Poised Tennis w/ The Alexander Technique

If you are like me, enormous swaths of your time the last couple weeks have been spent breathless in front of your television watching Wimbledon. 

I grew up playing tennis with my family. Most of the exercise I got was from retrieving balls I knocked over the fence, the result of trying to hit the ball with my arm as hard as I could. Since becoming trained in Alexander Technique, I have returned to both watching and playing and have found to be it a movement junkie's dream. The coordination, the skill, and the physicality are all intoxicating to watch-- but above all its the poise of the players I admire. I don't know of another sport in which the mental and physical aspects of poise are as clearly reflected in each other as in tennis. 

The Alexander Technique (A.T.) is above all a system for improving your poise and efficiency in activity and movement. Here are some places where A.T. and tennis intersect and how learning A.T. can bump your tennis game to the next level. 

'Whole Self Tennis'
Monkey, Lunge, and the Head/Neck Relationship

It is natural to focus on your arms and hands while playing tennis--Alexander Technique is a great way to widen your focus to see how your whole self affects your game. One of the reasons I used to shank so many balls was because I only focused on my arms and not a sense of my whole body in motion. Building this whole body connection and coordination is one of the key focuses of A.T. 

Tennis, like many sports, is played almost completely in two positions we work to perfect through A.T.--monkey and lunge. Connecting your upper body to your your legs, a focus of the way I work with clients, is vital to playing tennis effectively. 

Monkey is a form by which all 3 joints of the lower body are engaged to bend without distorting or over-shortening the spine. It is familiar to most tennis lovers as the classic return stance. In A.T. we seek to create the maximum space, tensegrity, and adaptability within this form while using minimum effort. 

Lunge (pictured above) is the form used to shift weight, run, change direction, and actually hit the ball. We look to perfect lightness in this so that our movement on the court can be as dynamic as possible and to allow the upper body the freedom for maximum control and power. 

Once both of these forms are perfected through lessons, you have the basis to build dynamic and enduring form for your game. 

Another key point to playing 'Whole Self Tennis' has to do with the poise of your head and neck--any extra tension in your neck will inevitably cause your shoulders to fly up, which will put extra tension in your arms and hands, messing with your shots. The ability to leave length in your neck, learned through A.T., is invaluable for any player. 

 Body-Mind Unity, Habit Change, and Attention to Means

Tennis is an extraordinary quick game--one of the reasons I love to play is because it is hard to be anything but in the moment while on court. Because of that, there is very little time to 'think'--you have to have trust between the lightning quick perception of what must be done and the movement to carry it out. The trust in your body-mind unity (a much better term than 'connection') is invaluable in this, and allows you to adapt with confidence to the demands of the moment. 

What might be even more potent is the framework A.T. gives for Habit change--since there is very little time to think as you respond, the ability to train and build positive habits while breaking negative ones is paramount to success. The unique process Alexander Technique gives for identifying and changing habits with relative ease and speed allows one to handle technical challenges that may arise in training with aplomb. 

Tennis is also a game where you have to 'stick to your game'--if you take your eye off the ball, you are likely to be toast very quickly. In Alexander Technique this is called the 'Means Whereby': sticking to your process and ignoring wanting to skip to the end of it. Really, its a question of focus. Alexander Technique teaches you to maintain focus on throughout movements, and you can transfer that skill into even the longest rally. 

Keeping Your Poise Under Stress

Tennis is a game above all of focus and endurance. In Andre Agassi's autobiography 'Open', he describes it as the loneliest sport--you stand out there for sometimes hours, not able to get support from anyone. The movement efficiency that A.T. teaches can help with the physical endurance, but it might be even more valuable for emotional/mental toughness.

As documented in previous blogs, fear has a distinct physicality. This can easily cause a player to tighten up, affecting the accuracy of their tennis. Interestingly enough, this can happen just as much when a player is winning (especially if they are close to taking a set, break point, or match) as when they are losing. A.T. provides a unique set of tools for releasing the physical tension associated with nerves, letting yourself breath, and re-centering.
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When players keep this poise, their tennis becomes extraordinarily beautiful to watch and experience. 

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