Archive for: rhythm
In the semifinals of the US Open 2011, Roger Federer, Andy Murray, and Serena Williams have shown us that their rhythm and timing can ebb and flow within (and between) their matches. They may not have wanted to lower their performance level and they showed that they could recover some level of their performance. They also showed that after recovery they faltered in maintaining that level needed to win their matches.
What are the advantages of good rhythm and timing for a tennis player?
Our brains have a series of rhythm and timing circuits which control our motor planning and sequencing. This is the central hub for our coordination functions. When these circuits are well tuned, we have accuracy and make few mistakes. The more precisely tuned these circuits, the more accurate we are and the fewer mistakes we make.
The statistics we gather about performance in a tennis match are an excellent gauge of how well tuned our rhythm and timing circuits are. Winners, unforced errors, double faults, aces, and service percentages are all certainly good numbers to watch to know how well a player is performing. These numbers also clearly indicate how a player’s rhythm and timing circuits are performing.
How do problems in rhythm and timing show up in a tennis match?
During a match, the changes in the player’s statistics are a good indicator of the changes in the player’s rhythm and timing. So, when we see a dip or surge in winners, unforced errors, double faults, aces, and service percentages we know that there are changes in the rhythm and timing.
Of course, an increase in double faults and unforced errors are an indication that rhythm and timing are in trouble. And, an increase in winners, aces, and services percentages indicate that rhythm and timing are getting better.
Overall, a player’s ranking is an indication of how well their rhythm and timing circuits function. Generally, those near the top of the ranking have the best rhythm and timing. Of course, there are all kinds of things which enter into a player’s ranking, but ranking is a good rule-of-thumb for understanding how well are player’s rhythm and timing circuits are working.
What are the kinds of things which affect a player’s rhythm and timing?
We need to remember that rhythm and timing is developed as we mature. It is not innate. Rhythmic stimuli help a child develop their basic rhythm and timing. Rhythmic exercises help us maintain and further develop our rhythm and timing as children and adults
Injury, illness, and surgery are some of the kinds of physical trauma which affect our rhythm and timing. So, when someone is recovering from these kinds of things, they need to have a rhythm and timing regimen in their training program to recover the connections between their brain circuits and their muscles. Most players simply combine their physical therapy with their return to their normal training regimen which has been developed for their sport. But, this is often not enough to recover their rhythm and timing to peak levels. Most physical therapists have no experience with or training in rhythm and timing.
There are emotional states which affect a player’s rhythm and timing. These may be affecting the player for a few minutes or hours or weeks (or even longer). What happens is that our emotional states can help us maintain our good levels of rhythm and timing. Or, they my bring about changes in our physical functioning which improves or degrades our rhythm and timing.
We know from experience that a player’s confidence that they can win a particular match has a lot to do with their ability to succeed. We also know that when a player recognizes that the opponent is going to win the match, something changes in the player’s state and the player performs so that this belief about the loss becomes true.
Another thing which can affect a player’s rhythm and timing are environmental factors. They can eat, breath, or touch something to which they react badly and their body goes into a reaction which affects their performance.
All of these things affect the relationship between the player’s rhythm and timing circuits and their array of muscles. Those timing relationships are critical for excellent performance, so when these kinds of things have occurred, the player’s performance will suffer.
What can tennis players do to prevent a drop in rhythm and timing?
For the physical traumas, it is simply part the normal aspects of any sport. Be prepared to re-build your rhythm and timing circuits with a training regimen which gives you optimum rhythm and timing. Have a training resource which specializes in that aspect of your game and use it when recovering from anything physical.
For emotional episodes which affect your rhythm and timing there is an aspect of effective rhythm and timing training which helps the player develop two sets of emotional skills. First, in an effective rhythm and timing training program, there are exercises in which the player learn to maintain and emotional even keel. All players experience the situation where an easy slam is presented and they get excited and end up with an unforced error. In a good rhythm and timing program you learn how to maintain the emotional states which maintain the highest levels of rhythm and timing. You also learn tips and tricks for recovering your good rhythm and timing on-the-spot when you have popped out of rhythm..
Second, some players have an extraordinary rhythm and timing training program which helps them develop multiple sets of rhythm and timing circuits. One for normal performance and others for special circumstances. So, if the player chooses to go into a particular emotional state, they don’t lose their rhythm and timing effectiveness. We all know of players who can continue performing well when they get angry, but most players are not able to maintain effectiveness in that state.
For environmental factors, it is best for players to have done an environmental audit to know everything which affects them. This gives them a way of preventing many environmental factors from affecting their performance.
Is there an objective, non-tennis test for Rhythm and Timing?
Yes, you can measure how precise your rhythm and timing brain circuits are functioning for yourself by taking our rhythm screening test. This is a simple, one-minute, online test which gives you a number (your Rhythmicity Index or RI) between 0 and 10o (some can score higher than 100). One hundred (100) is perfect and zero (0) is perfectly awful. The higher your RI, the better your coordination, the more accurate your shots, the more stamina you have, the more aces you can deliver, the faster you run, the faster your reaction times, the more accurate you are in challenges, etc. . . We recommend that professional athletes have an RI of at least 90 and preferably 95+.
