David Ranney's Tennis Blog

About How to Blog

I am always interested in learning how to do things and as you know blogging is new to me and I don't know much about it except how to post items. I came across this program about how to blog and like it says, I will be evaluating it, but I am hoping that I will learn something new and interesting. Below is the offer they have made to me and it is available to you if you want.

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I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

What do I Mean when I say Keep Watching the Ball Inbetwen Points

Here are some questions that I received on an instruction in my book:

Between points and games, you say to "keep watching the ball".  What do you mean by this?  Do you really mean watch the ball just sitting there on the court?  Most of the time between points, the balls are in someone's pocket, so I cannot see it.  Or do you mean this figuratively?  As in imagine seeing the ball.

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No, I mean this literally. Find some ball on the court to focus on. If you have the ball in your hand, you can bounce it or anything else as long as you are focusing on it. If you must, focus on a ball on another court. If there is truly no ball anywhere that you can see, then you are excused from this for that short period of time. You can still focus and be aware of your breathing.

It is also very helpful to be aware of both the ball and your breathing. Before I was able to be aware of my breathing when I was playing in a match, I would at least focus on my breathing in between points as well as focus on the ball.

This can be a very powerful exercise but I have to say it is very hard to do but worth working on. One way to practice this if you are playing with a fellow mental game enthusiast, is to just play with one ball for a while. See how many times your mind wanders from consciously seeing the ball when you are trying to do it every second.

Be aware of what your mind is thinking during the time you lose your focus. Remember, this is just another way to keep in the here and now and train your mind to stay focused on seeing the ball. The whole point of this is, if you see the ball, even between points, you will be able to focus on it that much easier during the actual point.

About the “other than conscious mind”

Here is a question I had about what the “other than conscious mind” is.

I stole the name “other than conscious mind” from Dave Dobson as I think it explains better what is going on.

The other than conscious mind is that part of the mind that controls all the organs, muscles, and all the other things that go on in the body automatically and is out of our awareness. It also includes the subconscious mind and the ego mind. Since the mind is what controls everything in the body, every part of mind that you are not conscious of is what Dave Dobson called the ‘other”.

Please don’t get too caught up in thinking that you have to really understand all this mind stuff. Just use it as a tool to understand how to get your conscious mind out of the way and let the other part of your mind control your body and to let it learn how to hit the ball into the court.

Without going into a big description, think about when you walk. Your conscious mind determines where you want to walk but you don’t think about walking and how your legs move etc. You just walk. That is the way tennis should be played.

If you haven’t already, you must read Tim Gallwey’s book the Inner Game of Tennis. He goes into great detail about the different minds. In his book he calls it Self One and Self Two but it is all the same as what I am talking about.

Also, Ron Waite’s new e-book will help you to understand this relationship between the different parts of the mind. This e-book is only $10 and it will help you more than just the mind explanation. Here is the link. www.tennisserver.com/turbo/perfect-tennis.html 

I do not go into all this in my book because Tim writes about it so much better than I ever could which is why I recommend it to all players who really are into the mental game.

Getting a Kick Out of Being An Author

I was playing with a friend, Ann, at the local public park when an adult and two kids (about 11 or 12 years old) showed up to practice. The adult was the father of the kids and we heard him talking to the kids about breathing and watching the ball. When we took a little break, Ann said to me that they must have my book because they were talking about breathing and seeing the ball. I agreed because I have never heard anyone talk about these things except me.

When we went back out on the court, I said hi to one of the kids when he came close and he said to his Dad. “Dad, it’s David Ranney, the author of the book.” The kid then told me he thought the book was awesome and that it helped him a lot.

I thought this was pretty amazing that a kid that young was getting so much value from my book. I must say that these kids were members of our club, were not beginners, and were pretty good players for their age. I have since worked with them on their game.

Anyway, I got a real kick out of the fact that they were really benefiting from my book before I even knew them.

Want to play 1000 Times Better in 10 Minutes?

At the National Indoors 60’s tournament, I was selling my book at the tournament desk. A fellow player purchased my book and after reading the lesson on seeing the ball, he came up to me and asked me if I would give him “the test” in person.

In case you don’t know about “the test”, it is a simple exercise that I give new students to demonstrate and experience how the ball must be seen. Only about 2% get this correct and it has shown me that even if I tell people to see the ball, they just don’t know what that means until they get the results of “the test.”

Since giving the test is one of my favorite things to do, I agreed. As it turns out, he was one of the 2% of the people who got the test correct.

However, I noticed that his strokes were not as consistent as they could be. Being the compulsive teacher that I am, I told him I wanted to show him the Mother of all Tips exercise. This is lesson #40 in my book and you get it for free when you sign up for my free Mini Lessons that I send out every two weeks. So, for the next 10 minutes, I showed him how to do this and made sure he was doing it correctly.

It turned out that he was still in the mixed doubles consolation and he was playing with a woman who he had never met before. Later in the day, he came up to me and said, “We just finished our match and my partner asked me after the match what had a happened to me. She said that my game had improved 1000%.” He told me that he just decided to use what he had learned earlier with me and it made a huge difference in his game.

