Hey, everyone. On today's episode, we've got Richard Bryce, known on YouTube and Instagram as The Tennis Hacker. If there was ever one of my episodes that you should watch on YouTube versus listening on your phone, this would be the one.
He demonstrates a lot of interesting exercises to strengthen your eyes and improve your vision so that you can track the ball more efficiently, get correct spacing, hit cleaner shots, and you'll definitely maximize your learning and improvement if you watch the video.
I have a link to that YouTube video in the episode description below. And before we get going today, a quick note about today's sponsor, ADV. They craft high-quality functional gear for competitive racquet sport players, including tennis and padel.
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Plus, their backpack is TSA compliant, which I just put to the test for my latest tournament trip to Florida. I highly recommend you checking them out and check the show notes for my link for 10% off. I'm really excited for you to learn the new ideas from this episode, just like I did. So sit back, relax, and prepare to become a smarter tennis player. All right, Richard, welcome to the pod. Jonathan, thank you for having me.
I've loved seeing your stuff online and you come at the game of tennis from a very unique perspective. There's a lot of coaches like me that are boring and it's all about technique or tactics or strategy. And there's a ton of us out there that are talking about these types of things.
But if you go to your website, like you talk about brain based training, you have a lot of ideas and exercises and expertise that are very different than a lot of tennis coaches. So I was wondering if you could just kind of explain. what brain-based training means to you and what exactly that is yeah i'll give some background to give people context because we come at it from a different perspective you know i know your history you were a tremendous player growing up
I played tennis growing up, but I wasn't amazing. I was like a low-level county player in England. And I was a low-level county player because I was willing to run and I was fast and I was fit.
And I was smart enough to just get the ball back in play and let people miss. But then when I came up against anyone good, they would just wipe me off the court. And that was always the way it was for me. And even when I went into tennis coaching after university, I still didn't get much better, even though my technical knowledge and everything improved, because unfortunately I just wasn't skillful enough to do what I needed to do.
I had visual deficits, I had coordination deficits, but I didn't know I had them at the time. I just wasn't able to do what a coach would tell me to do. And it wasn't until I had a series of... bad injuries and concussions. And I basically had a bad mountain bike crash that left me a mess at the age of about 34. Didn't know whether I'd be able to play tennis again because I'd completely separated my collarbone. And I started doing brain-based training.
to rehab those injuries and to basically try and get rid of my pain and try and deal with some of the concussion symptoms and it did that part really quickly it kind of got rid of all my injuries and my pain and that side of things
But the thing that surprised me was the next time I played tennis after not playing tennis for six months, I suddenly had better timing than I'd had at any point in my life. Because the neuro rehab process is about finding areas of the brain that aren't working in the way that they do. ideally would and training them so a lot of that's about the visual system about the balance system about the coordination about the movement systems
So by doing the concussion and the pain rehab, I suddenly raised my level of skill and I was finally able to actually play tennis in the way that I wanted to. So then I was like, huh. This is useful stuff. I'm going to start teaching other people how to do this. So without that concussion, without that accident, you said you had visual or cognitive.
lacking some abilities there that were preventing you from executing what your coaches wanted to do or what you wanted to work on. And you weren't aware of it until you had the concussion and started doing those exercises. How would a player today know whether their visual skills or cognitive skills are impaired? And that's one of the main reasons why they're not improving. How would they know that without getting concussed on a mountain bike?
Because they didn't play Div 1 college tennis and become a professional tennis player. Fair enough. That's how they know. And if they started adult tennis as an adult... They didn't start at 3-0. If you've got good vision, good coordination, you don't start at 3-0. You start at like 4-0 because you can run and you just get the ball back in play. And then they become a 4-5 very quickly. And within a few years, you know, they're a 5.0. if that wasn't you
or isn't you then you have limitations within your visual system within your coordination within your ability it's that stuff that's holding you back like you know it's a lovely idea that if we just practice and learn technique and do all those things then we're all going to be amazing but
You know, there's a reason that the best players in the world are the best players in the world. They've got the skill, they've got the vision, they've got the physical ability, they've got the mental ability to do it. And you don't know what you don't know. Like, I was a decent athlete. I played...
You know, in university, college, I played soccer for the first team. Not like it is in the US, because if you're in the first team in soccer in university in England, you've already failed as a professional. So it's different, but it's still a decent level. decent but that's very different to being excellent so in terms of the tennis
I didn't know that I had these deficits. I just knew that I couldn't time it. I was just late on every shot. I knew I understood where my contact point needed to be consciously because I was a coach and I understood this stuff.
But that's very different to kind of read the flight of the ball that comes at you at a different speed, different flight, different angle. Can I understand how that's going to react off the court? Can I translate that into a movement signal and actually start my swing at the right time? And then can I actually make the... of the speed of my swing and a swing path relative to the ball. I didn't know I had those problems. I just knew that...
