Podcast #159: Raise Your Tennis IQ (Part 2)
Number 3: The third part that's really essential as far as raising your IQ is being mentally and tactically ruthless. Something tells me that since you have a lot of experience already playing other sports; basketball is the one that you mentioned, you probably know exactly what I am talking about and this is something you absolutely do when you do play basketball. But I have a couple of specifics here that you should keep in mind and things that you should continue to work on.
First of all, find out and you want to do this as early as possible, any match you play, find out what your opponent doesn't like. Find out what makes them frustrated on the courts a nd then make them do it again and again and again and again. I might sound mean, especially to those of you out there who have a little bit more of a compassionate personality, but If you really want to win, what it comes down to, largely, is finding out what your opponent doesn't like and make them do it over and over and over again. That will make you successful. It's not that you're doing it because you don't Like them, because they're your enemy and your trying to make them angry. But to be totally honest, If you do this, it's very likely It's possibly will make them angry at the end of the day. You're simply doing it because you are a good competitor. You want to win, that's the point of competition is doing whatever you can to win, within the rules and within what's socially acceptable. I am not talking about gamesmans hip here, I am talking about legitimate tactics that you can use to be as successful as possible. Probably the most important one is where I just talked about. Find what they don't like, make them do it It over and over again. Number 2, under being mentally and tactically ruthless, know your strengths and use them as often as possible. You mentioned that you don't like your serve a whole lot Andrew, I don't know what your strengths are, specifically you don't mention them. Maybe it's your vice, m aybe it's your forehand, maybe it's your backhand, I don't know but you need to be aware of what that is and then go out of your way to use it as often as possible. If you just take these first two suggestions that I have and really implement them as much as you can, you will be successful at the recreational level of playing tennis. Exploiting their weaknesses, over and over and using your strengths over and over. If you do those two things, you are going to be very successful.
Thirdly, be aware of the result base and emotional momentum. When I say result base, I mean who is winning the points. There are always momentum swings back and forth during matches where maybe you'll win two, three, four points in a row or maybe you'll go in a run of winning five out of seven points, In a set of points or maybe vice-versa. You need to be aware of that. You also need to be aware of emotional momentum. I mentioned just a second ago, your opponent getting frustrated, getting angry. You need to be aware of when you have the momentum. Both in terms of who is winning the points and also in terms of emotional stability. A mental stability. If you feel, if you sense that you are gaining momentum, you are in a roll, you're winning points, your opponent is getting frustrated with themselves, they are getting upset, they don't feel like they are playing well, you need to be very aware of that and then crush them. Know when it is happening and that's when you really bare down mentally and you're as focus, as sharp as possible and you just put the screws to them. You pressure them as much as you can. That's when you are the most focus and you really make sure that you're using your strength. You really make sure that you're going to their weakness and you just make sure that you put them away. And it's really, really important to be aware of those momentum swings and to be able to take advantage of them. Know when it's really, really important in a match to really be playing your best and really be the most focus and have the most concentration. So Andrew, there you go. There's my quick outline for raising your tennis IQ. Just a brief overview. Number 1 was consistency is king. You have to be consistent. That's where your foundation should be. Number 2: Understand the percentages and play them almost exclusively. Baseline shots; mostly cross court, approach shots; mostly down the line. Make sure you listen to previous podcast episodes to get full description on that. And then number 3, be mentally and tactically ruthless. Find out what they don't like, know what they don't like and know what your biggest strengths are and then be mindful of momentum shifts and when you have the chance, crush them and put them away. Make sure that you win the match.
Andrew, there you go. Hopefully, that's helpful to you. I think those are really the most important parts of being successful. Especially, right around your level at 3.0, 3.5 type level. T hat being said, all of these things absolutely applied to the rest of you that maybe higher in levels as well. They're really, really important things. Andrew, thanks so much for being a listener, thanks for your question. Hopefully, this is helpful to you and let me know how you continue to progress with your tennis endeavors. Thanks a lot!
Before we get to our second topic of today's show, I want to real quickly remind you all about the two sponsors of the Essential Podcast. Number 1: tennistours.com, where you can purchase tickets to just about any major ATP or WTA professional tennis event.
Go check them out and if you make a purchase, use the Promotional code “Essential” to get a discount of your purchase.
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Okay! With that, let's get right into our second topic. It comes to us from Blake in Kansas, who's a 4.0 player. He wrote to me and said; I was thinking an interesting and helpful topic for the Podcast that would be: What parts of Strokes are conscious efforts and what parts just happens naturally. I got this idea when I saw a guy at my club hitting powerful forehands. I complimented him on his forehands and said “you have a great Windshield Wiper motion.” His response was “what's that?” What got me thinking, I am sorry, that got me thinking that aspects of the game such as follow through on grounds strokes, [inaudible] and serves. getting into the slot on the serve and other things should not perhaps be conscious, instead, they should happen naturally through proper technique. What are the areas of a stroke that players should focus on? Maybe the fundamentals, like weight transfer. What things should We put out of our minds and just let happen due to solid technique.
Alright Blake, that's a real good question. Interesting topic and I'd be happy to Talk about it here. I want to leave my response with the four stages of learning, any physical skill. Some of you may have heard this before. I know I've talked about this on the Podcast at some point but it's been quite awhile. I'll go through this quickly for those of you who have heard about it already. The four stages, in again, this is for learning any physical skills. Tennis, Golf, Bowling, Martial Arts, whatever, driving a car; whatever physical skill doesn't have to be a sport. The four stages are:
Number 1: Being Unconsciously incompetent. That means that you don't really have any information in your head about how to do the skill correctly and you're not good at it. You're incompetent! Stage number 2: Consciously Incompetent. Maybe you've gone and do some research. You've read a website about whatever skill you're trying to learn, you have some awareness now, but you're still not good at it; Consciously Incompetent. Consciously Competent. You're continuing to educate yourself. You got that information, now you've been putting in some practice and a certain percentage of the time, you can execute that skill, that physical skill correctly. You're still aware of it and now you can start to do it correctly. The last… fourth and final stage,: Is Unconsciously Competent.
That means that you've done it enough times correctly but you don't even have to think about it anymore and you just automatically do it. This is the ultimate. This is what you should be striving for In your tennis strokes. Everything you do in the tennis court, eventually, it should be your goal to do it correctly and without thinking. That's your ultimate goal. Do it correctly without thinking at all about what you are actually doing. Some of these recreational players, a million thoughts going through their head while they play, which is terrible. This bogs up your head. It makes recreating physical skills like a forehand or a serve usually-physically jerky and tense and just not very efficient. Plus, it distracts you from being aware of important tactical information. If you're actually competing, if you are thinking about all these different parts of your forehand, or these different parts of your backhand and all of these different parts of your serve, now you're focus completely on yourself and what you're trying to do with the racket. Instead of being aware of what's actually happening in the match and why you might be winning or losing the match. So many recreational matches are lost exactly that way. So, that's number two. Number one in my outline was []
Number three is the stages of learning.
Number two, your ultimate goal is to be unconscious and not think about it
