De-energizer Syndrome

Would you generally characterize your tennis game as;

• (A) a font of joy and self actualization
• (B) a cesspool of anxiety and self-loathing

If you chose (B) then you might want to ask yourself if those very powerful negative feelings you have about the game are largely caused by or the cause of your pathetically suboptimal play. I intend to try to convince you that it is more the latter than the former; that poor attitude creates poor play. I know you have heard it all before - your coaches, partners, even your mom told you to "just smile and enjoy the game!" Not only is this patronizing but it is darn near impossible to smile about or enjoy flubbing easy sitter volleys into the base of the net. There is no context, rationalization or perspective I know about that can frame such an event in anything but a negative light. Even knowing as I do the importance of a positive attitude in athletic performance, I still struggle to smile through my more egregious errors.

The role that a bad attitude (or 'baditude') plays in performance has to do with the expression of Energy in your game. The source of energy in sports is an amalgam of desire, ego, fear, aggression and a dash of psychopathology. Taken all together these disparate emotions express themselves as arousal. Arousal results in an increase in adrenaline (good), strength (good), speed of thought and action (good), aggressiveness (good), courage (good), palpitations (bad), light-headedness (bad), paralysis (bad), muscular tension and tightness (bad) and fear (very bad). No one can play their best without the good results of arousal nor with the bad parts. The trick is to tease out the beneficial, heroic components of arousal (excitement) and block the "jitters" (anxiety).

The source of the jitters is anxiety. In tennis anxiety is brought about by self-doubt, embarrassment, crushing disappointment and a soul-smashing dose of cruel realization of one's pathetic lack of any provable athletic ability. There is enough cold, hard reality in these notions to make them very difficult to dispel with any self-stroking rah-rah known to humankind.

Instead what you need is permission. Permission to go for shots that you know how to hit even when, upon missing them, tennis self-help book writers, your doubles partners, coaches, spouses or parents communicate to you, perhaps just by the infamous "shoulder drop", that someone of your "special ability" in tennis should not be taking a full cut on the ball. You should just shovel it into your opponent's court and pray for them to make an error. Instead, what you need to repress your anxiety is permission to fail: Permission to poach and miss. Permission to double fault. Permission to miss the same shot three times in a row. Permission to go to the net even if you end up getting passed. Permission to hit the short lob. Permission to miss the drop shot. Permission to play A-type tennis even if there is still lots of free space in your trophy case. I hereby grant you permission for all of these and anything else you can imagine. I will even go farther and insist that what you should always do is hit the best shot you own at every single opportunity; regardless of how you feel that day, regardless of how many you have missed, regardless of how "important" you consider the current game, match, set or tournament and regardless of what anyone else thinks about it. The only direction that leads towards your tennis goals, whatever they are, is to take your cut on every ball that comes within your reach and to know, in your heart, that when you miss that shot, I forgive you. I can't guarantee the forgiveness of your doubles partner, but I will assure you that while you tend to remember your losers, everybody else tends to remember your winners. So going for it, even when you fail spectacularly, paradoxically improves other's perception of your ability making it easier to get games, partners and a place on the team. Incidentally, it is also the best way to win, because once you have freed yourself to go for it and miss, you will have the power to transmute the sour taste of anxiety into sweet victory. When you stop worrying about errors, feeling guilty about errors, being embarrassed by errors and playing in abject terror of errors, you will have banished anxiety and unleashed the amazing power of positive Energy.

The True Nature of Forgiveness

So by what right do I have the power to forgive you all of your tennis transgressions? How do I absolve you when all around you, and you, persist in condemning you? The answer is I don't have that power, but you do. The power arises from faith. I am not talking about the faith of prophets and their disciples: I am referring to faith in the most literal meaning of the word; an unapologetic, unshakable, and unassailable belief in something. That something can be anything; a revered coach, a mentor, a system of thought, science, God, Mom, yourself - whatever you feel you can always trust. Most professional tennis players put their faith in their coaches to start and later transfer it to themselves. The object of the faith is completely up to you. The important part is what you must teach yourself to believe that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with you or your tennis game. Any challenges you encounter are the same challenges encountered by all players at all levels. Everyone misses. Everyone fails. Everyone makes egregious errors. The only difference between you and those more talented is that they did not have to work as hard to achieve what you have achieved and that in that extra effort there is a value that you bring to the game. Tennis is, above all things, a test of character. It is not about strength, speed, endurance, coordination, quickness, elite training or balletic beauty. That would be track or figure skating. Tennis is about facing adversity, improving your skills, getting in shape and competing because competition is fun - win, lose or tie. It is about the drama. That is why we all want to play against a player that is two levels above us. The outcome is pretty certain, but what if you won? Or even just made it close? You won't find that kind of tragicomedy in a foot race.

The Zone

Once you feel truly forgiven for your foibles on court the next step is to identify the Zone, find your way into it and drop anchor there. The Zone is located somewhere between pushing your forehand so tentatively that it dribbles into the base of the net and driving it so hard that it penetrates a chain-link backstop. To those of us who are differently abled there does not seem to be a whole lot of room between those two extremes. We struggle to find that magic middle while real athletes seem to stumble into that region and mostly hang out there. From my interviews with players whom I consider very talented, the principal difference in their approach seems to be an attention to feelings over results. A-players care less about where a ball lands than how it felt when they hit it. B-players focus on results. That sounds like a good strategy for business, but it is a trap in tennis. Some great hits have terrible results - the well-hit forehand that misses the baseline by less than an inch for example.

