What if you could hit your best shots and play your best tennis without having to think about it at all?
No reminders. No mental checklists. No voice in your head constantly telling you what to do. Just pure instinct and habit doing the work for you.
That’s what the best competitors at every level are able to do. And it’s where we all want to be.
But here’s a critical truth about the human brain that most tennis players never really sit down and think about. We can only consciously focus on one thing at a time. Your brain is basically a spotlight. It can only shine on one specific thing at a given moment. Everything else fades into the background.
The good news is we have an incredibly powerful subconscious system that handles everything we’re not actively thinking about. Talking, walking, even breathing. We don’t have to focus on any of that. It just happens. And the goal with any new tennis skill is to eventually get it into that same place. Into your subconscious. Into your habits. So you don’t have to think about it anymore.
In the last couple of articles I walked you through the Improvement Circle and how we can move a new skill from knowing about it all the way to being able to do it correctly while thinking about it. That’s a huge step. But it’s not the finish line. The finish line is doing it WITHOUT thinking about it. And that is the Holy Grail.
So how do we actually get there?
I recently put together something that I have never shared publicly before. It’s a list of 32 progressions. 32 stepping stones that take you from the very beginning of learning a new skill all the way down to being able to use it in real match play without a second thought.
At the very top of the list is the easiest progression which is segmented shadow swings. No ball. Just going through the motion one piece at a time. At the very bottom, number 32, is real match play. And everything in between gets progressively harder and more demanding.
I worked with a student named Brenda recently on her forehand and we used some of these progressions to bring her up to the point where she could do her new forehand correctly while thinking about it. We used segmented shadow swings, smooth shadow swings, fake tosses, and then feeds from the service line. Four progressions total just to get her to that point.
Now here’s the question. Do you think if Brenda walked off that court and went and played a match the next day she would be able to use her new forehand? Absolutely not. Not a chance. Look at how many progressions are sitting between where we left off and actual match play. Twenty one steps of increasing difficulty and challenge. And in a real match your brain is already juggling dozens of other things at the same time. Figuring out your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. Reading patterns. Managing footwork and tempo. There is simply no way a brand new skill is going to show up under all of that pressure if you haven’t earned your way down that list.
So how long does it actually take to replace an old habit with a new one? That comes down to four things.
First is how frequently you repeat the new habit. If you practice your new forehand once a week and then play twenty matches using the old one, you’re never going to tip the scales. Second is the quality of your training. Mindless repetitions with a distracted focus are not going to get you there very quickly. Third is how often you’re still doing the old habit. Your brain needs to be saturated in the new way of doing things before it ever starts to stick. And fourth is how athletic and coordinated you naturally are. Some players pick things up faster than others and that’s just reality.
Now here’s where I’m going to say something that might ruffle some feathers a little bit.
The way most tennis players go about improving right now is broken.
Take a lesson. Play some matches. Take another lesson. Play some more matches. Repeat. That’s the cycle. And honestly, unless you have an extraordinary level of natural talent, that cycle is never going to get you to the next level. Taking a lesson and then high-fiving your coach at the end like everything is fixed is not how new habits are built. The lesson is just the beginning. The real work happens after you leave the court.
So if you’re a player reading this, you need to take ownership of what happens between your lessons. Do the homework. Spend time working through those progressions on your own. And if you’re a coach, you need to be setting that expectation with your students from day one. Make sure they understand that the work after the lesson is where the real change happens.
This is not the easy path. But it IS the real one. And if you want to actually level up your game and stop feeling stuck, this is exactly where you need to put your energy.
I promise it’s worth it.
Your Coach,
Ian
