Learn to Take Risks So You Can Grow

Your comfort zone feels safe but that doesn’t mean it’s correct or helpful on the tennis court. For a long time, I was a solid baseliner and I felt confident playing without coming to the net. As I worked my way up the competitive junior tennis landscape, I began encountering players who kept the ball in the court with the same frequency and intensity. I lost my edge over my competitors and matches leaned heavily on battles of grit rather than skill and grit. I needed to develop new tools to compliment my solid baseline skills so I could establish an upper hand on the court.

However, instead of embracing change, I held on to what I knew for years. My development slowed down and I went from winning most tournaments to losing in the quarters or early rounds. This regression took place because I didn’t want to take risks. I prioritized safety and comfort over the uncertainty that comes with learning new tricks. I received plenty of good advice on what to work on but never accepted that I needed to go through the feeling of insecurity to reach the next level. I stubbornly held on to the way I was so I can feel good about myself and my game. In the short term, I got my satisfaction but, in the long run, I knew I was hurting myself.

I eventually embraced coming to the net when I started playing Division I college tennis. As part of a tennis team that relies on the doubles point to secure a lead, we spent at least half our practice sessions working on our net game. I had no choice but to go along. I went from being only comfortable at the baseline to feeling good playing from any part of the court. In the second year, my game began to flourish and I won nearly every match. I was finally able to claim that I played all-court tennis. This could have happened sooner had I opened my mind to learning new things.

A cause of my closed mind was fear. I was afraid of working on my weaknesses because learning something new meant I was going to experience failure. We should realize that most of our learning inhibitions stem from fear of failure. We can learn new skills just as well as anybody else. Our paths to obtaining new knowledge may be different and unique, but what stops us from learning when there is an opportunity is generally the same state of mind.

The beauty about developing new skills is that you add to the totality of your abilities. You get good at handling a greater variety of challenges over time as you work on new things. In my example, I needed to work on stepping in and approaching to the net. It wouldn’t have replaced my baseline game. Rather, it became an addition to my game and made a better tennis player. The best part about opening yourself to learning new things in tennis is that you will have an easier time doing the same for other aspects of your life.

Another Reason Tennis makes you Healthy

You might have heard that tennis can extend your life by nearly 10 years compared to doing no sport (we wrote about it here). A factor is that tennis engages your mind and body dynamically. Another reason you live longer through tennis is the social connections you make—tennis players bond well. This sport is a society of its own, open to everyone. A few weeks ago, I went into an elevator and a stranger said I must be a tennis player. I carried myself like a tennis player and they noticed – we became friends. But what is not talked about is how tennis teaches you mindfulness and makes you stay focused on the present moment. That leads to many health benefits as well.

Tennis is a mindfulness sport. Every ball you get will be different. The court is large so there are a nearly infinite number of possibilities with variations in spin, speed, height, and placement. To handle the different shots consistently means you need to stay tuned in to how the ball and your body are behaving. If you’re thinking about other things, you will not be aware of the ball’s behavior and will miss a lot because you’ll be out of position. If you’re not tuned in, you will likely be stiff and off balance for many of your shots. This means you won’t feel much of a connection with the game. To stay consistent and connect, you need to be in the zone. That means no thoughts about the future or past.

Thinking about the future constantly or ruminating over the past can lead to stress. These are points in time that don’t exist and you thus have no control over. Yet we tend to worry about what happened or what might happen. We do this because as children we have been taught to worry and no one taught us to stay in the flow. Let mistakes and good things happen.

Thoughts cause reactions to our physiology. Negative thoughts cause chronic stress. Stress hormones get released from overanxious thinking. If you’re chronically anxious, you will end up with physical ailments. On a basic level, you’ll have more knots in your shoulder and back muscles. Mindfulness on the other hand is shown to reduce anxiety, and depression, and help alleviate pain (read this post from the National Institute of Health).

People who commit to tennis learn from their coaches that they should be in a state of Zen. They get rewarded with measurable physical, emotional, and mental benefits. This knowledge is not new. Timothy Gallwey published one of the best sellers for mental tennis in 1997: The Inner Game of Tennis. He shares insight on reaching a state of flow and getting rid of our mental inhibitions:

“The first skill to learn is the art of letting go the human inclination to judge ourselves and our performance as either good or bad.”

