Learning How to Play Tennis: Strategy and Tactics

If you're a frequent visitor to Operation Doubles Tennis, you know that I advise against the current popular obsession with form, as if excellence in tennis is in discovering and copying the minute "secrets" of Roger Federer's technique.

This advice is nothing new, however. Tim Gallwey was the first to give it in his bestseller The Inner Game of Tennis back in the 1970s. In fact, the leading experts in how to teach the game are in agreement. All I offer is the unique perspective of someone with a background in biology who can explain why our brains are unsuited to learning the way most people try to learn to play tennis.

And tennis isn't the only thing I have taught. I am also a certified and licensed classroom teacher. I have taught swimming, biology, physics, general science, chemistry, English, track and field, and guitar. To all ages, from children to adults. So, I've noticed a thing or two about how people learn.

QUESTION: Why doesn't this knowledge of how best to teach tennis filter down to all the people teaching it? There are many answers. One is that conflicts with certain business models.

There's a similar problem in teaching strategy and tactics. Publishers of how-to and self-help books contribute to it. They, and many who teach subjects like this, mistakenly believe that the average person is intellectually lazy and wants everything boiled down to no-brainer rules of rote, as if to say, "Don't bore me with why: just tell me what to do."

That isn't true. By nature, human beings like to tax a brain cell or two. Only boring people are easily bored. What learners do want is the clarity, conciseness, and concrete visualization that make understanding solid and easy-to-grasp.

What's more, rote isn't easy. It isn't "simplifying things."

Yes, rote rules are no-brainers, but they must be memorized and recalled under fire, which is hard to do. For example, if you try to do physics problems by rote, you must memorize every form of every equation and remember them all under the pressure of a test. It's much easier to just understand, so that you need recall only one form of each equation. It's the same with tennis. To play by rote you must memorize dozens of rote rules and recall the right one under the pressure of each approaching shot. It's much easier to just understand the game so that you simply see what to do and do it intuitively.

Playing intuitively also allows you to get out of your head and into the zone, where your physical performance peaks.

This is why the best instruction on playing the game (strategy and tactics) opens your eyes to this dimension of the tennis game. A vision that not only helps you get the most out of your play so that you win more, but one that also enriches your playing experience and makes it much more interesting. One that enables you to enjoy tennis on a whole new level.

At this new, deeper level, you're no longer just going through the motions of hitting forehands and backhands. Now you're into the game itself.

What does that mean? It means that you're no longer just hitting shots. You are actually really playing the game. Half the fun is figuring out how to win it.

I'll never forget the day my eyes were opened to this hidden dimension of tennis, the dimension of the game itself. It had been there all along; I just never saw it before. The effect was like a revelation, like having a black-and-white movie suddenly take on Technicolor, or like having a two-dimensional painting suddenly become a three-dimensional statue in space. Before that, I had been like a sailor gazing overboard, unable to penetrate the surface of the sea to see the fascinating world beneath the surface.

Until then, like most tennis players, what I knew of tennis strategy and tactics could have been written on the back of a postcard. It was all just words; no mental pictures. My idea of strategy and tactics was to try a little of this and a little of that, with no idea what should work or why. I tried to play by rote — following dos and don'ts I had read in books. I stood where I stood just because everyone stood in that position.

In short, my understanding of the game was as shallow as a puddle. I couldn't see what was going on for myself. Therefore, I couldn't adapt to whatever a cagey opponent's game was doing to mine.

So, stretch a brain cell or two to visualize and understand this hidden dimension of tennis. I guarantee that opening your eyes to it will help you play better, help you win more, and increase your fun and enjoyment of the game.

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Playing Tennis to Win

Harold Solomon, via ZooTennis:

I have a different perspective on winning than some other people in our profession. In my opinion it is ridiculous to ignore that the intention of tennis players when they compete in tournament play is to win. I don't see anything wrong with having that intention every time you walk on the court if you are thinking correctly about winning.
[...]
Most importantly, I have to love the competition, I have to thrive in that environment. I am not afraid of competing, it's what I live for. My job is to push myself, to test myself, to challenge myself.

That's what it's all about - the challenge, the risk of losing. That's what makes competition exciting. That's what makes it rewarding.

Take that objective "to win" out of it, and what do you have? An experience gutted of meaning.

Go read a novel instead. It's a much easier way to experience conflict without risk.

I wholeheartedly agree with Solomon. As he says, it's "ridiculous" to make something evil out of wanting to win and playing to win.

Just ask yourself: Was it winners or losers who spawned this idea? Losers, of course. People who can't take losing, so they make something evil out of beating them. To never risk losing, they never try to win.

THEY are the ones - yes, THEY are the ones - making too big a deal out of winning or losing!

The "reasoning" behind this nonsense fails even the most superficial nonsense check. It's all based on invalid assumptions, straw man arguments, and confusing the issue.

For example, I hate the false accusation that people who play to win are people "who will do anything to win," even cheat. Baloney.

It's quite the other way around.

The people "who will do anything to win" are not really playing to win. Their idea of winning is a perverted idea of winning. They are the ones who settle for hollow victories got through cheating. And they do this because all they care about are appearances, such as the final score. So, they are satisfied with a false win got through cheating.

They do this because they don't think they're capable of winning the legitimate way, and they are too weak to handle losing.

On the other hand, players who really want to win would get zero satisfaction out of such phony winning. They want real victories. In fact, they can tell you of moral victories they are proud and happy about even though they came out on the short end of the final score. In other words, they are real people pursuing the real thing, not mere vain appearances.

In fact, the main reason they don't resort to cheating or gamesmanship is because that would shame them: they would view it as an admission that they couldn't win the legitimate way. They think they are better than that.

This is why THEY - yes, THEY - are the sporting players who want to defeat you fair and square. They are the players who WON'T do just anything to win. Even on the Pro Tour where a great deal of money is at stake, we sometimes see these players give their opponent the next point to make up for a bad call. Why? Because they want nothing to tarnish the victory they seek.

Tennis is just a game. Nothing more, nothing less. The objective of any game is to win it. Winning is fun, and losing is a bummer. Nothing more, nothing less.

The joy of winning and the disappointment of losing are just emotions that pass in a matter of minutes or hours if we don't try to pretend them away (and thus lock them forever in the subconsciousness to motivate irrational behavior without our awareness of their influence on us).

Winning a tennis match never made one person morally superior to, or more noble than, another, and losing never killed anybody.

So, my advice to players and coaches is to use your own head and examine every idea that comes blowing to you in the wind. Don't just swallow whole all the chatter out there. An awful lot of it is stupid.

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Flawed Tennis Form? Or Flawed Tennis Thinking? Part 2

Part 1

There are two ways to swing a tennis racket at the ball. The natural way and the unnatural way.

