No matter what your current skill level or your ability to hit great tennis shots, the secret to how to play better tennis is in your understanding of the game and the techniques involved.
There are many parts to the game of tennis, some of these include the: tennis technique, tennis tactics, the mental tennis, tennis footwork and the physical training.
These aspects of tennis go hand in hand and some tennis players may be weaker or stronger in certain areas.
Embrace the Learning Process to Play Better Tennis
The learning process of anything new can be frustrating. It’s human nature to stay the same and get comfortable with a certain routine or habit. This can be especially disconcerning when it comes to learning how to play better tennis. In tennis, most recreational players develop habits on their tennis strokes, some habits may be worse than others. But the worse habits to break are usually the weaknesses in your tennis game.
Unlocking the Key to Play Better Tennis: By Improving Your Tennis Strokes?
Human nature is often resistant to making changes, because making changes will disrupt the ingrained muscle memory. Muscle memory is important in tennis, because it is the brain’s virtual computer that tells the body what to do and how to perform a certain action.
In order to play better tennis, it is often required to make a change to your current habits. This may mean making a change to your tennis strokes, your tennis footwork, or even your mental tennis game. The act of making changes is practically like changing the chemistry inside your brain.
The Learning Process Can Be a Daunting Process
Much practice is necessary to play better tennis. The Learning process in tennis is rarely an easy task. How to play better tennis by making changes is often never a exponential outcome. This means, that there will be a lot of obstacles along the way keeping you from reaching the desired outcome.
What technical adjustments to your tennis strokes are needed for you to progress to a higher level?
A tennis player trying to play better tennis may try to make a change to his or her tennis technique, but the new tennis stroke may feel uncomfortable for a while. The initial change in the tennis strokes may seem worse. It Might feel as if you are taking one or two, step backwards by making this change in your tennis technique. Your mind might be confused, and wonder if you can ever play better tennis.
Maybe you’re thinking, “Why Do I need to take one step back, and Actually make the Change?”
It might be confusing and overwhelming to discover that how to play better tennis is not a quick fix. Rather, it is a long learning process that takes many hours of practice. While at first, this new change may feel impossible, that you’ll never play better tennis, soon you’ll realize that if you make the right change and stick with it, over time the change will blossom into higher results.
Changing the grip on the tennis serve, to the correct continental grip for example is a change that is required to play better tennis. A tennis beginner might struggle hopelessly with the grip change if they learned how to play tennis with a forehand grip for the tennis serve. This new grip might feel foreign and uncomfortable, although it is the grip that will eventually lead to success in the long run. Without making the change, the tennis player may never be able to play better tennis. But in the meantime, practicing with the correct continental grip on the tennis serve will be a test of personal will and the ability of the tennis player to overcome this bad habit.
Quality Repetition is Key
An important part of the way to play better tennis is to engage in quality repetition. This means that practicing the correct tennis stroke with good technique over a repeated amount of time is the way to manifest the best results on the tennis court. In essence, making adjustments to your current tennis technique is one of the best ways to start learning how to play better tennis.
Removing Bad Habits and Replacing them With Proper Stroke Production is Crucial to Long Term Success in Tennis
These adjustments may be confusing to your brain at first. The old habits of your tennis technique may be difficult to change because they have been inside your brain’s registry for quite some time. Your brain says that something feels comfortable and “right,” and is hesitant to adapt to the new changes.
The most efficient way to play better tennis is to practice the correct methods over and over, eventually erasing the poor habits. The new tennis technique will eventually emerge, providing better results after hours of practice.
The solution to play better tennis: Perfect Practice
Only perfect practice will make perfect and give result to improve your tennis. It’s a haste to practice for hours and hours without a set goal to attain. Tennis players at all levels fall into the trap of simply practicing or playing matches without a set outcome in their mind. A tennis player can practice the wrong methods day in and day out and still stay at the same level. They may never play better tennis, because they make the same mistakes and bad habits. The only way to play better tennis is through setting a clear outcome by outlining a specific path.
Maria Sharapova’s work ethic on the tennis court should be modeled by everyone
For example, if I now wanted to play better tennis I would be far better going out to the practice court with one particular tennis stroke I want to fix rather than going out to the practice court with an empty set of goals and go through the motions for three hours.
If I wanted to improve my tennis, and my tennis backhand was becoming a liability, I would first need to spend the majority of the time zoning on the particular aspect of my backhand I needed to improve. If for example, my tennis coach told me that I wasn’t getting low enough for my backhand, I would focus only on that aspect for the practice session instead of trying to play better tennis by hitting a gazillion tennis balls hitting a backhand without getting low enough.
Therefore, a person who practices for one hour with high intensity and with purposeful practice can actually out-perform another tennis player that practiced for hours on end without a clear intention as to what particular part of their tennis game they wanted to improve.
Practice Like the Pros
The reason why top pros are able to play better tennis and improve their tennis more successfully than amateur players is that they engage in quality practice. While they spend hours per day on the practice courts, for every hour they spend they are practicing with full intensity with a clear plan in mind.
Watch Rafael Nadal’s forehands while he practices. This tennis video clip shows Rafael Nadal’s forehands during a practice session. Watch how Nadal hits his forehand with a good strong intensity on every tennis ball. This is what makes Nadal’s forehand so great and why he is able to improve his tennis and stay at the top of the rankings.
The Concept of Muscle Memory
If you want to play better tennis, you must understand the concept of muscle memory. Muscle memory is key for players looking to improve their tennis.
Muscle memory is a precise mechanism and is especially important to play better tennis. This is the reason why the pros practice the way they want to play. If you are lazy in practice and hit every tennis shot with half intensity, likely the same will happen during a routine exchange during a competitive tennis match.
Muscle memory in tennis is the brain’s computer system that tells the body how to perform a certain action in a heartbeat. Providing your brain with the correct muscle memory and removing bad habits in your tennis technique is like erasing junk files from your PC.
Muscle memory can lead you in the direction to play better tennis and it’s application is for tennis players at all levels.
Use Muscle Memory to Learn How to Play Better Tennis
Tennis players desiring to improve their tennis should pay close attention to the following excerpt from wise geek,
“This is one of the reasons that with many activities that involve the body’s muscles, like playing an instrument, learning appropriate technique is always stressed. You want your muscle memory to reflect the correct way to do things, not the incorrect way. Your muscle memory can actually play against you if you’ve constantly been practicing something the wrong way.
Music teachers often make this contention. It’s a lot harder to teach someone who’s been playing an instrument for a few years because the first step is breaking them of all the bad habits they’ve acquired, which are now part of the muscle memory. Similarly, if you learn to bat, throw, kick or pitch wrong, your muscle memory has to be overcome, and new neural pathways formed to be a better athlete.
Most top level athletes and performers in a variety of fields believe that muscle memory is best developed when the same activities are practiced over and over again, with any corrections of form that are needed. Continual practice may mean you can make that perfect tennis stroke every single time (or almost), or hit a high note every time if you’re a singer.”
Learn to Hit a Forehand Like Roger Federer
If you want to jumpstart your forehand and play like the PROS, check out my 70+ page Tennis Ebook that will immediately show you how you can take your forehand to the next level.
The Modern Forehand Domination Ebook is guaranteed to improve your tennis technique, and increase power, topspin and accuracy of your tennis forehand!
Modern Tennis Forehand Ebook
Learn How to Hit a Forehand Like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic