Unpleasant experience:
where athletes already train equanimity

This is the side most athletes understand best, even if they do not use the word equanimity.

Take physical fatigue. Every time a player trains hard in the gym or on court, they meet unpleasant sensations. Muscles burn. Legs get heavy. Breathing gets intense. The body wants to stop.

When people first start training, that feeling can be overwhelming. The moment the discomfort rises, they want out. But over years of training, something changes. It is not only that the body gets fitter. It is also that the relationship to the sensation changes.

The player still notices the fatigue. They still notice the pain. They still notice the body is under strain. But it is not such a big deal anymore. It does not hijack the mood. It does not control the rep. It does not dictate whether they continue.

That is equanimity in action. And this point is hugely overlooked. Many athletes fail to notice that they have already built a high degree of equanimity with specific unpleasant sensations through years of willing exposure. It did not happen because they understood it intellectually. It happened because they repeatedly, voluntarily exposed themselves to that discomfort and learned not to be ruled by it. That is skill development.

Why pre-match nerves
can feel much worse

Now compare that to pre-match nerves.

For many players, pre-match nerves are less intense than muscular failure or brutal physical exhaustion. And yet they can feel much worse. Why?

Because the issue is not only intensity. It is relationship. A player may be highly equanimous with physical fatigue and barely at all equanimous with nervousness. So even though the nervousness might be a 5 out of 10 and muscular failure a 9 out of 10, the nervousness can create much more struggle. The player wants anything but that feeling. They breathe, distract themselves, suppress it, argue with it, panic about it. And that resistance is what keeps it alive.

That changes the whole goal. The goal is not that nervousness never appears again. The goal is that it takes more to trigger it, that if it does arise it escalates less, and that while it is there it interferes less. That is a real and trainable outcome.

Because now the player can go to the line at 2-all with no nerves, then serve at 5-4, 30-40 with nerves at a 5 out of 10, and still hit the serve they know how to hit, focus on what matters, and make the decision they know is right. That is one of the real superpowers of equanimity.

After winning the 2017 US Open, Nadal was asked how he stayed so calm. His answer was perfect. He said he was not calm. He was nervous. He explained that negative body language goes against you, and that one of the things he had tried to do all his life was make sure his body language helped him rather than hurt him. Then he said something even more important: in a Grand Slam final, you are going to be nervous, you are going to miss some opportunities, and that is part of the game. And he had been ready to accept all those moments and keep competing well. That is equanimity in action. Not the absence of nerves. Not pretending nothing is happening. He was nervous, he accepted that he was nervous, and he refused to let that nervousness dictate his demeanor or his competing.

Carlos Alcaraz makes the same point from a slightly different angle. In his conversation with Bryson DeChambeau, when they discuss pressure, Alcaraz says that before an ace in a crucial game there are nerves and the desire to hit the serve perfectly. But when you execute it the right way, it feels incredibly good. More importantly, he says he really wants to experience and face that challenge. Bryson then says that many people are scared of those moments, but that you have to walk through the fire and be uncomfortable being nervous so you can get comfortable being uncomfortable. Alcaraz agrees completely and says that real champions want that challenge, and that players who do not want to face it are not going to achieve the greatest things in the sport.

That is such an important example of equanimity because it shows that the highest level is not merely tolerating pressure after it arrives. It is becoming willing to meet it, to let it be there, and even to value the opportunity to go through it.

Pleasant experience:
the side almost everybody overlooks

This side matters just as much. People usually understand, at least vaguely, that they should learn to deal with unpleasant experiences better. Much fewer realize they are also being pushed around by pleasant experiences.

You win a point. You get the break. You are up in the set. You are close to a big win. You start playing well and liking how it feels. And then the system starts clinging. You want more of it. You want to keep it. You do not want it to change. You do not want to lose the lead, the rhythm, the confidence, the good feeling, the possible result.

And the moment that clinging starts, worry is never far behind. Because once you are gripping something pleasant, you are also afraid of losing it. So pleasant experience can generate just as much struggle as unpleasant experience. Not because pleasure itself is a problem. Because clinging is.

