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Through more than 50 years playing and trying to understand the game of tennis, I've seen a lot of players plateau at the same level with their game for many  years until the ravages of time finally start them down the inevitable path towards aging out. Obviously their “game” consists of both a physical side that is stroke quality, and the mental side, which is understanding the strategies of the game. Sadly, I've known many players who could explain sound strategies and tactics but mostly fail to take advantage of that knowledge in the heat of competition. Yes, I frequently consider myself guilty of that error.

 

In today’s discussion, I am more focused on improving the physical aspect of one’s game, so when you attempt to hit the ball that one more time over the net, it goes where you want. My favourite analogy for the physical learning process is throwing a ball at a hypothetical target on the wall. The first toss may hit the wall high and right of the target. If you are trying to grow the skill of hitting a target with a thrown ball, after that first missed toss you will try a second ball, allowing your learning brain to make a correction based on the visual feedback from the first. If the second ball hits the wall low and to the left of the target, that tells you a couple of things. First, something up there in the grey matter was engaged enough that it knew how to adjust in the right direction, or to at least adjust our throw in another direction. Second, it has now given the brain more information to work with to achieve the goal of hitting the target which is is somewhere between those two misses. 

A great practice wall in Agassiz, BC
A great practice wall in Agassiz, BC

After a hundred more balls your errors will likely be much closer to the target, assuming you are still bringing the same level of commitment and focus to the challenge. It is also likely you’ll have hit the target dead centre a few times. Before you get tennis elbow patting yourself on the back, realize that skill is not now imprinted permanently into your DNA. This is just one step on the journey to making that throw reliable. Even for this relatively simple task, you are still an undetermined number of practice sessions away from complete mastery.

 

At risk of sounding like a real downer, tennis is not that simple. There is no single target, as targets vary constantly throughout a match. Throwing a ball from your hand is less complicated than directing it with an impact on the centre of a string bed situated 18 inches beyond the end of your grip. Prior to your attempt to hit a tennis ball with a racquet, that same brain engaged in hitting the target is now also having to calculate the trajectory of the incoming ball from the other side of the net. Sadly enough, your opponent is also doing whatever they can to make that calculation more difficult with combinations of spin, power, and just plain good shots. Piled on top of all that is the fact that you have to move to intercept the incoming ball, making the targeting calculation exponentially more complicated for you and your brain. Why don't we all just quit now?!! 


To step back from the edge, we should all be quite happy that we ever hit the targets we do as recreational players that do this for fun on weekends (and weekdays if we are so lucky). But how can we up our targeting game? First, recognize that a tennis game does not allow for the repetitive practice that the earlier ‘target on the wall’ analogy does. After you miss just outside the line to the right, your opponent is not likely to hit you that exact same ball to let you try again. I would venture to say they probably couldn't get it close enough to the original shot even if they wanted to. This means your brain doesn't get that second throw to learn from, let alone the hundred it would take to make a measurable difference. Basically, when you play a tennis match, you are dancing with the skills you brought to the party.

 

I am a firm believer that improving your physical stroke skills takes practice outside of the game situation. As an example, you may get 3 or 4 overhead opportunities in a set. If you miss half of them because you couldn't get into position properly or the ball was spinning with backspin at 1500 RPM, your brain didn't learn anything. Well, except that it should ratchet up the stress levels when it sees a high ball in the air – like chickens when an eagle flies overhead. The value of practice always seemed obvious to me when I was young, but I really didn't think about why. Maybe I just had nothing better to do, but I always enjoyed spending hours at the local practice wall. The obvious bonus is not having to arrange a human practice partner and the wall never misses. Here are some things to think about for making your practice as effective as possible.

 

Returning to our target on a wall analogy, our brain can learn things to move our physical skills forward. These ideas can apply whether you are hitting against a wall, practice partner, or a ball machine.

 

#1 – Always have a target.

 This certainly applies when you are trying to groove a stroke – you may have heard the  maxim “don't practice until you get it right – practice until you can't get it wrong”.  Helping your brain by having a clear goal means it can tell that it missed and by how  much. That gives it the foundation to learning from correcting. In his book, The Inner Game of Tennis Timothy Gallwey¹  suggests that freeing the brain to do this in practice, rather than in a game when the outcome of the attempt matters to the score, makes the learning process easier. Remember, a target is not limited to that end result on the other end of the court. It can also be always hitting the ball in the middle of the strings or having your feet in position so your foundation is a solid platform on contact, every time.


 #2 – Minimize the variables to start.

A foundational term in education is scaffolding. It means completing the simple tasks first, giving you a base to build up to the more difficult. If you are trying to teach yourself how to hit a target it is much more difficult if your practice partner is trying to make you miss. That would be like attempting your ball toss at the hypothetical target at a full run with your back to the wall. You may make some headway, but it's probably not the easiest path to your goal of successful targeting. Build the speed and difficulty gradually so your attempts can be fluid and relaxed, rather than as a series of mini emergencies. Reducing things to their basic components right off the bat is not only a great way to start, but can also be the answer to dealing with a complex skill that has broken down and needs fixing.

 

#3 – Work on goals based on what your game needs.

A common mantra is “sometimes you win, sometimes you learn”. We all tally “unforced errors” - everyone does. The smart thing to do is keep track and look for patterns, your opponents may even be able to point them out to you if they are paying attention. If you decide a particular skill would really help your game if it were more reliable, break it down into its simplest components so you can make it successfully repeatable. In his book Muscle Memory and Imagery: Better Tennis, Dr. Archie Dan Smith²  argues that once you decide on the specific skill you are practicing it is best to work on that one thing only, until it is reliable. It might seem difficult – and monotonous – to see through, but he suggests at least a week of every other day for the skill to become reliably better for any length of time. I've heard it said that pros don't attempt shots they haven't grooved in practice. Perhaps when I've hit  over one million balls in a year, I will be less likely to try my low percentage “hail Mary” shots.

