Why Tennis Players Obsess So Much About Tennis Instruction

This is Part II of The Biggest Myth That Is Hurting Your Game and in this article you'll learn why there is so much focus on instruction and almost none about improving the feel through repetition.

The reason is quite simple: tennis techniques can be analyzed and explained in detail with pictures and videos. This makes it very interesting to both teach and learn.

It also suggests the logical connection between a problem - missing a shot - and a solution - doing something different with your movement.

But this logical solution is RARELY the right solution. The most common solution to missing a shot is more practice.

This means that at first glance you are doing the same as before; you adjust only with feel - more to the left, more to the right, higher, lower, more or less and so on.

But why is practice (i.e., repetition) so rarely mentioned?

Simple. Because there would then be nothing to write about.

For example, let's say you want to improve the accuracy of your forehand down the line.

Here's how you do it: have some one play with you down the line, and then try hitting a marked area about 1m wide. Do this for 5 to 10 minutes.

That's it.

Doing this will solve 90% of your problems with down the line forehands. No words, no instruction, just doing it.

Now, before you go to the next step, you'd need to practice this for a few weeks. There wouldn't then be any instruction needed for improving the down the line forehand.

Sure, we can conduct detailed analysis and tell the player to keep the racquet face perpendicular to the net, but will that really help? Can a player really control the racquet face accurately to the degree while swinging at 40 km/h?

This is not something that the player can consciously do. The feel will improve automatically with time and thousands of repetitions.

So, there is nothing to write about. But how can we coaches represent repetition on our websites or in the books? With white space? :)

Here's the problem:

When you are on court with a coach (a good one), he/she controls how much information you need at a certain stage, and how many repetitions you need of a particular piece of information (before you learn something new).

If you are practicing a down the line forehand, then I would mark the area and ask you to play there, and then I wouldn't say anything for 5 minutes! I might give you a tip here and there, and then we wouldn't talk much for another 5 minutes.

As a coach, I control the ratio information / repetition on the court.

But right now, YOU control the information / repetition ratio. And, unless you have been training in tennis for years, or have been a tennis coach yourself, then you may not know the right ratio.

In fact, since the only thing that you read on websites or in books is information (there is no way to represent repetition!) you mistakenly assume that this information is the key to improvement.

Twice in the last 6 months someone requested a refund on my How to Play Videos saying that he / she expected more instruction.

But, there is no need for more information to learn basic tennis techniques. What one needs is to take the information from the videos and hit thousands of balls.

I guarantee that you will play very good beginner's tennis (i.e., baseline, volleys, overheads, serves and returns) without any more instruction than presented in the videos.

But you will have to play each drill a few times hitting a few hundred balls...

So, what happens is that you learn new information perhaps on this website, you go to a court, practice that for one lesson and, when things don't work (YET!), you go back to the Internet and try to find a solution.

Your information or repetition ratio is not right.

Imagine a junior tennis player who started playing at 7 and is now around 17 years of age. How much of their practice is instruction, and how much is repetition?

I never precisely measured the time, but there is definitely more than 90% of repetition and less than 10% instruction. We are probably talking something like 98% repetition and 2% instruction.

And here's another one: how much of that 2% instruction is new information, and how much of that is just REMINDING the player what to do?

My estimate is that the new to reminding instruction ratio is around 1 / 10. I suggest that you ask a few tennis coaches these two questions to get a few more opinions on this matter, but I am pretty sure that they will you give roughly the same numbers.

There are some estimates of how much repetition you need before your movements become automatic. The minimum number that I have heard is 2,000, and the maximum is 20,000.

So, let's say it takes around 8,000 repetitions to store information subconsciously.

If you just rally with someone for 1 hour, you will hit around 800 shots. If all these shots were forehands down the line, then you would need 10 hours to store basic information, and have pretty good consistency playing a forehand down the line from a standing position.

If you want to improve a forehand down the line from a ball that is coming from cross court, you'd need another 8,000 repetitions; very likely more, since that's a more difficult situation.

But, since we don't practice forehands down the line for 1 hour, it will take much more than 10 hours to get to a solid foundation.

Why don't we practice a forehand down the line for 1 hour?

1. You cannot keep good concentration for 1 hour on the same thing. It becomes boring.

2. You would have to use the same muscle groups over and over, and would get tired.

3. When you play in a real match, you don't play down the line for a few minutes. In fact, you probably don't play more than 4 or 5 times in the same direction. So, you also need to practice with variety.

4. Much better improvement can be expected if you practice 3 days for 20 minutes (or 4 days for 15 minutes) than if you practice 1 day for 60 minutes.

So, once you think carefully about all the different forehands down the line (standing, closed stance, open stance, running and being able to stop, running and not being able to stop, high ball, low ball, top spin ball, sliced ball, fast ball, slow ball and others), you quickly realize that it takes years to master the whole game of tennis.

And the key is not more instruction, but more practice.

Next time: When is instruction really needed and how to make the best use of it? (not getting confused…)