This is also where equanimity on the pleasant side becomes so important. And this does not mean you stop wanting to win. It does not mean you stop caring. It does not mean you become passive. That is exactly the confusion people have. If you are less clingy about winning, that does not make you less competitive. It usually does the opposite. It frees you up to compete more fully, to stay with the point, to use your skills better, and to enjoy what you are doing while you are doing it.

Even one of the greatest players ever spent nearly half his career losing points. That is tennis. So if a player cannot appreciate the points they win, enjoy the rallies they play well, and let go of the points they lose, break points they miss, set points they do not convert, matches they fail to close, then they are constantly fighting the basic structure of the sport itself. Equanimity changes that. It lets you enjoy and appreciate what is good without gripping it. And it lets you meet what is painful without panicking about it.

Mike Bryan's story about winning the Olympics at Wimbledon is one of the clearest examples I know of equanimity on the pleasant side. We go into it much more fully in the book, but the core of what it shows is this: even when something wonderful happens, something you wanted deeply, something you worked for, something that means a great deal, the real question is not whether you enjoy it. Of course you do. The question is whether enjoyment turns into gripping, whether success turns into pressure, and whether wanting more starts to distort your relationship to what is happening right now. That is exactly where equanimity on the pleasant side becomes so important.

There is also Federer's description of what he calls fire and ice. The fire of wanting to win, being motivated, and feeling excited after a good point, and the ice of accepting losses, bad shots, the crowd, and difficult circumstances. He says it took him about three years on tour to find that balance. And what matters here is that this was not some instant decision. It was a decision to start trying to act that way, and then years of repetition before that balance actually became stable. That is exactly how skill development works.

Neutral experience:
the most neglected side

The third side is the most overlooked. Most of life is not extreme pleasure or extreme pain. Most of life is neutral. And the same is true in tennis.

A huge number of repetitions, drills, serves, recovery moments, and practice situations live in the neutral band. The natural reaction to neutral experience is usually dismissal. We overlook it. Or if we do notice it, we call it boring.

But this is where a lot of high-level training actually happens.

Take a server at a high level spending 30 to 45 minutes working on the serve several times a week. That is not always intensely pleasant. It is not always intensely unpleasant either. A lot of it is subtle. The toss is a little more here or there. The hand is a little more relaxed or a little tighter. The timing is a little cleaner or slightly off. The snap happens naturally or there is subtle interference.

Those are not dramatic experiences. But if the player is mindful enough — attentive enough, clear enough, interested enough — then those subtle, neutral experiences stop being boring. They become deeply engaging.

That is one of the hidden gifts of equanimity. When you stop dismissing neutral experience, subtle process becomes inherently rewarding. Now you are not only practicing to get better in some future sense. The process itself becomes satisfying because you are actually there for it. Not clinging. Not resisting. Not dismissing. Interested. That changes everything.

Why great players describe this
without the same language

The great competitors of every era have figured out versions of this, whether or not they use the language of mindfulness. They may talk about staying calm. Or staying cool. Or being able to feel nerves without letting them interfere. Or embracing difficult moments. Or being free to play.

The language changes. But once you understand equanimity clearly, you start to see the common thread. They are less resistant to what they do not like. Less clingy toward what they do like. Less dismissive of what is subtle and neutral. And therefore more available for what the moment actually requires.

That is why equanimity matters so much in tennis. Not because it makes you soft. Because it makes you freer.

What this means
in practice

When equanimity develops, several things tend to happen across all three directions.

On the unpleasant side: it takes more to trigger the reaction. When it does arise, it escalates less. Recovery is faster. And while the experience is there, it interferes less with concentration and sensory clarity. The player is no longer trying to play tennis and fight an internal battle at the same time.

On the pleasant side: there is less grasping. Less worry about losing what is going well. More ability to enjoy what is happening without immediately needing to protect it or hold on to it. Success can be received fully rather than clutched anxiously.

On the neutral side: subtle process becomes more interesting. Repetition becomes more workable. Attention to fine detail becomes intrinsically rewarding rather than boring. This has a direct effect on sensory clarity — the more interested a player is in neutral experience, the more they actually notice.

That is a remarkable range of outcomes from a single trained skill.

Once you understand how it works, you can train it in very specific ways so that it becomes available in all the situations that matter most. Not only the difficult ones. All of them.