In the natural way, you focus on the approaching ball, and your conscious mind thinks something like, "Whack that sucker." No more conscious thinking takes place. Your swing is spontaneous. Instinctive. Intuitive. It is being timed, coordinated, and controlled by the unconscious timing/coordinating/controlling centers of the brain. These are the same areas that take care of things like walking, talking, and handwriting - all spontaneous actions that we do without thinking about HOW.

The unnatural way to swing a tennis racket at the ball is by consciously issuing yourself verbal instructions, like, "Get the racket back, step into the shot (or load and explode), watch the ball, bend your elbow, watch the ball, swing low to high, watch the ball, follow-through...."

There is a serious problem with the unnatural way. It takes a huge amount of brainpower. Brainpower to recall and process the language of verbal instructions. Brainpower that won't be available for sensory perception. Result? You won't see the ball as well. Your judgment will suffer. Your kinesthetic perceptions will be dim, and your dynamic balance will be off. You'll have robotic form because you're issuing orders to your muscles the way a robot issues orders to its movable parts. Plus, you can't possibly think through all the instructions that fast. Plus, you are just interfering with the natural process of coordinating and timing your shot. Learning tennis this way will be painful, frustrating, and very slow.

Yet this is the way most tennis players learn! That isn't the way you learned how to walk, talk, or write is it?

Am I saying that you should forgo lessons and just be a hacker? No. I am just giving you another reason why you should not obsess about form.

Here are some lessons on the main site that will help you learn without doing so:
Learning How to Play Tennis
Dynamic Balance
Tips to Improve Your Tennis Technique

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Flawed Tennis Form? Or Flawed Tennis Thinking?

How many times have you seen a tennis player miss a shot and walk back to the baseline taking a practice swing? When was the last time you did this yourself? You're thinking that you missed the shot because of some flaw in your swing, and that's why you're practicing it.

If we could somehow search the brain of every tennis player in the world, we'd find in most the belief that errors are caused flawed form.

If that's true, then you would never miss a shot if you achieve perfect form.

Golfers think the same way. And this thinking is what underlies the common obsession with form in both sports. The "perfect swing" then becomes a sort of Holy Grail that all pursue for as long as they play the game.

It's an exercise in frustration and futility. In fact, players learn learn in spite of, not because of, their efforts to perfect their form.

That's because this thinking is what's flawed. It is NOT true that you miss a shot because of some flaw in your form. No amount of perfecting your form will enable you to play error-free tennis. And there is no such thing as "perfect form."

Tomaz Mencinger has a good two-part instructional article on the subject, The Biggest Tennis Myth that's Hurting Your Game and Why Tennis Players Obsess So Much About Tennis Instruction.

OK, so here's the Big Myth:

If I miss the ball, I must have done something technically wrong (meaning I moved my body parts in the wrong way). Thus, if I can correct that mistake (move my body parts "correctly"), then I will not miss the ball again.

Based on this myth, we tennis coaches have been earning money giving tennis lessons for decades.

Based on this myth, club and professional tennis players have wasted millions of dollars and thousands of hours, all on trying to improve their game. Without much effect, of course...

Read the rest, and next time I'll come back with some thoughts of my own on the subject.

Part 2

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Coaching High School Tennis

In coaching high school tennis, you must leave the players' strokes pretty much as you find them. For example, you can't change a player's serve or backhand, expecting her to win tomorrow's match with that serve or backhand that you've messed with. Renovating strokes takes time, time you don't have in season.

Which is why I love the Inner-Game-of-Tennis method for dealing with stroke problems in season. I therefore highly recommend the book The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey.

Here is an example of how I use it, to give you an idea how this method works.

First, a fact. Thinking about your form while you swing, or about where you're putting your feet as you run to the ball, IS A DISTRACTION. One that should NOT be encouraged.

That isn't what you should be paying attention to while you play a shot. You should be paying attention to the ball and to the feeling of what your body is doing.

Note the difference between thinking about what your body should be doing and feeling what your body is doing. The former is an attempt to consciously direct movement through thought, and the latter is body awareness through attention to sensation. In other words, one is thinking, and the other is feeling.

In the IGOT method, you focus the player's attention where it belongs – off thoughts and on what he's seeing and feeling. In other words, you raise awareness in him of the right things. That's all. Works like magic. Really. Try it, you'll see.

Here's a simple example. John comes over to me and complains that "I'm having trouble with my forehand. Will you come and help me with it?"

Of course I will, but I won't drop everything and go immediately. That would make a big deal out of his problem. So, I casually tell him, sure, I'll be over in a little bit.

When I get there, I just watch.

"I can't hit a forehand!" he says.

I'm not even going to respond to that. I just ask him to hit a few more while I watch. Then I ask him a question about his stroke. Usually, I ask him to show me about where his racket is contacting the ball.

Invariably, he doesn't know. Why? Because he wasn't paying attention to that. His mind was busy yakking at him.

He expects me to tell him where his contact point usually is, but I don't. So, he asks me to tell him where his racket usually is at contact. If necessary, I lie to say that I don't know or am not sure.

Why? Because my job to get him to focus his attention where it belongs. I tell him to go back and hit some more, paying attention to where his racket head is at contact, so that he can come back and show me about where it usually is.

Then I stand there and watch his forehand miraculously fix itself. As it does so, that contact point moves out farther and farther in front to where it belongs.

Before I know it, John is having a ball with his suddenly fixed forehand. He forgets I'm there. I have to interrupt him to ask him if he can show me where his racket head usually is at contact.

"About here," he says and shows me, as if afraid that I might tell him he's wrong.

But he's never wrong.

"Yup," I say, "It looks to me like that's about where it usually is, too."

Long pause. John looks confused. I guess I'm supposed to tell him whether that's the "right" place for his racket head to be at contact.

But what if I did that? Then he'd be right back where he started – thinking about where his racket should be and mentally instructing himself to contact the ball in the "right" place - instead of simply paying attention to where that contact point is.

So, I don't take the bait, even if he comes right out and asks me if that's the right place for his racket head to be at contact.

Instead I just say, "Well, it looks like a pretty good forehand to me. Don't you think?"

"Uh-yeah."

And so back to the court he goes, scratching his head and wondering how I fixed his forehand. I didn't fix his forehand: I just focused his attention where it belongs for natural learning to occur.

And that forehand really is fixed. He has confidence in it now.

The contact point isn't the only point in the stroke that you can have the player focus on. But it usually works, because adjusting it tends to correct any flaws earlier in the stroke.

Sometimes you need to ask where the ball usually lands on troublesome shot. In the net? Long? If long, about how far long? Six inches? Six feet? John never knows! Really. He's too busy with an inner dialog berating himself to notice where most of these shots are landing.

