Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast, your place for free, expert, tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Welcome to episode number 386 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about the Trap Keeping You from Breaching the 4.5 Level. And I use the 4.5 Level, but honestly this is what keeps players from every level. In other words, if you're currently a 3.0, this trap is keeping you from 3.5.
And if you're currently a 3.5, it's keeping you from 4.0. And if you're a 4.0, this trap is keeping you from 4.5. And I just see this play out over and over and over again. And the over 20 years that I've been coaching, this is the big sticking point. So let's go ahead and dive right into it. Tennis players have a knowledge problem, but it's not what
you think. I'm sure you've heard the phrase, you don't know what you don't know to kind of describe the idea that, sure, you can search for answers, but if you don't even know what direction to turn and everything, like the whole topic is kind of a black box, then it's easy to just kind of feel kind of lost, right? And not even know, like, I don't know what should I even be thinking about or searching for. I just don't have any idea
or context about any of this. Tennis players don't have that problem because especially in 2023, it's super easy to get tens of thousands of videos and blog posts and podcasts and whatever else you could possibly want. It's full of fantastic information about how to hit a forehand or what patterns to play in singles or how to improve your serve and a million other topics. It's virtually unlimited. So it's not that tennis players
don't have access to information. And it's not even that they don't really have enough context to know what direction to move in. It's not that they don't know what they don't know. The biggest problem is actually that they know a lot, but don't actually do what they think they are. Let me, let me repeat that. The problem really is that tennis players know a lot, especially, you know, your modern passionate tennis player has a ton of information
and knowledge, but they don't actually do the things that they think they're doing. And this happens and it's right off the bat if your knee stroke reaction is nope, not me. Like I totally have a handle on everything that's going on. Please bear with me here because it's a way deeper problem than you probably realize. And it's it's much tougher to overcome than you think if you just take it at face value. So what's important to understand first
is that this happens with technique. I think that's one thing and it can be kind of easy for people to understand that well, I might think that I have a certain swing path, but it might be a little bit different than what I thought. But this happens with strategy too constantly. I see this all the time with students. Let me give you a quick example of both technique and strategy. So we know exactly what we're talking about. And then
we'll uncover the solution. And I'll give you really detailed steps to take to overcome this. So first example, not too long ago. And these are real life examples that I had just recently. I had a student with a really extreme top spin forehand. And he swung so low to high that all he could hit was like a super spinny high moon ball type of shot. And wasn't necessarily that that's all he wanted to hit. In fact, his goal when he came
to me was, man, I just I can't put balls away with my forehand. I get players off balance all the time with my height and my spin and my depth. But when I get an opportunity, all I can do is just hit another high spinny, you know, deep moon ball type of shot. I just can't ever put the ball away because everything is so heavy and so, so spinny. So my goal was to teach him how to drive through the ball more and create more power and force.
But no matter how hard he tried to swing more level, and that's really the solution. If you want to remove top spin and add power, then the swing path needs to be more lateral, more straight towards the target and not starting so low below the ball and coming upwards so steep way. But no matter how hard he tried, he was just such a deep habit. He just kept dropping his racket way down below where he needed to and kept swinging up super steep.
So after like a couple different attempts at like different drills and I was using my iPad and video analysis, I kept showing him like, no, man, you're just you're still swinging super low to high. Like there comes a point where it's like, okay, I can only explain there's so many different ways and we can try so many different drills. He's just not getting it. So I finally told him, all right, tell you what, on this next ball, I want
you to just swing down. Okay. We've been trying to swing flat thing for, I don't know, however many tries and it's just not working. So just swing down on the next one. Okay. Like actually, it doesn't matter where the ball goes. Hit the middle of the net, hit the bottom of the net. I don't care. Like hit your own side of the court. It doesn't matter. Just swing down on this next one just so we can do something different and kind of reset.
So it tossed him a ball. He made his swing and he was like, all right, like the ball went straight down into the bottom of the net and he like kind of had satisfied with kind of his face and he was like, oh, that, okay, great. I did something different on that one. I swung down. So I took my iPad. I walked over to him and slowly showed him the swing he just did and it was flat. He hadn't swung downwards. He had, like he tried to, he
had swung completely level and straight. He actually kind of finished up and kind of still. It was such a deep habit for him to finish high and a swing low to high. So how crazy is that? Like he would have bet the farm. He would have bet a million dollars that that was a downward swing. And in his body internally, it was down. It really, truly felt down. But when we looked at the slow motion video, the reality was very different from
what it felt like to him. Please let that sink in. The bigger that gap is between what it feels like and what the reality is, the more stuck you're going to be and the longer you're going to stay stuck because even if you do things differently, but the way you do them isn't what you think it is. How can you possibly level up level after level after level? You're going to get stuck because of that lack of awareness between what you're
trying to do and what you're actually doing. And this is the worst because you can go years and decades assuming that you're doing certain techniques correctly or a certain way. And actually be playing the game of tennis completely different than what you think is happening. And so you're just going to keep spinning your wheels and you're going to stay stuck in the same way you're always stuck because you don't even know the thing
you're doing is the way you're doing it. And I'm telling you, this is the position that so many tennis players are in. Okay, so that's technique. But let me give you another example. This one, I think just doesn't seem like it should be possible or real life to tennis players. But it really, really is. This happens with strategy too. All the time recently I had a student where we did our kind of initial evaluation. We played some points.