Teaching with Zen

When I was coaching full-time at the Kings Highway Racquet Club, a parent came to me and asked how her daughter was doing. I started telling mom about her daughter’s progress, but she stopped me and asked again how her daughter was doing, explaining that outside of the family, I would see her daughter more than anyone else. This statement made me think more deeply about our influence over the lives of our students.

Over the course of my training, my coaches didn’t just help develop my game. They taught me how to overcome mental and emotional difficulties, open my mind to learning new things. Most importantly, I learned about mindfulness, kindness, being honest with myself, and taking responsibility. Tennis is more than just a game, it’s a teacher and representation of life.

Throughout the years of coaching and playing, I learned that tennis is not an isolated aspect of our lives but an integral part of developing our being and finding liberty. Everything I learned translated into other aspects of my life. Here are some high-level thoughts for coaches (and parents who teach) to consider when teaching tennis:

• Tennis, like all other sports, is how we learn physics and math. We created parameters but in essence, we are using our body to swing a racquet and hit a ball to a set area. We learn to work with gravity, force, and other physical variables. The more you’re open to connecting with physics, the better you’ll play.

• Tennis is best played without thought. A player should learn to observe and be aware by feeling and being attentive without working with fixed viewpoints. There are near-infinite combinations of speed, height, momentum, placement, and spin that a player must adapt to. Thought, guessing, or wishful thinking will only cause a delay in reaction time and make it difficult to adapt consistently. Thought prevents the athlete from existing in the state of flow.

• Expectations of winning or losing will distract from being in the moment. It’s another thought but the most detrimental of them. If you’re thinking about winning, then you’ll likely be afraid to lose. Your mind is also in a space that does not exist. The future or the past a non-existent and if they’re taking up space in your head that means you have less for observing reality. A student must thus learn to let go of outcomes and focus on playing moment to moment. Billie Jean King Jr. would tell students that they should “play one ball at a time.”

• Tennis has the word “love” in the game. Open your mind and heart and learn to love the ups and downs of this sport. This will teach compassion. Tennis will then become a healing activity. After all, playing tennis adds about ten years to life expectancy.

• If you teach your students to love and believe in themselves, then you’ve succeeded. Failure in coaching occurs when your student feels guilty for missing.

• Don’t take this sport too seriously. Commitment is important if you want to become a professional player. However, tennis did not always exist and thus should be seen as a sport that enriches your life. It’s not life or death. If doom and gloom is overshadowing your daily life, then it will be difficult to enjoy tennis.

• Tennis is a safe space to learn to become a better person. To find freedom from within.  

Winning Against Less Skilled Opponents

I cringe at my own blog title because I do not like to judge people, especially for their skill level. I do not like to call players unskilled because everyone can get better – skill is not a measurement fixed at one point. Skill is a moving variable that usually grows as you train more and learn to adapt to different shots. With that said, for the purpose of this blog, I will recognize that players are at different skill levels. Some are better players than others. And you will play people who are not as skilled as you in the game of tennis. But, even if they are not as good, you can lose to them.

So, here are five things you need to know to ensure you win against less skilled opponents:

(1) Do not underestimate any opponent. If you think you will win easily or that you must beat them because you’re the better player, you’d be setting yourself up for the risk of losing.

• First, the pressure of "you must win" could crack your mental game if you start making unforced errors. I had that experience and lost multiple matches where I was up a set and a break and would suddenly choke. One example was at a $15K Futures event. I was winning 6-0, 3-0 and up 30-0 in the game. I missed two backhands in a row and suddenly felt a rush of pressure. Couldn't relax and lost the match 6-4 in the third set. The reason was I set a lot of pressure on myself using the "I must win this" talk.

(2) Prepare the same way for every match. Sometimes, we may not think we have to win or that we are much better, but we show it by taking the match less seriously. The physical and mental preparation for the match gets a little lame, we don't hydrate or sleep properly. Maybe we will go out to a party thinking we’ll be fine the next day – there will be enough energy to play and win.

• Good preparation is about making sure that you will play at your top level. If you do not prepare well, you risk lowering your level, and then you could end up making the match balanced, giving your opponent a chance to win.

(3) Practice hitting dead-ball feeds regularly. Dead-ball feeds are shots fed by hand and not the racket. They are slower and generated from minimal force, which means you must do all the work to make it a good shot.