No matter what tweak or change that I made to my technique, when I tried to hit with power, I would shank the ball horribly long. So I didn't. I just... got the ball back in play and just waited for people to miss and it was good up until a point very tiring because you have to do lots of running and then it suddenly changed when I started to rehab things and it's like oh
I had vision and coordination deficits. That was what was going on because I haven't played for six months. All I've done is work on vision and coordination. And now I'm suddenly able to do stuff that I was never able to do for the whole of my life. So what were some examples of...
those coordination drills, those vision drills, you're trying to rehab back from obviously not for that purpose, but you said they were very, very productive. So in that rehab process, like what were examples of some of the best drills or exercises you were doing that you found the most useful? The vision stuff's a lot easier to show people, so we can start with that.
We've basically got two main types of eye movement. We've got fast eye movements and slow eye movements. So you literally break them down and practice them. For a fast eye movement, I'll kind of have my thumbs and use my thumbnails as targets. I just place them a little...
bit outside the screen so you can't see them but i've just done that i'm just going to look at one thumbnail and then the other thumbnail and one thumbnail and the other thumbnail and just switch back and forth between the two of them so that's a fast eye movement that's a saccade
I'm going to want to do that in different directions because we've got different muscles that make the eyes move in different directions. We've got different parts of the brain that create and coordinate the eye movements. So we do that left and right, up and down the diagonals as kind of a bare minimum. and then we do the same thing for a smooth pursuit so rather than a fast eye switch we do a slow eye movement where we're just tracking a target in those same
eight directions. And these things seem really simple, but when you actually do it with people in person, including lots of tennis players, their eyes don't quite do what they think they're doing. So you would think it's a simple skill that everyone can do. But it's not. A lot of people, when they make the eye switch, instead of it going straight to the target, it falls a little bit short of the target or it goes a little bit past the target.
when they're tracking and trying to follow something in a smooth circle it doesn't follow in a smooth circle there's kind of bits that it's missing so kind of basic coordination of eye movements is where you start you've then got
tracking things as they come towards you both slowly and quickly so i could use a pen tip focus on the tip of the pen and track the target as it comes towards me and a lot of people when they do this their eyes won't go all the way in you know they'll get to a certain point and one of the eyes will pop out because they just can't control it enough. So we can track things in slowly like that and then we can switch.
between things that are close and things that are far really quickly. So I can have the pen there, look at something that's up close, then look at something that's in the distance, up close and in the distance. And those kind of... would be the first four basic exercises for people to work on because they're kind of the foundational eye movements now i'm a bit of a psychopath so I'm watching you do those drills and I'm absolutely loving it. Right. So is there.
Can I do that too much? Like I'm just sitting here, I have a pen in my hand because I have notes during the podcast and I'm like, okay, like I can almost start doing those exercises the second we're done. is there a way I need to work into it is there a certain amount of reps is there a certain amount of time is there a certain time of the day where you should be doing it are there any rules for that
No. Sadly, I wish it was like that, but it's the same as every other type of training. Some people eat peanuts and they have major reactions to it. Most people can eat peanuts just fine. some people Djokovic can play for six hours and they're fine the next day the rest of us wouldn't be able to walk for a month if we did that so it's the same with this style of training generally you're going to start off a little bit lower and more sensibly and just see how your body responds
but some people can do a massive amount of vision training straight away. My background was concussion history and lots of problems when I was younger, so I had to start out fairly small. It's like something that seems simple, like looking at the tip of the pen and holding my hand.
head in that position if when I started if I did that for three seconds I would feel sick afterwards whereas I've worked with people in their 70s and their 80s that look at me like I'm an idiot going I can do this all day every day what are you talking about so there really is variation in what people can respond to most people doing a small amount of vision training they can do it every single day five ten minutes and be
completely fine some people that might not make them feel amazing but most people that's going to be a good starting point so with those particular exercises you can count reps or you can set a timer so maybe you go right i'm just going to do this exercise for a minute done I'm gonna do a near-far switch for a minute done I'm gonna do smooth pursuits in each direction
maybe do 30 seconds in each direction and then i switch is 30 seconds in each of the direction and that's going to be a great little starting point and depending on how quickly you do it that'll take maybe eight ten minutes Now let's say someone listens to this, watches this on YouTube, sees the exercises, starts implementing them on a daily basis to the point where they don't get sick. They're just using it comfortably.
What are some of the benefits that you think someone's going to see once they've done enough reps over a certain amount of time? How is that going to translate to the tennis court? What are they going to start seeing happen? Again, it really depends on the person. It depends on the threshold. Because the hard thing in tennis is people have got an idea of what they want to do on their mind based on the top.
0.001 percent that they see on tv and unfortunately we're in a situation where coaching has now turned into tell people to do what the pros do when people don't have that ability so People are trying to hit something that can be quite far away. So people have got an idea of what they want to do. They do vision training and stuff's improving.
But they don't necessarily go from being a 3.0 player to having Federer's forehand in two weeks of doing it. So a lot of people go, oh, this isn't working. So you have to... look at the improvements that you get a little bit more sensibly and if you do that what you'll notice is that you'll start to be able to track the ball more efficiently.
potentially you'll be able to start to see the ball more quickly you'll be able to react more quickly a lot of people are going to notice it improves their level of ability to maintain focus and concentration for longer but they're kind of the basic exercises there's a number that you might need to add on to that.
