FOCUSING ON REACTION SPEED COULD BE MAKING YOU SLOW!


On-court movement has become one of the
most important things in a player's arsenal


Webster says that the definition of reaction is “a response to something that involves taking action.” In other words, the horse bolts first, and then we try to catch the horse!

In tennis terms, that means we wait to return serve and plan to react when we know if the ball will go to the forehand or backhand side. Or, we watch our opponent getting under the ball and plan to react to his overhead once he completes his shot. Chances are that you are not going to get too many of those serves and overheads back into play. You’re going to be too late! You’re asking yourself, “Where will the ball go?” and that's the wrong question. 

I believe that reaction is merely the 3rd step in 
returning that first serve and defending that overhead.

In today’s fast-paced game, there is a step before reaction. That step is to be “proactive. You must ask yourself, “If the ball goes in, where is it likely to go?”.

You must continually ask the question.
"Where is the ball likely to go?"


Here is the advantage of being proactive. Being proactive means anticipating more than one option or outcome and having already started processing in your mind some of the things you would need to do to successfully complete each option.  

Let’s take the example of returning a first serve. There are two main options to choose from. You will either have to return the ball on the Forehand or backhand side (the less common option is defending a serve into the body). Being proactive means that you begin to organize in your mind what you will do if the ball comes to either of those two options. 

You could start organising in your mind the contact point (which will affect the ball's direction) or plan to control the degree of firmness applied to the grip (to help control the quality of the contact and depth of the return). You can also decide if you will adopt a strategy of being aggressive or defensive with your return.

You can plan many things with a proactive mindset, but the key is that the brain is already organising jobs that would have to be done eventually anyway. It’s a totally different mindset from the common reaction response of most players.

There is, however, another step we need to take even before being proactive. It’s something I call brain pre-innovation. Brain pre-innovation means that you are preparing the brain ahead of the next physical activity. For example when we sprint, the brain must always work ahead of the feet or we would trip and fall. The main task in training on-court speed and agility involves training the brain to always work ahead of whatever the feet intend to do. Normally a lack of speed is more about poor pre-innovation rather than poor leg speed.

Brain pre-innovation is at the essence of being very good proactively. We anticipate the likely outcomes and plan the desired responses, and then we react.

It looks like this…

Brain pre-innovation     =       Anticipation
Proactive                      =       Planning
Reaction                       =       Respond

Brain pre-innovation and being proactive are close cousins, but they have two separate functions. We wait to return our opponents' overhead and prepare the brain for certain outcomes (brain pre-innovation). We decide how to deal with those outcomes (become proactive), and when the time comes, we react, having previously completed the checklist of tasks needed to make the shot successful.

Returning Serve is a time to plan your options
before the ball arrives

So, you can see that a strategy of defending an overhead or returning serve based on reaction speed is doomed to fail. Each of these three steps needs to be completed, and we can either hope that this comes naturally or we can include it in our training on a daily basis.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

KEYS TO THE TWO-HANDED BACKHAND

Image
This article aims to provide you with 5 ingredients to help simplify the  two-hander and give you more control and versatility.       1. THE BOTTOM HAND The bottom hand on the grip controls the length of your contact zone.  The further on top the knuckles of the bottom hand are positioned, the longer your contact zone. The further around to the front of the grip the knuckles of the bottom hand are positioned, the shorter the contact zone will be. The Djokovic bottom hand is positioned almost on  top of the handle.  This would indicate that he intends  to hit down the line.   Positioning the knuckles of your bottom hand on top of the handle makes it a lot easier to hit your down-the-line shots, while placing the bottom hand in the front of the handle makes it easier to hit extreme cross-court angles. Y ou  need to play your backhand in various grip positions on the handle. The important thing is not the position of your hands on the...
Read more

CAN YOU PLAY YOUR BEST TENNIS AT 3AM?

Image
Several years ago I was on a practice court with Tamarine Tanasugarn. She was part of a team that had traveled with me overseas to compete. It was 7am and everyone was taking time to adjust to the unfamiliar conditions. Everyone except Tamarine that is! This was our first practice session after the long flight. Tamarine was striking the ball as cleanly as ever.   Her timing was perfect from the first ball until the last. What created her ability to adapt so well to the conditions and thrive? Later Paradorn Srichaphan, who reached a career high of #9 ATP had the same adaptability. I began to ask myself what this quality was and more importantly whether I could actually teach it to my students on-court. I began to formulate what I called 'The 3am Theory', the ability to play your best tennis at anytime, anywhere, on any surface, any, any… even at 3am in the morning.   Imagine you were woken from a sound sleep at 3am and asked to play a tie-break against a tough ...
Read more

WRITING A PROPOSAL FOR TENNIS SPONSORSHIP

Image
When tennis players begin to compete internationally the expenses involved in traveling overseas to events such as airfares, accommodation and food are quite high and put a significant strain on most family budgets. Players and their parents often try to off-set some of this financial burden by looking for sponsorship.  Here are some important points to consider when approaching companies or individuals for tennis sponsorship. It's important to put yourself in the shoes of the head marketing person of a big company. He/she are busy and any proposal you develop should be clear in what you want to happen . Don't presume that they know what you want. You need to tell them in a clear and precise way. A sponsorship proposal that is vague and lacks a clear description of what you want and how you will use the sponsorship will not send the right message to a busy Marketing Manager The head of marketing has the responsibility of planning a yearly marketing campaigne that f...
Read more