
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.

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