Walkabout

This disease process was first recognized by Aussie tennis players. The Australian "walkabout" refers to a particularly confused and aimless state brought on by the merciless sun and heat of the Australian Outback. In tennis, walkabout refers to an inability to hit anything but an egregious error. It poisons the serve, volley, lob, drop-shot, drives, running, walking, talking, and resisting the temptation to call oneself a "spastic nitwit looser..." You know you are in walkabout when nothing in your game works. You find yourself missing the unmissable, flubbing the un-flubbable, and generally embarrassing and exasperating yourself. It should not be confused with a failure of a specific stroke nor with any of the more specific physiological syndromes described elsewhere. The condition is global and catastrophic.

Walkabout is not a rare condition. Everyone who plays tennis finds themselves 'on the Outback' occasionally. Some of us seem to spend a lot of time there, often taking up residence for an extended hiatus. An extended walkabout is called a "slump," and having spent a significant portion of my tennis career in one slump or another, I can tell you that one is pretty much like another, which suggests a common etiology.

Walkabout is most often episodic. One can start a match in the Zone, hitting the targets, moving well, and making good decisions only to find oneself sliding inexorably into an infernal pit of despair.

Metabolic Collapse - the Silent Assassin

My original take on Walkabout was that it was psychological. A result of the inexorable Shame Spiral that haunts talentless people like myself. Over time, however, as I plowed through all of the major tennis neurosis to create this site, I noticed that even with all of my ego-based demons tamed, I still had days when I was useless on the tennis court. One day, as I was twonking second serves up into the ceiling, I experienced a moment of clarity. The total inability to execute the simplest of tennis movements could not be due to a crisis of confidence. Since walkabout is impervious to any exercise of will, it has to be physiologic. Since it disrupts all aspects of one's tennis game, it must be generalized. And since it takes down one's entire game at once, it must have a single, focal root cause. The organ system that is most directly involved with all athletic activities is the musculoskeletal system. While many systems of the body support the muscles, the one which is most responsible for muscle function from moment to moment is the cardiovascular system.

A disruption of oxygenation of the blood or blood flow to the muscles could wreak havoc with the functioning of every muscle in the body simultaneously. The physical symptoms might be quite subtle, but the disruption of complex movements such as tennis strokes would be devastating.

I believe that the pathophysiology of walkabout is the failure of overused, stiff, diseased, or oxygen-starved muscles to respond appropriately to nerve signals coming from the brain. I call this phenomenon Cellular Metabolic Collapse but it might as well be called 'muscle-no-work'. It is a painless condition similar to the last rep of weight-lifting set, wherein one tries to move the weights, but the muscles can no longer respond. This state can last minutes, hours, or days depending on the root cause. Dehydration, hypoglycemia, inadequate nutrition, alcohol, and drugs can all potentiate this condition, but the most important cause is oxygen debt due to poor blood flow or poor blood oxygenation. If you feel 'stiff' at the start of a match, are out of breath during a point, or feel exhausted late in a match, your muscles may not respond as your brain expects them to. You may have every good intention of putting topspin on your forehand, for example. Still, the best your upper body musculature can do is hit directly through the ball, sending it over the baseline. The condition is completely painless, and the dysfunction of the muscles is partial, so you may not experience anything but egregious and frequent errors, loss of power, and profound frustration. There is no quick and easy fix for this state. The muscles always recover function, but rarely during a match. If lactic acidosis sets in, the effects can be quite profound or even dangerous. The best that you can do if you suspect that you are suffering from cellular metabolic collapse of the muscles is to decrease the muscle cell energy utilization to give your muscles time to recover. Warming up before a match, starting slower, and trying to play efficiently may help. In dire emergencies, tactical adjustments such as switching from topspin to slice or playing from no-man's-land can help. The only way to prevent this calamity is to get in better cardiovascular shape through weight loss, aerobic training, and hitting lots of balls to condition the upper body. I always hoped that such activities were required only of elite athletes for whom a quicker step might mean the difference between mediocrity and fame, but now it seems that I can either run every day or risk humiliating myself every time I step out onto the court.