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New Directions in Professional Tennis Instruction: The EASI Tennis^TM System

Research confirms that tennis is one of the most complex activities ever devised by humans. Among the numerous sources of complexity is the human learning process itself. By developing a system of teaching tennis that is based on the way humans learn best, we may dramaticlly accelerate the development of good stroke technique. 

In a series of articles, we will introduce new methods of teaching that are designed to dramatically accelerate the process of learning tennis and to significantly reduce the gap between the skill level of the professional and the skill level of the amateur.  We believe that achieving these two goals will revitalize all aspects of the tennis market because the amateur will be able to betterr relate to professinal tennis (which will increase TV and tournament viewers) and will be able to gain skills never before thought possible (which will increase sales). 

In order to understand the EASI Tennis^TM System and its implications, we must first understand key aspcets of the human learning process and why conventional methods fail to address these aspects of learning. The present article discusses the challenges of teaching from the point of view of 9 features of the human learning process that must be considered when formulating any teaching regime. In  the second article we will discuss the origins of current methods and why they are not atune to the natural learning process. Following this, we will present a new method of teaching technique that specificaly addresses the human learning process. 
 

9 Aspects of the Human Learning Process

Eyewitnesses to crimes are notoriously unreliable. The same is true when players and coaches try to describe tennis strokes. There are at least two sources of this unreliability: One is related to the ‘speed’ with which we see, which is about 30 frames per second. The second is that there are two types of vision, peripherial and focal, and peripheral vision, the formmost commonly used,  is not sufficiently precise to hit the ball cleanly.

Normal visual processing of about 30 frames per second is too slow to observe what is happening in any tennis stroke (about 200 frames per second would be much better). Further, there is no stop action in our visual processing, so even at 30 frames per second, we are unable to recall any specific frame. 

Hence, teaching pros, while instructing a student, are not able to see the most important part of a stroke due to its speed. Unfortunately, it is during this high-speed "unobservable" portion of the stroke that most of the student’s problems can be found. We call this the problem of observability. 

The consequence of this problem is that you can't correct an error tha you cannot see. For this reason, high-speed video developed by Advanced Tennis, and also found on TennisONE, will play an increasingly important role in tennis instruction in the future.

The second limitation is that as we move around, we primarily depend on our peripheral vision. This is of great importance to tennis. Our brains do not process this form of vision very accurately since we require only rough information about our environment to move about successfully. To perform precise tasks we use an entirely different form of vision, called focal vision, which is processed very accurately.

The issue of peripherial versus focal vision is that to hit a tennis ball accurately, one must use focal vision rather than peripheral vision. But most of the time we are playing we are using peripheral vision. It is the natural thing to do. 

Because of this, it is possible to be looking right at the ball with peripheral vision and hit the ball on the frame of the racquet.   

The Ambiguity of Human Language: 
If it has two meanings, half of your students may miss the point

Another challenge to tennis instruction is the ambiguity of human language. The role of language in teaching a skill is that it makes it possible convey to the student the insights of those who have mastered the skill, reducing the student’s learning time. However, if in the course of teaching, the instructor uses ambiguous language, the learning time may actually be increased rather than reduced. 

To teach high precision skills in the shortest possible time, one must use a high precision language. Today, there is no formal language being used to teach tennis. What we do have is a set of ambiguous metaphors, templates, and rules that are used in place of a formal language. 

For example, the phrase “hit through the ball” has numerous interpretations, and hence is insufficient to convey the intended meaning.

The Problem of Associative Learning: 
If it has no meaning, it is easily forgotten

Humans learn most quickly through relevance. If an action has a result that can be associated to a value or an observable outcome, it is learned more quickly than a meaningless action. For example, suppose by following a specific tennis tip, a player produces a well hit ball during a lesson. Unless the tip has a rational meaning, the studeent will find it difficult to create a meaningful association. As a result, when the player leaves the lesson, the they are unable to repeat their performance.