So for some people, just doing those, that's going to take them a long way. For other people, they might not have a problem with those basic eye exercises. The basic eye exercises might be okay, and they might need to work on slightly more advanced exercises in order to... give them the improvements that they actually need to get the result that they want do you find that so
I'm 41 now, which I know is not like that old, but it feels old to me. And there are times where I play Padel. That's my new like athletic hobby, right? And there are times where I've told the guys I play with, I'm like, you know what? I'm just not that guy anymore.
Like as an athlete, like I'm doing things like I either stumble on my feet where I never would have used to. Or what I noticed was when the ball comes off the glass and I'm tracking the ball, there are times where I've swung and either missed or like shanked it. And I go, I don't even think I saw it. I don't even think I was looking at the ball. And I don't know if that's.
eye fatigue i don't know if that's just like declining athleticism but like that's something that never would have happened so is that a common thing as well obviously i know when you get older your eyesight probably gets worse but just the ability to track or the consistency of your eyes or maybe like the endurance of your vision? Is that a very, very common thing that as you get older, that's going to decline as well? Yes. But as with many things, the question is, why does it decline?
Does it decline because it has to decline because everyone that gets older has to see these things go downhill? I would say I'm living proof that that's not the case. I had loads of problems when I was younger and I... don't have loads of problems now and i'm just a little bit older than you so it doesn't have to go downhill when i was 35 my visual acuity i used to
Again, I'm English. We don't go to see dentists. We don't go to see eye doctors. We don't do any of that stuff. But when I started the brain-based training, I had kind of 40 over 20 vision. And then I got up to 20 over 15 vision, which is... better than theoretically perfect. And that was in my 30s and 40s. So it doesn't have to go downhill.
So what it suggests for you is maybe you haven't quite been stimulating things in the way that they need to. And it's a use it or lose it scenario, just like fitness, just like strength, just like flexibility. If you don't do something, your brain and your body goes, well, we're not going to work.
the energy of maintaining this we're just going to let it fade away because we're not using it so for someone like you who was you know a really high level athlete when they were younger it's very easy to get back you know a little bit of vision training a little bit of movement training and it suddenly switches on very quickly so that's a whole different beast to someone who's never been athletic starts playing tennis in their 40s and they're at a low level
They've got a lot more climbing up to do to be able to do what they actually want to do for someone in your position. You just do it and it'll change stuff very quickly. You just motivated me. I'll probably be like nauseous and throwing up later. I'll have to text you because I'm going to be doing like these eye exercises for two hours so I can play better Padel tomorrow morning. One thing that comes up a lot is, and I've seen online, is the whole like eye dominance or...
keeping your eye on the ball or watching the strings, like what are your thoughts on impact and at least where you should be looking or what someone should be focusing on and what type of information maybe people should kind of discard as like, it's not really for me at my level.
I really wouldn't put anything into the eye dominance stuff. And I've spoken to, you know, some really reputable eye doctors and, you know, people that train brains and some of the smartest people in the world on this. I'm like, in tennis.
Well, we've got these wonderful inventions called necks for a start that turn, you know, and if you're looking at the contact point, ideally your head is going to be looking at that contact point anyway, so you'll be able to see stuff with both eyes for good distance judgment, for good depth perception. We want to be using... both eyes at the same time. So to base decisions off eye dominance I'm not sure it holds too much weight most of the time.
And even the main coach out there that's kind of promoting that stuff, you watch his video on it and he's like, yeah, Federer, left eye dominant, he does that with his forehand, he turns his body, he does this because of his eye dominance. I'm not sure why he does that on the backhand as well. I'm like, well, hold on. He's got two shots. He's got a forehand and a backhand.
50% of the time he's following this rule and 50% of the time he's not following this rule. So how can we use that as the logic that we're basing our decisions on? The footwork patterns that you use, are we going to base those on your eye dominance or are we going to base it on you've got a very small amount of time, you've got to get...
the ball quickly and you've got to use that stance all players top players hit from certain positions off an open stance because that's all you can do in that position now everyone hits a jumping sliding backhand that you know
People like me that lack that flexibility dream of being able to do that, but now they can all do it. Do they all have the same high dominance or is it just that's what you have to do to get to the ball and get in that position if you've got the strength, the speed and the flexibility to do it?
So eye dominance, a lot of people come to me and they're like, yeah, I think the problem with my timing is my eye dominance. And you're like, okay, well, let's assess all of your other visual skills and let's assess your coordination and we'll see what we find. Oh, well. You've got this deficit, this deficit, this deficit, this deficit, this deficit, this deficit, and this deficit.
should we see what happens when we improve those things and when we improve those the problems seem to go away why base our decisions and pin it all on this one thing i dominance that we can't do anything about So that's generally my thoughts. You've triggered me, you mean person. I just have to spend so much time explaining, like, don't worry about eye dominance. That's the least of your problem. The biggest problem is that you've got a short forearm and you're trying to hit it as hard.
hard as you can firstly decide to be more consistent and then we'll work on the body and right I feel like that is as I'm getting older and hopefully more experienced as a coach is that's what I'm learning is one of the biggest skills is like someone might come and say they have 25 issues, but what is the...
