FOCUSING ON REACTION SPEED COULD BE MAKING YOU SLOW!

By Paul Dale | The 3AM Method

Returning serve requires Brain Pre-Innovation before the ball is struck.

Webster defines reaction as “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 or volley 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, overheads or volleys 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, defending that overhead or reaching that volley.

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?”

By the time you react, it's already too late — anticipation gets you there first.

Here is the advantage of being proactive. Being proactive means anticipating more than one option or outcome by mentally processing what 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. You will either have to return the ball on the Forehand or backhand side (the other option is defending a serve into the body). Being proactive means that you begin to organise what you will do if the ball comes to either of those two targets. 

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 whether to adopt an aggressive or defensive strategy 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 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 preparing the brain before 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 is to train 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 likely outcomes, plan the desired responses, and then react.

It looks like this…

Brain pre-innovation     =       Anticipation

Proactive                          =       Planning

Reaction                           =       Respond

Brain pre-innovation and proactivity are close cousins, but they serve distinct 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.

A great return of serve isn't reflexes — it's Brain Pre-Innovation in action.

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 it comes naturally or include it in our daily training.