Hey everyone, welcome to the 36th episode of Baseline Intelligence. The podcast is to make you a better tennis player and a smarter athlete. I'm your host Jonathan Stokke. He is a USPTA elite professional in his coached young professionals JJ Wolf and Kimberly Burl over the last several years. On today's episode, we discuss how your brain type affects your motor skills, how long it takes to make a technical change, and debunking
some of the greatest myths in tennis. So sit back, relax and prepare to become a smarter tennis player. All right, Andy, welcome to the pod. Hey, thanks, Robin. Thanks for having me.
It's a treat for me to have you on because I've seen a lot of your videos online and one of my regrets is like a younger coach is that I was a good player and I was coached by good coaches and so I thought that if I retire and call myself a coach, that makes me a coach and I didn't really spend that much time learning in my early 20s and I've learned a lot from you online in the last couple of years. And you are one of the people that pushed me towards
Vic Brayden and all of his teachings. And so for the listener who doesn't know, can you kind of give them a brief description of who Vic Brayden was in the game of tennis and then how you two got started together? Oh well, I'll see if I can run through that. No, I'm glad you've been finding value in some of the online content that we've made a lot of blood and so it and tears have gone into that. But Vic Brayden, I would say first for the listeners, probably just Google it.
He's got a pretty long Wikipedia there. But he's in the international tennis hall of fame, coach, he ran the tour back in the Jack Kramer days in the 60s. Then he started the Vic Brayden tennis college did a ton of research in tennis and also in like 40 other sports. So he's a tennis researcher, but then he's also a licensed psychologist. The list kind of goes on and on and on.
But he did a lot of research in tennis and sport. He's one of those guys that would spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get high speed film back in the 70s and really was able to break a lot of myths that were out there in tennis, you know, with a slow motion footage and things like that. But we could probably talk for an hour just on his background, but yeah, I would I would Google Vic, but international tennis hall of fame, coach and amazing guy.
So how do you do that? Yeah, where we first connected. So my family, I was born in Southern California. When I was four years old, we moved to Southern Utah, which is in the desert near Vegas. And I luck would have it years later that he had a Vic Brayden tennis college there in that small town.
So we moved back when I kind of got into tennis around 11 years old. We moved back to Southern California just so I would have so I'd have more opportunities with tennis and my brother was a musician kind of playing in bands in L.A. I think like that. We landed back in Orange County. I was probably 13 years old.
And my family didn't have a ton of money for, you know, lessons and things like that. So we're just looking around different clubs and we found the Vic Brayden tennis college and I had no idea who Vic was and my family, you know, my mom to this day can't keep score in tennis, but she called them up and we went out there and I tried out I think maybe a lesson or two and and I didn't have
the money for lessons. So what they did is they put me on a work scholarship. So I was able to do, you know, yard work and string rackets and data entry and you know, even one time cleaned up Vic's famous tennis library. But so they were they were nice enough to put me on a scholarship and I was able to play out there for a couple of group lessons and then I had kind of free reign to
play tennis there whenever I wanted. So that was probably a year to two years I spent there first getting to know Vic and you know, a lot of good memories and then a few years later we moved back to Southern Utah and the Vic Brayden tennis college was there. So I was training there and then ended up pretty much started to teach right away before and after college.
So you mentioned the myths that he was able to dispel or you know shed light on some maybe some technical issues by using that slow motion video and I want to touch on a few that I became aware of but I want to open up to you first and just which one do you think is the most important or your personal favorite that when you were exposed that information you kind of your eyes were open you're like oh wow that's maybe counterintuitive to what I thought was actually happening.
