Rafael Nadal has explained how he dealt with and slowly overcame “feeling anxious” during the most mentally challenging period of his career.
The 20-time Grand Slam winner discussed some of the different approaches to tackling feeling overwhelmed by pressure.
The 35-year-old referred to the 2015 season when asked if he had ever experienced a moment where he felt the pressure was too much.
In 2015, the great Spaniard failed to make it past the quarter-finals at any of the four majors and did not win a Masters 1000 event for the first year since 2004.
“Yeah, sometimes you feel a little bit anxious. There are different approaches, no? One approach is to stop it for a while, and try to recover,” the 35-year-old told CBS News.
“Another approach is [to] keep trying and accept that you have this problem – you accept that you will not win. My approach [in 2015] was to keep going and slowly overcome that situation, no? So I was doing [that], and after eight months I started to feel a lot better.”
