{"id":68,"date":"2004-09-16T23:44:44","date_gmt":"2004-09-17T07:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=68"},"modified":"2004-09-16T23:44:44","modified_gmt":"2004-09-17T07:44:44","slug":"technique-vs-target-word-vs-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/technique-vs-target-word-vs-image\/","title":{"rendered":"technique vs. target, word vs. image"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After giving instructions to two men working on my house, I jumped into my car and rushed to the court so that I would have time to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisdiary.com\/2004\/03\/practice-routine\">practice<\/a> before my match. When I opened my trunk&#8230; no rackets. I rushed back home and back to the court and practiced my serve until my playing partner turned up. Except that he never turned up. I can entertain myself for hours hitting a tennis ball against a wall, weird I know but it comes in handy sometimes.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve discussed the difference between thinking about technique when you hit a shot versus having an image of where you want the ball to go. If you are thinking about technique once a point starts, you\u2019ll never be able to keep up \u2013 you have to react, not think. In the book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zengolf.com\" target=\"_blank\"> Zen Golf<\/a>, Robert Parent describes the situation another way. If you&#8217;re thinking about technique then you are worried about hitting a good forehand, backhand or whatever. If, instead, you keep the target in mind, landing the ball in a deep corner of the court for instance, then you can swing freely without worry and likely get a better result. Parent puts it very well: &#8220;The best target is where we want to send the ball. The best intention is to trust our swing. The best purpose is to enjoy playing the game.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Our subconscious instructs our body to carry out all those perfect shots we execute on the court. The subconscious works with images not words, especially if those words are, &#8220;You idiot, you took your eye off the ball again.&#8221; That explains why we mentally rehearse our next shot before each point and also explains why keeping a target in mind is an effective way to execute a shot.<\/p>\n<p><em>Practice Report<\/em>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisdiary.com\/2004\/03\/practice-routine\">practiced<\/a> for two hours, hit against the wall for half an hour.<br \/>\n<em>Solutions Analysis<\/em>: the backswing on all my strokes is a trunk twist &#8211; my racket goes back only as far as my trunk will twist. It also helps to step into the ball and hit it well out in front of my body if I want to hit it hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After giving instructions to two men working on my house, I jumped into my car and rushed to the court so that I would have time to practice before my match. When I opened my trunk&#8230; no rackets. I rushed back home and back to the court and practiced my serve until my playing partner [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,68,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-body-mechanics","category-mental-skills","category-tennis-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}