What Champions Do Between Points.
Issue 146- Jason Payne, CMPC
Wimbledon is in the second week. If you have watched any of it, you have watched the most-studied twenty seconds in performance psychology, whether you knew it or not.
The camera cuts to the server as they walk back to the baseline. Their eyes go down. They bounce the ball three times, or four, or some specific number they have used since they were fifteen. They breathe. Then they serve.
Twenty seconds. Between every point. For four hours.
The tennis players you are watching are running a protocol they have practiced more than any tactic in their game. What happens in that window is what separates the top ten from everyone else on tour. Not their forehand. Not their serve speed. The between-points routine.
The Loehr Studies
In the mid-1980s, a sport psychologist named Jim Loehr took heart-rate telemetry equipment to Wimbledon and the US Open. He was trying to answer a question no one had asked properly. Why did the top-twenty players seem to have another gear in tight matches while everyone else broke down?
The data he collected yielded an unexpected finding. It had almost nothing to do with what happened during the point. It wasn't about Cardio fitness or lung capacity. It was what happened between the points.
Loehr’s monitors showed that the top-ranked players dropped their heart rates by fifteen to twenty beats per minute in the seconds between points. Their journeymen opponents did not. Same shots. Same court. Same nervous system architecture. The top players had trained themselves to recover in twenty seconds what took the others two minutes to recover from. Multiply that gap across four hours of a five-set match, and you have a performance difference that never shows up in the shot statistics.
From those studies, Loehr built what he called the Sixteen-Second Cure. Four phases, executed in the same order, every time.
Phase One: Positive Physical Response. The immediate seconds after the point. Head up. Shoulders back. Racket forward. The body posture the athlete would have if they had just won the point, whether they won it or not. This phase denies the opponent, and the athlete’s own nervous system, any visible evidence of the previous outcome.
Phase Two: Relaxation Response. The walk back to the baseline. Slow breathing. Loose grip on the racket. Eyes moving to a neutral point on the court. This is where heart rate actually drops. Parasympathetic activation. Recovery.
Phase Three: Preparation. Somewhere in the middle of that walk, the athlete transitions from recovering to planning. What do I want to do on the next point? What is the score? What is the opponent expecting? A short visualization of the shot they are about to hit.
Phase Four: Ritual. The final seconds before serving. Bounces. Breath. A specific pattern the body executes without any conscious thought at all. The ritual is when the athlete goes on autopilot, freeing the conscious mind to execute the shot without interference.
Sixteen seconds. Four phases. The same, every time.
Every Sport Has Closed Moments
The insight travels beyond tennis. Every sport has closed-skill moments, the moments where the athlete has control over the timing, the environment is predictable, and there is a small window between the whistle and execution. That window is where the Loehr model applies.
The foul shooter has ten seconds. The volleyball server has eight. The pitcher on the mound has about twelve. The penalty shot in Soccer. The kicker in football has thirty from the coach’s signal to the snap. The golfer has as much time as they want, which is often the problem. The gymnast has a longer window before a routine and a shorter one between apparatuses.
Every one of these moments is a window between points. And in every one of them, the same four phases apply.
Basketball’s Version: The Free Throw
Free throw shooting is the clearest case in basketball. The athlete is fouled. The whistle blows. Ten seconds are counted down from the moment the ball is handed to them. There is nothing the defence can do. The pressure comes entirely from within.
It is a very strange moment in a basketball game. All action stops; a frenetic game comes to a complete stop. The focal point becomes the foul shooter. Every eye in the gym is trained on the foul shooter. It is no wonder it creates pressure. And that is before you even consider the score and time remaining.
What separates ninety-percent free-throw shooters from seventy-percent shooters is almost never their form. Their form is fine. What separates them is what they do in those ten seconds.
Steph Curry has been the closest modern example to what Loehr documented in tennis. His pre-shot free-throw routine has stayed almost identical for over a decade: same dribble count, same wide stance, same mouthguard chew, same breath before release.
His career free-throw percentage of just over 90% puts him in the top five in NBA history, and, unlike most shooters, that number tends to rise rather than fall in clutch situations. Reports from Warriors sports science staff have described Curry's heart rate signature under pressure as unusually steady for an athlete at that intensity, closer to a rested baseline than to a typical fight-or-flight response. His recovery rate is comparable to that of a world-class distance runner. It is not an accident. He has been training it for decades.
What Curry himself has said in interviews is that his internal state barely changes in the seconds before a critical shot compared to a garbage-time free throw. Same routine. Same breathing. Same body posture. Whether the game is a random midweek game in Charlotte or the fourth quarter of a Finals Game Seven. He is running a version of Loehr's four phases in ten seconds instead of twenty. He is running them in the last minute of a tied playoff game or in the first quarter of the preseason game. The between-points recovery Loehr measured in tennis is what Curry has trained in basketball. Different sport. Same protocol.
