Tennis and the Power of the Mind
As the ball fires off the end of the opponent’s racket, the body, within one second, must complete a symphony of calculations, measurements, movements, adjustments, and muscle contractions. Armed with information from the eyes, the brain must compute the ball’s landing spot and where the racket head needs to be to make contact for the return of serve. This split-second calculation includes velocity, spin, wind effects, and various trajectories (vertical and horizontal). Once the ball hits the court, these calculations must be repeated with more urgency as the ball is quickly approaching. Every movement is more important than the last as contact is imminent.
Anytime I think I’m not good at math, I consider the complex calculations that are required of even an average tennis player — that makes me feel a little better about struggling mightily to a C in high school geometry. The complexity of even seemingly simple human tasks was pointed out by W. Timothy Gallwey in his famous tennis book (a self-help book in disguise) when he said:
“The truth is that everyone who inhabits a human body possesses a remarkable creation.”
Over the years I’ve changed just about every aspect of my game to become a better tennis player. I’ve switched forehand grips, adjusted my serve toss height, opened up my stance, and made countless other tweaks, but my game remained stagnant. I always assumed I’d reached my potential as a player — one who had no formal lessons and adopted numerous irreversible bad habits. But after reading Gallwey’s book, I’m rethinking everything.
Gallwey wrote the Inner Game of Tennis to help tennis players like me, but one could easily replace the word tennis with any sport or skill and change some of the technical parts (there aren’t many) to improve at just about anything. Written in the early 70s, Gallwey’s primer has stood the test of time.
The problem most tennis players, amateurs, and professionals alike, have isn’t with our grip, stance, or footwork — it’s with our minds. Instead of endlessly nitpicking every physical movement and berating ourselves after poor shots, Gallwey teaches the inner game, in which the player “comes to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills…(aiming) at the kind of spontaneous performance which occurs only when the mind is calm and seems at one with the body, which finds it’s own surprising ways to surpass it’s own limits time and time again.”
It’s easy to understand what Gallwey is getting at here. The best players are often described as “unconscious” or “out of their minds.” But telling someone to relax is like telling someone who is anxious not to worry. Without practical exercises or tips to remedy their anxious mind, the advice is useless (and likely counter-productive). After Gallwey declares “the art of relaxed concentration” as the secret to great performances, he guides the reader in learning how to achieve the elusive state.
It doesn’t matter what you want to improve at; the Inner Game can help. By discovering how to keep our judging selves at bay and unleash the subconscious learning we’ve used since birth, we can stop struggling, interfering, and worsening and simply “let it happen.”
Here are eight lessons from The Inner Game of Tennis that you can apply to anything in your life:
Images are better than words:
Watching my daughter learn to walk was one of the most fascinating things I’ve witnessed. From a helpless baby, barely able to move, to running around like a banshee within a few short years, she learned the complicated mechanics of upright walking on her own. She watched those around her, practiced, and learned.
Imagine if she had never seen anyone walk and was forced to learn through verbal instruction. Sure, perhaps eventually, she could have put it all together (she’d have had to learn the language first), but her development would’ve been years behind schedule. It’s incredible how much we learn by observing.
Gallwey argues that too much instruction is worse than no instruction at all. He taught thousands of players and realized that “the concentrated mind has no room for thinking how well the body is doing, much less of the how-to’s of the doing.” In other words, when we start thinking about every little step in a process, we tighten up and disrupt the parts of our brain and body that know precisely what to do and how to do it.
Foster an inner trust:
I’ve had inner conversations on the tennis court that would make even the most experienced sea dogs blush. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I’ve called myself every derogatory name in the book and invented some new ones. Gallwey proposes a simple exercise: imagine that self-1 (the name-calling critic) and self-2 (the person playing tennis) were two people, a coach and a player. He suggests asking, “how would you characterize their relationship after witnessing a conversation between them?”
In my case, toxic wouldn’t begin to describe this coach-player relationship, and I’d immediately suggest the player find a new coach. Gallwey summarizes the internal struggle as a lack of trust between self-1 and self-2. Even though self-2 is extremely capable, self-1 assumes control (thanks a lot, ego), causing too much thinking and tension.
But how can we quiet that loud, boisterous ego-maniac that is self-1? The first step is to let go of “the human inclination to judge ourselves and our performance as either good or bad.” This doesn’t sound easy, and it isn’t at first, but it creates extraordinary results when achieved.
This morning while playing, I hit quite a few forehands long at first. My typical response would be to utter something like, “my forehand is terrible today,” but instead, I said, “I’m hitting a lot of forehands long right now.” This less judgmental version prevents the judging mind from extending itself. It may start with “my forehand is terrible today” and progress to “I have a terrible stroke” after several more mishits. Within minutes the extension might evolve to “I suck at tennis.”
In hindsight, this same extension problem led to my math struggles in school. I was doing well at math until I came to a concept I had trouble mastering. Instead of saying, “I don’t understand this concept well,” I allowed self-1 to convince me that I’m not good at math — a self-fulfilling prophecy.
By removing the judgments and seeing things for what they are (long forehands or a poor understanding of one mathematical concept), self-1 will better trust self-2 to act, leading to surprising results.
Program for results:
Please don’t feel bad for self-1; he won’t be left out of the learning process. While the need to quiet self-1 is evident, Gallwey explains that he has a “valid role in learning and playing tennis.” When doing something complex, like hitting a tennis ball, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the minutiae (eastern or western grip, open or closed stance) and forget about the results (did the ball go where you wanted it).