Biggest issue. And what what issue will I solve that will maybe solve five issues at the same time? And a lot of times I find that players get very obsessed with what I would think are very, very small pieces of the pie. And they're completely ignoring half of the pie. and i'm like yes you're right the drop shot does need to get better or
Maybe there is something to the angle of your head on your shot, but that is like a 0.01% impact on your game. Whereas your return to serve that you're missing wide every time is probably half of like, you can make a massive jump if you just put your area there. So. because they've got a problem with their technique or they're missing it why because they're going for the line rather than aiming for the big space in the middle
exactly exactly right so you mentioned coordination and kind of hand and foot and eye all that stuff going together yeah are there any when you get on court with someone or when you see someone are there any
what you would call like a physical coordination drill that you'll do with someone right off the bat to be like, let me just test where they are. Do they have former D1 athletic ability and coordination or are they like a complete newbie starting from 0%? Is there anything that you can do there to test that? You don't even...
Once you understand movement and a little bit of neurology, you don't actually need to do any tests. You can just see it. You can see someone that can move well and you can see someone that can't move well. And you can see when most players are trying to move around the court and swing, they've just got really...
inefficient movement and it becomes very obvious like a lot of older players they can't even move their spine like they can't separate different parts of their spine and get it moving and if you can't move your spine then
you don't need special tests to know that that's going to be limiting you on all of your shots because you have to be able to move your spine on your shots but if you want to break stuff down then yeah you do it in the same way with the vision stuff so when we're doing a side to side eye movement when i look
So that side, it gets created by some areas in the brain and it gets coordinated by some areas in the brain. So if my eyes fall short of that target, it tells us about a certain area in the brain. If my eyes go past the target, it tells us about a certain area.
same thing with movement when we're looking at movement we're going to be looking at okay how accurate is the person in terms of this movement what's the rhythm and speed of the movement like and then what's the fatigue ability so like can they do it well at the start and then as they do it and more and more, they start to fatigue. So one of my favorite assessments, I'll have to stand up for this. I guess you can still, my face is less important on this, but.
doing a hand wraps assessment so this isn't something that i've made up or this is you go to a neurologist and they're going to do this assessment with you to find out whether a part of the brain that's responsible for coordinating movements is working the way it should so a hand wraps assessment looks like this. You're going to keep your hand flat. I'm going to hit it with the front and back of my hand. And I'm basically going to do that as fast as I can on both sides.
and what you'll find is you know that's what it should look like maybe going a little bit quicker if you can but what you'll find is you'll give people these instructions okay keep your hand flat keep your elbow tucked in and then they can't do it so they'll start doing this to compensate so we go
that's a lack of accuracy in your movement. You're not able to follow the instructions, keep your elbow to your side and then they can go like this. Or if they're hitting the side of the hand, we know that that's a lack of accuracy. If they're bending their hand and they're trying to find different ways. to cheat. They're all indications of lack of accuracy in that movement and then we're looking at the speed and the rhythm. Can they maintain an actual rhythm?
can they maintain this maintain the speed or do they do it once and it looks okay and then two seconds later they do it and things are falling apart and people go wow that's another very exciting test yeah this is rapid pronation and supination this is how quickly you can control the part of the body
that dictates the angle of the racket face at the moment of contact so it's one of my favorite kind of diagnostic things for right you know what sort of control is this person going to have because if you can't control your forearm while you're standing there go and do this Can you control your forearm while you're sprinting around the port? Caught, the ball's coming at you, you're twisting, you're turning, you've got decisions to make. So I break it down in that way.
That is fascinating. So obviously I'm going to mention this at the beginning of the episode, but I hope people are going to watch this episode because there's a lot of visual cues you need to see. But it blows my mind and like, I'm not going to try it now, but it blows my mind that that.
It looks so simple. And yet I'm probably like, maybe the first time I try it, maybe I struggle with it too. And I go, man, like it is very, very interesting. And then you might be telling a player to do four different things on the take back and drop it here. And you go, okay, well now I kind of understand why. basically not making progress on that or why it seems like I'm speaking a different language to that player.
Yeah, I think this is one of the difficulties of coaches because a lot of coaches grow up playing tennis. They're naturally good. They're naturally athletic. They love tennis. They gravitate towards it and they achieve a certain level. They have got absolutely no clue.
what it's like to not be able to do the stuff that they can do. Like a lot of coaches think that players lack folk. They're just not concentrating. They're just not listening. They don't want it. No, they just, they literally can't do it. It's like Usain Bolt.
Just run faster. Just pump your arms like this and just run faster. And you're like, it doesn't work like that. You have to have the ability to do what you're trying to do. And a lot of people just don't have the ability to do the things the coach is trying to do. And then the coach is saying, yeah. Use Roger Federer's technique. Look, it's really easy. You just do this, you do this, you do this. Meet the ball out in front. Well, yeah, but it's not that easy. There's the skills that go into it.
Along that, what kind of what you're demonstrating and maybe a common issue, and you might have some thoughts on this, is we talked about reaction time and obviously some of that is probably seeing the ball, some that is probably anticipating. A very, very common thing I see is people getting their rackets either back late on a ground stroke or they're at the net in doubles and they're kind of late getting their volley preparation ready.
where does reaction time and preparation and vision and all that collide? Because that is a very, very common issue I see. So how do you help players improve that? So where it collides is you have to be able to do all of it to play tennis well. Reaction speed is, can you actually see clearly at 78 feet or a little bit further than 78 feet away? A lot of people can't. If you can't see fine detail at 78 feet, then that's going to be challenging.