That's a good question I mean there's a lot of them but really what happens at the impact point how long the ball is on on the strings three to five milliseconds and just to give people a reference point if you stick at your tongue just quickly or you'll have that. That's about a hundred milliseconds. So the ball is not on the string very long and then it takes about 50 to 70 milliseconds for the sensation of hitting the ball to reach your brain so by the time you even felt it the ball
is long gone. So that's really one of the okay what you can't come over the ball you can't carve the ball and you can't the feeling maybe that that you you know you're going to come over the top of the ball or peel the orange on a slicer but that doesn't happen. So what happens at the moment of truth that that's a big one the role of the wrist and that's kind of a bit of a pun as well but so just watching in slow motion that players would say you know I roll my wrist over the ball
or things like that and then you just see the wrist really fixed. So ground strokes, volleys, you know just the impact point and how long the ball is actually on the strings and then with a serve you know there was a lot there that he did you know scratching your back and some of the things that were taught in the former times I would say you know that was a big one. Toss the ball high for more time where actually you know the higher you toss the ball the faster it's dropping
through the window of your racket so you actually have less time to hit the ball. So although it may seem a little bit more rough to people when they have a low toss it actually the ball sits in the window of the racket longer. So those are a few of the myths that we talk about a lot and you know staying down for example on ground strokes whatever force you push off the ground goes back up through your body so if you stay down you oppose your own swing you oppose the forces that are
working you know with the ground reaction force the kinetic chain so you don't actually want to try to stay down you're really just going to let the body unwind and lift and he shows in his videos if you were to go watch like for example the big brain and backhand video which I think is on YouTube you know he'll show that when you stay down it's the acceleration rate that stops or DCs is when you stay down so you know you see the racket accelerate but the rate of
acceleration actually decreases when you stay down. You already touched on a couple incredible ones there I want to go a little more in depth so the first one that kind of blew my mind was I was taught like a windshield wiper forehand like I was going to take my racket and kind of like I don't
know like I was cleaning the windshield and it's a very risty motion and whenever I hit tops spin I just assumed like you said covering the ball or brushing up and then when I've seen top swings online pretty much any quality forehand swing you know that wrist flexion is kind of stable throughout the contact point and even well after that ball is gone can you kind of explain that that concept to people so a lot of people think it's a very risty shot but I think maybe when
you explain it to realize it's not that risty. Yeah it's really you don't want to try to do it so when the forearm goes forward and you know back in the 90s maybe the 80s 90s when Vic was talking about that he would say pre-stretch the pre-stretch forehand we did three research of agacy and he
showed that where when the forearm goes forward the wrist would go back so action reaction you know Gil Reyes when Vic showed that to Gil he was not aware that he was like whoa what's what's that but so there's that movement then then when the when the forearm goes forward the wrist lays back so
nowadays they're calling it lag and snap right so then the the wrist comes back to a fixed position at the contact point and then it will stay fixed you know at least 12 to 18 inches of what you're after for a hitting zone and then you really see the forearm pronate but when you see all that fast
you know you just it just looks like players are bringing really risty the other risky part of that is that you know in pro tennis you're looking at the top players of the game which people love to do on youtube is they're constantly improvising you know it's not like you're just always set to hit a perfect on balance forehand or backhand you know you're hitting on the run high balls low balls you know it's they're constantly having to use the fine motor shots you know sometimes you'll have to
use maybe a little bit more of your forearm but when you're working on fundamentals you don't want to be trying to turn the door knob or wind fill wipe or things like that and that goes back to Jonathan I'm being a little long-winded but it goes back to just knowing the dimensions of the court if
people really understood that there's less than 20 degrees of variance the racket face has to go to go corner to corner has very very little so the size of the court you know looks gigantic to the eyeball but if you just look at how much you have to move the racket less than 20 degrees
to go corner to corner you don't want to be using your wrist so the vick would say you know in tennis you're really at war with the wrist another concept with a groundstroke will stick with the forehand that's fine but you know generating I've heard you guys describe it as like pure
topspin or whatever but the ability to hit topspin is obviously crucial to be consistent and to be able to hit a little faster and to hit with height over the net what are the basic fundamentals for creating good topspin well I mean it's cliche to say low to high but we say inside out you know
inside out low to high so from close to away from your body where if you're up to high most people don't get below the ball so if you're up too high let's say ball level then the swing goes more outside in so you always want to be swinging low to high inside out and then that's where you
know the friction with the tennis strings against the ball for those few milliseconds the low to high swing path for whatever angle you swing up and the speed that you swing up will determine how much spin the ball gets and then you're going to have basically a vertical racket face close to
it I mean you could say okay the fun few shots that are hit really hard so many may have a racket face it's slightly closed but it's not like you're going to tell your student hey I just close the racket face three degrees there you know it's like just yeah it's just keep keep the
