Wimbledon 2023: Brain games and conscious breathing – the secrets of Djokovic’s success

Novak Djokovic is famous for his dedication and meticulous preparation, so it is surprising to learn he might let some of his strict routine slip as he tries to make more tennis history this fortnight.

Djokovic has a 24th Grand Slam in his sights and is halfway to becoming the first ATP or WTA singles player since Steffi Graf in 1988 to complete a Calendar Slam, by winning all four major tournaments in the same year.

He has already triumphed at the Australian Open and Roland Garros in 2023 and the lessons the 36-year-old learned on his way to those wins have showed him he does not have to be a perfectionist to progress in SW19.

“Routines are extremely important for every human being because I think it is in our biology that we are repetitive on a daily basis,” Djokovic explained. “If there is something that makes us feel good, we want more of it.

“I am definitely a guy who likes them because then I feel more comfortable with my preparation, so that I feel more confident in myself that I’ve done everything I possibly need to do for what is coming up.

“Routines really give me peace of mind, but it is important to balance it out sometimes by breaking them. Now I like to play a game with my brain sometimes, and challenge it.

“For example, I did not train at all in the days between matches at the Australian Open, when I was injured, but at Roland Garros I had two of those days between matches where I didn’t train as well.

“That is something that, earlier in my career, I would probably have not accepted because I had the mentality of a hard worker, and I had to do that extra 10 minutes or half an hour.

“I used to be a bit more upset with myself if I didn’t do something – it would be like ‘you’re not good enough now’, or ‘you are going to lose now’, but over time I guess you grow out of that mentality.

“I have learned that less is more and also that if I break my routine or don’t complete it, it’s also fine. It’s important not to be too hard on yourself.”

Will Wimbledon grass be on his menu again?

One routine that Djokovic definitely doesn’t want to drop anytime soon is his habit of celebrating winning Wimbledon by eating a blade or two of the Centre Court grass.

It’s not an official part of the gluten-free diet he has stuck to since 2010, but he has now been munching on it for more than a decade.

“It’s the tastiest grass I have ever tasted,” he told BBC Breakfast.

“I think it started for me the first time I won, in 2011. I just didn’t know what else I could do from the feeling of joy I had at that point. I just said ‘you know what, I might as well just have a little bit of the grass’, and it became a little bit of a tradition.

“I have done it every time I won Wimbledon, so I am hoping I can take more grass this year.

“What makes it the tastiest? It’s Wimbledon! The way they maintain it. I had lots of people writing to me, asking: ‘How can you eat it? There is so much sweat in the grass.’ But I am like, ‘I am not even thinking about that!’.”

More marginal gains – movement on court

It’s not surprising Djokovic usually has such an appetite by the end of the tournament – his incredible movement during matches means he has covered pretty much every blade of grass on Centre Court by the time he gets to nibble on it.

More marginal gains are involved there – while he has always stressed the importance of emotional strength, and credited the power of his imagination after his 2019 Wimbledon triumph, Djokovic seeks an edge from his equipment too.

“Your racquet and your shoes are the most important items you can have as a tennis player,” he explained as the new trainers he will wear at Wimbledon were shown to him, complete with a ’23’ stencilled on the heel in honour of his latest landmark.

“It took three years, going back and forth, to get the right shoe for me and it wasn’t easy for the development team because I had so many requests and changes.

“First of all I probably move differently to most of the guys out there – even on grass, I slide – so I needed to be able to stop and change direction. There were so many different details involved, and I think the people who made it suffered more than me.”

If that sounds like it was a challenge, it was one that Asics senior product manager Rene Zandbergen, who worked closely with Djokovic, was happy to take on.

“Not every tennis player is as involved in the process as Novak was,” Zandbergen said. “He got into it because he is a perfectionist and he loved to look into the details himself.

“He was willing to learn about all the elements involved and it triggered him because he saw it as a chance to make himself a better player.”

How to cope when things do go wrong?

It’s not just on court where being in motion is important for Djokovic – it’s a big part of his mental preparations too.

“I believe a lot in the power of movement, and its effect on psychology,” Djokovic said. “Not just physical movement but certain somatic movements when it comes to visualisations or whatever mental work you are exercising.

“When movement is intertwined with the mental work too then you get a better effect, or at least that is something I have experienced.

“If we talk about mental strength and how it affects performance, I feel that half the work is already done before you step out on the court, or the battlefield. It’s something that, if you fail to prepare properly, you leave yourself a much bigger mountain to climb.”

When things go wrong for Djokovic, he is well known for his ability to deal with it, and still win.

Again, he says that’s because he has a plan about how to get back to an optimum state of mind. It is as simple as him being aware of his breath and counting it as it moves in and out of his body, but he feels it is crucial to him regaining control.

“You have millions of factors that affect you as an individual athlete on the court and the question of all questions is how do you stay in the present, or the here and now,” he said.

“People are always saying that in matches you should forget about the past and don’t think about the future, to just be ‘in the moment’, but I don’t think that’s possible, in reality, because of how our mind works.

“I like to call it a traveller, because it likes to travel through the past, present and future in ‘what if?’ scenarios all the time, and on court they are probably the most intense. You always think ‘what’s going to happen – am I going to win or not?’.

“One of the biggest lessons I have learned about mental strength in matches is that, if you lose your focus, if you are not in the present and things have started to go the wrong way for you, then it is fine. You just have to accept it, and then come back.

“I think that recovery, or how long you stay in that negative emotion, is what differentiates you from other players.

“The recovery is more important than working hard to stay in the present, because it is almost impossible to stay there all the time. It’s about how quickly you can get back and for me it is breathing, conscious breathing, that helps.

“It is probably the one ingredient that I would pick out as being the most important.”