What I Learned from the Inner Game of Tennis: Part 4

[johnyandell]

Would love to discuss my article, "What I Learned from the Inner Game of Tennis: Part 4"

[jeremy93]

Very cool video and article!

[jeffreycounts]

Really enjoyed this one. That video is quite the time capsule isn't it? Why is that woman wearing a full dress, that was my first question. Kind of hard to move around in that. Second, you can see how much harder tennis must have been with wood rackets. The racket head is so small and those things were weighty.

There is a lot to love about that video in my opinion. Tim gets her rallying with relaxed, natural strokes and she is having a blast. He also uses himself as a model for her. These are three things that your typical tennis lesson fails at miserably. You typically see a barrage of lengthy verbal instruction with zero visual models, followed by the student trying to turn all the words into some sort of motor movement, and consequently hitting in a very unnatural, forced way as a result. It's a miserable, ineffective process - quite the opposite of what you see in the wonderful clip of Tim and his student.. And our instruction model hasn't changed much even though Tim's book and this video came out what, 50 years ago?

As great as this lesson goes, I do agree with John that you would need to start to shape and fine tune her strokes. Adding stroke key images, as John depicts in his book Visual Tennis would help incorporate the key points she is missing - like coiling and uncoiling her shoulders. And getting some movement through the ball as opposed to so much across her body. I really do love the fluidity of her strokes though. Someone in the YouTube comments of the video said her forehand takeback kind of looked like Lendl's and I agree! She has a nice natural loop there and could develop a really nice forehand by adding stroke keys to get the upper body coiling and uncoiling, combined with going through the ball.

This series motivated me to read The Inner Game of Tennis, which I had sort of dismissed because of it's age. I'm so glad I read it though because it's a game changer and deserves all the attention it has received. It really has had a profound effect on me and I wish I had read it years ago. The concept of a Self 2 as being the real genius (and the real source of joy) just seems so right to me. At the same time, if we are focusing on pure technical improvement, I think Tim's work existed before this incredible explosion of video technology. John, with his Sony Betamax was doing it before anyone else. And his insight into visual learning aided with "stroke keys", along with the incredible value of capturing actual pros hitting the ball in frame by frame video we can study and copy is just as revolutionary (and I'd argue more practical and scientific). The Visual Tennis book and the McEnroe/Lendl Winning Edge video were the start of a second revolution which I am just honestly incredibly grateful for.

There is another video of Tim teaching a student in 2012 for a PBS special. In the video, I think, you can see the limits of Tim's approach there in terms of technical improvement. The student isn't getting better because her technique is really off. Bounce Hit and watching the seams of the ball just can't help her with a really late contact point caused by zero shoulder rotation combined with a racket face slightly open on contact every time and a super cramped follow through.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlI8pAmuGxo&t=80s

Here is a still of the students (Nia Peeples) hitting the ball. You just can't NOT address the technical issues if you are going to help her in a meaningful way.

nia.jpg

[jthb1021]

Really enjoyed this one. That video is quite the time capsule isn't it? Why is that woman wearing a full dress, that was my first question. Kind of hard to move around in that. Second, you can see how much harder tennis must have been with wood rackets. The racket head is so small and those things were weighty.

There is a lot to love about that video in my opinion. Tim gets her rallying with relaxed, natural strokes and she is having a blast. He also uses himself as a model for her. These are three things that your typical tennis lesson fails at miserably. You typically see a barrage of lengthy verbal instruction with zero visual models, followed by the student trying to turn all the words into some sort of motor movement, and consequently hitting in a very unnatural, forced way as a result. It's a miserable, ineffective process - quite the opposite of what you see in the wonderful clip of Tim and his student.. And our instruction model hasn't changed much even though Tim's book and this video came out what, 50 years ago?

As great as this lesson goes, I do agree with John that you would need to start to shape and fine tune her strokes. Adding stroke key images, as John depicts in his book Visual Tennis would help incorporate the key points she is missing - like coiling and uncoiling her shoulders. And getting some movement through the ball as opposed to so much across her body. I really do love the fluidity of her strokes though. Someone in the YouTube comments of the video said her forehand takeback kind of looked like Lendl's and I agree! She has a nice natural loop there and could develop a really nice forehand by adding stroke keys to get the upper body coiling and uncoiling, combined with going through the ball.

This series motivated me to read The Inner Game of Tennis, which I had sort of dismissed because of it's age. I'm so glad I read it though because it's a game changer and deserves all the attention it has received. It really has had a profound effect on me and I wish I had read it years ago. The concept of a Self 2 as being the real genius (and the real source of joy) just seems so right to me. At the same time, if we are focusing on pure technical improvement, I think Tim's work existed before this incredible explosion of video technology. John, with his Sony Betamax was doing it before anyone else. And his insight into visual learning aided with "stroke keys", along with the incredible value of capturing actual pros hitting the ball in frame by frame video we can study and copy is just as revolutionary (and I'd argue more practical and scientific). The Visual Tennis book and the McEnroe/Lendl Winning Edge video were the start of a second revolution which I am just honestly incredibly grateful for.

There is another video of Tim teaching a student in 2012 for a PBS special. In the video, I think, you can see the limits of Tim's approach there in terms of technical improvement. The student isn't getting better because her technique is really off. Bounce Hit and watching the seams of the ball just can't help her with a really late contact point caused by zero shoulder rotation combined with a racket face slightly open on contact every time and a super cramped follow through.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlI8pAmuGxo&t=80s

Here is a still of the students (Nia Peeples) hitting the ball. You just can't NOT address the technical issues if you are going to help her in a meaningful way.

nia.jpg

Jeff what I find interesting in the second lesson with Nia, she actually did exactly what he did with his stroke. His left hand and arm weren't engaged at all as he was demonstrating the bounce...hit technique. He demonstrated a crappy 2.85 NTRP forehand and she picked it up immediately hahahaha! Maybe if he'd have showed her properly like the serve video from before she might not have to be a "scrappy" 3.0-3.5 lobber on her forehand side for the rest of her life.

[kenh]

Don Klotz was a long time coach at the U of Iowa. I think he finished in the early 80's. He was a genius and an innovator. He wrote a small book entitled (I believe) Keep It Simple. In that book he hypothesized that if 2 people, who had no tennis experience, were stranded on a desert island and only had tennis for recreation, their games would evolved to efficient orthodox games. His reasoning was based on the following thoughts about how the throwing motion evolved. He said early man wanted to eat the rabbit and tried to kill it throwing stones. He did not eat rabbit at first because initially his throwing motion was bad. He did not turn his shoulders and his elbow was very low. However gradually those things improved. first his elbow got higher and then he started turning his shoulders and finally he pushed from the legs and then he had good dinner. The idea that things evolve into efficiency.

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