Every coach knows a talented player whose free-throw percentage collapses in the fourth quarter. What is collapsing is not their skill. It is their routine. When the pressure rises, the athlete abandons the phases and starts trying to make the shot instead of executing the process. The shot leaves the routine, and the misses follow.
The same pattern applies across sports. The volleyball server whose short game vanishes in a tight fifth set. The kicker who pushes it wide in overtime. The golfer who tops the ball off the eighteenth tee. The pitcher who leaves a fastball middle-middle in the sixth inning after two quick outs. Not skill issues. Routine issues.
How to Design a Routine With Your Athletes
The design is not complicated, but it has to be explicit. Pick the closed moments in your sport. For basketball, that is the free throw, the inbound play in the last thirty seconds, the pre-tip-off huddle. For soccer it is the penalty kick, the free kick, the goalkeeper’s throw-out. For volleyball it is the serve. In football, it is every kick and every snap when the quarterback has time to read. Name them.
For each moment, walk your athlete through Loehr’s four phases and let them build their own routine. Physical anchor for Phase One, something the body does immediately after the previous outcome that projects composure. Breathing pattern for Phase Two. A short visualization cue for Phase Three. A physical ritual for Phase Four that stays exactly the same, every time, forever. Keep the whole sequence under fifteen seconds. Practice it in low-stakes reps until it runs on autopilot. Then let them try it in a game.
The change is usually visible within a month. Not because the athletes become different athletes. Because they have finally been given a tool for the twenty seconds that were wasted. Or worse, the moments when their minds were negatively impacted by the pressure.
Three ideas for this week.
Watch one of these moments in sport. Pay attention to the behaviour before a penalty kick at the World Cup. How does an MLB pitcher automate the space between pitches? Or watch the Wimbledon finals and see how the best tennis players create routine. That is the visible edge of the invisible work.
Name the closed moments in your sport. Then ask your athletes what their routine is for each one. If they do not have one, add designing it to your July development plan. Ten minutes of specific practice this month will change how they perform in October.
Design your own. Coaches have between-points moments too. The walk to the huddle after a bad possession. The pause before you say something to a struggling player. The breath before you talk to a referee. What is your protocol for those twenty seconds?
The tennis players make composure look natural. It is not. It is the most rehearsed part of their game.
Rehearse yours.
🎧 The Ultimate List of Coaching Podcasts
For years, I kept a list of my favourite coaching podcasts. Somewhere along the line, I stopped updating it. But I took some time and added to it. Over 160 hours of top-notch professional development for free.
One of the simplest ways to sharpen your thinking, broaden your perspective, and stay connected to the best ideas in leadership and performance is by listening to podcasts. They give you access to world-class coaches, sports scientists, and leadership minds, often during the time you would otherwise spend driving, walking, or working out.
Over the years, podcasts have become part of my own development rhythm. Some challenge my assumptions. Some give practical tools I can use the next day. And some simply remind me that the best coaches are lifelong learners.
That’s why I’ve put together The Ultimate List of Coaching Podcasts. It's a curated collection designed to help you:
✅ Build stronger culture
✅ Improve how you teach and communicate
✅ Deepen your mental performance toolbox
✅ Stay current with modern player development
✅ Grow your leadership from the inside out
Whether you’re a veteran coach or just getting started, there is something in here that will stretch your thinking.
👉 Dive into the list and pick one new voice to learn from this week.
Because the best coaches don't stay static…
They keep evolving.
Are you or your athletes struggling to be their best?
Let's find a solution together.
I help coaches thrive.
As a Certified Mental Performance Consultant and a basketball coach with 25 years of experience, I understand the barriers to peak performance for both you and your athletes.
I would love to help you or your team build a competitive advantage. Here are a few ways I can help:
- Consult with your team or coaching staff
- Teach mental skills to your team via Zoom
- Work 1-on-1 with coaches
- Work 1-on-1 with athletes
Book a Free Discovery Call
If you’re feeling the weight of expectations, pressure, or burnout, you don’t have to figure this out alone.
A discovery call is simply a chance to talk through your season, your goals, and your process with another coach who’s been there. No pitch. No obligation. Just a meaningful conversation.
Schedule a discovery call here.
Shoot me an email at jasonpayne@evolutionmpc.com. I love talking about coaching and seeing how I can help you.
Coaching is hard; let's make it easier.
Check out my website at http://jasonpayne.ca
Thanks for reading, and have a great week.