 

Parting Shot:

 

Something to keep in the back of your mind – one of the things that makes the memory of hard-earned skills begin to fade with time is not necessarily brain related. The human body is constantly regenerating itself. The learning brain that went through the practice last April and had that forehand impressively wired is now struggling to keep the ball in play. Hmm, it may have something to do with the fact that the player badly sprained their ankle in July and tore a meniscus in their opposite knee in September. Between those two injuries, and the resulting serious lack of exercise for eight months, when the brain tries to fire the same neurons it did in April and nothing is pushing back, it needs to go back to school with what it has to work with now. As the body changes, it's much like the loosening of strings that we talked about in blog episode 1.

 

I welcome your comments.

Mark

 

¹ Gallwey, W. T. (1974). The Inner Game of Tennis. Penguin Random House LLC. New York.

 

² Smith, A. D., MD (2017). Muscle Memory and Imagery: Better Tennis. CreateSpace. mmitennis.com



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Updated: 7 days ago


The question I get asked most often as the “stringing guy” is “when should I change my strings?”

 

Other than the obvious answer - after breaking the existing strings - it's a question that requires some understanding and then making a decision only you can make for your tennis. A little knowledge can really help with that.


An important thing to know about tennis strings is they are constantly stretching and relaxing. Once the machine pulls the end of the string to the set tension, it is clamped off and begins to relax. It's the nature of how strings work, not some weird defect. Different materials lose their tension at different rates, but eventually they all do, and it's always faster right after stringing and gradually slows down. This happens whether you hit a ball or not, although the impact from playing the game generally speeds up the process.

 

Throughout your tennis journey you will likely play with different racquets and certainly different strings. If you are paying attention, at some point you will decide you like your strings a certain way - they perform well for you and enhance your ability to play the game. They “feel” right. Professional players spend time defining what that means to them so they can have their racquets strung to match that “feel” the day before, or as close to the match as possible. They know they like to play with fresh strings because they've spent many, many hours honing their skills with a racquet strung just the way they like it.

 

For us mere mortals, the process is usually a bit different. For example, some of us can immediately tell the difference and appreciate when we have fresh strings, because it just seems easier to put the ball where we want to. Others get the fleeting feeling that a newly-strung racquet feels different, but soon forget about it. We might have a good (or even bad!?!?) day or two on the court with new strings, but soon that fades. While we are hitting tennis balls our strings are stretching and then snapping back, although over time they are losing tension. It's known as creep. Remember this process is faster in the beginning and then slows down over time.


There are gadgets and gizmos that can be used to measure how much your strings have relaxed. There are phone apps that measure the frequency of vibrations when you strike the string bed with something firm.


There are expensive machines in specialty shops that can measure how much energy

it takes to stretch the strings a small amount.  


There are also handheld devices, both electronic and manual, that give you some indication of how the string tension has changed since the last stringing. They are especially useful if you compare that to the reading from the instant the racquet came off the stringing machine.

 

To cycle back to the question in the title: why should you care about string creep? The answer: as string tension drops, the racquet plays differently. If the strings are now soft enough that the ball is staying on the string bed for one one-thousandth of a second longer, that can mean the difference between a ball landing inside the baseline or a foot and a half beyond. Fortunately for us, creep doesn't happen like a light switch; instead, it happens relatively slowly, again, faster initially and less obvious over time. Certain types of string also lose their tension at a slower rate than others.

 

If you are not someone hitting hard enough to break strings regularly, then it is possible your subconscious tennis brain will make adjustments as creep happens without you knowing about it. It will compensate for the changes in tension by changing the way you hit the ball. Few people I know will enjoy missing their targets day in and day out, so something subtle is going on as the strings age. The racquet is now training the player to hit differently in order to keep the ball in play. Fortunately, the changes slow down as the strings truly become “old”.

 

So, to get past axioms like “change your strings in a year as often as you play in a week”, or “time to change when the tension drops by 20%”, the decision comes down to your commitment level, and possibly your finances. If you appreciate playing with a newly-strung racquet then understand that feeling is finite. Not many recreational players can afford to have new strings every time they play like the professionals do. It's not really practical to think about unless you are stringing your own racquets and have a lot of time on your hands.

 

It comes down to, then, two ways of approaching strings:

 

1. You can try to chase a consistent string tension and be willing to make a point of getting them replaced at regular intervals. That will give your practice and play a consistency, so your equipment is always predictable.

2. You can just play with them until they break and accept that you will be playing with strings that change over time and will not perform the same as new.

 

The only point I would make about the latter option is there are lots of opinions on tennis blogs and articles saying that old strings can cause arm problems. In my stringing practice I have experienced people who come back for a restring when they start feeling pain in their arm. I need to be honest and say I have been unable to find a physiological reason for this to be the case in the research I have done. My gut tells me the strings should get softer as they loosen, so the impact with the ball should actually be less harsh. Assuming anecdotal information reflects reality, it could be that changes in stroke technique that come from playing with loose strings could potentially be the culprit. On the flip side, many people insist on playing with looser strings. That would frustrate me because I would miss the perceived control of firmer strings. Certainly, many advocates of lower tensions experience no issues with their arms or shoulders.


I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter.



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The  Chilliwack  Tennis  Society​

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