Real improvement starts with bridging the gap of awareness
...and once you do that, you can accomplish in weeks and months what traditional lessons would do in years (if ever)
Oh, you’re still here? Good.
Traditional tennis instruction is a funny thing. It’s one of the few investments in life where people go back week after week, year after year, sometimes for decades, with minimal improvements.
The main reason behind this is the lack of a process.
“If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.” – W. Edwards Deming
Let’s go back to the example of John… you saw his forehand earlier:
These improvements didn’t happen through incremental change.
(Are you seeing how incremental change is the enemy here? 😳)
These improvements happened through fundamental + foundational changes… and those can only happen when you bridge the gap of awareness.
The first step of any process to improvement is to know and understand what you’re already doing… and compare that – side by side, movement by movement – to what you’re supposed to be doing.
That can’t happen with the naked eye.
The scariest thing a tennis player can do is record himself or herself playing. But when you do that, you bridge the gap of awareness.
For the first time ever, you get to see your feet, your unit turn, your racket path, your grip, your arm extension, your follow through, your racket face at contact, and so much more.
For the first time ever, you get a full view of everything that you’re doing in the hundredths of a second that determine whether you hit a winner or hit the ball long.
And… when you combine that with seeing your individual movements compared with a pro (yes, side by side, movement by movement), for the first time ever you eliminate the gap of awareness completely.
The truth is, most players will never see themselves on video… so it will take them years to understand the intricacies of what their bodies are doing versus what they should be doing. (If they ever figure it out at all)
But if you’re one of the brave ones willing to record just a few seconds of yourself hitting a ball, then real improvement can happen. Because then you can use a process.
Here’s what the process looks like from start to finish…
Understand. See and understand exactly what your body is doing at each part of your stroke. Don’t guess at what you’re doing… get yourself on video, in slow motion, frame by frame, so you understand your body’s movements.
Analyze. Compare yourself side by side with a pro and analyze the key checkpoints in their swings. Analyze the mechanics of a successful stroke so you understand fundamental movements versus stylistic movements… all of the top pros have different styles, but the same fundamentals behind their movements.
Repetitions. The hardest thing to do is to break old habits… especially when they’ve been repeated thousands of times over years. Just like trying to cut through a forest with a machete, it's hard at first, but get's easier every single time you do it... at first there's a lot of resistance, but before long each and every rep makes it smoother
If this stuff sounds heavy, it is. There’s a reason why most players at your local courts are almost all at the same level… it’s because the road to mastery involves breaking you down before it builds you back up.
(This goes against everything we talked about when it comes to traditional tennis instruction making you feel better!)
PS. By this point you should already see that there’s no way around it… if you want to eliminate the gap of awareness, you must get yourself on camera. I promise it’s not as scary as you think, and there’s a fast way to get up and running using this process to real tennis improvement.
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