So, your question reaps the same result. When he goes back to hit some more so that he can answer your question, you get to stand there and watch his shots magically correct themselves and start landing in.

This is a fast and effective way to coach strokes in season.

You don't get to show off how much you know by issuing a long list of instructions, but that isn't the objective here. The TEAM objective is to win tennis meets, and the coach must have team spirit, too.

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TM: Q and A - Reality Check

Do you always believe yourself? That little voice in your head - do you always believe it? Is it always telling you the truth?

Is believing yourself believing in yourself?

All right, I'll cut it out now ;-)

This Q & A with Tomaz Mencinger may be one of the most important things you'll ever learn

---

By Tomaz Mencinger
TennisMindGame.com

I am a 15 year old girl, and always before a tournament I either practice my serve or play a set against someone at my club. Almost always I play at my top performance. But at the tournament, if I start off poorly, my mental game goes downhill from the start. I understand that I'm supposed to move on and go to the next point, but I try and more times than not I'm not able to move on, and I continue to hit the ball in the net or out. For example at today's match I kept trying to encourage myself and focus on the next point, but every time I missed another shot I would get more frustrated and rush points and loose games more quickly. Also if I am playing against someone that I know I'm better than and can beat I get even more frustrated with myself when I make stupid errors. I understand mentally what I'm supposed to do, but I have not been able to actually do it.

I understand what you are saying.

What happens is that when things go wrong at the start you BELIEVE them and then they define your future performance.

You look for proof of how good you are and then you play accordingly.

I suggest you go through your past experiences and think whether your performance in a match has ever gone up and down? Or did it ALWAYS stay the same through a whole match?

If your answer is that your performance has gone up and down during a match, then you KNOW that even when your performance at the start is low, it can go up.

In fact, if you don't become negative about it and just keep playing it will almost ALWAYS go up. That's because you'll get used to the conditions, you'll warm up your body and mind to the competitive level, you'll start reading your opponent better and so on.

Try to remember a match (or several matches) when this happened. This will give you proof to counter your own doubts the next time you start a match not playing well.

And about playing weaker opponents and frustration: one thing to keep in mind is that at your age you still cannot blast someone off the court, even if they play poorly.

You'll have to construct points, and it will take some time to win a point. And it will take some time to win a match. You have to stay in the NOW and play each point. DON'T go into the future where you have already won, since this will make you lose focus on the current situation and play poorly.

Copyright 2008, Tomaz Mencinger -- all rights reserved worldwide

Tomaz Mencinger is the author of The Mental Manual for Tennis Winners and The Tennis Strategy Encyclopedia and How to Play Tennis: A Step-by-Step Video Instruction Guide for Tennis Beginners.

Archive of Past Articles

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Playing Tennis - the Mental Aspect

When you step out on a tennis court, what is your goal?

That sounds like a stupid question. Your goal is to to win the match, of course.

Is it? Are you sure?

We are composite personalities, part true inner self and part ego. The troublesome ego has its own agenda. Which is vanity.

That isn't to say that the ego is bad. Like our emotions, it's there for a reason and performs an important function. You just want to be sure that it isn't in charge. The intellect must be calling the shots, not emotions or ego.

It's worth your while to really get to know yourself. We often have ulterior motives and intents, which can be buried in the subconscious.

If your goal is to win, then you should be ready to win ugly if you can't win pretty. Are you?

Aye, there's the rub. Many players constantly make choices motivated by the desire to swing "right" or to hit the "right" shot, not the desire to just win the bloomin' point. Result: they lose the bloomin' point.

But they look good doing it.

Looks. Appearances. That's what really counts - not the score.

This happens partly because we live in a society that is hypercritical of everything a person says or does and even FEELS. Virtually everything rises to the level of being "right" or "wrong." This pressures us to feel a need to win approval of everything we do. Even our natural feelings get judged, so we pretend we don't have the frowned upon ones and repress them.

In tennis this extends into an obsession with form, technique.

The ego TAKES THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE BYSTANDER. It is always nagging you about how what you're doing LOOKS to others. That's all it cares about. It will have you more concerned about how you're swinging the racket than about where your shot goes.

That's all vanity. The score is real. And it's just a game, not a measure of your personal worth.

The good news is that just by knowing yourself, you can avoid this pitfall. All it takes a little thought. A little quiet time for little soul-searching now and then to honestly ask yourself what you really want and what your goals really are. For, when you discover a silly goal deep down inside, it evaporates.

You won't get anywhere with a bunch of goals aimed off in different directions. You need one goal, single-minded pursuit of one thing. So, keep it simple: just play the game on the court, not any of the other stupid games people play.

When you thus get into the game itself, you're thinking about strategy and tactics, not your strokes. You'll be surprised at the different effect pressure has on you now: now it stimulates you and brings out the best in you, not the worst.

Now you start really having fun.

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Your Emotions During a Tennis Match

Everything you do has a moral effect on you and everyone it relates to. That is, it affects morale.

So, when you're down, never let it show. Do feel what you feel, but it's private so keep it to yourself. Be like birds: they can be so faint they're one second from dropping dead, but, to hide their weakness from predators, they still manage to look fit as a fiddle. When you're dog tired, put a spring in your step. When you err, make light of it.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
— Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Nonetheless, the surest way to show emotional weakness is to lie about your feelings by pretending you don't have them. For one thing, doing this is self-delusion. Furthermore, your adversaries just see right through the charade and smell blood.

Your feelings aren't "right" or "wrong," and you cannot control or change them. All you can control is your actions.

For the most part, it's best to keep your feelings to yourself on a tennis court. But many people confuse that with repressing your feelings.

Repressing your feelings is just a lie that buries them in the subconscious, where they mushroom unchecked by any limiting influence and where they rule your behavior like an unseen puppet master. So, know/own them instead. Let them remain in the conscious layer of your mind, where you are aware of their influence on your behavior and can temper it with reason and good judgment.

This is why some players show anger without harming their play or boosting the opposition's morale. Indeed, if you feel it, there's no real harm in showing anger now and then. So long as it's in a mete amount and there's no chagrin in it.

I really don't mind the shows of emotion, banging your racket, getting upset in the moment — that's just adrenaline. But that constant feeling of hanging your head, walking a little slower, just being dejected. You're showing your opponent that you're ready for him to beat you, and that's not a good thing.
— James Blake

Exactly. People play tennis for the same reason they read a novel — for the emotional experience it supplies. Therefore, expect a few emotions. That just means you're alive.

Disproportionate anger and chagrin, however, make errors a weighty matter. To keep chagrin out of your head, just keep things in perspective. A match is just a game — fantasy warfare, a war you really want to win but one waged in sport, one there's no loss in losing. And missing tennis shots is no measure of your personal worth!