Now, you and I know that 1000% is an exaggeration, but we also know that something dramatic happened to his play, all because of his ability to see the ball correctly and his ability to do the Mother of All Tips during his match. Now I don’t recommend doing the Mother of all Tips in a match, but he was able to modify it enough so that it worked big time for him.

I don’t expect most people will get such dramatic results but you can expect to see immediate improvement just by doing one or both of these concepts.

When Billie Jean King Broke the Wimbledon Record

Elizabeth (Bunny) Ryan, who held the record of the most wins at Wimbledon for many years, was my first tennis instructor when I was a kid. I don’t know when my mom met her, but somehow my mom and Bunny were friends. When I played in Junior Wimbledon we spent a lot of time with Bunny who showed us around and introduced us to some of her famous friends. She would also come and visit with us when she came to Southern California.

Anyway, this is just background. According to my mom, Bunny was very proud of her Wimbledon record, which, as you know, she held for many years. And, if I have my facts correct, she died on the day Billie Jean King broke her record of the most wins. My mom said that Bunny just didn’t want to be alive when her record was broken. If you can believe this, somehow Bunny knew she was going to break her record and just decided this was the time for her to go so she didn’t have to face the fact that she no longer held the record.

Again, I don’t know for sure if this is true, but it makes a good story and I have been telling it for years whenever Billie Jean King’s name comes up.

How to Help a 9 Year Old be Non-Judgmental

Question: Our local pro at our tennis club has your book and has bought into “Mental Tennis.” He has a 9 year old son who goes ballistic when he makes a bad shot. I know corrective ideas for an adult, but what about convincing a 9 year old not to be judgmental on a bad shot?

Answer: The problem here is that the son has an unrealistic view of reality. This was and is created by parents and tennis professionals who don’t really understand how winning happens and how a ball is hit.

I would ask the student, “Who is hitting the ball?” The usual answer is, “I am.” And I say to them, “No, you are not. Your body is hitting the ball.” I would also tell the person (whether it be a child or adult) that if they become the greatest player the world has ever seen, they will still miss shots. I may even point out that Federer who is the greatest player in the world still misses nothing balls.

This child is doing exactly what I did all those years before I took my lesson from Tim Gallwey. I tried so hard to hit the ball into the court and the more I tried the more I tense I got and the more frustrated I got when I missed. Only when I learned to let my body hit the ball and truly let the ball go where it wants, did I stop getting frustrated.

This child (or anyone) needs to learn that their body can hit the ball better than using their conscious mind. They will always achieve better results when they simply let their body do things rather than trying to make them happen. They need to make playing (especially in tournaments) way less important. They need to play a different game. A game where they figure out how to let their body hit the ball. They need to be taught that by letting their body hit the ball, the body will learn to hit the ball far better than if the conscious mind tries to do it.

So, the big question is how we get the child to do this. You do this by teaching the child to see the ball, breathe and relax properly when hitting the ball. Remember that when you relax more you are giving up control of hitting the ball to the other than conscious. In fact when you work on all these things, you are practicing letting the body do the hitting.

In addition, the parents or the teaching pros need to re-enforce these principles. If they still have the child think they have to hit all great shots in order to win and/or hit all the balls into the court and if they encourage the conscious mind to do this, the child will continue to get frustrated.

I hope this answers the question. I feel like I am not able to give as complete an answer since I have not talked to the child or seen how the child behaves on the court, but hopefully, this will help.

When Relaxing and Visualization Doesn’t Work

Question: I have a girl who kept hitting her forehands high and deep. I tried relaxing the wrist and grip and visualization the ball going 4-6 feet over the net, but no change. Can you tell me how to fix this?

Answer: In my opinion, any time you visualize something and it doesn’t work, there are two things that need to be addressed. One, as you tried already, is to work on relaxing some part of the body more. You tried to have her relax her grip and wrist, but the fact that it did not work tells me that she is not relaxing this enough or there is some other area in her body that needs relaxing. Sometimes one person’s idea as to what is relaxed is not what being relaxed really means according to my way of thinking. I have had students who, on their scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the highest level of relaxation) feel that they are at an 8 when on my scale they are at a 3.

Maybe her breathing is too tense. Maybe she is not relaxing the arm movement at her shoulder enough. Also, I would make sure she is specifically feeling how relaxed these areas are. It is not always effective to just tell someone to relax. It may help if you have your student re-read Lesson #4 in my book which is goes into more detail on relaxing.

The second issue when someone is visualizing something is that there is the tendency to try to do what it was that they were visualizing. This, of course, leads to being too tense. Once you have visualized, you must truly let it go and just be aware of what is happening.

So, I would suggest going back to work on relaxing the grip and wrist to the max and at the same time visualizing the ball going lower. There may be some other issues, but without actually seeing the girl hit, I can’t really know what is going on.

A Better Way To Warm Up Your Serve

In all the 50 years of my tennis life I learned to warm up my serve when playing by serving three balls and having my opponent catch them. Then my opponent would serve them back and I would catch them.

