TennisOne Lessons

Watch Tennis

Daryl Fisher

Have you ever found yourself playing tennis particularly well after watching a great tennis match, either live or on television? Many people have told me that they have had this experience, and I have had it countless times. Not only have I often felt as if my level was generally elevated, but specific shots also seemed to improve after watching certain players. As examples, my serve has seemed better after watching Pete Sampras, and my ground strokes have seemed better after watching Gustavo Kuerten.

I have considered a number of possible explanations regarding this experience, and perhaps some of them might help you improve. These explanations include motivation, learning, visualization, and mirror neurons. Regardless of the reason, I hope, like me, you find yourself playing better tennis by watching more high-level tennis.

Mind Games?

This "sense" of playing better after watching professionals play is far from something that is scientifically verifiable. I have no actual proof of playing better tennis, but, beyond the score, most of us have a sense of when we are playing better or worse. We just feel it.

Feelings about doing better or worse are not always accurate. Mistakes associated with feelings remind me of Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s description, in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, of how a particular airplane flying instructor based his training on negative feedback simply because he felt that pilots often flew worse after receiving positive feedback, and flew better after negative feedback (chapter 17).

The instructor was correct with regard to the how the pilots performed following the feedback, but was not correct in thinking that the positive or negative feedback had anything to do with the changes. In fact the immediate shifts in ability had nothing to do with the feedback at all. The pilots were simply getting back to “normal.” After a poor performance, something that would warrant negative feedback, the pilots would get back to normal and do better. And after a great performance, something that would warrant positive feedback, the pilots would also go back to normal, which was worse.

In each case the pilots were reverting to their usual skill level, or “regressing to the mean.” They would likely have flown better after flying poorly, and they would likely have flown worse after flying particularly well, and in both cases they would do this only because they would naturally revert to what would be considered their normal ability. The positive or negative aspect of the feedback itself was largely irrelevant to short-term performance.

In the case of playing better tennis after watching high-level players, I do not believe that the correlation is an error of statistics. I definitely feel like I am playing better, and for that matter I think there is something to this feeling.

Motivation

For more reasons than I can mention, many people seem to be motivated by watching the higher levels of a sport. The reasons for the motivation do not matter as much as the truth that watching sports has the potential to fire us up in a way that makes us want to suit up, get in the game, and play. As David Foster Wallace wrote with regard to watching Roger Federer play tennis, “inspiration is contagious…”

Of the potential motivations, the two that seem most relevant to the topic of why we seem to play better when we watch professional tennis are: 1) the motivation to simply enjoy the striking of a tennis ball; and 2) the motivation to win.

For many players, these two motivations are not typically aligned. If you have played much competitive tennis, you likely recognize that the motivation to win often detracts from the enjoyment aspect of the game. Taking away from the enjoyment also generally detracts from the ability to play well, and thereby detracts from the ability to win. It is ironic that wanting to win can actually make winning more elusive in this way.

It seems to me that when I watch professionals play tennis, my interest in simply striking a tennis ball is bolstered. This interest, in turn, helps me play better. That is, when I just cannot wait to hit the ball, I play well. Eagerness to hit the ball, it seems, helps align my enjoyment of the game with my motivation to win.

Learning

It might be enough to play better tennis simply because of being fired up, but your play can also be improved through learning about the sport. Examples of things that you could learn about by watching high-level tennis include, but are not limited to, technique, strategy, and psychological momentum.

As much as what I just said about learning is true, that sort of learning about tennis does not explain why a person would get an immediate playing-level boost just from watching tennis professionals play. It does not explain why I seem to serve, volley, and hit ground strokes better after watching a great match. Motivation/inspiration is still a better explanation with regard to this effect. You may have guessed, however, that there is more to it.

Learning can take multiple forms. You can know how a forehand is struck, but still be unable to execute what you know. Alternatively, you might know how to execute a forehand, but not know how you do what you do.

Philosophy professor Colin McGinn, in his book Sport, writes about how the acquisition of a skill, such as hitting a forehand, is the acquisition of a form of knowledge (chapter 1). So, knowing how to hit a forehand could be considered practical and tacit knowledge. There are also people who have knowledge with regard to a forehand, but they cannot get their bodies to execute what they know, and these people can be said to have a variety of theoretical knowledge.

