The Inner Game Approach to Changing Technique

Sean Brawley

This article is for all coaches and players who wish to better understand change and the change process in the hopes of learning a more effective way to change, whether that be improving your volley or serve or grandstrokes, or any other type of change that you feel might improve your tennis or your life.

In previous articles, I've written about the primary way go about change—the giving and receiving of critical technical instruction—and some of the inherent challenges that tennis teachers and players face when employing this method. Giving technical instructions is, of course, not wrong or bad. It's been used for over a hundred years as a way to impart knowledge and improve performance in every sport and beyond.

Interference

But giving technical instructions can interfere with the learning process. It can create self-doubt in the player since an instruction is inherently judgmental, it can cause the player to think too much about what they are doing, and it can cause them to focus on their form instead of more important things like reading the ball and where they intend to hit the ball, both of which help to shape technique.

I've also written previously about how the Inner Game approach helped me to discover the root causes of poor technique and movement disfunction. I've mentioned, for example, that when I have a new student do the "bounce-hit" exercise, much of their improper technique drops away and they become noticeably more efficient, because they are compelled to read the ball better. The same is true if I have them focus on their balance, footwork, and posture due to the fact that this is the physical foundation for technique.

In this article, I would like to share a more effective way to change habits and give technical instructions using the Inner Game approach. I've met a number of masterful teachers over the years who have learned how to blend both methods to achieve better, more lasting results.

For me, this takes me full circle in my training with Inner Game author, Tim Gallwey. When he revised the book in 1997 (Click Here), I helped him specifically with Chapter 5: Discovering Technique and Chapter 6: Changing Habits, both of which describe a better way to change using increased self-awareness as the primary tool.

Immunity to Change

Making changes in one's behavior is generally experienced as quite difficult. Even when we are highly motivated to change or improve, we rarely acknowledge that some other unconscious part of us is resistant to changing.

In his best-selling book, Immunity to Change (Click Here), Robert Kegan, the Meehan Professor of Adult learning at Harvard, describes how our individual beliefs, along with our cultural and collective mindsets, create a natural but powerful resistance to change.

The book illustrates this by way of a powerful example: a recent study showed that when doctors tell heart patients they will die if they don't change their habits, only one in seven will be able to follow through successfully. "Desire and motivation are not enough: even when it's literally a matter of life or death, the ability to change remains maddeningly elusive."

I experienced this recently myself although in a much less dire circumstance. A young man came for a tennis lesson absolutely committed to improving his faulty backhand. He drove 2.5 hours and paid me quite a lot of money for a two-hour lesson. He said he had taken many lessons in the past and nothing had worked.

I told him we'd start by warming up so I could take a look at his "bad" backhand. I hit 5 balls to his forehand and then 5 balls to his backhand, all of which he ran around and hit forehands! So much for his commitment to change in that moment!

The Inner Game Approach to Changing Habits

I have found that there is an easier, more natural way to facilitate change. The Inner Game approach acknowledges and taps into our powerful natural ability to learn while also acknowledging and reducing the many different ways we can get in our own way. When resistance is lowered and players become focused in a relaxed and non-judgmental way on what they want to change, they receive feedback from their own experience and as a result change happens naturally.

The first step, of course, is to decide what stroke you most want to change and why? Let's say like the gentleman above you'd like to change your backhand. Perhaps you hit the ball into the net more than you'd like and would like to become more consistent. Or perhaps you hit mostly flat shots and would like to learn how to hit topspin.

Non-Judgmental Awareness

Whatever it is you'd like to learn, the next step is to forget everything you think you know about it and instead observe how you are currently performing the stroke with non-judgmental awareness. Notice how it currently feels to hit your backhand while not trying hard to follow any previous instruction you may have been given. In the beginning, don't worry about results as this may cause you to become tight.

Let go of results and just bring as much awareness to your stroke as you can. As you relax, you might start to feel the rhythm of your stroke or perhaps start to notice a specific part of your swing such as your followthrough.

Self-awareness of your current reality is critical because you cannot change what you are not aware of.

Picture the Desired Outcome

After you have become more familiar and aware of your habit as it is and have begun to relax, the next step is to get a clear picture of your desired outcome. How many balls over the net would you like to hit out of 10? (You'd be shocked how many players, when given a choice, will say 6 or 7 instead of 10 since it is generally double their usual result.)

In the case of hitting topspin, it can be helpful to visualize the desired arc of the ball or the amount of spin you would like to hit. I may demonstrate for my student various amounts of topspin and the different arcs they create to better enable them to visualize their desired result.

Once you have a felt sense of the current way you perform your stroke and have a clear picture of the result you are looking for, there is a quite natural inner creative tension that is created that draws us towards our desired future. Much has been written about this creative tension between vision and desired results from Shakti Gawain's Creative Visualization, (Click Here) to Robert Fritz's The Path of Least Resistance, (Click Here) to John Whitmore's Coaching for Performance. (Click Here.) Whitmore was an early protégé of Gallwey's.

Non-judgmental Awareness

After we get a clear picture of our desired results, we once again return to non-judgmental awareness of what is. As we bring simple awareness to our habit, we can never do that habit the same way again.

I will repeat this because it is so important. When we bring simple awareness to our habit, we can never do that habit the same way ever again.

Our task then is to notice with curiosity how our habit is changing with each successive shot and stay curious rather than focused on outcome. Changes will occur naturally and without effort.

Once your stroke has begun changing effortlessly and naturally, it is time to include noticing the results. You and your coach need to remain vigilant at this point as it is quite easy for both of you to become quickly attached to the results and begin to feel fear or frustration.

As Gallwey writes in The Inner Game of Tennis, "during this process it is important to have a certain lack of concern for where the ball is going. As you allow one element of your stroke to change, other parts will be affected."

Initially, this may result in greater inconsistency, but if you continue with the process while you remain attentive and patient learning will occur effortlessly and easily, and because the change is embodied it is more likely to last.

A More Simplified Model

Below are a few more specific areas in which coaches often give instruction and how to easily convert the technical instruction into an awareness instruction.

Making changes is often experienced as challenging, due in large part because of our natural resistance to change. However, when you reduce judgment and attachment to the outcome, and focus on what you would like to change in a relaxed way, change can occur naturally and easily.

This approach is not only highly effective, it also helps you regain trust in your natural ability to learn and to play without so much thinking. When you stop trying to control your actions, you are able to learn and perform more closely to your full potential, which brings an inherent joy and satisfaction.