I have discovered a better way, however you will only do it this way if you are playing with a friend. If you are playing a tournament match, you will still warm up the same old way.

Here is how you do it;

You (or your opponent) will warm up your serve while the other player will warm up their return of serve. Warming up your return of serve does not mean hitting the ball back to your opponent, it means hitting the ball like you would if you were actually playing. Once you have finished warming your serve up, then your opponent can warm up his/her serve and you can warm up your return of serve.

When you do it this way, you get to practice your return of serve, and how often do you do that? I also find that I will hit more serves, so it is like going out and hitting a mini bucket of balls. And, how often do you do that?

How often have you missed your return of serve once the game starts (at least in the beginning) because you haven’t hit any return of serves when you have warmed up the old way?

So, go and use this way of warming up and see if you like it better than the old, usual way. I know I do.

About How Far To Go In Letting The "Other Than Conscious" Control Things

A reader Question:

 

“I read the first portions of your book, regarding watching the ball and breathing. The watching part is helping me, as I need to relearn this, and your Core statements 1 & 2 are a big help (I'm seeing spin sometimes for the first time). The breathing is all new to me and will start practicing this before I go further in the book.

 

I do have a question however, about how far to go in letting the "other than conscious" control things. I thought that this part of the mind was to be given a goal by the conscious mind, then let go and busy the conscious mind with watching the ball.

 

Do you advocate letting the other than conscious mind completely decide where and how the ball will be hit?

 

And my answer is:

 

How far do you let the other than conscious mind decide where and how you hit the ball is a terrific question and, unfortunately my answer may be a little fuzzy.

 

The best way to discuss this, I believe, is to use driving as an example. Usually, you have a destination in mind when you get into your car and you need to have in your mind the route you need to go in order to get to this destination. In tennis, as an example, let’s use hitting the ball to the backhand as your destination or goal for this discussion.

 

While you are driving, your conscious mind needs to be aware of where you are, what streets you need to turn on, the other cars on the road, and be ready to slow down, speed up, turn etc as needed. In tennis, you will need to see if you are actually hitting the ball to the backhand side. But when you do this you are letting your other than conscious mind actually execute these movements hopefully without thinking.

 

Now, there are times when you don’t really need to pay much attention to where you are and what is going around you. This happens when you are driving on a long trip and your car is on cruise control and you are just pretty much sitting and sightseeing. This would be considered “zoning out” or “going on autopilot” which is extremely dangerous while driving a vehicle, although it works well for tennis. You are in a trance and your conscious mind is just not very active. It will know, however, when you need to turn (hit the ball to a particular place). Your other than conscious mind will be paying attention and will direct your body accordingly. This part of your mind is seeing where you are and will “wake up” the conscious mind, if needed.

 

Here is what I do on the court and, to be honest, I don’t know that I can describe exactly what all this feels like. I am also still learning and experimenting how the relationship between the conscious mind and the other than conscious mind works so that I can play to the best of my ability. I do know that it is not always really obvious as to who (meaning my conscious mind and my other than conscious mind) is doing what and I believe that everyone needs to discover for themselves how this relationship works for them. That being said, getting to what I have called “the foundational place” is an important step in discovering this relationship.

 

Bear with me as I think I am finally getting to a “real” answer to your question.

 

When I begin playing, I start with a strategy that I believe will get me to where I want to go. I use my core principles as the vehicle to execute this strategy. However, many times my conscious mind just does not want to let go. It wants to control things and to be able to recognize what is going on can become very subtle. I may think that I am letting my other than conscious mind control hitting the ball, but I am really not.

 

How do I know this? I know this when I start choking or when I start missing balls that under normal circumstances I don’t miss. So, especially when I get behind in the score (sometimes even before this), I truly attempt to get my conscious mind out of the picture and I do this by letting go of “any” strategy or thought of what I am doing and relaxing my body more and just doing the core principles. I attempt to completely turn over my play to my other than conscious mind. I do this by visualizing what you want to happen and then letting go of a conscious strategy. In other words, I try to get to my foundational place.

 

 

What then begins to happen is that my conscious mind gets back into its proper function and just acts an observer and this is where I am aware of the thoughts (directions) that the other than conscious mind gives to my body as to how and where to hit the ball and not the other way around.

 

Once I am in this state, I do find that I am playing at my very best so, for me, I do want to “completely” turn over all control to my other than conscious mind. Going back to the driving analogy, your other than conscious mind will wake up your conscious mind if, for example, a change of strategy is needed.

 

I feel like I really can’t describe to others how this really works. I just know that, for me, this is what I do. You, and everyone else, will have to figure it out, but when you do the core principles and when you work on getting to “the foundation place” you will begin to discover how it works and feels for you.

 

Are you sorry now that you asked? Have I really messed with your mind? I think a whole book could be written about this. OH, I forgot. There was one and it was called “The Inner Game of Tennis” by Tim Gallwey. He explains all this so much better but now you know my puny explanation and how I “try” to play.

 

So to answer your specific question “Do you advocate letting the other than conscious mind completely decide where and how the ball will be hit?” my answer would be yes.