Zen, Skill Development, and The Inner Game Of Tennis | Hacker News Reader

Zen, Skill Development, and The Inner Game Of Tennis

zacharyburt.com

36 pointszackattack5 comments

This is more or less how I played tennis in high school. I never had the best skills, but my doubles partner and I were great at getting under the skin of our opponents—essentially making them play down to us.

The whole purpose of drilling—in whatever field of life, whether sports, academics, military, etc—is to get you to stop thinking about what you're doing. In tennis, if you're thinking about how to hit the ball you're going to mess up your shot. You need to get your brain out of the game and rely on muscle memory: footwork, positioning, grip, bend your knees, brush up stroke, eye on the ball, follow through.

Once you frustrate your opponent and get them thinking about their game their technical advantage has been mitigated. Smile at them, talk a bit of trash, ask them questions, position yourself aggressively to signal that you don't rate their shots/serves highly, lob the ball, hit volleys at their feet, etc.

Not the most noble way to play, but a sure way to keep yourself in the game if you never had the money for private lessons.

Excellent post and advice. The Self 1 / Self 2 comparison reminded me of the book Switch by Chip and Dan Heath. They discuss both a rider and elephant, the intellectual and emotional sides of the self. The metaphor is useful in that it shows how effective motivating or controlling that self 2/elephant can be.

See also: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

I saw a clip from 60 Minutes in college that showed Tim Gelway teaching tennis to a group of middle-aged people. None had ever played tennis before. He picked the person who showed the least potential and within 20 minutes had her serving better than I've ever served in my life. It made a huge impression on me. The book isn't really about tennis; it's how the human mind is meant to think and learn, and how far off we are in our preconceptions about those things.

My mom is a psychologist and she travelled to the U.S. just to attend one of his courses (we're Swedish). She had never played tennis but she got elected as the one he would teach how to serve and she managed to hit almost all serves after 20 minutes. She got so excited that she brought me to the U.S. to practice for a couple of days with Tim Gallwey's tennis-partner Sean Brawley.Throughout my life I've always been extremely bad at performing under pressure (especially in tennis) but he taught me things about myself which improved my tennis more in an hour than a full year of practice with any other coach. I never became a good tennis player (partly because I'm cross-eyed and therefore lack normal depth perception) but I've had amazing use of the tricks he taught me and a couple of years ago it helped me win the World Championship in NHL 2004. It still amazes me how I managed to overcome my extreme performance anxiety (which has always stopped me from performing well when it mattered the most) and focus, while having four TV-cameras right behind me. It was like someone else was playing for me.

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