The wonderful news there is we've got eye doctors that can help with good prescriptions. And a lot of people don't get their eyes checked regularly enough. If you just go and make sure that you've got the right prescription, that's a great first step.
Then it's a case of training the visual processing speeds. So there's lots of different exercises you can... use to do that so training the actual speed of your eye movements can help with that but then there's I do different chart exercises and I've made a VR system and I've got different training tools to help people actually process visual information more quickly and then it's
There's always an ability component and a technical component and a concentration component. So there's 50 different things that someone might need to think about to hit a good shot. If they need to be able to react sooner, then they've got to focus on that. They've got to be watching their opponent.
shaping it for the shot they've got to consciously and deliberately learn to try and time their split step and they've got to have all of their focus on trying to react to what the ball's doing with their feet and with their upper body because
More people are good with their hands than reacting with their feet. So they have to do the conscious part of that. So it's like, yes, does the visual system work underneath? Do we have these hard skills? Do we have the ability to process the visual information quickly enough?
And then are we actually paying attention and focusing on what we should be focusing on rather than thinking about something else? So that's kind of the first part of it. So it's which do they need to train? It depends which is more of a problem for them. for them, but generally all of it.
You mentioned at the beginning of that, you said, well, some people do have a hard time just even seeing 78 feet away from them. So do you ever just like, do you basically just laugh to yourself every time someone's convinced they got hooked on a bad line call when you're like, That's 80 feet away. The ball's moving 50 miles an hour. It was 1 16th of an inch out, and you're convinced that you saw it correctly, and maybe they didn't. Do you ever just laugh about that?
well that and the well i do find it funny when me i've got like 20 over 15 vision i train vision all day every day and i'm playing against someone and i call a ball out and they're like no you're cheating i'm like You've got big, thick glasses on, really? Like, it's right there. I train people's vision for a living, so yes, but more so than that,
Professional line judges, they've got one job in life, and that is to call the line. And they still get it wrong. So the rest of us from 78 feet away, it's going to be tricky. That's so funny. Another common issue that people have not only with reaction time is spacing from the ball. So I've almost never met a player that is going to get too far from the ball.
Like unless they're just lazy, but like most of the time it's like, oh, they're overrunning it, whatever it is, forehand, backhand, volley. They get very, very close. What are your thoughts or what are some things that have worked for you and players that have helped them kind of get a little more accurately spaced from the ball?
Yeah, I mean, if you've watched any of my YouTube videos, I like to think I make the most boring tennis videos there are because all I talk about is trying to react to the ball, trying to time your split step and trying to get the right spacing. And I make a bunch of videos going, look how far.
Now Choraz is away from the ball. Yes, but this is the thing that we need to copy. It's the spacing that enables them to get the biomechanics. And as you say, that's the biggest challenge for people. So again, I put it into the same category. All right, I just kind of break it.
down in my head do they have the visual ability to actually judge distance and judge depth properly and most people don't because most people don't have good coordination within their eyes they can drive a car without crashing and they don't hit things on the side of the road but that's different
to the sort of depth perception that we need while we're playing tennis and then we've got to factor in we're moving to the ball which changes how we're going to be perceiving that distance so do they have the raw visual skills and ability do they have the coordination
and the footwork patterns. So do they actually have the movement abilities and have they practiced the footwork patterns enough so they can make the adjustments and then are they actually focusing on it? Are they being disciplined within their practice? Because I find that most players, they really lack discipline, and you might have seen it within their practice. They're trying to do 50 things all at once, and you can't do that. I was never a professional player, but I'm...
I'm decent these days and now I'm playing left-handed. I've gone through the process again of kind of relearning to play left-handed. The spacing is everything. So all the important stuff happens before you hit the ball.
you have to see the ball you have to read where it's going you have to set up in the right position and while you're setting up in the right position you have to make the decision as to what shot you're going to try and hit are you going to try and go for the line are you actually going to get the ball to land
back in the court so all that important stuff happens before you make contact with the ball so is the player actually thinking about that important stuff like okay the ball's traveling towards me I need to set up this far away from it Or are they thinking about getting the racket lag because that's what the next coach on YouTube has told them to focus on? So a lot of that is the focus side of it there. Hopefully I'm not going to expose myself as a horrible coach here, but...
Like one of the things that I struggle to communicate or maybe even understand myself how I do it is, let's say, for example, you toss a ball wide to my forehand. So I split step. I take a step with my right foot, my left foot, my right foot. I'm open stance, and then I hit. If you toss the ball really wide, I'll take those same three steps, just bigger and more explosively. If you toss the ball slower and a little closer to me, I'll take the same three steps.