For excellent advice on how to get along with yourself and your errors, I highly recommend Tim Gallwey's book, The Inner Game of Tennis.

One more thing. When you step out onto the court, don't forget something as important as your shoes and racket — your sense of humor. It's armor proof to the arrows and bolts of the inner battle.

Which is nothing, because it's all in the head.

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Be Brave

Are you one of many tennis players for whom tennis is an exercise in moving and swinging properly? Players whose thoughts are 95% about technique? Who think about their form while they're playing matches? Who remind themselves to "watch the ball" or "bend your knees" before every serve or service return? Who turn their backs on a shot of theirs that is going out before it even lands and taking a little practice swing to demonstrate to themselves what flaw in their form to blame for that error? Players infatuated with the fine points of technique and totally disinterested in strategy and tactics? Players who think they know strategy and tactics by knowing a handful of rote rules like "Get your first serve in"?

if so, the next time you are playing a match, ask yourself why you take this attitude. It's a distraction, isn't it? A distraction from the game itself. Which is a bit scary, because you might lose.

Be brave. Get your mind on the game. Get INTO the game. Instead of thinking about bending your knees before you return serve, think about the score. Think about how you can mess with that server's mind. Think about what he or she has done in this situation before. Think about.... Well, I could give a couple dozen things to think about during that moment and none of them would have anything to do with how to swing the racket.

The game's the thing. That's where the fun is.

You have worked hard to develop the strokes that enable you to play at your level. So, don't cheat yourself out of the payback for all that work. Those strokes are just your weapons. In match play, it's time to use them. As they are.

This is the voice of experience. I used to obsess about form. And I never realized how much fun and how intriguing tennis can be till I cut it out.

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Tennis for Robots

Did you ever pay much attention to how your mind works while you are performing various tasks? If not, try it some time. Tune in on the mental experience of doing things like talking, reading, trying to remember something, or doing something physical.

In doing different things, the brain actually operates in different modes.

For example, when you are reading good fiction, you get lost in it. You become unaware of the words on the page. All they do is (through the power of suggestion) plant images (sights, sounds, smells, etc.) in your imagination, so that you IMAGINE the scene taking place, as if on some magical movie screen in the mind.

But if you put down that novel and pick up a math book, you are suddenly back to experiencing thought as words again.

You are using different parts of the brain for these different processes. The frontal lobe is that part of the brain most exaggerated in humans. It is so large in the human brain that it grows up and folds down over the rest of brain. Why is it so huge? Because it processes language. It thinks in words.

It thinks consciously.

Now, what happens when you do something physical, say, lean over a child gate to pick up an object off a low coffee table on the other side? That takes a careful balancing act so that you don't fall over that child gate. But you don't worry about that.

Do you analyze the motion, deciding what you're going to do with your off arm, how much you should bend your knees, deciding what angle your toes should be pointing, and so forth?

Of course not! If you did that, you'd surely fall over that child gate!

You just walk up to the child gate, form a picture of yourself doing it, and then just do it.

You don't think about it at all. You don't use the frontal lobe of the brain to control your movement. You use the further back parts of the brain, the parts that house the imagination and the unconscious coordinating centers.

They need only that brief mental picture you form of yourself doing it. It's their marching orders. So they see to the details of how to carry out this command. If you're very young, they aren't very good at it yet, because you haven't had enough practice at tricky movements. But if you're an adult, they have learned enough through experience to know just how much to bend your knees and which way to point your toes and what to do with your off arm.

In other words, they are filled with unconscious KNOWLEDGE. They gained it through natural learning, as Tim Gallwey discusses in his book The Inner Game of Tennis.

The result is spontaneous movement, intuitive movement, highly coordinated and well timed movement.

The surest way to botch up this kind of movement is to interfere with it by consciously thinking of how you should perform the details of this movement. Don't.

Why? Because then you are using your body like a robot. What is a robot? A robot is a machine. Its movement is not spontaneous. Inside its little robot head orders are buzzing, like "Move right arm this way. Move left leg that way. Now lean forward at a 45 degree angle...."

Result? Robotic motion.

This is why people find golf and tennis hard to learn. They get instructions. Verbal instructions on how to move the feet and swing. Those verbal instructions get into the head and buzz away as word commands from the frontal lobe while the player is trying to hit the ball. Result? Robotic golf and tennis swings.

Don't.

We don't learn physical things that way. In a million years you won't learn a good tennis or golf swing that way. You'd still be blabbering on your hands and knees if you had tried to learn to walk and talk that way.

And the proof is in the pudding. Why is it mainly just golf and tennis that people find so hard? The answer lies in how we learn most other sports.

For example, a kid sees other kids playing basketball. He watches and watches, imagining himself doing it and then jumps at the chance to go out there and imitate them. Not once is he given, nor does he think of, a VERBAL INSTRUCTION. His brain is doing it all with pictures and feeling. He experiments to discover through results and feel the best ways of doing a thing.

In other words, he learns how to play basketball naturally, not through verbal instructions, like many tennis and golf players learn.

Now, it would be foolish to become an extremist in this regard. To break a bad habit, a tennis coach may have to have a player key on a single verbal instruction while practicing a stroke. Verbal instructions aren't evil. But they are the least effective way to learn. And, you don't want to form a habit of playing with verbal instructions buzzing around in your head.

Which means that your normal mode of play should be with your conscious mind as quiet as possible. Then, if you must key on a verbal instruction occasionally, for five or ten minutes at a time, fine. But don't make a habit of it.

The bad thing about our glorious frontal lobe is that its task is enormously complicated. All the logic involved in processing language (such as that in verbal instructions) costs vast sums of brainpower.

So, guess what the brain does to get extra brainpower for this business whenever you are thinking?

It reflects its attention inward, on your thoughts. You stop seeing the things in the room around you. You stop hearing the traffic passing outside on the street. If someone says, "Honey, would you get me a beer?" you probably won't hear them. Your brain has tuned out incoming information from your environment. Nothing that isn't alarming will get your attention.

But it isn't just your external environment that gets tuned out when you are thinking. Your internal environment gets tuned out too. You won't be aware of your posture or whether your feet are flat on the floor. Your kinesthetic perceptions will be dimmed.

Why? Because the brain is diverting its resources to the frontal lobe for this huge task of processing conscious thought in the form of language. And it doesn't want anything distracting you from it.

Indeed, no one can think (or remember anything) while being fully conscious of the sights and sounds around them. It's one function or the other: take your pick. The brain has reflected its attention inward on your thoughts, or it has turned its attention outward on the rest of your body and your external environment.

Things like - you know ... the BALL. The quieter your mind, the better you'll see and judge the ball. It's as simple as that.

