6 TYPICAL TENNIS PROBLEMS AND HOW TO SOLVE THEM
Here are 6 typical tennis problems that I hear from players all the time and ways for you to fix them.
1. I GET NERVOUS
The first thing you need to understand is that it's natural for you to get nervous while you compete. The problem, however is that only some players actually acknowledge that getting scared is part of tennis. Instead, they try to block out the nerves, often by distracting the mind and bringing it to focus on something else. This is a very Western way of dealing with your nervousness.
Timothy Gallwey's best-selling book "The Inner Game of tennis", while an excellent book and really the first tennis book that dealt with the mental side of our game, mainly used distraction as its preferred method of dealing with players who had problems handling their nerves.
Using distraction to combat nerves can work under relatively mild stressful situations, but it's unreliable during really stressful situations such as important matches.
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Timothy Gallwey's book "The Inner Game of Tennis." was one of the first tennis books to deal with the mental side of our game |
One of the book's best remedies for players suffering from nervousness was the "Bounce, Hit" method. Gallwey suggests mentally say "Bounce" as the ball lands in front of you and "Hit" when you strike the ball.
This method works well in practice, cleverly distracting your mind from what could go wrong (your insecurities) and focusing it instead on the on-coming ball, its speed, depth, and height. To further distract the mind from "choking" during the shot, Gallwey asks you to mentally say "Hit, " which distracts the mind and allows it to stay free of negativity.
Gallwey's method has been used for many years now and by probably thousands of weekend players. On the practice court, it works immediately, and players quickly feel the freedom from the stress and anxiety that plagued them a few minutes ago.
However, I believe that the "Bounce, Hit" method is merely a distraction from stress; you haven't gotten better at handling your nervousness; you've simply kept your mind busy briefly during the stroke. In real-match situations, you have too many other functions to perform, and you'll need to send your awareness to them.
So, at its best the "Bounce, Hit" method of dealing with nervousness is an excellent gimmick for practice, but that is simply not practical at a higher level during competition.
I mentioned that Gallwey's method of "Bounce, Hit" is primarily a Western approach to the problem of nervousness, so what does the Eastern process look like?
The Eastern way is to tackle the problem front-on, to accept that it's part of competing and that the bigger the occasion, the more pressure, and the greater the potential to get nervous.
When Djokovic, Nadal, and Federer were young players, I'm sure they got just as nervous as the rest of us, and then something happened, and it happened to all the other great players. They learned to play great tennis while being nervous and under stressful conditions.
Here's how I train players to thrive in stressful, pressure-filled situations.
"I expose my players to pressure in practice constantly, and continually ask them to play points when they are the least "ready", and when it is the most uncomfortable time to do so., That means exposing their "problems" to pressure and stress is at the foundation of my coaching".
This is my 3am Theory of training, and while it doesn't make your nervousness disappear, it does allow you to play your best tennis when under pressure in matches.
2. I LACK POWER
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
The Ground, therefore, is an essential element for us to focus on if we are wanting to add more power to our game.
You would have already seen the top players lifting off the ground while playing their groundstrokes. The bigger they want to hit the ball, the more power they want, the more they jump. Jumping in tennis is directly related to tapping into the power of the Ground.
Another essential thing to remember in your quest for more power is to establish a "Contact Foot" for every stroke you play. The Contact Foot is the foot you use to draw energy from the Ground. It can either be the right or left foot. You can play the stroke in a closed stance or open stance position; it doesn't matter. Nature just requires you to draw energy from the Ground using one foot.
3. I HAVE POOR TIMING
Here again, the Ground is our source for timing the ball. If you have problems generating enough power, you're also experiencing timing issues.
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Begin to strike the ball cleanly by focusing on the Ground and your Contact Foot |
You need to go to the Ground for your timing problems, specifically, the connection you establish with the Ground through the Contact Foot.
"By isolating your awareness into the Contact Foot, you are focusing on the exact spot timing comes from. Your foot and the Ground create timing; timing starts there".
Send your awareness to your Contact Foot during practice sessions, and focus on setting up your Contact Foot on every stroke you play. You will quickly experience the improvement in your timing and confidence to increase or decrease the speed of the ball and generally control the ball better.
