There are only 5  skills you need in tennis, in order of importance:

Consistency

Direction

Depth

Spin

Power

A lack of any one of these often leads to frustration and anger, which leads to  even worse performance and ultimately no enjoyment.

I’ve always found it strange that such a simple and beautiful activity could lead to such emotional turmoil. Just stand next to a court, close your eyes and listen to what goes on on a tennis court one day. If you didn’t know it was just a game, you might think people were being tortured! “AAAARGH! You idiot! Hit up on the ball! Move your feet! Come on!” Quite amazing.

There are two ways to get these 5 essentials in tennis.

The easy way and the hard way.

The easy way: Effortless Learning.

By effortless learning I don’t mean to sit on the sofa and magically become a better tennis player. Effortless learning involves activity, but it doesn’t involve ‘trying hard’. When you try hard, you tense up which means your muscles oppose each other, there is no fluidity and no power.

Have you noticed that in pressure situations when you are nervous, you tend to under hit the ball? That’s because of tension in your muscles – they’re fighting each other.

But in effortless learning, you don’t fight anything, you just learn. You don’t get rid of bad habits, you create new, better habits. You don’t get rid of the hitch in your swing, you gain a fluid swing.

When you were a toddler and were graduating from crawling to walking, you didn’t think to yourself, “My walking is really bad. I’m walking on my knees and hands, I should be on 2 feet with no hands! I need to fix it.”

No, you just stood up and started walking without trying to mold your crawling into walking. And it worked pretty well didn’t it?

You can walk pretty well, can’t you? How often do you fall over while you’re walking, put the wrong foot forward, trip over your own feet, forget to step, or step with the wrong foot?

Wow, you must have had a really good walking teacher! No? Then who taught you to walk so well?

You, of course! You taught yourself to walk. And it was easy and fun. By watching other children who were walking and then trying it yourself and naturally correcting through noticing what happened and not giving yourself a hard time when you didn’t ‘do it right’, you learned to walk without ‘trying to learn’ to walk.

You weren’t tense or mad at yourself when you fell over while learning. You just noticed what happened and did it differently the next time until you found what worked for you and that naturally became your walk. And now look at you! You could be a professional walker!

But somehow, as we get older, we get the idea we need to read a book, be told what to do, break a thing down into it’s parts and memorize and that will be that – we will have ‘learned” it. But that’s not learning, that’s memorizing. Sounds like school doesn’t it?

Zen Tennis takes you back to your natural, simple way of learning. Like the way you learned to walk. No stress, no frustration, no beating yourself up. Just simple awareness and correction.

Do you have that voice in your head telling you what to do? That all knowing, all powerful voice that knows everything?

How’s that working for you? Does it help you enjoy your tennis, or does it create frustration and criticism? Have you noticed that the voice is quick to criticise and slow to compliment?

A little known fact is that your ‘body mind’ (the mind that learned to walk without instructions or reading a book) knows how to get the ball over the net better than the voice in your head that says things like “Remember to keep your racquet down, watch the ball. Racquet down, step, racquet down, DOWN! Damm it! Idiot! You did it again! Keep your racquet down!” Once you realise this and put it into practice, you start making real progress and enjoying the process of learning and improving your game. The ball magically gets over the net and you feel relaxed and start really enjoying the beauty of the game.

Using a combination of mental game techniques and the ’still mind’ principles of Zen I have been consistently amazed at how my skill and enjoyment of your tennis game have increased. In a nutshell,  using these simple techniques will get you in the Zone more often and you’ll be playing your best tennis and  improving and enjoying yourself in a way that will surprise you.

These techniques have been used since the 1970’s and have been very successful.

However, if you prefer regular instructional type lessons, I am a certified Professional Tennis Registry Pro and can offer you a regular lesson, or a mix of Zen and regular, whatever works for you.

The Hard Way: learn to control the 640 muscles in your body.

Step in with your left foot, bend your knees, take the racquet back and down, turn your shoulders, follow through, watch the ball, kiss your elbow.

And that’s the simple version. If you really think you can control your body with the voice in your head, you’re in for a tiring match.

Trying to tell your body everything it needs to do is impossible. Against any decent server, you have less than 1 second to respond. That means that in 1 second you have to tell your body to change to a forehand or backhand grip, move into position, turn your shoulders, get the racquet back, swing, follow through. Oh yes, and don’t forget the tip you got at your last lesson…what was it again. Oooooh, the ball just went straight past you.

That’s a bit of an over exaggeration to make a point, but I think you get what I’m saying – you can’t tell your body everything it needs to do. In fact, you can only really focus on one command at a time, whereas your body naturally does hundreds of things at the same time without you even thinking about it.

So in the hard way, you try to tell your body everything it is doing wrong and how to do it right. In the easy way, you let your body’s natural intelligence guide it and make the necessary corrections naturally.

I’m not saying there is no place for instructional lessons, just that they are over used and don’t allow for people’s unique playing style. If you’ve watched the pros play, you’ll notice they all have a different style, especially with their serves. That’s because everybody is different, and what what works best for me and my body type, might not be the best thing for you to try to get your body type to do.

With Zen Tennis you learn your best style, for your body type, for your inclinations. This means less stress, less chance of injury and more efficient strokes.

To try Zen Tennis for yourself call me on (904) 556 2990 to set up a lesson. Or visit the contact page and send me an email.

See you on the court!

Paul