So, learn as much as possible the easy way, by watching others play, by viewing videos, by looking at pictures, by imagining/visualizing yourself doing it, by taking shadow sings. Experiment. Yes, experiment, discover. You'll be surprised how much that helps you get the proper feel.

And if you do have to key on a verbal instruction now and then, fine. Just don't make a habit of it.

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An Act of Confidence

I ran across a little gem today in John Mill's column, Tennis Anyone? at the Tennisserver.com: Confidence.

Of course, as Bill Tilden said, every missed shot tends to erode confidence, and every great shot tends to build it. But we aren't completely at the mercy of fate in this department.

Confidence, like other virtues (such as courage, fortitude, faithfulness, etc.) are developed by simply practising them. I forget where I read this long ago, but it was excellent psychological advice for the average person. Courage, or any other virtue, isn't in your genes. If you want to be a courageous person, act as though you are.

Act like a courageous person. Make the courageous choices. It's a simple CHOICE.

And you will know it when you are courageous.

It's the same with confidence: make the confident choices. John gives a great example.

Most players hit balls so "off center" because as the ball gets nearer to the contact point the average player will allow doubt to enter the picture and try to look where they want to hit the ball.

That little choice you make, to look away at where you want the ball to go, is a choice to NOT be confident about that.

Make the other choice instead. Mills says that he thinks once a player masters the habit of staying focused on the point of contact, they become confident players.

Right. It's an act of confidence. Just as you become courageous by performing acts of courage, you become confident by performing acts of confidence. In other words, your own actions affect you, and you are, in large part, what your own actions and choices have made you.

Read the rest. And then here's more at Operation Doubles about keeping focused on the point of contact.

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TM: Your Tennis Energy Needs, Both Mental and Physical

By Tomaz Mencinger
TennisMindGame.com

Q: I am a 46 year old woman, fit and known for my endurance. I lift weights a couple of times each week, do cardio (outside of tennis) 3 days each week, and play 3 hours of tennis singles 4-5 days. I have been playing tennis for only 9 months, but advanced quickly and am on 2 leagues playing singles and doubles. I win more singles matches than doubles, about 50% overall. I am more comfortable at the baseline, but advance to the net given the opportunity. My matches tend to be long for women's 3.0 matches, usually 2½ hours or more and almost always going to 3 sets.

My question is this: Why during some matches do my arms start to feel like Jell-O? Last night I played in a doubles tournament and lost 7-5/7-5 in over 2 hours. We could have won; we were evenly matched. However, in the second set at 5-5, my arms just felt like well done pasta, and my serve was broken. I am beginning to wonder if it is mental because it doesn't always happen. Or maybe I am not eating right pre-game. I usually have some oatmeal, peanut-butter toast, and lots of water (we live in Louisiana, USA & and it is very hot). Also, I have noticed it happens more often in doubles games, but there I usually spend much more time at the net, and am keyed up more(?) My friends and I love your newsletter and web site. We find it amazing how you can "see" what is happening in people's head. I look forward to your advice.

I think you could be right on both of your ideas: it could be food, and it could be mental.

With food I mean energy. When running low on energy, some people first feel in the arms, others in the legs.

Make sure you eat carbohydrates - pasta - and not too much meat (since it take long to digest). I remember Michael Chang saying in one interview, that the best thing about not playing a tournament is that he doesn't HAVE to eat pasta. ;)

The other reason is mental and is also connected with energy, mental energy. You see, when you play a match you are under stress. There is pressure on you every few seconds. This is tiring for the mind.

And the same as we have certain fitness level for our body - an energy storage - the same way we have mental energy storage. You are using your mental fitness energy every time you are under stress.

In long matches you run out of your mental energy and this affects your concentration and at the same time your body. Mind and body are strongly connected, and tiredness in mind shows as tiredness in body and vice versa.

What to do?

You get better with practice. If you play long matches often, you will get better at keeping your concentration for a long time and being able to withstand stress for a longer time.

Also note that any stress outside your tennis life - such as family matters, job, money and so on - will take their toll on your mental energy reserves.

Copyright 2007, Tomaz Mencinger -- all rights reserved worldwide

Tomaz Mencinger is an athletic consultant who works with nationally ranked juniors at the Tennis Academy of Asia in Thailand. He is also the author of The Mental Manual for Tennis Winners and The Tennis Strategy Encyclopedia and How to Play Tennis: A Step-by-Step Video Instruction Guide for Tennis Beginners.

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TM: Q & A on Positive Thinking and Imagery

By Tomaz Mencinger
TennisMindGame.com

I recently received the following question from a reader in Venezuela:

Hi, well this is my problem: I have a good and strong drive but sometimes when I am receiving the serve my return, unexplainabily, becomes too weak and goes to the net. Why? Concentration matter?

Does this ever happen to you too? If so, you might be interested in my answer:

One of the reasons why this happens is if you play "too careful". Especially if you are thinking that you "don't want to miss".

Although the intention may be smart - to keep the ball in play and be consistent - it is a negative intention - not to MISS.

If an image "missing" is present in your mind - it will tend to guide your body toward missing.

For the mind-body connection it doesn't matter whether you are imagining "missing" or "not missing". It's the same - there is an image of missing the shot that exists in your mind, and you are trying to NOT to make it come true.

Your body responds to images in the mind, not to logical words.

So in order to hit the ball IN, you need to see that in your mind. Imagine it going IN, not out.

Be decisive and play with a positive purpose.

Will you still miss some returns? Yes, but a lot less than if you had an image of "not missing" in your mind.

Best, Tomaz

Copyright 2007, Tomaz Mencinger -- all rights reserved worldwide

Tomaz Mencinger is an athletic consultant who works with nationally ranked juniors at the Tennis Academy of Asia in Thailand. He is also the author of The Mental Manual for Tennis Winners and The Tennis Strategy Encyclopedia and How to Play Tennis: A Step-by-Step Video Instruction Guide for Tennis Beginners.

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TM: Solve tennis problems in the order they come

By Tomaz Mencinger
TennisMindGame.com

The ball is coming towards you, and now you have to hit it. What I often notice with players is that they don't take care of problems in the order they come to them.

What I see is that they hit the ball, wanting to force an error from their opponent. What they forget to take care of is the net and out.

Or they decide to play the ball in a certain direction – not necessarily to win a point – and they take a lot of care not to hit too long by playing very low. And of course many of the shots end up in the net.

When you hit the ball, your first problem is the net. Take care of the net first with an arc. It may sound silly but you WILL LOSE the point every time you hit the net. Don't do it.

Your next problem is to keep the ball inside the lines. You MUST make the ball curve down after it has passed the net. Take care of the »out«. Again, if you hit too long, it's a point for your opponent.

Only your third »problem« may be your opponent and how to avoid their better shots or something in this manner.

Remember, first take care of tennis – the net and out - and only after that worry about how to outplay your opponent.

