This is the game that takes place in the mind of the player, and it is played against such obstacles as lapses of concentration, nervousness, self-doubt and self-condemnation. In short, it is played to overcome all habits of mind which inhibit excellence in performance.
The player of the inner game comes to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills; he discovers a true basis for self-confidence; and he learns that the secret to winning any games lies in not trying too hard. He aims at the kind of spontaneous performance which occurs only when the mind is calm and seems at once with the body, which finds its own surprising ways to surpass its own limits again and again.
Every time I get near match point against a good player, I get so nervous I lose my concentration. I’m my own worst enemy; I usually beat myself.
Whatever’s going on in her head, it’s too damn much. She’s trying so hard to swing the racket the way I told her that she can’t focus on the ball.
To test this theory is a simple matter, if you don’t mind a little underhanded gamesmanship. The next time your opponent is having a hot streak, simply ask him as you switch courts, “George, what are you doing so differently that’s making your forehand so good today?” If he takes the bait and begins to think about how he’s swinging, his streak invariably will end. He will lose his timing and fluidity as he tries to repeat what he has just told you he was doing so well.
And what’s going on during the hit itself? If you look closely at the face of the player, you will see that his cheek muscles are tightening and his lips are pursed in effort and attempted concentration.
When a tennis player is “in the zone,” he’s not thinking about how, when or even where to hit the ball. He’s not trying to hit the ball, and after the shot he doesn’t think about how badly or how well he made contact. The ball seems to get hit through a process which doesn’t require thought.
Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking.
Perhaps this is why it is said that great poetry is born in silence. Great music and art are said to arise from the quiet depths of the unconscious, and true expressions of love are said to come from a source which lies beneath words and thoughts. So it is with the greatest efforts in sports; they come when the mind is as still as a glass lake.
Often the exchange of shots at such short quarters is so rapid that action faster than thought is required. These moments are exhilarating, and the players are often amazed to find that they make perfect placements against shots they didn’t even expect to reach.
The 1st skill to learn is the art of letting go the human inclination to judge ourselves and our performance as either good or bad.
Judgments are our personal, ego reactions to the sights, sounds, feelings and thoughts within our experience.
What does this have to do with tennis? Well, it is the initial act of judgment which provokes a thinking process. First the player’s mind judges one of his shots as bad or good. If he judges it as bad, he begins thinking about what was wrong with it. Then he tells himself how to correct it. Then he tries hard, giving himself instructions as he does so. Finally he evaluates again. Obviously the mind is anything but still and the body is tight with trying.
After Self 1 has evaluated several shots, it is likely to start generalizing. Instead of judging a single event as “another bad backhand,” it starts thinking, “You have a terrible backhand.” Instead of saying, “You were nervous on that point,” it generalizes, “You’re the worst choke artist in the club.” Other common judgmental generalizations are, “I’m having a bad day,” “I always miss the easy ones,” “I’m slow,” etc.
What usually happens is that these self-judgments become self-fulfilling prophecies. That is, they are communications from Self 1 about Self 2 which, after being repeated often enough, become rigidified into expectations or even convictions about Self 2. Then Self 2 begins to live up to these expectations. If you tell yourself often enough that you are a poor server, a kind of hypnotic process takes over.
Judgment results in tightness, and tightness interferes with the fluidity required for accurate and quick movement. Relaxation produces smooth strokes and results from accepting your strokes as they are, even if erratic.
- But what did I teach you?
- I can’t remember your telling me anything! You were just there watching, and you got me watching myself closer than I ever had before. Instead of seeing what was wrong with my backhand, I just started observing, and improvement seemed to happen on its own. I’m not sure why, but I certainly learned a lot in a short period of time.
He had learned, but had he been “taught”? This question fascinated me.
In the game of tennis there are 2 important things to know. The 1st is where the ball is. The 2nd is where the racket head is.
Uncomfortable without a standard for right and wrong, the judgmental mind makes up standards of its own. Meanwhile, attention is taken off what is and placed on the process of trying to do things right.
They were trying to live up to an expectation, a standard of right and wrong, which they felt had been set before them. I began to see that my compliment had engaged their judgmental minds.
The 1st inner skill to be developed in the Inner Game is that of nonjudgmental awareness.
Thousands of these operations are taking place every few seconds. At the same time, again without conscious effort, your heart is pumping and your breath is going in and out, keeping a fascinating complicated system of organs, glands and muscles nourished and working. Without conscious effort, billions of cells are functioning, reproducing and fighting off disease.
The foregoing has only 1 purpose: to encourage the reader to respect Self 2.