I'll just make them a little bit smaller and a little bit smoother. And it will feel very similar rhythm-wise to me. Yes. And I will have the same spacing, but the steps were not the same. you know when you when you fed me very wide i had to move quickly with big steps when you fed a very very easy ball they were smaller and smoother and so i'm big on timing with the footwork i want the steps to be similar i want the rhythm to be similar obviously rhythm is key
But I've had a hard time articulating to players, well, how would you know when to take those smaller steps? Or how would you know when to smooth it out a little bit? You've got a scissor kick overhead. Sometimes I got it like. right left right as fast as i can because i might get lobbed for a winner sometimes it's a very smooth calm movement but it's the same movement just at a different timing and cadence so
Like I said, hopefully you don't lose respect for me by asking that question. But like, how do you see, how would you communicate the difference between those two movements, which are the same steps, just at a different timing? Well, I mean, first I would...
definitely not lose respect for you because you've got some of the best content out there, which is why we make videos and it saves me effort. I just send your videos to my YouTube or to my email list because you explain things and articulate things so beautifully. But what you're describing there is you're... a phenomenal athlete that's got amazing pattern recognition because you've done things millions of times so we have
the visual skills do you actually have the ability for your eyes to move properly can you process raw information quickly do your eyes work together so you've got good distance judgment and depth perception we've got that stuff And then we've got the pattern recognition of how many balls have you seen coming towards you? Because...
Your brain works via pattern recognition. It uses things that happen in the past to predict what's going to happen in the future. So if you start playing tennis, you've only been playing tennis for a year, you're never going to have that type of pattern recognition just because you haven't seen hundreds and hundreds of thousands of balls.
balls of different flights coming towards you. So you've got the visual skills, but then you've also got the repetitions and kind of consciously thinking about what that repetition means. So if the ball is doing this. What should you do? Now, again, I don't know what you've seen of mine, but I had to stop playing right-handed in the end after this mountain bike crash. Now I'm playing left-handed. So going through it left-handed, and I've got to a reasonable light.
solid four five level so not amazing but it's it's trending in the right direction and it was friggin hard and the hard thing was the stuff you've just described the spacing visually okay my visual system already works
The space orientation has changed because now I'm using my left hand compared to my right hand. So left-handed forehand, the spacing is so much different to a one-hander on the right-hand side. So when it comes to the left, that's problematic. But I was very mechanical with it. Like I'll put a ball... down on the court or do a split step and go right at the ball. I'm going to make contact with it there.
How much power do I need to use in my legs to get me to that ball that's there? And I'll place one a foot further away and go, right, practice the same footwork pattern. How much power do I need to have to get to that ball there? And then practice the footwork patterns like that. And then set a ball machine up. Practice.
the shot at that distance and that distance, again, to get the pattern recognition. Okay, the ball's doing this. I need to put this much power in my legs and like very, very mechanical, but that's what I had to do to be able to do it with my left hand. So that's kind of now.
what I say to people on my videos is like, well, this is what I had to do. I didn't worry about that stuff when I was a kid because I started playing when I was eight. So I didn't even think about it. Whereas now I'm an old chap and I've had to start again. I've had to go to this level of depth and that's with. pre-existing coordination and pre-existing visual abilities.
So there were two reasons why I was super excited to talk to you. One, obviously, your expertise is a blind spot for me. It's something I don't have a background in. I find it super interesting. And obviously, it is very, very important with the vision training, the brain-based training. The second part is...
you just mentioned, which is I know that you switch from your right hand to your left hand, which is incredible that you could get to a four or five level with your non-dominant hand. So can you walk us through that process a little bit more? Like day one, you start and you go, okay, well, since I've... I have a background as a tennis player. I'm already maybe a 3-0 or a 3-5.
what maybe the biggest hurdles were besides that spacing. Obviously the non-dominant hand is weaker. Just talk me through that process in general, because it's an incredible feat for you to get to a four or five level with your non-dominant hand.
Well, I mean, straight off, you start as a 4.0 player, not a 3.5 player, because I've got a... And again, there's levels of tennis like this. I'm okay, but I've played... you know there's levels so I don't think I'm amazing but I've got decent movement and I've got discipline is what it comes down to and I can move reasonably quickly like I'm way slower left-handed than I was right-handed because it's i haven't quite got there yet in terms of the speed but even at the start
I would just, not with any sort of technique, just hit the ball flat, continental grip on both sides and let the person miss. And at the 4-0 level, if you can get to the ball, that's all you need to do because they love missing. 4-0 players and 4-5 players are just obsessed with hitting the ball as hard as they can.
They just love hitting the ball out and they hit maybe one winner in 10 and they somehow use that as justification for them to just keep on hitting the ball hard. So I was able to win at the 4-0 level very quickly because people just love to lose to you if you get.
the ball back in a couple of times but that's a there's a big difference between that and feeling like you can actually play tennis so getting to the point where i feel like i can actually play tennis and i can enjoy it again was absolutely exhausting The backhand came relatively easily to me. And the reason being, it's all about the spacing.