How to do this? Not by analytical thinking as we did here. This was only necessary for understanding.

When you are hitting the ball, you need to IMAGINE the ball flight – over net, curving down and into a certain target that hurts your opponent – in that order.

This takes a few milliseconds, and then your brain and body have the right information to produce a winning shot.

Copyright 2007, Tomaz Mencinger -- all rights reserved worldwide
Tomaz Mencinger is an athletic consultant who works with nationally ranked juniors at the Tennis Academy of Asia in Thailand. He is also the author of The Mental Manual for Tennis Winners and The Tennis Strategy Encyclopedia and How to Play Tennis: A Step-by-Step Video Instruction Guide for Tennis Beginners.

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The Greatest Tennis Tip of All

I've heard some interesting discussions lately, and they made me realize that many players don't understand what we mean when we say that you shouldn't try make yourself swing certain way or move your feet a certain way while playing. That you shouldn't be thinking about your form. That it's about where the ball goes, not about how you swing.

Apparently, many think think we mean to pay no attention to form while you play. Nothing could be further from the truth!

What we want is for you to pay very close attention to your form. Very close attention to how you are moving your arms and legs. Very close attention to the ball.

By all means, PAY CLOSE ATTENTION to the ball and to what your body is doing!

But how can you do so while a little voice in your head is constantly barking instructions at you: "Watch the ball. Move your feet. Step over with the left foot. Get your racket back early. Keep your wrist firm."

Ask yourself, could you play well if someone stood at the net post saying these things to you?

Of course not. It would be a distraction. It would suck your attention to their voice and off what it should be on.

Well, my friends, the same thing happens when that little voice in your head starts barking instructions. It sucks your attention off what it should be on. Your brain automatically goes into Reflection Mode, the mode it operates in when we are thinking. In that mode, the mind focuses its attention inward, and we become to some degree absorbed in our thoughts. In this mode, much incoming sensory information (sights, sounds, smells, feelings) gets diverted to the subconscious level so that it doesn't distract our THINKING.

But playing tennis isn't an intellectual activity. You need heightened, not diminished, awareness of everything your eyes see, your ears hear, and your body feels. You want MAXIMIZED awareness of these things: that's what makes for peak performance.

So, try this the next time you play: Pay attention to how you swing and move your feet. Don't misinterpret that now. I didn't say to think about how you should move your arms and legs. I didn't say to try to consciously direct your swing and footwork. I didn't say to issue yourself mental instructions on how to swing and move your feet: I said to pay attention to how you ARE swinging and moving your feet.

That's all. That is, BE AWARE of what you and the ball are doing. Very aware. Very, very aware. Quiet the mind so that you aren't paying attention to your thoughts instead. Really FEEL what your body is doing. And when you make an error, note exactly how far out the ball was.

That's all. Try it. It works like magic. You'll see.

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Psychology of Tennis

Here's some food for thought on current ideas in sports psychology. In fact, we see the same ideas in general mental self-help practices.

Addressing the psychology of the game is clearly important and should be helpful. I am a big fan of Tim Gallwey's The Inner Game of Tennis and Tomaz Mencinger's Tennis Mind Game, among others.

But I say, "Woah!" at what sounds like self brainwashing to self delusion from some. It's easy to see where I'm coming from on this. For, if you check out my other sites, you will see that I have had experience with people who - shall we say - have a very positive attitude about themselves.

People who pass for normal but, when you get to know them, prove to be pathological.

What I'm getting at here is the idea that you should train your mind to think a certain way. To force your thinking a certain direction. The opposite direction.

The idea is that, to cure yourself of feeling that you're inadequate, just convince yourself that you're super-adequate. To get rid of the feeling that you can't do something, just convince yourself that you can.

But I ask, "Where does this stop?" Answer: nowhere short of believing that you can do anything. Anything you set your mind to.

Sorry, that is a fairy tale.

It's called "believing" in yourself. As usual, the word believe no longer means "be faithful to;" it has been switched into meaning "subscribing to a list of doctrines about something," in this case, about yourself.

You are to believe that errors are CAUSED by wrong thinking = you are capable of flawless play, because all you need to do is think right. The assumption here is that believing your shot will go in makes it go in. Rather like "faith healing."

It reminds me of the old bartender's trick: when the drinker is drunk, you can change water into wine by filling a glass with dishwater and handing it to him as though it IS wine.

You are to train your mind to psych yourself up into "the zone."

Now, the zone is real. But the proponents of self delusion/brainwashing don't describe it as merely a quiet, non-judgemental, and properly focused state of mind. They describe it as a state of mind in which you have NO fear, have NO doubt, and feel that you can do NO wrong - so whale away recklessly: the ball will go in.

Let's call that what it is - make-believing that you have virtually magical powers. Whether you acknowledge that or not, that's what it amounts to.

How is the mind manipulated to control thinking? Through visualization, hypnosis, sleeping with motivational tapes injecting in-formation (in the form of subliminal suggestion) through your ears. If I were an artist, I'd call these methods "waving a magic wand" to put someone under a spell in which they think they're a frog or the greatest tennis player in the world.

Now all those methods do have legitimate uses for legitimate objectives and can be helpful. But all too often they are applied toward illegitimate ones. Why should information have to be snuck into your head? Common sense dictates a healthy suspicion of that.

I'm not saying this psych job won't work. In fact, I have an uneasy feeling that we might be seeing it working in some players at the top of the game, especially some who have been a flash in the pan.

But what good does it do you if it makes you the No. 1 tennis player in the world but ruins your life? Your inner life? Your relationship with your (true) self? And the other personal relationships in your private life? All ruined, because this brainwashing has removed you from reality and put you in a fantasy where you are some kind of tennis god.

It's nothing but an adult reverting to childhood and playing 'Pretend.'

It isn't "positive" thinking at all. It's negative thinking, because it negates reality.

If you have the problem of negating your self worth by thinking you're a loser, there are two ways you can stop it.

One is by truly positive thinking: shoving those irrelevant, distracting, negative thoughts aside by replacing them with thinking about your tactics and strategy for the next point. That's positive. That's thinking what you can do to win.

The other way is by negating your negative thinking with negative thinking in the opposite direction: erase the thought that you are loser by repeating to yourself, "I'm a winner, I'm a winner, I'm a winner, I'm a winner, I'm a winner...."

You doom yourself when you brainwash yourself into thinking that, if you only believe in yourself strongly enough, you can whale away with reckless abandon and have the ball go in.

Inherent in that mental virus is the notion that you CAN make every shot. So, ideally you really SHOULD make every shot. Result: every error is a moral failure.

Tiny, perhaps, but they add up.

Make a few too many in any given match and - CRASH - your game evaporates. That is, the spell evaporates. Your magic is gone. You are dismayed.