What does “Trust yourself” mean on the tennis court? It doesn’t mean positive thinking — for example, expecting that you are going to hit an ace on every serve. Trusting your body in tennis means letting your body hit the ball. The key word is let. Your trust in the competence of your body and its brain, and you let it swing the racket. Self 1 stays out of it. But though this is very simple, it does not mean that it is easy.
In some ways the relationship between Self 1 and Self 2 is analogous to the relationship between parent and child.
Create an image of the desired form. Show yourself exactly what you want Self 2 to do. Give it a clear visual image, moving your racket slowly in the desired path, and let yourself watch it very closely.
Imagine that I am the director of a TV series. I assure you that you needn’t worry about hitting the ball out or into the net because the camera will only be focused on you and will not follow the ball. What I’m mainly interested in is that you adopt professional mannerisms, and that you swing your racket with supreme self-assurance. Above all, your face must express no self-doubt. You should look as if you are hitting every ball exactly where you want to. Really get into the role, hit as hard as you like and ignore where the ball is actually going.
Letting go of judgments, the art of creating images and “letting it happen” are 3 of the basic skills involved in the Inner Game. The 4th and most important skill is concentration.
But words can only represent actions, ideas and experiences. Language is not the action, and at best can only hint at the subtlety and complexity contained in the stroke.
In a society that has become so oriented toward language as a way of representing truth, it is very possible to lose touch with your ability to feel and with it your ability to “remember” the shots themselves.
When the verbal instruction is passed on to another person who does not have in his bank of experience the action being described in memory, it lives in the mind totally disconnected from experience. The chances are now even greater that there will be a split between memory of theory and the memory of action.
A great deal of technique can be learned naturally by simply paying close attention to one’s body, racket and ball while playing. The more awareness one can bring to bear on any action, the more feedback one gets from experience, and the more naturally one learns the technique that feels best and works best for any given player at any given state of development.
Bottom line: there is no substitute for learning from experience. The saying of an old master is pertinent here: “No teacher is greater than one’s own experience.”
So the question that remains is how one person’s greater level of experience can help another person. The short answer is that a valid instruction derived from experience can help me if it guides me to my own experiential discovery of any given stroke possibility.
The exact degree of tightness you discovered worked for you would be very hard to put into definitive language; it is remembered by its feel.
Although it is obvious that we can learn a great deal by watching better players play tennis, we have to learn how to watch. The best method is to simply watch without assuming that how the pro swing is how you should be swinging.
Self 1 easily gets enamored of formulas that tell it where the racket should be and when. It likes the feeling of control it gets from doing it by the book. But Self 2 likes the feeling of flow — of the whole stroke as one thing.
Tips are a dime a dozen, and there are good ones and bad ones. But what is more difficult to come by is a workable way to apply tips, to replace one pattern of behavior with a new one.
Don’t assume you know just because you’ve been told; let yourself feel the wrist motion intimately. If you are in any doubt, ask the pro to show you the motion, not tell you about it.
- Observe existing behavior non-judgmentally.
- Picture desired outcome.
- Let it happen. Trust Self 2.
- Non-judgmental, calm observation of the results leading to continuing observation and learning.
When you try hard to hit the ball correctly, and it goes well, you get a certain kind of ego satisfaction. You feel that you are in control, that you are master of the situation. But when you simply allow the serve to serve itself, it doesn’t seem as if you deserve the credit. It doesn’t feel as if it were you who hit the ball.
The best way to quiet the mind is not by telling it to shut up, or by arguing with it, or criticizing it for criticizing you. Fighting the mind does not work. What works best is learning to focus it.
To still the mind one must learn to put it somewhere. It cannot just be let go; it must be focused. If peak performance is a function of a still mind, then we are led to the question of where and how to focus it.
As one achieves focus, the mind quiets. As the mind is kept in the present, it becomes calm. Focus means keeping the mind now and here. Relaxed concentration is the supreme art because no art can be achieved without it, while with it, much can be achieved.
Sometimes the ball even begins to appear bigger or to be moving slower. These are natural results of true focus.
So the question arises as to how to maintain focus for extended periods of time. The best way is to allow yourself to get interested in the ball. How do you do this? By not thinking you already know all about it, no matter how many thousands of balls you have seen in your life. Not assuming you already know is a powerful principle of focus.
Few players understand the importance of concentrating attention on the feel of the racket as they are holding it. These are 2 things that a player must know on every shot: where the ball is and where his racket is.
But sensitivity to rhythm developed through concentration helps. Those who have practiced concentrating on the feel of the path of their racket usually find that without intentional effort their stroke begins to slow down and to simplify. Both the rapid jerks and the fancy stuff tend to disappear and consistency and power tend to increase.
Remember: it is almost impossible to feel or see anything well if you are thinking about how you should be moving. Forget should’s and experience is.
