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Tennis is a game of anticipation. You constantly have to adjust your movements based on what is happening on your opponents side of the court. One of the ways we were taught to help with anticipation is a move called the "slit step". When your opponent is about to hit the ball, you are supposed to do a mini hop, and when you land you want that to be when they hit the ball. We were told that once you land you will be in an athletic position ready to move quickly to the ball. I'm not sure if there is science to support that, but what I do know now is that we needed to have a high level of the response orientation perceptual motor ability. This ability helps make quick choices among numerous alternative actions, which we must do before every single shot. We must decide whether we want to return the ball down the line, cross court, lob the ball, do a drop shot, add slice or topspin, if we want to set up and approach shot so we can charge the net, and many more. Our response orientation was one of many keys to success (along with a gnarly split step)!

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As a doubles player, I was given the opportunity to try to correct not only my own mistakes, but also work with my partner to try to correct his individually, and both of ours as a unit. It is not only the job of the coach, but it is also the job of the other athletes. In order to be effective in giving corrections, there are a few things that we want to make sure happen first. The first thing is to relate the new skill to a well-learned skill. This will help the athlete remember the skill better. In this case, we can just try to make minor corrections to their technique in order to not disrupt the progress they have already made on a certain skill. Another thing to keep in mind is to let the athlete have a moment to reflect on their performance before you correct them. This will allow the athlete to learn how to use their our sensory feedback to make performance corrections.

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You play tennis? You'll be great at this! 

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You play tennis? You'll be great at this! 

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It was an extremely strange phenomenon, but apparently because I knew how to play tennis at a high level, I instantly knew how to play every sport with a racquet, or that required a swinging motion (insert heavy sarcasm)! Whether it be baseball, ping pong, or badminton, people constantly looked at me to be the most elite athlete in these sports that I really had never played. Although some skills were transferred between tasks due to similarity of the motor programs, I was not the Chosen One when it came to these new sports. BadMINTON was the worst unit to come in gym class, due to the fact that it had my last name in it, and it had a racquet with a net. These two factors meant I was supposed to be the next Michael Jordan of badminton, apparently! Although the general motor program between the two sports were similar which allowed me to pick up on the game a little faster than others, I was as much of a novice at this sport as anyone else.

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Looking back on a life of tennis, it seems as if the contextual interference theory was applied constantly during practice. My coach always tried to give us game time scenarios, and didn’t believe in the traditional feeding of balls and trying to hit one target over and over. In order to become great at returning a serve, he would not just have us return the same ball over and over, he would mix up the speeds of his serves, the types of serves (topspin, side spin, flat), and where he would stand on the service line. This way we would have to constantly have to abandon previous action plans and reconstruct them when we needed them again, making it a better learning environment.

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With an entire lifetime of tennis, these skills have been etched into my procedural knowledge. I no longer need to think about how my wrist is going to move during my forehand, or how much trunk rotation I need on my backhand, these things just come naturally now. Come summertime, many people tend to approach me to ask them to play tennis with them while it is nice out! I love to still hit the ball around, so I always say yes. Unfortunately for me (and them) I am normally asked for tips on how to improve a certain shot, but sadly, I cannot communicate something that just comes naturally to me now. I try my best to show them what they need to do, but not everyone learns that way, some people need the verbal instructions. This is just as frustrating to me as it is to them, why can't they just see what I am doing and copy that? I now understand that my procedural knowledge may be getting in the way of my teaching abilities! I will just try to give them some external feedback next time, after I give them time to process their shot of course!