In my opinion, it's all about the spacing and then it's all about the timing. They're the two things. Can you set up in the right position for your shot? And then can you make the adjustments? So if you think... you know right-handed forehand i'm used to having i don't hit with a bent arm so i'm used to having spacing that's out there so instantly the spacing in my left-handed backhand is fine because it's you know
just relative to where the forehand spacing was it's really good and then if you think about the timing the big challenge for players is they're always late on shots so with the forehand I've got my body already rotated to the wall by the time that I make contact. With a one-handed backhand, I'm still side on. So in terms of my brain's orientation to initiate in that drive using my back leg, The timing just worked, so the backhand was really easy. The forehand was the exact opposite of that.
for the exact same reasons. Now the spacing has gone from being there on my one hander to now being somewhere out there somewhere. So that's a lot of difference to make. And the timing, I'm used to making contact with my body in this position. Now I've got to make contact with my body in this position so that the spacing shift and the timing shift on the forehand would just... just hard just really really hard so I did exactly what I described earlier worked on the footwork patterns
Got used to loading off my outside leg and hitting an open stance. Because I'm old, I never hit an open stance one-handed backhand on my right-handed. I'd fall over if I tried that. So learning how to use my left hip on the open stance. practicing the footwork patterns, laborious, feed the ball there with a ball machine, and trying to get the timing. And again, I talk about this on my videos. I would set up a feed, and I would hit it horribly, and I'd go, okay.
The ball is traveling like this. When did I start my hip drive? When did I start my racket drop relative to the bounce of the ball? And if I hit the ball late, which you always do because that's the problem that players have. People get too close, they hit it too late. try and mentally adjust and bring it forwards so if I started my swing just as the ball bounced and I hit it late on the flight of the ball that the same flight of the ball I've got to start my swing just before the ball bounces
I just did that over and over again with different feeds to build up that prediction, to build up the memory bank of, okay, the ball is doing this. It means this. I've got to set up this far away from the ball, and I've got to start the swing at that time. So that was the process.
For me, there's no new drills. Drills are just a way to kind of make things... exciting and different as a coach but the ball comes towards you you've got to set up on the right position you've got to get the timing you just have to focus on those bits over and over again so i just did it very mechanically until i could do it and you get to the point where then it just suddenly
starts to fit together and then you can play what i just heard from you was you were just describing deliberate practice which if anyone's read the book peak yeah exactly you you went out there and you are like you said it was exhausting that's the word you used
Most people, when they go practice tennis, they're excited. Oh, it's fun. I get to go play tennis because they're just going to go hit or play some games, which is fun. I get it. But also they're not going to leave the court a better tennis player. It's just.
That's great. It was fun. And if your goal is to just purely have fun, that is fantastic. And if your goal is, I want to get a little bit better as well, then you have to do the things you just said. You have to analyze what just happened. What did that ball do? Make a little mental note.
And that takes a level of engagement where if you do that for 45 minutes or an hour or maybe even two hours and maybe even four or five days a week over the course of six months, I could see where that would be very exhausting. But then also that's how you get. up a level or even two levels with your non-dominant hand. Yeah. And I think the thing that gets missed is you have to have a real task.
process on what you're doing you have to take the ego out of the equation and that's really hard when you used to be able to do something and now you can't you want the book we all want the ball to go in but if we have decided or i've decided that the reason that i've I'm not making the shots that I want is because my spacing is the problem. You have to focus.
or pretty much a hundred percent on the spacing so you set up a scenario at the right level of difficulty which is a key feature of deliberate practice it's too easy it doesn't quite work it's too hard it doesn't why it works like goldilocks it's got to be at the right level of difficulty And I'm evaluating myself on that spacing. So if I get too close to the ball and I luckily slap an amazing shot.
I can't then mentally reward myself because I failed at the thing that I was trying to achieve, which was getting the correct spacing from the ball. And conversely, if I get the correct spacing from the ball... and my shot goes six inches long i then can't mentally berate myself for missing the shot because i achieved the objective that i was actually trying to achieve which is the thing that i've established that i need to fix in order to actually move forward
and improve which was the spacing and I think it just doesn't get emphasized in coaching like it has to be that task focus until it's done it's like this then this then this because until you've got the spacing I honestly don't know how
coaches make videos about the stuff they make like they just talk about what the hands are doing they talk about the wrist lag and so have you actually watched anyone play tennis like I've been I've lived in a few different countries I've been to many different places at many Everyone gets too close to the ball. And until they fix that, they can't use the inside-out swing path. Like, it just doesn't... It can't happen. So I don't... Oh, you're stressing me out this morning. But...
That's how I look at it. And that's how I think about it because I don't, going through it with your left hand, like you can either do something or you can't. And like, if I tried to follow the coaching that's out there normally and the way that people teach it. There's no way I'd have got to this point with my left hand because no one mentions footwork. Very few people even talk about the shot selection and the tactics that you talk about.
And very few people talk about the actual process, and it's the process that enables you to get the results. My smartest friend, he is in baseball. He was not a baseball player, but he's an analyst, numbers guy, money ball.
And one of the things he told me, I forget the context of what you were talking about, but he said, never confuse a good outcome with a good process and a bad outcome with a bad process. And he's like, sometimes we make great mathematical decisions to draft a player or to do something.
and it doesn't work out. And we go back and we look at the process and go, did we do everything that we're supposed to do? Yes. Oh, that was unlucky. It's not supposed to work every time. And then sometimes they've just thrown a dart and drafted someone's nephew in the 50th round.