It's rather like what happens to a big, swaggering dude with a gun...who is informed that it ain't loaded. Woops, he's suddenly Mr.-Meek-and-Wouldn't-Hurt-a-Fly.

It is better and healthier to face facts: Tennis is a game of errors, because it challenges the limits of perception, timing, speed, balance, and judgement that the human brain and body are capable of. Every nice shot is somewhat of a miracle. So, errors are part of the game. Nobody can make every shot. So, nobody SHOULD make every shot. Your errors are just errors, not moral failings to believe something strongly enough.

Now you have a healthy and sensible attitude. You view your errors as simple matters of fact, not something to condemn yourself for. You pay attention to them, correcting for them on the next shot. You surely don't whale away with reckless abandon. You formulate a game to minimize the effect of your errors on the outcome. To do this, you blend the right amount of aggression and error inducing tactics with the right amount of tactics to reduce your frequency of error.

The mind is our most precious possession. It's best not to play games with it. People who do believe in themselves, who are faithful to themselves, who are true to themselves, never lie to themselves. Because friends don't lie to friends.

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Tennis: Playing to Win

There was a time when I didn’t much enjoy playing tennis. I thought my problem was that losing bothered me and that I cared too much about winning. I kept trying to “have fun” and “just play for fun.” That is, I kept trying to correct my attitude, bringing it into conformity with what’s accepted and acceptable = politically correct.

But there was a disconnect. An inner conflict that heightened the harder I tried. I’m sorry, but my Hypocrisy Detector kept going off. I don’t know about you, but my Hypocrisy Detector really bugs me, so I do my best to keep it quiet.

As I grew as a person, I learned to pay attention to my instincts. I learned that when something feels wrong, you should stop and think about it, because it is unnatural, and when something is unnatural it probably is wrong.

So I thought about this. Didn’t take long. Because political correctness on this issue makes no sense. So I ditched it.

Instead of trying to pretend that I didn’t feel what I felt when I blew a shot or lost a match, I stopped fighting myself. I accepted and owned my feelings.

Guess what? A miracle happened. It was like releasing the valve on a pressure cooker. My sense of humor was back. Things were in perspective again. Yes, blowing a shot or losing a match is a bummer, but that’s all. It’s no moral failing of cosmic significance. Nothing to be that afraid of.

But I really wanted to make that shot and win that match, and I wasn’t going to lie to myself about that anymore. No more pretending that I was “just playing for fun.” I often went out and just hit for fun. But when I played a match, it was to win, and I wasn’t going to lie to myself about that anymore.

Suddenly I was having fun. More than fun – I was having a blast.

I went from a choker to someone who plays her best under pressure. Now I could truly say, like major league pitcher Nolan Ryan, that the greater the pressure the more I liked it. Now I relished moments before the serve on a big point. Now I found them thrilling, almost mouth-watering. Now, on an off day, I was never despondent: I knew I could and would get my game going great guns. There is no greater confidence a person can have.

When you play a game, you lay something of value on the line. Your feelings. You risk the disappointment and chagrin of losing. It takes a bit of courage to do that, just as it takes (far, far greater) courage for a soldier to lay their life on the line in combat.

Have that courage. Lay it on the line: play to win.

Sometimes you will. Sometimes you won’t. But your life will be the richer for it, and your character will be the better for it, either way.

TM: If I play this 10 times...

By Tomaz Mencinger
TennisMindGame.com

After a good baseline rally, you finally force your opponent to cough up a short ball. You attack down the line, and your opponent hits a running forehand a few inches from the line passing you cleanly.

You think, "Wow, I’d better not approach like that next time. I must risk more or not come to the net at all."

Is that the right decision? Very likely not.

How can you know whether you should play a certain tactic or shot?

First, ask yourself, "If I play this tactic/shot 10 times, will I win more than 5 times?"

Or, "If my opponent plays this type of shot, can they make it more than 5 out of 10 times?"

That way you can judge whether your tactic works LONG TERM. There is something you need to know about the mind—that its No.1 priority is to protect you from pain, both physical and emotional. When your opponent hits a clean winner past you, you don't like it because you feel emotional pain, even if but a slight one. Your brain reacts by signaling you to avoid that situation.

Your mind isn’t interested in the distant future, where you will experience even greater emotional pain when you lose the match. (I hope not, but most people do.) It wants to protect you from immediate danger, so you start doubting that you should come to the net.

When you think, "If I do this 10 times what will be the result?" you realize that you may have to sacrifice a few little emotional pains to win the match and avoid a bigger pain, gaining greater pleasure.

Look for long-term strategies and tactics that will help you win the match. Avoid hasty decisions based on your emotions.

Copyright 2006, Tomaz Mencinger -- all rights reserved worldwide

Tomaz Mencinger is the author of The Mental Manual for Tennis Winners and The Tennis Strategy Encyclopedia and an athletic consultant who works with nationally ranked juniors at the Tennis Academy of Asia in Thailand.

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Playing Tennis: Turning Your Attention Outward

Have you ever played tennis to music? I mean background music without words, loud enough that you must raise your voice a bit to talk to your opponent. If you have, then you know the remarkable effect it has on your performance.

The background music affects your mood and makes it easy to get into the zone, doesn’t it? Why?

Here’s my theory, the product of an odd combination of background knowledge I have in areas you normally wouldn’t view as connected. I’m interested to hear what others think.

The key to understanding this is, I think, in understanding that we can direct our attention in either of two general directions, inward or outward. In this, we are quite different from animals, who rarely direct their attention inward. They have little need to, because they don’t talk and therefore don’t need to interpret written and spoken language. They don’t study. They don’t plan. You get the idea.

Therefore, they are always alert and well aware of their surroundings.

On the other hand, we spend a huge portion of our time REFLECTING, that is, turning our attention inward to think. We do this while reading, while working on a computer, while trying to figure out some puzzle, while consciously thinking what would be the best way to respond to something, while trying to remember some fact or instruction (recall something from the brain’s vast system of freeform relational databases).

The next important thing to note is that, whenever we reflect, we become more or less ABSORBED in our thoughts.

For example, while you are working on a computer, you become absorbed in the screen, a reflection of what’s in your mind, and you are oblivious to the rest of the room, the weather outside, the sounds of traffic on the street, and so forth.

That’s good. Otherwise you’d constantly be getting distracted and never would figure out to make that goshdarned JavaScript work. The same thing happens while you are solving a math problem. It’s called “focus.”

Again, for example, have you ever been reading a novel and not heard your wife say, “Honey, get me a beer”?

She said it, but you didn’t hear it. Actually, you did hear it: it just didn’t register. That is, it was filtered from your consciousness. In fact, it made such a light impression on your brain cells that no memory persists of hearing it.

