MASTER UNPREDICTABILITY







We all desire Control, Understanding, and Predictability in our lives and feel uncomfortable with anything that is out of our control, not understood, or unpredictable.

Unknowingly, this need for predictable outcomes may have led us to train for tennis incorrectly. Many training venues use repetition as their 'go-to' method of teaching players the game. Coaches prefer it, and players enjoy it. It makes them feel good! 

The repetition method of training involves someone feeding hundreds of balls from a basket.  The balls being fed from the basket will have the same flight, bounce in the same position on the court, arrive at the same speed, will bounce up to the same height, and will each have the same identical spin. 

Hitting hundreds of balls like this gives us the predictability that we enjoy. Also, because we eventually begin to hit the ball fairly well ( after hundreds of balls who wouldn't begin to start feeling better with their stroke?), we become more confident and we start to believe our game is improving. 

But the fact is that tennis has high levels of unpredictability, and all we are developing with the repetition method is a false confidence that will not stay with us throughout an entire match.

Here's an example...

You're going to hit a backhand and you are considering two choices:

Crosscourt or Down-the-Line…

Mentally you are saying to yourself that hitting crosscourt on this ball will help pull your opponent wide and off the court. This may lead to either your opponent returning the ball to a weaker position and allowing you to attack the next ball or your opponent may have trouble recovering from that wide position off-court and allow you to exploit the open court.

You may choose to play the ball down the line because by changing the direction of the ball you may catch them 'flat-footed' and open up opportunities to attack the point.  

In this first stage, you are making decisions. Basket feeding doesn't involve any decision-making.

In the second stage, the opponent will reply to your wide crosscourt or your decision to go down the line. This stage is highly unpredictable because you can't influence your opponent's decision-making process much. Again, basket feeding doesn't contain any form of unpredictability either.

If these two-point options were to develop further, you can clearly see that each time your opponent played the ball, there would be unpredictability present.

So why is unpredictability seldom included in practice sessions anywhere? 

Consider your tennis game for a moment and think whether or not you are approaching your tennis with the mindset of someone trying to make your tennis predictable? 

I believe that this emphasis on practising in a predictable manner hurts our game a lot and that if you can master the mindset of unpredictability, it will also boost your game beyond its present level. 













Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Comments

  1. colerainedistrictbadmintonJune 30, 2020 at 4:15 AM

    Thanks for the informative and helpful post, obviously in your blog everything is good.I got too much interesting stuff on your blog. I guess I am not the only one having all the enjoyment here! Keep up the good work.
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    Replies
    1. Paul DaleJuly 1, 2020 at 9:34 AM

      Thank you so much! It's really nice to have feed-back like that and to know your enjoying the content. Thanks again.

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