When it’s game time, it’s too late to fiddle with a new grip — but you can use mental imagery to improve your game. Gallwey suggests you “hold in your mind the image of where you want the ball to go and then allow the body to do what is necessary to hit it there.” In this case, self-1 serves an important role, setting the goal, but then he must step aside and allow self-2 to act.
Programming for results or shifting attention from the means to the end allows for healthy interaction between self-1 and self-2, not the toxic one I’ve experienced on the court (and off) over and over again.
Program by identity:
If self-1 has you convinced you’re not tennis player material, it might be time for some role-playing. Gallwey tries this with students who have an especially vexing self-1. He tells his students to pretend that he is “the director of a television series” and asks them to play the role of a top tennis player. Gallwey continues, “I assure you that you needn’t worry about hitting the ball out or into the net because the camera will only be focused on you and will not follow the ball. What I’m mainly interested in is that you adapt professional mannerisms and that you swing your racket with supreme self-assurance.”
Gallwey found that role-playing allowed his students to get outside themselves; when they did, they experienced marked improvements in their game. Some changes were so dramatic that players exhibited styles of play they had never demonstrated before — totally transforming their games.
Replace bad habits:
“Habits are statements about the past, and the past is gone.” Recognizing a bad habit is not enough; you need to change it. And changing a habit is much easier when you replace it. When my daughter learned to walk, she didn’t need to break her habit of crawling; she just replaced it with walking, a better way to get about.
Park the mind:
Concentration is one of those tricky concepts to describe, so it’s easier to start with what it’s not. According to Gallwey, concentration is not “staring hard at something…trying to concentrate…(or) thinking hard about something.” Instead, concentration is a “fascination of mind.” Trying to concentrate is oxymoronic and counter-productive; thus, it leads to stiffness of the mind and body.
But we can practice relaxed concentration. For tennis players, Gallwey recommends focusing less on the game and more on the ball. He suggests intensely watching the seams or listening to the distinct sound as it comes off the racket. Focusing on the ball instead of the game “parks” the mind — creating the stillness required for peak performance.
One who can focus is one who can appreciate. Once you’ve achieved a flow state, an activity reveals a new level of enjoyment. Gallwey touched on this, saying:
“The value of concentration becomes clear as we grow to understand that nothing can be enjoyed or appreciated if it cannot be known. Beauty cannot be enjoyed unless one can know it…By increasing the effective power of awareness, concentration allows us to throw more light on whatever we value knowing, and to that extent enables us to know and enjoy it more.”
Concentration, in effect, adds texture to our lives but can only be fully realized once we can park the mind.
Be here, now:
“It’s perplexing why we ever leave the here and now. Here and now are the only place and time when one ever enjoys himself or accomplishes anything.”
You’re likely beginning to see that Gallwey, while a great tennis coach, was also a tremendous philosopher and teacher of the art of learning. Having worked with thousands of students, he learned that the greatest interrupters of focus are the past and the future. On the court, it’s especially easy to start creating a future. “If I lose this point, I’ll be down 1–3,” but this imagining creates a lapse in concentration. Gallwey warns, “the conscious energy you need to perform at your peak in the now has been leaking into an imagined future.”
A simple awareness of the wandering mind is enough to start reining it in. But the key, Gallwey says, is practice — “I have found that the most direct means of increasing one’s ability to concentrate is through the practice of meditation.” A meditation practice can enhance alertness, which Gallwey describes as “a measure of how many nows you are aware of in any given period.” Through meditation, your brain can learn to slow down, be present, and become alert to more nows — a significant benefit in tennis and life.
Be Unfreakable:
In a noisy, ever-changing world, the ability to not freak out is indispensable. Remaining calm when everyone else is losing their minds is the ultimate advantage. People freak out all the time — when they hit a traffic jam, making them late to a meeting, when the stock market plunges, taking a bite out of their net worth, when a candidate from the opposing political party wins an election, and when their boss passes over them for promotion. The freaking-out mind loses its ability to reason, to see clearly the events that are unfolding, and to take the appropriate actions.
Gallwey identifies three types of freak-outs:
Regret about past events
Fear or uncertainty about the future
Dislike of a present event or situation
But in each case, Gallwey argues the event and the mind’s reaction or two separate things. The first two types of freakouts are especially nonsensical because we have no control over them. The past has already happened and cannot be changed. The future is unknowable, so energy spent on it is wasted. Learning to keep the mind in the present eliminates (or severely dampens) the first two types, leaving “dislike of a present event or situation” as the lone remaining source. There are two ways to deal with unpleasant circumstances: change the circumstance or change your mind.
To play the inner game well, we need to learn to let go - a point Gallwey demonstrates with a story:
A Zen master once asked an audience of Westerners what they thought was the most important word in the English language. After giving his listeners a chance to thkn about such favorite words as love, truth, faith, and so on, he said, “No, it’s a three-letter word; it’s the word let."
Giving up a sense of control is not easy, but letting go allows us to accept life for what it is and focus on those few things we can control, which helps us remain unfreakable even when things seem to be falling apart.
Is it possible that one of the best books for life is about improving your tennis game?
Yes, I think so. Life is a pattern of the same things happening over and over again, just with different flavors, colors, and sounds. Humans have faced the same trials and tribulations for thousands of years, despite new technologies and progress. The same hindrances to my tennis game impede my improvement as a writer (and other areas I want to improve), so Gallwey’s book, despite being about tennis, is really about controlling your mind, which can improve every part of your life.