• Solid players usually hit a heavy ball. These are easy to counter-punch. But some less skilled opponents will give you “junk” shot and those are not easy to hit because there is less momentum and “weight” behind those types of shots. You need to be comfortable generating your own power and acceleration consistently if you want to control the points against players that don’t generate much power behind their shots. Otherwise, you will find yourself making a lot of unforced errors.

(4) Master the approach shot. Many less skilled players will hit shorter more often. But I've seen so many solid players mess up matches against less skilled players simply because they are not comfortable attacking the short ball. After missing a few short balls, confidence begins to wane and seep into the rest of the game.

• Simply practice attacking the short ball repetitively, and you’ll feel comfortable stepping inside the baseline and attacking the short ball.

(5) Be consistent. You might have a bad day, which will lower your playing ability. So, you need a plan-B game: that is consistency. If your A-game, where you attack the ball, is not working, you can’t keep it going because your unforced errors will pile up and affect the score. You could lose. Grinding, playing high-percentage tennis, is thus the best way to ensure that lower skilled opponents won’t get to take advantage of the days when you’re just not feeling good.

• Consistency is practiced by drilling cross-courts and playing with movement but without trying to end the point.

Lastly, enjoy the game no matter who you play.

Stages of Movement

In tennis, every ball you get is different. No shot lands at the exact same spot with the same speed and spin. This means you must track the ball and adjust your positioning with your legs for every shot. In other words, you need to move and adapt for each shot. This is the reason every coach and professional player will tell you that movement is the most important aspect of tennis. Movement will not turn you into a champion but, without good movement, you don’t have a chance. A few weeks back, I wrote about movement builders - advice on how to ensure your movement is “sharp.” Here you will get an overview of the movement stages.

Positioning. Your court positioning is your location before your opponent hits the ball. Top players dominate the center of the court because covering the center reduces the open space for your opponent to hit. Here are key pointers:

• You should face the ball and not your opponent.

• Shift your center to cover the cross-court angle (“off-center”). So, if you hit the deuce side, then your center shifts two to three feet away from the “T” (the baseline center mark).

• Normally stand three to four feet behind the baseline. But move closer if you’re attacking and your opponent is on the run and likely to hit short. Position yourself further back if you need more time to handle aggressive, deep, or really high balls.

Setting-Up to Hit. You must first split-step as your opponent is swinging to hit their shot. The ball will have left their racquet by the time you land. Then, assuming the ball is heading away from the center, your first move should be explosive and long. You want to cover as much space in as little time. As you approach the ball, your footwork needs to shift to many quick smaller adjustment steps. As you're setting up to hit, you must keep your feet wide apart (minimum shoulder width distance) and knees bent.

Recovery. A good recovery is when you’re able to position yourself back to the center (or off-center) before your opponent hits the ball. You must have a sense of urgency after hitting to get back in position. If you’re far from the center, plant your outside foot wide and push off that leg with a crossover step and a double-shuffle. The combination of crossover and double-shuffle should get you back to the center from the doubles line. It’s a quick and effective recovery combo.

These three stages complete the main pillars of movement. However, effective movement also means maintaining good posture, a low center of gravity, intensity while behind relaxed, and anticipation. Everything you do between your shots should be organized so that it is easier to get behind the ball and hit in your strike-zone.

Movement Builders

Movement is the most important part of tennis. Roger Federer, one of the greatest in tennis history, recently told the press the top 20 movers are the top 20 ranked players. Movement consists of many components, not only speed. You have to be quick to change direction, adapt to a variety of speeds, and be organized so that you're in a position to hit the ball your way.

Here are eight tips that will help you become a better mover:

1) Spend more time doing drills where you don't know where the ball will go.

2) Avoid thinking negatively about your movement. Instead, focus on finding specific action items you can implement.

3) Invest in off-court conditioning and speed drills. You're only as good as your fitness takes you. Tennis will wind you down quickly if you're not fit enough to handle your opponent's tempo.

4) Move for every ball, even those that seem unreachable.

5) Keep a good posture. If you're leaning too far forward and your center of gravity is too high, you will slow yourself down.

6) Reach for the far shots with your legs and arms and not your upper body.

7) Stay observant of the ball without thinking consciously about where it will go. Thinking will slow your reaction down.

8) Recover and own the center of the court.

Ask a Coach

Parent's Question: I’m pushing my 10-year-old kid because other kids the same age are performing better. What can I do to help my child catch up?

