Here is Part 2 of my interview with tennis teaching legend, Vic Braden. (Click Here For Part1 if you missed it)
Topics covered are: keys for improving, staying injury-free and a lesson you can learn from Pete Sampras!
Vic Braden Interview Part 2
If you prefer reading, here is a transcript of the interview:
Florian:
Ok. Let’s move on to the second subject today. Vic I want to talk to you about the keys for long-term enjoyment and satisfaction on the tennis court.
What are your thoughts on that subject ?
Vic:
Well, there are many components to that but for me recreational players need to know how good they could be if they really focused on some things. For a lot of recreational players, the goal is not to get much better, the goal is just to win in their classification.
There are 16 different brain types. For example, one lady when interviewed said: I love watching them smile when they beat me. It is fascinating to me that somebody would get joy out of that.
The other thing is, when we did motor learning studies, we found out how difficult it is for intermediates to make a change. The brain wants to continue doing the same thing.
So you see recreational players playing at a certain level and stay there for 30-40 years, which is allright if they are having fun.
I just can’t believe how good some people could be if they wanted to focus. But to make a change is painful so we found that people have to be willing to go through the pain to make the change and if they are not willing, they will stay at the same level.
On the subject of having fun, it is so important for people to understand, that if you start Tennis when you are 60 years old, there is a 90 and over division now, so you have 30 years to work on your game.
So it is never too late! I have made major changes with people who are 91-92 years old!
Florian:
Yes I actually have several students who have been watching the videos and they are in their 70’s and 80’s and they have been sending me emails that they are improving their game and I take great satisfaction from that obviously.
One thing I would like to ask you is, from your experience, because I know there are so many recreational players that believe it is too hard to improve. I find that once players stop improving, if that goes on for several years, usually the fun goes away a little bit doesn’t it ?
Vic:
Yes. I had schools in Germany and I could go back there 5 years later or 10 years, and the same people who would not make a change were playing exactly the same way they did 5 or 10 years ago.
There are certain brain types where their whole goal is to improve and for other brain types their whole goal is just to have fun and there are other brain types that continually lose and get used to losing.
For me, I built the Jack Kramer club with Jack and we had 3 world champions in that club.
One of the coaches would always say that one of the worst players we ever had as a junior was Pete Sampras. The kids didn’t even want to play him he was so bad and so Pete quit Tennis to go play Baseball. But his sister Stella said no you are not going to do that so Pete stayed in Tennis.
But Pete Sampras set his goal on improvement rather than winning!
He always played up in his divisions in the juniors and got beat all the time but with each defeat he learned something and of course he became one of the best players in the history of the game!
So Pete is always a good example to me what Pete did in the approach that he took because he did not count defeat as just a gigantic loss, he counted it as a way to gather some new information!
Florian:
Yeah and I have found that those players, that are really trying to improve on a continuous basis are usually the players that get the most satisfaction out of the game and stay with it for the longest amount of time.
Vic:
Well, Tennis is such a challenge. You know, 50% of all the people who play around the world today, will lose!
So millions and millions of losers every day but again it is brain typing. When we were doing brain type research with John Niednagel, a famous brain-typist, we saw that intuitive thinkers wanted to change but the thing I found is that most people don’t like to be videoed. I video everybody!
Very often people are doing things in intermediate Tennis, that they did not know they were doing!
It’s a common thing when I show frame-by-frame analysis they go Oh my god, I did not know I did that. We even had one man deny that it was him! He just walked out and said that’s not me. He was in a class with all women so we were pretty sure it was him.
On the other side of the coin, Diane Ross did a wonderful study showing that when the racket gets out of your peripheral vision, a lot of the crazy things happen and you lose feel.
We had people who were pretty sure their racket is down by their knees and it is over their head. That’s why I want everybody to see their image frame-by-frame.
Florian:
Yeah and that’s also why I think it is so important, if you are trying to correct something, you take a look at the video and then you really have to exaggerate the correction in order to make any significant amount of change because any small change will just feel really big to you!
Vic:
Yes that’s true. The signal from the brain is quite different. I was doing a study on terrorists for Israel with Dr. Ariel. Dr. Medione developed a camera that can scan a crowd and get face prints just like finger prints and I did it on Federer.
When Federer played on grass, the edges of his mouth were up and his eyes were open a certain number of degrees and when he played Nadal on clay, his eyes were closed a little more and the edges of his mouth were down!
The brain sends all those signals. It’s all in the brain.
We talk about muscle memory but the muscle has no memory. It’s in the brain and so everything is in how a person thinks about it and works intelligently on making changes!
Florian:
Ok, last but not least, on this subject, you know long-term enjoyment and satisfaction, what do you have to say about staying injury free ?
Vic:
Well the number one thing we found is that people got on the court and hit too many balls before they actually got warmed up. A study showed that you got to get body temperature up by 3 degrees before the liquid gets into the joint centers.
So a lot of people get out and start hitting too early and then they wreck their arm, their rotator cuff. So it is very important for people to warm up properly. Even to run in place for a little bit until the body temperature gets up 3 degrees minimum!
Jack Kramer used to tell me that he would like to win matches in the warm-up and I said what do you mean by that ? He said in the warm-up I watch every ball and make sure I get it back and the opponent starts thinking: Oh my god, this guy hasn’t missed a shot and that happened a lot! He said I won matches in the warm-up
Florian:
Yeah that is amazing. Those are things you don’t even notice even though it does happen all the time.
I remember watching Federer against Nadal. I don’t know what tournament it was, probably French Open. They were just coming onto the court and the difference in the body language was just amazing. Nadal looked so confident and Roger had his head down when the match hadn’t even started yet.
Vic:
It is interesting how the brain works and what you have to do to make some changes.
You have to go through an uncomfortable period and most people don’t want to go through that. They want to have comfort because comfort is what they have done before but what they have done before is why they were not invited to play in major events!