To make McGinn’s meaning clear in a concise way is challenging. Perhaps it will help your understanding if I tell you that my theoretical knowledge with regard to hitting left- and right-handed forehands is the same, whereas, since I play right-handed, my right-handed practical knowledge is greater than that of my left-handed forehand.

To see a tennis ball struck by a professional does not necessarily provide strictly theoretical or practical knowledge, but it gives us an example to work from for the sake of both. To watch tennis played by a professional might give us some theoretical clues, but what is less obvious is that we might be learning something at a deeper level through watching tennis professionals play, something closer to practical knowledge. The acquisition of this practical knowledge might come in the form of the following two topics: visualization and mirror neurons.

Visualization

Visualization, as the word implies, means visualizing something in your mind, or using your imagination. With regard to tennis, it could involve imagining such things as tennis strokes or moments in competition. Through the use of visualization we can effectively have “sweatless” practice sessions or matches.

I first read about the concept of visualization in the 1980s. Up until that time, the concept seemed to offer the best explanation as to why watching high-level tennis seemed to have such a positive effect on my game. Watching tennis on television seemed like a variety of visualization.

While I am comfortable suggesting that there is value to visualization, I would like to note that only visualizing your tennis play will not make you a great tennis player. It will very likely help, but you will also need to spend time on the court.

Also, I would like to encourage caution with regard to the claims that you will find with a quick Google search on the topic. There is quite a bit of visualization crackpottery out there. For example, there is a study associated with shooting basketball free throws, supposedly conducted by a Dr. Blaslotto at the University of Chicago, which suggests pretty amazing results from visualization. These results made me wonder why the experiment had not been made more of, and, for that matter, repeated for confirmation. This study appears to be an example of “when something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” My search of academic books and journals left me empty-handed with regard to this study or the researcher.

A number of other academic studies on the topic do in fact show up, however. The good news is that visualization really can have some positive effect on performance.

What is less clear is at what levels visualization is helpful. For example, even if visualization helps with fairly simple tasks (like shooting a free throw), there is less evidence for visualization being useful for more complex tasks (like tennis strokes). It might also be true that visualization helps with the execution of actions already mastered, but that it is less helpful in learning complex tasks in the first place. Perhaps the unanswered questions associated with visualization will be addressed through research related to mirror neurons.

Mirror Neurons

Mirror neurons were first identified in the late 1990s by a group of neuroscientists (namely Giacomo Rizzolati) from the University of Parma. What the neuroscientists observed was that there were some neurons in Macaque monkeys that would fire both when a monkey performed an action and when the monkey observed the action performed by another monkey (or human): mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons offer one of the best potential links between watching high-level tennis and playing better as a result of it. Within our frontal lobes reside visiomotor command neurons that fire when we perform an action involving our bodies and an object. Neuroscientists would call this object-directed action, and tennis turns out to be an example of such action. When we perform an action, neurons within our frontal lobes fire. Interestingly enough, when we just see someone else perform the same action, some of those same neurons fire.

As with the topic of visualization, I am going to refrain from making any grand claims with regard to mirror neurons. Research has already shown that humans certainly have much more advanced, intricate, flexible, and evolved mirror neurons than those found in monkeys (or any other animal tested), but additional research is required. Mirror neurons are somewhat relatively recently discovered, and they remain a hotly discussed topic among neuroscientists and philosophers.

It might be true, as some neuroscientists and philosophers claim, that mirror neurons are the keys to such things as human development and empathy, but even if they are not, they are with near certainty interesting with regard to your tennis development. Research related to mirror neurons seems to be particularly interesting with regard to why we might be able to learn through seeing and imitating (and perhaps thereby through visualizing). Their discovery at least suggests that you could benefit from watching some high-level tennis.

Try it

Of all of the suggestions that I have ever offered, this may be the easiest to implement: watch high-level tennis. At the facility where I teach, my students are regularly exposed to top-caliber college players, but anyone with a television or a fast Internet connection can watch tennis. In fact, my personal experiences with watching tennis and then playing better were generally achieved through watching tennis on television.

I find it somewhat interesting that after all of the years of being told that television would slow down my mental activity, here I am suggesting watching television. I have good reasons, however. I truly hope that you come away more motivated, having learned something, with a clearer picture of what you want to do, and with your mirror neurons firing. For whatever the reason, you will likely also find yourself playing better tennis as well.