A very common example is provide by pros who insist on a student developing a “follow through”. They are imposing a (well-intentioned) rule for which there is no associated value or meaning. This is because you can have a great follow through without having good ball control, or even good ball contact.
 

These pros have great follow throughs - a well intentioned rule but teaching it may be meaningless because by itself, it has no associated value.

The Problem of "On-demand" Recall of Reflexive Memory: 
We seldom know how we did it 

We have all had the experience of hitting a perfect shot only to realize we have no clue as to how we did it. This is because the human brain has very little ability to recall the details of a reflexive action on demand. This fact makes it almost impossible for Pete Sampras (or any expert) to tell a student what she or he does to hit a tennis ball. One well-known result of this fact is that great players are not necessarily great teachers.

This problem is further exacerbated by the fact that most people firmly believe that they can recall, on demand, the details of a reflexive action. However, modern technology has provided a means of examining how the strokes of the best players in the world are executed: high-speed photography. 

Using high-speed photography, it is now possible to develop a detailed factual record of the strokes of a large body of the best practitioners. Although this work is still in it’s early stages it already shows the potential to help pros everywhere overcome many of the inherent limitations of human perception.

The Problem of Intentional Action: 
We have less control than we think. 

How often have you heard “hit the ball out front”? This (ambiguous) rule is repeated every day and still many students have trouble with the execution, even if they interpret it correctly. Accurately carrying out an intended action, requiring precision, is inherently difficult.
 

Accurately carrying out an intended action, like hitting the ball out front, is inherently more difficult than it may seem.

Even if one had prefect recall, and the teacher conveyed their actions perfectly, a human's ability to carryout an action intentionally as prescribed is initially quite limited. One source of the difficulty of intentional action is the absence of good visual feedback loop in our brains. This could be used to correct an action while it is being carried out. Instead we must rely on developing an internal “somatosensory” memory—better known as a feeling to tell when an action is proceeding correctly. 

Teaching the development of somatosensory feedback (feeling) control is in its infancy and there is much more research needed before it can be successfully taught. However, even if the feeling for a movement were to be developed perfectly, the speed of action on a tennis court greatly exceeds the speed of the fastest somatosensory feedback loop in the human brain. Even perfect feedback would arrive too late in most cases to be useful in correcting the motion during the execution of stroke. In tennis, players have to rely instead on an “after the fact” sensation to tell if what they did was correct.

The Problem of Neuronal Disassembly and Neuronal Encroachment: 
Learning is a battle ground

Have you ever gotten you serve down pat on a Saturday and then find it impossible to hit a decent serve two days later? This is likely a result of the curious feature of the human brain has of partially disassembling, over night, the knowledge of an action learned the previous day. Since brains learn the basic components of a procedure and a method of assembling these components to execute the procedure, it has no need to store (remember) the procedure as a complete unit. 
 

If you learn your serve as a complete unit or template, you are going to easily forget it. However, if you learn your serve or any other stroke as a set of elementary relevant components, it will be easily reassembled each day you go out to play. But it will require time to reassemble, and you must allow for this, without getting frustrated. In fact, frustration can significantly delay reassembly of a stroke just as would be the case when reassembling a rifle. 

The natural disassembly process is a nuisance that must be respected if we are to learn a procedure as quickly as possible. But there is another dynamic of the human brain that is just as annoying. Every action or thought requires an assembly of neurons to carry it out. However, neurons assembled and devoted to one task may be co-opted by neurons developed for an entirely different task, depending on your priorities in life. A good example is when a person who has lost his hands learns to use his feet to perform many of the same tasks. 

If the original learning event was based on insufficient information, ambiguities, or purely reflexive conditioning, it can be easily forgotten and any attempt to reproduce it by referring to the imprecise information is usually futile. 

Stress Breaks Down Reflexive Knowledge:
If you learn something by “conditioning” you may easily forget it under the pressure of a match.

