About Straka — Tennis, Mental Training, Mental Performance
AI-narrated readings of Christian Straka's writing on mental training, attention, and mental performance for competitive tennis players. The same essays you can read at straka.la, voiced in the cadence of a patient teacher.
Why You Get So Angry Playing Tennis (and How to Control What Happens Next)
How to control anger in tennis starts with what happens after the miss. Why you get so angry, when it helps, and what you can train.
12 Aug 2026
The Energy Cost of Attention
Holding attention is metabolically expensive, and that budget is not fixed. What near-infrared light does to it, what I found testing a photobiomodulation helmet with players, and what it does not do.
13 Jul 2026
What a Mental Performance Coach Actually Does for a Tennis Player
What a mental performance coach actually trains: attention under pressure, recovery after errors, and decision making when the score gets heavy.
17 May 2026
Where /ask Ends and Coaching Begins
/ask answers the question you bring. A coach does different work — watching, listening, asking back, drawing on their own experience. Not /ask plus eyes.
14 Apr 2026
Equanimity in Tennis: The Skill of Neither Pushing Nor Pulling
Equanimity is not calm. It is not indifference. It is the trained skill of neither pushing away what is unpleasant nor clinging to what is pleasant.
2 Apr 2026
Sensory Clarity in Tennis: What Are You Actually Noticing?
Paying attention and noticing clearly are not the same thing. A player can concentrate very hard and still not detect what actually matters. That gap is where sensory clarity lives.
21 Mar 2026
Concentration in Tennis: The Four Subskills That Actually Matter
Most players think concentration is one thing. In tennis it is four distinct subskills — and they can be weak or strong independently. That changes everything about how they should be trained.
9 Mar 2026
What Actually Breaks Down Under Pressure in Tennis
Players say they tightened up or lost confidence. Those descriptions make sense but they are too broad. If you want to train performance under pressure you need a more exact understanding of what is actually breaking down.
25 Feb 2026
Pre-Match Nerves: What to Train Instead of Trying Not to Be Nervous
Nervousness before a match is not the problem. The relationship to it is. What players need to train is not the elimination of nerves but the ability to perform clearly while they are present.
13 Feb 2026
Why Players Choke in Tennis: What Is Actually Happening
Choking is not weakness or lack of toughness. It is a very specific failure of attention, perception, and equanimity under highly meaningful conditions.
1 Feb 2026
Why Players Choose the Wrong Shot in Tennis
A player can hit the same shot for two very different reasons internally. One is driven by the situation. The other is driven by what the player is feeling.
20 Jan 2026
Why Stay Present Is Too Vague to Help a Tennis Player
Stay present is the most common mental performance instruction in tennis. It is also the least useful. Here is what to say instead.
8 Jan 2026
How to Integrate Mental Training Into a Drill
A player is not training the mental game simply by being on court. They are only training it when they are actually using these skills: putting attention where it needs to go, noticing what matters, and allowing experience to be there without getting pulled off the task.
27 Dec 2025
Why Knowing What to Do Is Not the Same as Being Able to Do It
The mental side of tennis is not exempt from training. It does not get a special shortcut just because the mind can be talked about. Understanding is not ability. Ability has to be built.
15 Dec 2025
What Are You Actually Paying Attention To When You Play
Most players have never seriously examined where their attention actually goes during a match. That gap between where focus lands and where it should be is where performance breaks down.
3 Dec 2025
What This Blog Is For
The mental game is not separate from performance. In tennis, it is part of performance. This blog takes apart specific moments on court and looks more closely at what is actually going on there.
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