than the vanilla ice cream in the bowl first and then you can add the magic shell and the sprinkles later I like that when the the thing is is you know good players what is it they don't say what they do and don't do what they say but yeah like I would have thought that there were definitely balls
like if you hit a fastball to meet deep on the baseline and I kind of just flick to my hand at it I in my mind I am closing my strings a little more and then if I look at that shot on video and slow motion it's just not nearly as closed as I thought it was and yeah again that's like a thought or a
feel but I guess you always have to match those fields up with like what's actually happening yeah for sure but but but taking that I mean for example when you take the ball you know just off the bounce you know for a half volley let's say and you slightly hurt the racket base then
then the angle coming off the strings will keep the trajectory low but if you're on the baseline you you really have to knock the the fuzz off the ball to get the ball over the net you have to get you know below the ball and swing up that's where you always say you know big tennis is a lifting
game and the research he did which is getting below the ball and swinging up from about a four-foot height if you swung on a pure horse on a plane you had to hit the ball two hundred and twelve miles per hour to get it to clear the net and he would say if you could do that you'd have hair
in your tongue and live in a tree so it's it's just not possible which you'll see you know you've washed in the top guys I mean the women aren't too far behind but you know they may be crack a hundred miles per hour on a few groundies and it's incredible speed when you see it but that's
not average let's go back to something you just touched on a second ago and you were talking about the dimensions of the court and the 20 degrees but also the shape of the court you know I was one of those coaches who would draw on a dry race board draw a picture of a court and I guess it
was kind of a rectangle but it was honestly way too close to a square and my service box was more than half the court or sorry my the back of my court you know it wasn't dimensionally correct and you know we know that it's almost three times as long as it is wide can you just describe
how that shape of the court should influence maybe both a little bit of technique but also maybe some tactics yeah so as far as technique goes yeah just understanding that you barely have to bury the racket face the angle the racket face left to right to go corner to corner less than 20
degrees so if you're in the middle half markets actually 19.6 if you're on the sideline it's 19.1 so if you can just imagine it being more belong there a sidewalk try to match your forward and upward swing to the court a little bit more so you could think of a sidewalk a train track you
know just anything with a little more linear just especially when you're having problems with you know with control missing the ball wide most people are just pulling their left side on the fore and even the pro game they're pulling their left side and missing one they're missing in the net because
of it but so just trying to match your forward and upward swing to the shape of the court which we know is a rectangle but it's it's a pretty narrow one and then part two was tactically yeah I mean so angle begins angle if you can hit the ball deep and down the middle with Billy Jean King said
you can beat everybody in the world the problem is you can't do that even the best players in the world it's very difficult they have to ball deep more than a few times in a row if you're creating angles too much that can make you run and today's game you just don't see that many people
going forward but they're all trying to work on it but so if you can just work on playing deeper especially when you're behind the court deeper in towards the middle when you're behind the court or on the baseline and then as you move closer to the net those angles open up to you
from the service line you know you're you're gonna get around 27 degrees if you get halfway between the sort of service line and that you get 30 degrees you get three feet from that you had 130 degrees so the closer you get to that the more angles open up further your back the the
smaller the angle becomes so just being aware of some of that geometry can help you reduce the amount of errors you make this is going to be a difficult question because I'm going to try to get you in the mind of crazy town but you and every other coach or great player has talked about
you know depth and of course hitting through the middle at certain times and amateurs and juniors it's it's just always angle angle wide wide wide you know a lot of them are getting this information but that preset you know instinct is to always be stretching someone wide instead of maybe like oh
I can rush them deep or move them back why do you think that is like the default setting for most players that they want to go wide and not deep to the middle well it's more fancy to go to do the wide and the angles I mean when you watch highlights right from matches usually you see
the incredible shot making you don't see kind of the boring the boring average rally shots that are maybe only a few hits that were hit deep so I think that's one thing is people think they have to have tons of variety and creativity when really you know when going back to a braiding theme it's just
you got to just learn to hit the same old boring winner so I think I think that's a big part people just they want to play TV tennis but there is still a lack of understanding if they just understood the dimensions of the court and how little room you really have to play with that helps it
goes a long way so I know we're bouncing around a little bit but there's just a couple of these you know myths and topics and I just want to give everyone just a little taste of you know kind of the stuff that you teach and the facts here but talking about the volley I always had a
continental grip I had Kelly Jones on a couple episodes ago and I was talking about how I had a continental grip for my volleys and my racket face always felt very open I had a hard time with high forehand volleys and I didn't really understand the angle of my racket face at contact I would have said as an early coach and for sure as a player that my racket when I made contact with a volley was a 45 degree angle so can you tell everyone listening why I was completely wrong on that one?
