The mind body connection is one that has been explored for many years. But a lot of us think of it as flowing from the mind to the body.

“A champions mind” is about how Sampras had the ability to simply elevate his game under pressure. Everyone talks about Nadal as being the toughest mentally.

But what if it is the other way around. What if it is actually physical toughness that is leading the way?

After the Wimbledon final, the NBC broadcast in the US showed the famous 1980 fourth-set tiebreak between Borg and McEnroe. Interestingly, both McEnroe and Borg thought that the entire match would turn on who could win that tiebreak. McEnroe would see it as a ray of hope and take it to victory. Borg would be deflated because of all the match points lost. In fact, Borg said he thought he was going to lose the fifth set.

But in the end we know it did not turn out that way. Borg was simply able to win points on serve and appeared to still have plenty left in the tank. Mac ran out of steam and he struggled to hold serve. After that match, Mac said the realized the importance of taking his fitness to another level.

All of this got me thinking that maybe toughness originates in the body not in the mind. In short, given relatively equal abilities the main difference ends up being physical. In tennis, this would mean movement, endurance and strength.

This provides an interesting solution to a paradoxical problem. Everyone wants to get better at tennis. So many people spend more and more hours working on tennis. But maybe the answer is not in playing more tennis. Perhaps the easiest way to improve results would be to simply get more fit.

In fact, in one study three groups of juniors at different competitive levels were asked to perform a series of fitness tests designed by the USTA. The researchers then used statistics to sort the players. What they found was that junior players could be very accurately categorized (in some cases close to 95% accuracy) by their endurance, speed and movement.

All of these juniors had started played at a young age and their tennis skills were very good. Thus fitness may have been giving them an edge that eventually put them in another competitive category.

I am not suggesting that technical skills don’t matter. I am just saying that fitness can determine a match even when one player’s skills are slightly “inferior.”

This got me thinking about why Nadal won Wimbledon. In the end, it became physical. Here is a quote before the final was played:

And Nadal has demonstrated that he has the ability to win Wimbledon, whether or not Federer is in his way. That’s because the gods — Mercury, to be precise — gave him the gift that’s critical to winning both events. Great movement and quickness.

Nadal acknowledge that Sunday, saying, “I think I have very good thing to play here, on grass. It’s the movement. I move well on this court, and that’s very important part of the game.”

So maybe other champions also relied on fitness. A quick search led me to many quotes from other champions. If you read carefully, you’ll see that ultimately it was their fitness that won them matches. Fitness is no guarantee they would be victorious but it took them a very long way.

Agassi

After his victory, Agassi turned to the players’ box, made eye contact with Graf, Gilbert and trainer Gil Reyes, then pumped his arms and ran in place, implying he was strong enough to play well beyond the time (2 hours, 19 minutes) needed to beat Kafelnikov.

“I feel like I’m stronger than I have ever been, I’m fitter than I’ve ever been and I’m moving better than I’ve ever moved,” Agassi said. “That allows me the luxury of taking a three-out-of-five-set match and turning it into a sprint, really making every point important, putting so much pressure on my opponent that they have a long ways to go. Whether I’m down or whether I’m up, I now have the platform to execute my game and not to waver from it.”

“A strong body listens. It obeys. A weak body commands. If your body is weak it tells you what to do. If your body is strong it will actually listen to you when you tell it to do something. If you built it right you can overcome some of the obstacles of age and recovery”

Federer

Paganini’s three-year plan proved successful. “Today, Roger can reach a maximum speed of 20 km/h (12 mph), which means that he can keep up with a regional sprinter for the first 30 meters,” he recollected in 2003. Federer could run 3,300 meters in 12 minutes, 9,300 meters in 40 minutes and he could press 150 kg (330 lbs) while doing knee-bends. This was an im mense improvement from before.

Federer found it easy to motivate himself for these goal-oriented training sessions because they broke up the routine. “Just a little bit of change does me a lot of good,” he said. “Once I’m out on the court, I don’t have any problem getting motivated. If I want to be No. 1, I have to give my all in training.”

Thanks to Paganini, he understood why he was training so hard. He quickly noticed that his improved fitness was helping him to increase his self-confidence. “I feel mentally really good because I know that I am physically prepared and that I can compete,” he said after the first extended training session with Paganini.

Lendl

After the French , Lendl found himself feeling sluggish and heavy, even in practice. He lost badly in the early rounds of several tournaments. In august, Lendl asked Solomon to call Robert Haas, who had worked earlier on a diet and conditioning program for Martina Navratilova. “I told Jerry I wasn’t sure what Ivan’s problem was,” Haas remembers, “but that if it had anything to do with endurance and fitness, then I could definitely help.”

Haas did a series of blood tests and discovered that Lendl’s diet was exceptionally high in protein, and that his cholesterol level was way up in the danger zone. Sure enough, Lendl told Haas that on a normal day, he might eat five or six scrambled eggs for breakfast, a couple of McDonald’s hamburgers for lunch, and a steak for dinner. “It was the sort of diet that will throw up a brick wall in the way of performance.” says Haas.

Like Fibak, Haas found in Lendl the ultimate motivated student. Lendl switched to a diet dominated by pasta, soup, water, fruit, a bit of chicken, and virtually no red meat. He even ate the once-hated vegetables in the service of a greater good.

Lendl noticed changes very quickly. Having once slept as much as fourteen hours a day, he now felt rested with no more than eight even during the most strenuous tournaments, as few as four or five when he wasn’t playing competitively.

Haas also helped him set up a rigorous physical-training program. Lendl bought a climber, which he could take with him to tournaments. Akin to a fireman’s ladder, the climber provided a workout not only for his lower body but also for his upper body, which many tennis players ignore.

Haas also encouraged Lendl to take up serious bike riding. Thin and gawky for much of his life, Lendl developed huge thighs and the upper body of a middleweight boxer.

Finally, Haas encouraged him either to meditate for twenty minutes each afternoon or to take a brief nap. Lendl opted for the nap. He can fall asleep now as soon as his head hits the pillow, and feel restored in as little as ten minutes.

“He just wasn’t providing his body with the right chemicals, the right fuel.” says Haas. “Once you do that, the difference may be anywhere from a one to 5 percent edge, but at his level, that means a lot.”

Serena Williams

in 2006

I believe Serena would be able to tell you that as well so I don’t think she is surprised that her fitness eventually let her down in Mauresmo’s 6-4, 0-6, 6-2 victory to reach the quarterfinals. There was one point in the middle of the third set that went very long, and after it was over you could just see she was really winded.

From that point on, it was clear that Serena was struggling through the remainder of the match. An outgrowth of her lack of fitness is also that her movement is not up to the level it used to be when she was dominating the women’s tour. Her movement was something that made her special in the past — that set her apart from the rest of the competition.

Today

If she stays focused and healthy, Williams certainly has a legitimate shot at more. With her serve, agility and drive to win, another two or three titles on Wimbledon’s slick grass are well within reason.

While not at her peak fitness level earlier in the decade, Williams is far from the self-described “bootylicious” days when she played — and often won — at less than top form. “This is the most consistently fit I have been, so that is really important,” she says.