And the player became a great player. And you go, cool, lucky for us. But we did nothing there. Like we don't take any credit. We don't add that to our process. We just go, cool, blind luck happened. We will accept it. But we also don't.
pat ourselves on the back. And that's something that I always think about. And you mentioned that about players hit the lucky winner. And obviously the outcome was great. So how can you argue with that? But if your goal is improvement and maximizing efficiency, you can look at the task like you said and kind of accurately assess your performance yeah and that's what you have to do and you know does it take depending which
That's another thing with coaching. Coaching, they don't teach models of motor learning and motor learning theories. They don't even talk about the phases of development. You're going to have to do something 10,000 times well before it's likely to be a habit. So that means I've got the spacing correct 10,000 times before I've got a chance of getting good spacing in a match.
We're running a little low on time because I'm completely fascinated by everything you're saying. So I'm going to ask you the two most common Instagram questions. Number one is what is the best coaching advice you've ever received? Spacing, actually. When I was my first coaching job in England, I was very fortunate to get taken. I made basically friends with a lady, Sam Armitage. She was a good GB player.
back in the day and because we're friends i basically had free coaching every day for an hour and every single shot that i hit every hour until it stopped spacing further away further away further away, further away, further away, further away. And I'm like, no, and eventually got there. And that dramatically changed it, just fixing that spacing issue. So that was one of the best bits of advice that I ever got.
Okay, I have a separate question along the lines of, we've been talking about visual awareness and actually like... understanding the space but one cue so like one time someone was getting too close to the ball and i said you know what can you just take a forehand and i just wanted to graze the end of the racket i want you to shank it right
And then they hit a perfect forehand. I go, sorry, that wasn't, you didn't accomplish that. Like you hit it well. That's great. That probably actually was the correct spacing, but I want you to hit the end. Is that an okay? Is it like a band-aid in your eyes? Because when I do my golf swing or whatever, if I know I've made a mistake, I just go, I'll try to make the opposite mistake. And usually what happens is I just hit it perfectly because my feeling was off or...
how I was perceiving is off. Is that like a bandaid fix to just go, Hey, if I'm too close all the time, how about I just shank one off the end once and see what that feels like. I mean, the proof's in the pudding. If it works, it works. But it's a very intelligent coaching cue. We habituate everything. We just basically do things in a habitual way. So people habituate the spacing. We spend our whole lives doing things.
arm's length away and now we've got to do something that's further than arm's length away. So we have to break that habit. So what you've just described is a coaching cue that's going to help you to break that habit. Last question. Your best advice for the 4-0 adult player? Stop trying to hit it so hard and aim for bigger targets. I mean, that is just phenomenal.
I love that. I love how you said it. By the way, a follow-up question for me because I was going to ask you earlier and then you started talking about your left hand. When you walk by a court and you see 4-0 or 4-5s playing, what impresses you?
about a player like when you walk by and you go oh that you know i kind of like what i see there that's a good player what is the thing that jumps out for you certainly not hitting fast you've made that clear which i love by the way well yeah you can tell when someone's a good player
Honestly, one of the big things that impresses me about people is when they start playing as an adult and they stick with it and they keep on trying to improve because that takes a lot of wherewithal, a lot of mental capabilities to stick with something that's so hard to do. So I find that really impressive.
But it's the footwork. I think it's just the biggest giveaway, isn't it? You can just see by the footwork. Do they actually have intensity in their recovery? That's normally the big giveaway, I guess. So that would be the easy answer. People that aren't very good, they don't recover.
Because I used to think it was all about the split step and the preparation. But then when you actually watch people, they don't even recover after the previous shot to get into a position where they could do a split step at the right time to then set up in position. So it's the intensity of the feet in between the shots, I guess. That's my final answer.
Love it. You mentioned your YouTube page, but can you let us all know, because this stuff is absolutely fascinating, where people can find you, where you are online, all the stuff you got. Yeah, so YouTube is Tennis Hacker or Tennis. Which way? I probably should know which way around it is. But I think YouTube's just Tennis Hacker and Instagram, maybe it's Tennis.Hacker. So that's where to find me. And then website is TennisHacker.net.
Absolutely phenomenal. I have learned a ton. I was telling, I interviewed Connor Casey a couple of days ago and I was like, the podcast is like the biggest cheat code for me because. I get to learn from you. So it's free learning from me. And then everyone will thank me for the episode when you just educated us for 40 minutes.
I can't thank you enough. That is wildly fascinating. And like I said, I'm going to go get nauseous this afternoon, like doing all my eye stuff here so I can play better Padel. But thanks so much for joining the show. You're welcome. It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Okay, wow, lots to unpack there. Obviously, the vision exercises were super cool to learn about, and I highly recommend you try that out on your own for a few weeks to see how that goes. Two things to sit out for me in this conversation.
One, how impressive it is that he taught himself to be a 4-5 player left-handed and the deliberate training process he went through to achieve it. If you want exceptional transformation and improvement, you have to train exceptionally, and he certainly has done that.
The second thing that stood out was the emphasis on spacing. A beautiful stroke stops being a beautiful stroke when you make adjustments due to poor positioning. You can see forehands like Medvedev, Tiafoe, and Federer, all very different. but all have the correct spacing. So make that a focus moving forward, and I think you'll find your ground strokes make a small jump. Thanks again for listening. I hope you just improved at tennis without even hitting a ball.