I would tend to view this as a bad outcome and will react by modifying my forehand, often with disastrous results, while Federer's feelings would tell him it was a good hit and he would, therefore, hit the next forehand the same way, usually with a spectacularly good result. The difference; Federer puts his trust in his feelings, his training, and the superior physics of his strokes. His faith in those things is unshakable, even in the face of the weirdness that always happens in a tennis match.

Completeness of Stroke

Most of the advice you have been given about on how to find the Zone likely goes something like this: "...so don't hit the ball softly but don't hit it too hard either..." and who could argue with that? But that notion of how to stay in the Zone is so oversimplified that it is completely useless. How hard is too hard? How soft is too soft? Hitting hard works for some people and I have been beaten by others who are so adept at powder-puff placement that they have me falling all over myself. What the successful slammer and the powder-puff player have in common is both take a complete stroke at every ball. They hit with spin, control and "pop" even when stressed and on the run. Do not confuse completeness with bigness. A large, sweeping swing at a forehand is no more complete than just sticking your racket out and letting the ball hit it. Both of those strokes are equally incomplete. Conversely, a crisp forehand volley hit with dynamic balance, snap, underspin, a loose grip and well-defined lock, load and explode phases is every bit as complete as a full, sweeping topspin drive with the same components. A volley may look "less" than a groundstroke, but to be consistent and effective the volley must have all of the same components as does the drive, albeit in a smaller, more time-efficient package (see short stroking). If you don't take a complete stroke at the ball, if you don't push off with your feet and get all of your muscles involved, if you don't get your bodyweight into the shot, if you don't invest that energy in stored forces for control and spin then the best you can produce is a sloppy slammer or a pathetic push. Although a push may seem safer bet, the inevitable result for me has always been some pathetic tweety-bird shot that is likely to flutter over the baseline or kamikaze into the net. Instead, your goal should be to treat every ball that comes your way to your best and most complete effort with all of the spin, drive, footwork, snap, body turn, follow through and oomph you can muster in the time allowed. In short, the time for just sticking your racket out or just shoving the ball back into the opponent's court is never. Short stroking provides reliable fall-back strokes for when your opponent doesn't see fit to give you time to prepare for a larger swing; a slice return of serve or a "squash shot" for very wide balls for example, but even your most defensive shots should never be throw-aways. Instead, attack them with wild abandon and defiant aggression, and you will make a home for yourself in the Zone.

De-energizer Syndrome
• Chief Complaint
  • "I have no energy!"
• Symptoms(Sx):
  • feet not chirping
  • everything is slow motion
  • no pop
  • depression
  • tightness
    • holding back
    • poor footwork
  • guilt
• Signs(S):
  • holding back
    • no lock or load
    • no pings on the strings
    • pushing or spanking the ball
    Pathophysiology(Px):
    • self doubt
      • no faith
        • athletic ability
        • training
        • strokes
    Diagnostic Tests (Tx):
    • do you believe?
  Treatment(Rx):
  • blind faith
    • no choice
    • in whoever or whatever
      • who you know
        • coach or mentor
      • what you know
      • what you've done
    • remember the goal
      to get to the Zone
      • NOT to win
      • NOT to avoid errors
      • NOT to avoid embarrassment
• Differential Diagnosis:
  • Walkabout Syndrome
  • Tightness Syndrome
  • Fade Syndrome
  • Paralysis Syndrome
  • Expectationism Syndrome
  • Ego Collapse Syndrome
  • Defensiveness Syndrome
  • Regression Syndrome
  • Attribution Syndrome
• Prevention
  1. practice faith
  2. focus on goals
     • stroke completeness
     • practice short strokes
     • find Zone in practice

Getting in Touch With Your Feelings

So for those of us who can't seem to really "feel" the game what does "feels good" or "feels bad" mean? There are certainly proprioceptive clues such as vibration, sound, and impact but I can't demonstrate them adequately with words. There are feelings I can convey with words, and here they are:

Good Feeling/Bad Feeling Words:

The last pair requires a bit of explanation because they look reversed, especially after I encourage you to feel your "weight into the ball." If you hit the ball hard - hit through it with all your might - you get a fast, flat ball with a more or less random direction vector. Conversely "hitting out" means taking a swing complete with the requisite stretch-shortening cycle moves that ensure adequate spin and directional control. Thus a "full swing", comprising all of the necessary components for control but may be a short or long stroke, is different from a "long stroke" which includes a long lag phase during which pace is generated. A long stroke may look like you are hitting out. It may even feel that way to you, but if it does not include the requisite snap that supplies control and spin it is not a full swing, and you are not hitting out. This distinction is so important you should reread the preceding sentence. Conversely a very short stroke such as a volley can also be "hit out" or not. There is a huge difference between a volley hit with snap and underspin and a volley that is merely sticking out the racket and letting the ball hit it, but that difference may be nearly invisible to the eye. The ear can pick up the difference between the musical 'ping' or 'pop' of the ball off the strings in a properly hit volley versus the dull thud of a block volley. Both can result in winners, but only a properly hit volley gives you the control you need to effectively handle volleys that are low, high, fast, slow or half.

Back to the Zone

I don't blame you if you tell me you can't 'feel' the ball like Federer does. I don't know if anyone can. The larger point is to trust the feelings you have, the strokes you have and the game you have. I could get arbitrary about it and remind you that they, and you, are all you've got, but I won't sink to that. More important is the process by which we find our way into the Zone. The journey is powered by natural anxiety transmogrified into positive energy by unshakable faith in yourself and your game. If you count your errors, dwell on your inadequacies or curse the fates for your rotten luck that same anxiety turns to guilt, fear, and depression all of which leads inexorably to the Pit of Despair aka Tennis Hell.