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Posts Tagged ‘muscle’

In the field of racket sports, lawn tennis is the most popular game. You can name numerous prestigious lawn tennis tournaments- Wimbledon, Family Circle cup and etc. – that are being joined by prestigious lawn tennis players. The major names in your list might be Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams. But have you imagined these people doing lawn tennis while reading a newspaper? Such circumstance might be out of your imagination until you tried being serious towards playing table tennis.

A table tennis player once told me, “Playing ping pong is like playing lawn tennis while reading a newspaper”. It is like moving your body while moving your thinking. The statement might be an exaggeration for you. But for hard table tennis players, the statement just describes ping pong the way it is. Its nature of being a mind sport is only one of the qualities that set it apart from other sport. Let me give you two more special qualities of ping pong:

To have a strategy, you must read your opponent. And in reading your opponent, you are to know his/her weaknesses and strengths. By knowing these things, you are likely to do the shots that challenge his/her weaknesses; avoid the shots that will allow him/her to execute his/her strengths. In order for you to execute your strategy, you must be able to acquire the skills that you might need. You can learn the necessary skills from your personal trainer. If you don’t have the luxury of having an immediate trainer, you can learn from instructional table tennis videos.

Ping pong is an easy to set-up sport. It would not take you to hire a construction company in order to put up a table tennis court. All you need is a vacated room wherein you can put a table and will still have a space for side stepping and for relatively little forward and backward movements. Of course, in order for you to play table tennis, you must have the necessary equipments: net, table, rackets and a ball.

Any sport is a mind game. You ought to think while you play. In lawn tennis, you ought to do the same. But in lawn tennis, you are not as pressured to think as in table tennis. In the latter sport, the court area is too small for you to merely outrun and outsmart your opponent.

Have you seen a 10 year old ping pong player having a good fight against a 17-year old player? I have watched one. This is amazing and interesting for me. In basketball, you may hardly see a good fight between a 10 year old and a 17 year old basketball player. The reason behind this is the principle of age and growth. A 10 year old boy is not as high as a 17 year old. The disparity in the height between these two basketball players might be too enormous.

Being a great ping pong peddler does not entail physical superiority. Of course, tall players have advantages over small players even in ping pong. But the advantage is not too huge. Tallness means having a longer reach and longer feet movement. But in ping pong, it can be compensated by the agility of small players. Unlike in basketball and lawn tennis, being tall is really an advantage. In basketball, you may limit the moves of your smaller opponent by using your body as a post. In the latter sports, being tall means higher service efficiency and steeper strokes. Table tennis is not the sport that makes a big deal out of the known physical advantages such as tallness and muscle volume.

Do you have trouble switching from playing tennis indoors to playing tennis outdoors or changing from one environment to another? Would you like to know why you have this difficulty?

Playing tennis indoors and playing tennis outdoors are different. Most players have a tough time making the necessary adjustments. Recently I was coaching Nico, an extremely talented player who had been playing indoors for months. He then attempted to play outdoors and was a mess! Balls were flying everywhere. He had beautiful stroke mechanics indoors, but outdoors he looked clumsy and awkward…what happened? Nico still possessed the same stroke mechanics, yet he could not execute those fabulous strokes outdoors.

The way to begin playing outdoors is to wait and become familiar with the environment and slowly adjust to what the body is going through. Even without windy conditions players seem to struggle when switching from indoors to outdoors. You still possess the same stroke skills, so what gives? Why can’t you simply go out, hit a few balls to warm up, make a few adjustments and play?

For answers, let’s go to the Tennis Warrior System where I teach that the senses define a player’s stroke, not the mechanics. Sense of timing, sense of judgment, sense of balance and muscle sense. All four of these senses work together to develop a ‘feel’ for a stroke.

To the player who often plays indoors these senses are in harmony with the surrounding atmosphere, background, court surface, lighting and sounds. The subconscious has adjusted to and is set to these surroundings. Therefore the senses are automatically calculating, moment by moment, all the differences in your surroundings. All this without your even being aware of it! As you are about to hit a tennis ball, your senses determine the velocity, trajectory, depth and spin of the ball, then weigh this information against your surroundings. Amazing, isn’t it! And you thought you were just out there mechanically hitting a ball. NOT EVEN CLOSE! I repeat. NOT EVEN CLOSE! In fact the mechanics are child’s play compared to what is going on inside your body.

Can you see the problem that occurs when switching to a different environment? Whether switching from indoors to outdoors or just changing your location outdoors, you have a totally different set of surroundings. A new atmosphere, background, court surface, lighting and sounds that the senses must now respond to and adjust! The mechanics of the stroke have not gone awry. Instead your senses have been temporarily short-circuited. They are still operating, but are set for the old environment! As a result your ‘feel’ is gone and you feel clumsy and completely out of sync! Help! What should you do?

The first thing to do is come to your senses! DO NOT PANIC! Just relax and begin retraining the senses. But how? Here is what I told Nico. I assured him that his mechanics were just fine, but his senses were being challenged. He was supposed to just relax and let his subconscious slowly figure out how to reset his sense of timing, judgment, balance and muscle sense to the new environment. I told him to not expect the ‘feel’ to be the same outdoors as the ‘feel’ is indoors. He was to allow himself to develop a new ‘feel’ based on his new surroundings. Slowly, Nico worked himself into this new arena.

The secret is to NOT stand in the way of this process. Do not force the old senses developed from a different tennis environment onto the new tennis environment. It will not work! It will only serve to frustrate you. Do NOT expect the ‘feel’ to be the same! Be patient and your new ‘feel’ will emerge.

NOTE: The longer you play at a particular tennis location (whether indoors or outdoors) the longer it will take to adjust when you move to another tennis environment. Adjusting may even take days! Why do you think touring pros arrive at a tournament a week ahead of time to practice? They are retraining the senses. You must do the same!