Right now, while you are reading this, you are unaware of the pressure of your butt on the seat you’re sitting in. Well, not any more, eh? By mentioning it, I snagged the attention of your brain cells and made that incoming sensory information leap to consciousness on you.

The same thing would happen if, while you were reading that novel, your wife yelled, “Fire!” That you would hear.

The brain is a marvelous organ. It is programmed to filter certain types of information from consciousness and under certain conditions. If, for example, you live near a railroad or an airport, your brain learns to filter out the loud noises. You don’t even hear them anymore. Correction: you aren’t aware of hearing them anymore.

But let those flights start coming in from a different direction because of unusual winds and you suddenly become aware of them.

We almost never have our attention turned wholly outward or inward. Normally, our state of consciousness is somewhere on the continuum between extremes. So, we are always more or less absorbed in our thoughts. While asleep, we are extremely absorbed.

Nonetheless, we have two definite mental modes of operation: one for when our attention is focussed primarily inward and one for when our attention is focused primarily outward. We filter much more of what's going on outside the mind when we are in the first mode.

Our ability to filter unnecessary incoming information is crucial. For example, when you are talking to somebody, you "tune out" the picture on the wall behind him and the sound of the footsteps in the hall. If you couldn't do that, you'd miss most of what he says and wouldn't remember his name or face. He'd be nothing more than another object in your field of vision to you. (People suffering from NPD have trained their brains to filter all but the information they seek and consequently have a problem in this regard, one that superficially resembles mild autism.) Again, for example, if you want to find a health-care product on a store shelf and can't focus on one item at a time -- if you "see" everything in your field of vision -- you're going to go nuts.

But while playing tennis, the danger is filtering too much, filtering things we should be aware of.

Playing tennis is a PRECISION physical activity that requires our maximum powers of judgment. That means it requires maximum input of sensory information about the court situation, the speed of the approaching ball, its trajectory, its spin, where the various parts of the body are and how they are moving, and so forth.

If we are busy thinking, turning some of our attention inward, we are going to miss a lot. The brain will take fewer snapshots of the approaching ball, for example (as with slow-speed filming). Result? We judge its speed less accurately. We won’t see the ball as clearly. Result? We won’t notice as much information that tells us about the spin on it, like the fuzz, the seams, and the trajectory. We collect less body information as well, information about our balance, the position of each part of the body, the speed and direction in which various parts are moving, and so forth. In other words, our kinesthetic perceptions take a performance hit, too.

How much can a person miss? An incredible amount. For example, have you ever wondered how your doubles partner could fail to see an opening as big a barn door in the opposition’s court and hit somewhere else instead? Then you know what I mean. He or she never NOTICED that big opening. It was right there, big as life, in their face, but they never noticed it.

Why? Because they were THINKING. Not SEEING. Too much of their attention was turned INWARD.

If this sounds like it supports what Tim Gallwey teaches in The Inner Game of Tennis, that’s because it does. The IGOT Method aims at focusing your attention OUTWARDS, raising AWARENESS of what’s going on out there, on the court.

Ignoring what’s going on in your head.

That little voice in your head will shut up if you pay no attention to it. (Since it’s your ego, it’s narcissistic and so that’s all it wants = attention.)

It might as well be me, standing at the net post and barking orders at you while you're trying to play: “Watch the ball. Bend your knees. Step into the shot. Get the racket back early. Hit deep to deep. Keep the ball far away from that opposing net player. And yadda yadda yadda. Hey, you DIDN’T WATCH THE BALL. What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you do a simple thing like watch the ball? You are pathetic. You always do this.”

Could you play if I did that to you? Then don’t try to play with that voice in your head doing that you.

I think these facts show why playing and practicing with background music makes it so easy to get in the zone. It draws your attention outward. So, you don’t just hear the music, you hear the ball. You see it better.

In other words, the music gets your attention. It gets your attention turned outward. Hence, it gets your brain into the outwardly focused mental mode, “tuning out” the jabberbox in your mind and thereby minimizing your awareness of thought and your level of absorption in it.

The additional attention you are paying outward improves your timing, ball judgment, speed, and coordination dramatically. You are “in the zone” and playing “out of your mind.”

It is quite simply that – getting out of your mind. And into the real world.

This is why I say that even strategy and tactics must be taught with a view to minimizing the need for memory of verbal instructions, which must be THOUGHT of and recalled during play. For one thing, there’s simply no time to search your brain’s database for the right rote rule of what to do with the approaching ball. For another thing, the moment you start THINKING (remembering) what to do, you turn a good deal of your attention inward, becoming less aware of the approaching ball and the court situation.

This is why boiling strategy and tactics down to no-brainer rules like "Hit deep to deep and short to short" doesn't work. In other words, rote doesn't work. Instead, as much as possible, strategy and tactics must be taught visually. It must also provide a solid foundation of UNDERSTANDING. Only then can the player apply this knowledge during play without thinking.

Indeed, you must play by just seeing what to do and doing it spontaneously, without thinking. Like you drive an automobile. For more on this see this article at the main website.

TM: Stupid Shots

By Tomaz Mencinger
TennisMindGame.com

Have you ever said »Oh, what a stupid shot?« If you were referring to your own shot, how did you feel? Not too good, I bet. And how did you play after that »not good« feeling? Not well, right?

But a mistake isn't stupidity, it's just a mistake. You intended to win the point in one way or another: only after you actually play that shot can you see its results in that particular situation.

And since we are not computers, we sometimes need to miss many times before we realize that a certain approach usually will not work. Before that, we see that the approach isn't working, but we aren't sure whether the problem is the approach or just failing to execute it well enough. That's why we keep trying something even when it may seem stupid to an outside observer.

So now that we know all this and realize that there are no stupid shots, what are these mistakes then?

I simply call them "inexperienced" mistakes.

You haven't enough experience to decide perfectly every time. Sometimes you experiment. Sometimes you want to do your best, but you don't know all the strategic and tactical mistakes or the correct ways of playing the game.

This means that you just lack experience.

So, when you make a mistake, instead of labeling it as a �stupid� mistake, view it as an "inexperienced" mistake. How does that feel?

It sure does feel better, doesn't it?

It relieves you of the guilt feelings and gives you hope for the future. Indeed, seeing mistakes as stupid implies that you are stupid. And, since stupidity is a permanent condition, this view implies that you are doomed to make stupid mistakes forever.

The choice is yours--how will you view your mistakes from now on? As stupid or as inexperienced?

Copyright 2006, Tomaz Mencinger -- all rights reserved worldwide

Tomaz Mencinger is the author of The Mental Manual for Tennis Winners and The Tennis Strategy Encyclopedia and an athletic consultant who works with nationally ranked juniors at the Tennis Academy of Asia in Thailand.