4. I LACK CONFIDENCE
You're moving wide to hit a backhand, but your opponent is also advancing towards the net, hoping to pick off your passing shot. It's a tough situation, but you have been playing well all week and are confident of successfully hitting the passing shot. But, just as you are about to play the picture, your mind has a quick moment of doubt, and you miss the shot wide of the singles sideline. Sound familiar?
This scenario has been repeated in matches around the world for years. This is choking, and it happens to the best of us. But why did it happen even though we played confident tennis all week? Shouldn't confidence stay with us once we have it?
The truth is that Confidence is highly fickle. It can be with us one moment and gone the next.
I've watched many players in matches over the years, and I don't trust confidence, and I certainly don't try to organise my practice sessions around developing it anymore. In fact, I nudge the player into point situations that uncover where the weak areas are. The player could lack confidence with their 2nd Serve, Passing Shot, or Volley. If they have any confidence problems, that's where I want to send the player during practice sessions. I want to put them under pressure and expose those specific areas of their game.
Expose these areas enough times, and put the player under enough pressure, and you will begin to see a coping mechanism develop within the player that helps them in live matches. Some will say that I am developing confidence in the stroke when I train this way, but I avoid the word confidence and would rather describe what I am doing as creating coping mechanisms. I am addressing the problem in a broader sense.
5. I'M NOT IMPROVING
We have all experienced that horrible feeling when our game is stuck and with no improvement taking place. You can be working hard and focusing hard on your practice sessions but the improvement just isn't coming. You're not alone. You could be experiencing "burnout", a situation whereby you're losing motivation because the progress you wanted to make with your game is not happening and your results are poor.
Although many people believe that Burnout is due to over-training I have another view. I believe that Burnout is 100% mental.
If a player has a clearly defined pathway for improvement that they understand and have agreed on with their coach, and each day the player is presented with challenges during their practice sessions (appropriate to their age and their level), that are tough but realistic, then Burnout will not occur.
If your body is tired from the workload at practice that day you can always get a good sleep that night and recover for the next day. However, if you have mentally hit a wall because of practice sessions that don't seem relevant or that make no sense, you have a problem. This is Burnout!
The solution is to take a step back from what you are doing daily and assess what needs to improve about your training sessions. You need to change what you're doing in your practice so that you feel alive again, and produce better results in matches.
The question to ask yourself about your on-court routine and the drills you're doing is are they related to me winning more, particularly against the players who stand between me and tournament titles?". If the answer is no, then you need to seek the advice of a trusted coach or mentor, so that together, you can re-design your on-court program. You have no time to waste in doing this!
The question you need to ask yourself regarding your off-court training routine is, "am I continually improving my strength, speed, endurance, flexibility, and balance?". If the answer is no, and your gym sessions are getting harder to tolerate, then you need to enlist the help of a trainier who can change things up a bit. Together, design a program that brings some fun back to off-court training and don't be afraid to think "outside-the-box".
6. I'M NOT FAST ENOUGH
Great movement on-court is a critical element of tennis today. I was present at a talk Roger Federer gave in Singapore a few years ago. When asked "What has been the biggest change in tennis since you turned pro?", his reply was Movement. He described how much better techniques were today, and how much better the equipment is since he turned pro, meaning players today had to cover more court than ever before and do it much faster due to these advancements in technology and coaching.
Here are 3 things to help improve your speed during matches:
1. Pre-innovation
The essence of speed is something called pre-innovation. Without pre-innovation, you will not be able to own that explosive start you see with the top players, nor have the sharp changes of direction you need to reach every ball.
Pre-innovation involves training the brain to react to the foot landing on the court. If the foot can react and activate its next movement quickly, this means that pre-innovation is good. Slow foot reaction means poor pre-innovation.
2. A complete system of on-court movement
Rather than you re-inventing the wheel, why not pick up an on-court system of movement that encompasses your anticipation of where you need to go to hit the ball, your balance during the stroke, and your recovery back to the next ball. Click on the "system" link to get to the complete article.
3. Reaction time
Few players react to the ball as quickly as they need to. With better reaction time you'll cover 1-2 meters more court than you were before.
A great way to improve your reaction to the next ball is to watch the opponent's contact. At the moment the opponent strikes the ball lift off the ground, become airborne. While you are airborne the opponent's ball is traveling towards you, it's direction is known. As you land, you can make the necessary preparation for the direction you need to go to. This act of lifting off the ground on the opponent's contact is called your Skip Check.
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