well the continental grip does open the racket face if you would just have let's say an eastern forehand grip in a ready position and then and then just turn the racket to a continental grip the racket face is open 45 degrees up into the left for a right-hander so it is open 45 degrees but at
contact it's not going to be that way you have to match that open racket face to a downward swing or you have to swing on an arc to get the racket face vertical at the hit so it's either you're going to adjust your grip or you're going to adjust your wrist and nowadays really what you see
most players on the tour they'll have a composite forehand grip and if they don't make any kind of grip change or heel pad change at all then they're they're having to change the wrist forward and if you're strong okay you can stabilize it with a vertical racket but you still put the wrist in a
really vulnerable position for injury but most of the time you just see they have a really downward racket path so there's a lot of calculation involved with that downward swing not to mention a net in front of you and then understand floats I mean if there's just all kinds of reasons I've seen
this on great base before and it was not taught to me and obviously I don't play anymore so it's not like I'm going to work on it but I've heard people say it's okay to have two volley grips you know a forehand volley grip and a backhand volley grip and I've heard some people just say that's the most ridiculous thing ever and some people say that you know you have the same amount of time and can you just kind of explain your stance on that and kind of what those options are?
Yeah so let me let's just say you have a composite forehand grip where you're in between an eastern forehand and a continental that can just help you with a very little amount of wrist adjustment to square the racket up and hit it hit it flat hit it hard and then be able to drive through the
volley and have a hitting zone so in case you're timing as early you're still going to be good so same thing on the backhand side if you can get the racket head square by getting the grip over towards panel number one we'll say the right side of panel one even if you go into
in between one and a continental it helps you square the racket up and then you can drive it forward so the whole point of that is that you put the arm in the most efficient position as far as the wrist is concerned right so not in a vulnerable position for injury and then you can hit the
ball flat you can hit it hard you can stick the volley and then you can go forward so you can have a hitting zone and that's really what we try to focus on on all the strokes is just that you know forehand backhand volley is to understand is that you can have a safety zone right in case you're early you're still going to be good and then that goes right back to the dimensions of the court got that long arrow sidewalk and you keep the racket going towards your target.
I love if you could elaborate to finish up on this technical side and I'll be doing videos for the listeners out there so they can see some of the things you're talking about but you're doing a good job of explaining it without being able to give a visual but with the serve you briefly
touched on in the beginning and you said you know about the height of the toss and the rate that it's dropping and that's something that a lot of people push back on because they feel very rushed can you just touch on that again and explain maybe what the optimal height of a toss would be
and then why that makes sense. Yeah I'll get to I just thought you know with the work timing and time on the ball so the big day you don't have time to switch well if you have time to turn your shoulders you have time to switch a grip it's just that it takes like anything it takes practice
and most people aren't being taught hey work on a grip change but you'll see even the best players in the world a lot of times they will shift their grip and they don't even know it you know they'll make a small adjustment with the heel pad you just really have to look closely you just watch their fingers and they're they're dancing around but so you do have time you just have to practice it
as far as that goes with the timing on on the ball toss is what you were talking about. Yeah just with the serve like a lot of players launch their ball toss and there's some pros they do it too and so then if you see a pro doing it then you assume that that's the greatest thing in the world but you know there's a lot of pushback because if someone lowers their toss even a little bit they feel very very rushed and oh my god how can I you know get my swing in and all this stuff so
can you kind of just explain that concept in a little more detail. Yeah I mean it's natural for people if they have a high toss you go to the low toss yeah it's going to feel rushed but most people make the mistake where when they get into a low toss they toss first and usually straight out in front
of them and so when you put the tossing arm up first it takes the right arm that if you're right-handed player the racket arm a lot longer to catch up to the toss so the idea of what you want to do delay the toss by turning the body first so the arms you'll start to go back you know when the
weight goes back your left arm if you're right-handed player would go more parallel with the baseline and then you try to bring your arms up a little bit more in unison so together so by the time you get to where people would say the trophy position we say the the mirror position or salute position
where the racket would be you know more over your head by the time you get to that position that's about when you're tossing the ball and of course people do it they have some lag before that player's like curious for example but then he speeds up the racket really well