He told me coming in that he really wanted to focus on strategy and patterns and stuff like that. So he played some points out together. And I, after 10 minutes, 15 minutes, I've got a really good idea of where he likes to aim and what patterns he likes to use and
how he positions himself. So before I asked, before I showed him rather what he was doing and his areas for improvement, I just kind of asked him a couple of basic questions to get a gauge of his understanding of principles of target and pattern and position and things like that. So for 30 seconds, I just asked him a couple questions. All right. So in general, like, where do you think he should be aiming when you're on the baseline? And if you're
positioned here and your opponent is there, like, what's the smartest target? And where should you be recovering to and why and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you went down the list and perfectly described like the textbook reason or answer for all the different things that I asked. Like in other words, he knew exactly what he was supposed to be doing. And then I said, okay, great. Fantastic. You're exactly right. I can tell you've done your homework.
You've probably done a lot of instruction. You know, exactly what you're supposed to be doing. But now let me show you what you're actually doing. And so I went through, you know, point by point, I had examples all pulled up and showed him where he was doing the opposite of what he knew he was supposed to be doing point after point after point, after point, after points. How crazy is that that even with something as basic as like where I'm standing
and where I'm aiming? You can have a big gap between what you understand. You should be doing, but what you actually do in real life. There's kind of a fog in between those two things. And in the middle of the craziness of match play, instant kind of takes over, old habits take over, things that we used to do that we figured that I'm done with that,
you know, bad habit come back in again. They sneak back in. And without it's realizing it, we can do all kinds of things that are destructive to our results, even though we know we're supposed to be doing something different. So there's two big problems here. And this is
kind of the big friction point. First of all, the more you study the game and the more advanced your book smarts are, like, you know, academically, the more you understand and the more information you crime into your head, the easier it is to assume that you do all that basic stuff you learned, you know, a long time ago, because it's like the smarter you get, the easier it is to just figure like, oh, yeah, I, of course I split stuff out.
I learned about split stuff like 20 years ago. And I've taken a thousand lessons in the last 20 years. And I've played a thousand matches. And so, you know, I've won all these different whatever tournaments. I've been bumped up extra number of times. So of course, I split stuff. But it might not actually be true. And also, the longer you worked on your game, the easier it is to assume you've developed lots of great habits. And especially with the
fundamentals, right? Like every lesson ever, coach tells you certain things. You just hear every lesson, oh, keep moving your feet and keep your eye on the ball and like bend your knees and swing a little high. So it's, so it's easy to just kind of assume like when you've been around the block a thousand times. Of course, yeah, I have you done. Like, yeah, I know you don't have to tell me that anymore. I figured that out a long time ago. Let's move on to
the advanced stuff. Let's move on. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. You know, I've heard that so many times I get it. I totally set there. Please tell me what's the next step and what's the next step? Well, guess what? Listen closely. If you're a 3.0 player, it's the fundamentals that keep you from advancing to 3.5. If you're a 3.5 player, it's the fundamentals that keep you from advancing to 4.0. And if you're a 4.0 player, it's the fundamentals that keep you from advancing to 4.5.
And guess what? If you're a 4.5 player, it's the fundamentals that keep you from getting to 5.0. Please, please, just take a second and just think on what I just said. And maybe your knee drink response or like gut reaction is no. There's somewhere in there, there's the high level stuff. There's the high performance. I gotta go to the high performance drills. I need to get to the next level secrets and tips and just give me the advanced stuff. I already know all that basic stuff.
That's wrong. The fundamentals never stop being the most important thing that holds you back. No matter what level you are. Now, there's an exception. The exception would be, okay, your number 1,000 in the world. And maybe that doesn't sound very high to you, but trust me, if you're 1,000 in the world, you can't even comprehend the level of talent and athleticism.