Have you ever come off the court after a particularly stressful match and said, “I forgot how to hit a forehand”? If so, you probably learned your forehand by rote repetition or conditioning. It is a fact that procedures learned by rote and reflexive conditioning are easily forgotten under stress. 

The short story is that rote conditioning will not necessarily carry you through a tough match. About the only solution known today to quickly remedy the breakdown of a stroke is to have a verbal knowledge of the individual components of a stroke that can be used to restart your reflexive processing. If you have time on your side, then some form of mental relaxation will eventually restore your stroke, however, this can take as long as 20 minutes. 

If your strokes are based on templates, then there is little chance of restoring them under the pressures of a match.

The Problem of Layered Learning: 
The faster you try to go, the slower you may learn.

No one can tell you exactly how to hit a tennis ball. What they can do is convey some idea through words and examples of how it might be done. This is because language is imprecise at best, we have a limited ability to convey our actions in words, and humans learn in a series of successive approximations. We have addressed two of these challenges above so we will address the third here. 

Learning is somewhat like climbing a series of hills where the next hill can only be seen after one reaches the top of the one before it. The first approximation of a stroke will usually be crude and inefficient. But because you have a first approximation, you have a basis for an improvement that would not be possible without it. It is not possible to jump from never having hit a tennis ball to hitting a tennis ball efficiently. It must proceed in stages. 

The challenge to tennis teaching community is to formulate the best possible set of stages of learning. This must start with the best (by present standards) set of components that can be approximated and conveyed in words and actions. The components must be simple and relevant if the student is to learn quickly. It must be possible for the student to practice these components, like learning musical scales, on their own on a backboard for example. 

The most important point about layered learning is this: If the learning process is rushed, and if the student is not given ample time for exploration and experimentation, the layers will be easily broken down under pressure, or will be broken down by the natural disassembly process we spoke of earlier. 

The Problem of Component Based Learning: 
We don’t learn entire templates efficiently.

In early childhood development there are no templates, metaphors, or rules to guide the development of physical or mental skills. A child learns by exploration and experimentation. In this experimental trial-and-error process, the child develops many “action components” which do not necessarily constitute a purposeful act, but which become useful later when their environment begins to enlarge and change. This might be described as component based learning. It is the natural learning process and ensures the ability to adapt to new environments and circumstances before they are encountered. If, for example, walking templates and rules were imposed on a child during their early developmental years, the results would be disastrous.

The fact is that our brains do not operate effectively from templates and rules precisely because they restrict our ability to adapt. The same is true for tennis. If we make templates and rules the basis of teaching, the learning process will be retarded accordingly. This fact does not only apply to tennis, but to education generally. The challenge to tennis professionals is to define the right components from which to start the teaching process. This requires us to systematically replace every template, metaphor, and rule with relevant and meaningful components, facts, and data. 

Many professionals have been nudging the tennis profession in this direction for years. Notably in this regard are: Vic Braden, John Yandell, Dennis van der Meer, Jim Loehr, Jack Groppel, and others as well. However, what has not been done is to organize the experimental findings and insights of these researchers around the mechanics of human learning that have been discovered by such eminent researchers as Professor Walter Freeman at Berkeley, Professor Ellen Langer at Harvard, Professor Anders Ericsson at Florida State University, or many other scientist who have contributed to our understanding of the human brain.

What this means is that the scientific research must be translated into specific procedures that are clearly supportable by science and thus not just a matter of personal opinion, as is the case with much of teaching today. The procedures must be as simple as possible, unambiguous, reproducible, transferable, and must allow the student freedom to explore and experiment independently of the instructor. We must replace metaphors with facts, templates with components, and rules with reason.

The Bottom Line: 
Teaching anything is hard.

The nature of human learning is a significant challenge to teaching even when scientific facts and precise language are available. The problem is not with the student; we are what we are due to years of evolution. Our challenge is to reinvent professional teaching to fit the human learning process. If we do this, children and adults alike will develop the skills to play tennis in less than half the time now needed. 
 

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