While you were reading or listening to the sights and sounds around you, you were not aware of the feeling of your tongue, but with the slightest suggestion, the mind directs the focus of attention from one thing to another. When attention is allowed to focus, it comes to know that place. Attention is focused consciousness, and consciousness is that power of knowing.
It is also necessary to learn to focus awareness in the now. This simply means tuning in to what is happening in the present. The greatest lapses in concentration come when we allow our minds to project what is about to happen or to dwell on what has already happened. How easily the mind absorbs itself in the world of “what if”s.
Since the mind seems to have a will of its own, how can one learn to keep it in the present? By practice. There is no other way. Every time your mind starts to leak away, simply bring it gently back.
But time is a relative thing, and it really is possible to slow it down. Consider: there are 1000ms in every second. That’s a lot of milliseconds. Alertness is a measure of how many nows you are alert in a given period. The result is simple: you become more aware of what is going on as you learn to keep your attention in the now.
Breathing is a very basic rhythm. It is said that in breathing man recapitulates the rhythm of the universe. When the mind is fastened to the rhythm of breathing, it tends to become absorbed and calm. Whether on or off the court, I know of no better way to begin to deal with anxiety than to place the mind on one’s breathing process. Anxiety is fear about what may happen in the future, and it occurs only when the mind is imagining what the future may bring. But when your attention ins on the here and now, the actions which need to be done in the present have their best chance of being successfully accomplished.
Interestingly, this state of being, when Self 1 is absent and Self 2 is present, always feels good, and allows a more vivid consciousness and usually great excellence in performance. It may not feel the same as ego gratification, a feeling which we all too often like a great deal, but there is a feeling some call harmony, balance, poise, even peace, or contentment.
Another way to look at the zone is that it comes as a gift. It is not a golf you can demand of yourself, but one you can ask for.
I’ve been courting Self 2 for a long time now, over 25 years consciously, and it comes at its own timing, when I am ready for it — humble, respectful, not expecting it, somehow placing myself lower than it, not above it.
On the faces of players you may observe, in quick succession, shame, pride, ecstasy and despair. Smug complacency gives way to high anxiety, cockiness to hangdog disappointment. Anger and aggression of varying intensity are expressed both openly and in disguised forms.
I’m better than you. Here, “good” is measured against the performance of other players rather than against a set standard.
It’s not how well I play, but whether I win or lose that counts.
To be the best; to win; to defeat all comers.
Desire to be at the top of the heap. Stems from need for admiration and control.
Obstacles:
- External: There is always someone around who can beat you; the rising ability of the young.
- Internal: The mind’s preoccupation with comparing oneself with others, thus preventing spontaneous action; thoughts of inferiority alternating with superiority, depending on the competition; fear of defeat.
Many start tennis as a weekend sport in the hope of getting exercise and a needed relief from the pressures of daily life, but they end by setting impossible standards of excellence for themselves and often become more frustrated and tense on the court than off it.
One basic message came across loud, clear and often: you are a good person and worthy of respect only if you do things successfully.
I missed the easiest put-away volley possible in front of a packed grandstand. For many years thereafter, I replayed that match point in countless dream, and it is as vivid in my memory now as it was on that day 20 years ago.
I was still tight before most matches.
The atmosphere was very different from that of Meadowbrook, my little pond where I was the chief frog. Suddenly my previous optimism turning to pessimism. I was doubting my game.
Among the most vocal are youth who have suffered under competitive pressures imposed on them by parents or society. Teaching these young people, I often observe in them a desire to fail. They seem to seek failure by making no effort to win or achieve success. They go on strike, as it were. By not trying, they always have an alibi: “I may have lost, but it doesn’t count because I really didn’t try.” What is not usually admitted is the belief that if they had really tried and lost, then yes, that would count. Such a loss would be a measure of their worth.
Because it is those very obstacles, the size and churning power of the wave, which draw from the surfer his greatest effort. It is only against the big waves that he is required to use all his skill, all his courage and concentration to overcome; only then can he realize the true limits of his capacities. At that point he often attains his peak.
The basic meaning of winning became more clear to me. Winning is overcoming obstacles to reach a goal, but the value in winning is only as great as the value of the goal reached. Reaching the goal itself may not be as valuable as the experience that can come in making a supreme effort to overcome the obstacles involved. The process can be more rewarding than the victory itself.
I’m caring about something that I can’t wholly control. Whether I win or lose the external game is a result of my opponent’s skill and effort as well as my own. When one is emotionally attached to results that he can’t control, he tends to become anxious and then try too hard.
The message of the Inner Game is simple: focus. Focus of attention in the present moment, the only one you can really live in, is at the heart of this book and at the heart of the art of doing anything well. The ability to focus the mind is the ability to not let it run away with you. It does not mean not to think — but to be the one who directs your own thinking.