Coach's Answer: Don't force it and let your child develop at their own pace. A coach wants their student to improve skills and learn new ones. That means the student needs to work on themselves and not worry about others. Attention elsewhere takes away attention from yourself. More importantly, people develop at different speeds but they all eventually reach similar skill levels if they keep training and working on themselves. Players that performed well young do not always end up getting the same results as adults, and the same goes for players that lagged behind when they were young -- they sometimes end up dominant as adults athletes.

When I was 13, I got selected into the U.S. High Performance Tennis Team and was second in the lineup for the Junior Davis Cup team. You could say I was the second-best U.S. tennis player in my age division. The best was Donald Young. He was our number one and at 15 he became the youngest Junior World Number 1 (in the 18 and Under age division). We won the 14 and Under World Championships.

In our cohort, Donald reached the highest rank of 37 ATP and won a doubles Grand Slam. A good achievement. I had 7 ATP points which put me in the top 1,000 in the world. But neither Donald nor I reached our expected potential on the professional tour. Donald was expected to be a top 10 player, perhaps even number 1. These expectations come from being among the best in the world at an early age. From other countries, a top junior from Germany, who beat Novak Djokovic in the Junior Davis Cup finals, didn’t live up to expectations either — never reached the top 500 ATP.

On the flip side, some of our top U.S. adult players grew up as “unknowns” in the junior tennis realm. Robby Ginepri, who reached the singles semi-finals at the U.S. Open and was ranked World Number 15, didn’t start playing until he was 11. Steve Johnson, who was also close to the top 10 ATP and among the best U.S. players on the Tour, didn’t start his dominance until his junior year in college. So, performance on the tennis court will begin to really matter as a young adult after he or she has gone through years of training and development. Even then, as long as they train to get incrementally better, their game will continue to evolve and improve.

The point I want to convey is that it shouldn't matter if your child is behind today. Rather, you should seek that your child is training well, competes, and gets better without feeling like they need to be or play like other kids. The best comparative measurement is if your child is a better player today compared to last week. That’s how you should approach it if you want to create a healthy approach to competitive training.

Four Tips to Moving Better

Roger Federer said, "the best movers are the best players." The top 20 players in the ATP and WTA are the top 20 movers in the world. So, if Roger Federer tells us the best movers will reach the top, we can agree that movement is key to becoming a great player. But do you know why?

Movement is what gets you in position to hit the ball. So, if you move well on the court, you're more likely to get in the correct place and hit the ball with minimal added difficulty. On the flip side, if you're movement is lackluster, then you're making it far more challenging to hit the ball the way you want. Moreover, there is a negative long-term effect of poor movement: bad technique.

Yes, in the long run, poor movement will make your technique worse. When you move badly, you're unlikely to get into a good position, right? A bad position means you are either too close or too far away from the tennis ball. Now, think of what happens to your swing. When you're too close, you will be cramped or jammed and your arm will not be able to swing naturally. You will have to compromise your technique to somehow get the ball over. Same when you're too far from the ball and your body is forced to lean off balance so you can hit the ball. If that happens occasionally, then your technique won't change because, as Aristotle once wrote, you are what you repeatedly do. But if the majority of your shots are hit from a position that's too close or too far, then over the years your technique will be formed around that cramped style. You won't get enough repetitions to practice swinging clean and naturally. Federer was able to develop his beautiful strokes because he became such a great mover and almost always ends up in the right position. Roger was not that smooth when he was a teenager -- her worked very hard on his legwork to reach that level of smoothness and gracefulness.

The Four Tips to Moving Better

(1) Stay on your toes, move continuously, and be in the athletic stance (which just means legs racquet wide apart and knees bent). These might seem like three different things (they are) but for tennis purposes, it is just one thing. You want to package continuous movement while being on your toes and in the athletic stance because those three elements combined make you more ready to move quickly and efficiently on the tennis court.

(2) Split-step. Split-step when your opponent is swinging to hit the ball. That resets your momentum and helps you get ready to change direction quickly toward the area you anticipate the ball will land.

(3) Recover. Recover back quickly to the center or off-center (when you're covering for cross-court angles). If you recover, there will be less open space for you opponent to attack and less distance for you to run. If you do that consistently, you'll have an easier time control most of the of points.

(4) Anticipate. You must anticipate where the ball will go and where you need to be after it lands. The more actively engaged you are with observing the tennis ball and anticipating its trajectory, the sooner and more efficient you'll move. When we're in a passive mode, our reaction time gets delayed putting the player at risk of hitting late.