David Ranney's Tennis Blog

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.