Watching Rafa in Miami:
Three Lessons
John Yandell
What lessons can you learn from watching Rafa Nadal practice? Hit every forehand with 4000rpm? Keep your water bottles perfectly aligned?
Sure. But--seriously--watching him this week in Miami, I saw three things that are critical for players at all levels--but are sadly rare. Rhythm, posture, and timing.
Focusing on these elements I could feel myself absorbing them directly, I began imagining myself doing them and noticing how that looked and felt in my mind's eye. When I went on court later after the second day the effect was incredibly positive.
I believe any player can have the same experience. And create it on demand. I call it the osmosis effect. (Click Here for more on that.)
You can create it by watching pro tennis live--or watching highly skilled local players, or by watching video, or from our stroke archives, and hopefully from this article as well.
In fact it's the principle that underlies much of the material on Tennisplayer. So let's take a look at what I saw and felt and absorbed.
John Yandell is widely acknowledged as one of the leading videographers and students of the modern game of professional tennis. His high speed filming for Advanced Tennis and Tennisplayer have provided new visual resources that have changed the way the game is studied and understood by both players and coaches. He has done personal video analysis for hundreds of high level competitive players, including Justine Henin-Hardenne, Taylor Dent and John McEnroe, among others.
In addition to his role as Editor of Tennisplayer he is the author of the critically acclaimed book Visual Tennis. The John Yandell Tennis School is located in San Francisco, California.
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