but if you can delay the toss by just turning your body then tossing that helps and then you're not going to have that rushed feeling because you're basically halfway through your swing by the time you release the ball is there is there an exact height or a reference point you know if I reach
up all the way and I make contact with my serve is there a baseline figure if you say I toss it 12 inches above my contact or exactly to my contact are 20 inches is there a reference point like that no I mean Vicky used to always say 20 inches out of your outstretched hand which is basically
the distance from your hand to the you know to the middle of the sweet spot of the strings we've got a lot of players where they just reach up on a wall you go by your tippy toes Marcus spot put a bandaid on the wall and then top for that spot I was telling a player the other
day at Roscoe Tanner who was a famous big server with a low toss you looked like he hit it on the way up but he hit it at the apex he would knock the leaves off of a tree reaching up as high as he could and then you would toss or the broken leaves obviously you just don't want to have a toss
it's so high that you have to stop the momentum of your swing the retail player's program your swing and then toss to your swing but most people have their swing programmed by their toss in a negative way so the high toss gives them more time to add extra movements that are unnecessary or even to
have a hit your paws in the swing so then you have to startle over again yeah and then you get used to that hitch and then you think that's what you need and so I need to make sure I have that time they get so upset when when they don't have time to make those extra movements and I'm like you
just have more time to get in trouble yeah they just don't realize those extra movements or why people don't recognize them so we just did a ton of just a brief drive by of all these different shots and some techniques and some fundamentals and players are usually fairly resistant to work on
new things it takes a lot of time like what is your stance or what is your take on you know the amount of time it takes to rewire your brain or kind of change the technique whether you know some people have major surgery to do some people have minor surgery but what is that process like
well yeah you have to be open to change number one that's that's for sure if you have any doubts about the change then it's usually not going to happen if the pain of changing is greater than the pain you feel when you lose people don't change so you know you have to be kind of all-in so to speak you okay hey I look at the science of that the rationale the fact that makes sense now let's go do it if you can do that the process is going to go a lot faster so for example to throw
out this video that's become sort of famous that I made for fun when I worked with JJ Wolfe and he was a kid and changed the serve from a palm up to a palm down it was basically just really and he's athletic kid at 15 but it was just a few days and within a week he had grasped that concept
pretty darn well going from palm up to palm down you know but he used all in it's like okay yeah let's do it yeah we're gonna do that I think the average for most people it could be eight weeks is what big used to say and you get it you lose it you get it you lose it you know it takes it takes time
and there's definitely some frustration you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable when you're making changes but it really I think a lot of it's mental where how many reps you're gonna put into it and how much you kind of believe okay this is this is it I'm gonna I'm gonna
make a mountain do this you can't have doubts that makes a lot of sense you said it's the pain of the pain of losing has to be greater than the pain of that change because it is a painful process that makes no sense and it does take time can you briefly explain I this is something you've touched
on and I'm aware of it but I don't have a great grasp on it can you explain my own I'm not a my own expert but basically if you just think of the the signals of your brain the wires right the the more the more you repeat something then my own is what insulates that and makes makes it the
signal faster and smoother so it's kind of you can think of a a wire and the rubber around it that would be a way where it's like okay the more the more you repeat something the more the thicker that becomes the insulation if that makes sense so how does that relate to to improve or changing
the the technique of a shot yeah so you every rep counts so you don't you don't want bad my life you know even if you're let's say for example if you're just warming up returns I'm always on my players like hey just every rep counts no no sloppy reps it's like get in there and make a good rep
every single time because you just don't want to have sloppy bad reps so there's good my own and bad whatever you're trying to work on just try to work on that one thing take the best swing you can every single time I see there's two things here my wife used to coach golf and the first time I
ever dragged her out for a lesson she said she goes okay you should probably stop taking practice swings and I was like why and she's like well your practice swing is awful so practicing a horrendous swing like just doing nothing is probably an improvement on that and then yeah exactly yeah and then
I see warmups a lot and people come out and they're not really moving their feet and it looks like maybe they're trying to get their body loose but they're not super focused and I'm like you just spent 10 minutes repping a lot of things that you probably don't want and if you multiply that 10