You know, once you get to that point where you're one of the best people in the world at tennis, now, yes, there is a tipping point where we need to go deeper and more advanced and more high performance minded. Yes. But if you're listening to me right now and you are 5.0, which is 5% of the whole population of competitive tennis players. Even if you're a 5.0 player, it's still the fundamentals that are the gap between winning maybe 20% of your matches at 5.0 and winning 60% or 70% or 80%
of your matches at 5.0. It's still the fundamentals. I know this because I've been teaching tennis lessons for over 20 years using video analysis and breaking down and pinpointing the problem, the sticking point, like what's the fundamental thing that's holding this player back on their serve, their forehand or their backhand or their drop shot or overhead or whatever. And it's the same things
from level to level to level to level. Now, the 4.5 player is better at hitting a forehand than the 3.5 level player, but it's still the core base level fundamentals that are keeping them back from being a 5.0. Please hear me on that and trust me on that. Like for me personally, like I'm 4.5 is my level right now. When I'm playing my absolute best tennis, I can be competitive at 5.0. I'm not a good 5.0 player, but that's like at my best. And right now, I'm not anywhere close to my
best. I only play a couple times a year because I focus on coaching. And so I play at the 4.5 level. And I'm competitive and I win more times than I lose at 4.5. And I'm happy with that. That's much higher level than most players ever play. But for me, as like a mid plus, like upper level 4.5 player, I have a lot of fundamental problems with my habits. Not so much with pattern. Well, yeah, a little bit with patterns. Definitely somewhat patterns, but much more so is like my
athletic habits. My technical habits need a lot of refinement. And then I totally could be a solid 5.0 player. But it's still the fundamentals for me. I know exactly what they are. And it's not anything advanced. It's not anything fancy. It's probably all stuff that you've already heard. So how do we solve the gap between feel and real? How do we solve the gap between knowing what we're supposed to do and not doing it and actually doing all those good things that we've learned over
the years? Well, I recommend recording yourself. Number one, this is the only way to know for sure. Just record yourself and watch it back. And I've got five different suggestions for you. Five different ways or lenses to view your play back through. And I highly recommend you do a separate viewing for all five of these areas. Because if you watch through, you know, let's say 30 minutes of your point play. And you're trying to pick out all five of these things all at the same time
while watching the same point. You're going to miss four of them and you're only going to see one. I know this because this happens to me when I watch my students. I miss stuff constantly because I'm looking for something else. You can only look for one thing at a time. So watch it back. If you really, really, really are serious and you really want to know the truth, record yourself for like half an hour. Singles are doubles. Doesn't matter. And watch back 10 minutes of it, 15 minutes of it,
five different times and watch for these five areas. So the first time, watch through and take notes on technique. And meaning like your swings, your, the way that you move your body and swing the racket, the way that you hit your backhand, the way that you hit your serve. And take notes on everything that you see where you're like, Oh, wow, I can't believe I do that. And I totally thought I fixed this problem. And wow, like that, that just, I don't even know why that's wrong.
But I can just tell like that's wrong. And just just make a note of all those things. And I'm sorry, if that doesn't sound exciting. Take note of all the things that you're positively surprised about, too. There will be things that are positively surprised about as well. We're like, wow, my forehand isn't nearly as, you know, jerky is, maybe I thought it would be, you know, whatever. Make a list of positives, make a list of negatives. And the negatives, now you have like a very
specific narrowed down list of things that you can prioritize. And it's actual real things that is like, wow, I totally didn't expect XYZ. And now you've got huge room for improvement. So let's watch, watch the number one technique, watch through number two, watch for positioning, separate viewing, just watch for where am I standing and where is the ball and does it make sense? Make notes, positive and negative. Number three, watch through it again, a separate time and make
notes on your targets. Where are you aiming? And does it make sense? Different scenarios, different situations, where are you aiming? Make a list of pros and cons. I do really well in this situation, but in that situation, that doesn't make any sense of why am I trying? That's just, of course, I'm going to lose that point, you know, most of the time. Number four, the fourth time you watch it through, watch for footwork and take notes, which you're looking for
is like smoothness, gracefulness, how much flow you have in your footwork. That would be on the proside. On the conside, look for like, jerkiness or like, inefficiencies, look for things looking kind of start and stop or, you know, kind of awkward or misposition or misbalanced, make a list. And then the fifth time you watch through, watch specifically for mental toughness and take notes. What situations and scenarios, man, I've really handled that really well. You know, I could tell
that was difficult or challenging, but I bounced back really fast. That's awesome. And on the flip side, what situations or scenarios do you see your reaction response and you think to yourself, what the, what am I doing? Like, how in the world am I going to play good tennis when that's the way my attitude is, that's the way I'm responding. There's no way I can play good tennis. What mentally I respond like that makes sense. So we're watching through five times. Now this is,
this is a lot of work. But and also is it probably going to be painful at first? Yes. It's this is going to take some time. It's going to take some dedication. Is it probably going to uncover some things that you didn't really especially want to know? And it's, it's a little bit maybe embarrassing and frustrating to see like what the reality is. Yes. But will the next several weeks and months be your most productive, focused and impactful training that you've ever done?
Yes, it will be because you're going to have an incredible amount of insight that you did not have before. And you're going to know the truth. And you're going to know exactly what to focus on and why. And you're going to be properly motivated to actually put in the work because now you know the gap. And now you actually understand what it's going to take. And this is what holds players
back is not even knowing the gap is there in the first place. And even if they have like a suspicion that a gap is there between feel and real, they have no idea what is even there. They're just totally flying blind. Meanwhile, cramming more information, more information on the front end of their what they're thinking about and what they're aware of. And just chasing their tail. Season after season, year after year, match after match. I don't want that to be you.
If you're listening to me right now, I want you to avoid that trap, avoid that mistake. And this is how it's possible to level up. Level after level after level. Hopefully, this has been really helpful today. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you next time. For more free, game improving instruction for passionate tennis players. Thank you so much for listening today. Take care. And good luck with your tennis.