Podcast. Jeff has received numerous accolades and awards within the tennis coaching field including USPTA Coach of the Year and induction into the USTA New England Tennis Hall of Fame. Tim is the founder of Donovan Tennis Strategies which is a college placement service for tennis players. He was also a standout player at Brown University for four years, reaching a high of #6 in the NCAA Division 1 rankings. He then played ...
Aug 18, 2020•52 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the Tennis IQ Podcast, Josh and Brian discuss how tennis players should approach various stages of a set/match through a sport psychology perspective. These stages of a set/match include the start of a match, being ahead by a break, being behind by a break, closing out a set, and starting a new set after winning or losing the previous one. To learn more about Josh and Brian's backgrounds and Sport Psychology businesses go to TiebreakerPsych.com and PerformanceXtra.com . If you...
Aug 12, 2020•56 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast Brian Barker is the guest for Episode 2 of the Tennis IQ Podcast. He formerly coached James Blake (ATP #4 player in the world) and is currently the Director of Tournament Training Programs at Tennis Club of Trumbull. In this interview, we discuss Brian's background as a junior player and his success at the junior level as one of the top players in New England, and then at the collegiate level as captain and standout player at the University of South Carolina. We also get into Brian's philosophy ...
Aug 04, 2020•47 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast In the first episode of the Tennis IQ Podcast, Josh Burger of Tiebreaker Psych LLC and Brian Lomax of PerformanceXtra introduce themselves and explain how they each discovered the theme of tennis being 90% mental through their own experiences. They discuss the concept of Tennis IQ and the importance of tennis players training the mental side of the game. Josh and Brian also talk about the psychological challenges that tennis players are facing as the sport emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, wit...
Jul 28, 2020•58 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast 