minutes times whatever 300 days a year that you might be playing that's a lot of minutes that you are practicing something that you shouldn't be not exactly you did you you want to maximize your time of line that Vic would use is you want to practice in the manner which you're expected to perform
so when you're on the practice course it's like hey you know how you practice is how you're going to play you know when you're just talking about motor programming and my all that kind of stuff it's like every rep counts I always chuckle when I watch fitness videos with tennis players where
they you know they're moving really intense and then their shadow swings are just all you know they look like a snake going into a hole you know it's like are you aware of why your racket work is doing there and I you know I know they're just trying to kind of take a little swing at it
but it's like hey why not go over there and take the best swing you can as if you're you're really hitting a ball in front of you because it's really the way they're shadow swing when they do those kinds of drills is not doing their they're swinging a good we have a couple Instagram questions and
one of them I kind of modified because I actually watched a video with you recently and I found it incredibly fascinating you were talking about they were asked the question originally was about the brain and how that relates to the style of play and your technique but I watched a video
on YouTube I think and you were explaining that based on your brain type you might be predisposition to have certain technical flaws or certain certain techniques or or aspects of your body that you may want to use more can you kind of elaborate on that yes so one of Vicks partners I would say
that he worked a lot with his name is John Neenogel and his son Jeremy as well as doing continuing a lot of John's work but he John has a book there's a few out there ones called your best sport and he's taken the Myers Briggs concept with brain typing or personality typing and
taking it a few steps further with motor skills and so it might be a whole we have a whole episode on brain typing but so everybody's either an introvert or an extrovert they're in the moment or intuitive so they're an S or an N they're a thinker or a feeler or they're a J or a P meaning
they like structure and organization or they like to go with the flow but the middle two letters will connect to your to your motor skills so for example if you're an SF brain type as sense a feeler your gross motor skills so you're going to be really good at using large muscles in your body
if you're an ST your fine motor skilled so you're going to be really good at you're going to be basically genetically wired to use from your think your finger to your elbow and so most it's fascinating with John's work and this is I'm going to the super fast but basically if you look at
any quarterback that's been legendary they're an ESTP so they're an extrovert they want to make things happen they're fine motor skilled and the P's can go with a flow so for example if somebody's taken their wide receiver that they were supposed to hit if they're taken they're like oh no problem
I'll just hit that guy but so for example like Ryan Leif way back in the day when he was paid like 55 million dollars became a flop John told them hey don't pick this guy because his brain type he was a J he's not going to do well at the pro game they're like uh it's not in a sense but it was
100% correct so there's going to be with tennis players if you look at the WTA which is very interesting a lot of the legends you had Lindsey Davenport and the ESFP so they're gross motor skilled players or I would say they're big moments you know they they use their body really well
coil and coil SFs can hit two handed back ends really well because they they know how to coil them and coil the body and then on the men's side you see more of the fine motor skilled players the NTS the STs so for example a Yonic center I've guessed almost 100% is an ISTP brain type
and so they're very good at the fine motor skills in the hand-dye coordination it's yeah we can go on and on about brain typing but that's it's another tool where it's like okay as a coach all brain type players that I'm working with and then I can know you know it's from
how the body works where you want to keep working on the strengths and then also where they may be weaker and it's also how they I was going to say it's how they perceive the world too you know a P if someone's a P brain type they're not going to be the most organized people in the world
so you need to really give them structure here's what we're going to do here's what we did here's what we're doing tomorrow and then a J will really want that too a J wants to know hey what are we doing what's the plan we you know I want to have structure you know knowing those little things
can can help you relate to the person that you're coaching so is that something when you're working with a new player or you get to meet them do you actually have them take a test or do you just kind of pick up on that observationally since you've been around for so long and you know
what to look for like for an amateur player out there and you're hearing this like actually want to go take it so I know from my golf game not my tennis game I'm kind of curious like what am I and then I go oh that makes sense I can kind of see what he's talking about should everyone out there
be aware of what they are in this in this regard I'm sure I think it's fine I mean he does put you in the box because there's nature nurture John would say need dollar he would say it's 60 40 nature versus nurture the way you know your background way you grew up I'm a P but I grew up
in it pretty like a J household you know so when we had our captain's like you don't really sit on the couch there's 19 pillows you know so yeah I think it's I think it's fun it's good to know and then yeah for even life you know I've helped friends with their relationships and family members
and they say hey you you know they see the world like this and you like this you got to meet in the middle so it doesn't have to be you know put you in the box at all but I think it's just another tool that's definitely helpful and yeah to answer question I 100% will brain type players even
just in the moment if I'm teaching somebody that I've never met before it's like okay let me see how this person is and then I can help them but then the players I work with long term 100% will have them take tests and then the most difficult question of the podcast because you have so much
great information so many things that you could help people with what is your best advice for the 40 singles player that's a question gosh we saw so many three five fours coming to the tennis college all these years and one of the frustrating parts would be you'd see somebody and they'd come
back the next year and they're exactly the same it's like come on hey Bob you know I told you're four hands two two far behind your body too long here what what happened you know we gave the information so for a 40 player I mean it's always going to come down to fundamentals but I would say
good advice would be just take one shot you know that you really need to improve could be served backing whatever it may be going forward take one shot and just take a year and really work in math for that shot and get better you know just say hey this year I'm gonna learn how to hit a tough them back in because time flies and people you know people to send up being the same and if you just you want to be the same that's fine but you know why not why not get better there's there's four
basic areas in tennis right you have to hit run compete and recover and really for any tennis player not just a 4-0 when I work with a player on tour this is exactly the areas it's like hey what what can you do in each one of those areas better and try to do a little bit of those things every
day so okay how can you improve today when you're hitting how can you improve today with your run and your fitness what can you do for the mental emotional side and then how can you recover better with your food your sleep distracting those kind of things so just try to try to do a little bit
of all those four areas every day you're gonna be much better you know you can say the 1.1% better every day but the general tip would be hey just take one area game one thing and just work on it for a year so so let's pretend then that some of the listeners out there are so willing to
listen to you and take your information they go Andy that's a great idea and then they're trying to figure out how to pick that shot would you how would you pick that shot would you go with a strength and go maybe I can make this insanely good would you go with the biggest weakness or how
would you evaluate which one of those ways you each individual should go you could you could you could go with the strength for sure a maximizing strength again the level so you know if you're at a higher and higher level people are going to find your weakness so if you've got a hole in your
game they're gonna find it so I think you know trying to patch up the holes is the way I would go first is like hey you know you got this hole and then obviously keep working on your strengths but find the biggest hole in your ship in your boat and try to try to fix that hole
love that Andy I appreciate your time obviously this is a more in the technical side but like I said you're watching your information online and getting exposed to Vic total eye opener for me in the last couple years and I'm still trying to grasp it all but so much great stuff here hopefully
people are paying attention and we'll be googling Vic and watching your stuff online but thanks so much for your time today I know where I'm hopefully it was meaningful I know we could ramble forever and and there's so much to talk about with tennis you know development but yeah it's been
pleasure all right I want to thank Andy for coming on the show I highly recommend googling him and watching as much of his online content as you possibly can find on youtube and the great based tennis website two things stood out to me today obviously the serve is one of the most
important shots in tennis and the height of the toss is something I wish I knew when I was playing I now toss it only slightly higher than I can fully extend up and my consistency day to day has really improved the other quick thing that we touched on was his estimate of eight weeks to improve
a skill his line that the pain of losing has to be greater than the pain of change if you want to improve is so true the process of changing technique is often painful and sometimes you take a few steps back at first before seeing even the slightest bit of progress but push through plug the
biggest hole in your ship and be a better tennis player next year at the same time I want to thank you all for listening I know there are a lot of podcasts out there and I'm grateful you chose to join me today I'm motivated to evolve and improve so please subscribe if you enjoyed the
episode and leave a comment or review so keep getting better every week for more check out my Instagram at Stokey tennis for clips from these podcasts as well as general drills and tips to help your tennis game thanks for listening I hope you just improved it tennis without even hitting a