Just because a person has an RI of 90+ does not mean they are or will be a great athlete in any sport. That person still needs to have training in the sport to become good. But, good rhythm and timing are essential to becoming a great performer in any sport and improved rhythm and timing speeds the training to achieve those results.
Players tell us that they have difficulty maintaining focus when there are distractions. They also have difficulty staying focused when they are waiting.
The US Open 2011 had a great first week, but days 9 and 10 were rained out (okay, about 10 minutes were played on day 10) and this is frustrating for everyone involved. Now, we are at the start of day 11 and it is raining in New York City. Imagine the frustration that players have in the face of this kind of scheduling difficulty.
Where Does Focus Come From?
Our ability to focus is based in those same brain circuits which control our coordination. When we have trouble with our coordination, we also have difficulty with our ability to maintain focus. These capabilities do not seem to be connected and I did not think they were linked until I started teaching children with Attention Deficit Disorders (ADD & ADHD).
When I took these children through rhythm and timing training, they would dramatically improve their attention and focus, but they would also dramatically improve their coordination. Before the training they would not be able to run, throw or catch a ball, jump rope, or even skip. After the training, they would enjoy excellent coordination and begin to excel in sports they had struggled with or had shunned before.
How Do We Focus?
Our brain has many different sensory management circuits. One set of these circuits are gating circuits for external auditory, kinesthetic, and visual data. They are called gating circuits because we open and close them to permit in or block out a particular data stream. Our rhythm and timing circuits are used for the proper control of these gates. If our rhythm and timing has problems, we cannot control these gates and we can have a variety of focus distractions and difficulties.
Let me give you a concrete example of what these gating circuits can do for us. A person with good focus can sit at a table in a restaurant and focus in on a conversation at the next table. And, they can focus out (not hear) the conversations at the other nearby tables.
One of my clients is a young quadriplegic lawyer. His hearing was not properly gated. He was easily distracted by unwanted audio signals. He had difficulty sleeping at night because of cars entering and leaving his apartment complex. His gating circuits were almost always open wide. He had no control over what he heard.
After the rhythm and timing training he wrote me an email telling me about a seminar he had just attended. Several times during the program the presenter stopped and apologized to the class for the noise coming from the next classroom. He told me he had not heard that noise until the presenter mentioned it. Last year he and I were in a restaurant together and his care-giver motioned for him to listen to the music being played. He was surprised that he had not noticed the music, because it was his favorite song.
So, now it is clear that he does not have to be distracted by audio signals. He is able to focus in on things he wants to hear and focus out those things he does not care to listen to. In the seminar, he wanted to focus in on the information of the seminar and in the restaurant, he wanted to focus in on our conversation. Other sounds were unwanted and were not a distraction to him.
Does This Only Work For Audio Signals?
Our brain has these kinds of gating circuits for visual and kinesthetic data, as well as audio.
We all know that some people have a higher pain tolerance than others. This means that they can keep their kinesthetic pain gates closed a lot more easily and a lot longer than people with less tolerance for pain. And, we have all had experiences where we looked at something and did not see it.
How Can This Information Help Our Tennis Game?
What can help your tennis game is to improve your rhythm and timing. When you do that ,you receive the coordination which makes your shots more accurate and your sensory gating circuits become more well tuned which provides you with improved focus and concentration.
As we are nearing the end of the first week of the US Open 2011, we have been able to watch many interesting matches. One of the things I have been focusing on is players who are wrongly challenging the Line Judge’s calls. Many people wonder how the player can challenge the call for a ball which is clearly on the line, especially when the player was right there to see where the ball landed. Of course, the other side of the coin is also rarely understood, when the Line Judge wrongly calls one way or the other and the ball is shown to have been clearly different from the call.
How Do Our Brains Discriminate This Information Wrongly?
Our coordination is based in some brain circuits which originate and parse out the timing signals for activation and release of our muscles. Our motor planning and sequencing process does the parsing so that each muscle is activated or released in the correct order for our movements to occur. The more precise those master timing brain circuits, the more precise is our motor planning and sequencing process, and the better is our coordination.
If our master brain timing circuits are not very precise our brain’s motor planning and sequencing circuits cannot keep up with the volume of (visual as well as auditory and kinesthetic) data being received, so they miss some of the data and fill in some data which our brain has made up (extrapolated) from the data that was perceived. If our brain’s master timing circuits are not very precise, many of the things we think we see are made up and filled in by our brain. So, we think we see one thing and the reality can be different.
It’s In The Flipping Cards
Do you remember seeing a series of drawings on a deck of cards being slowly flipped so that your brain sees the artwork moving like a cartoon? That’s how our brain processes the images it has to manage from the real world. It sees a series of frames. And, depending on the precision of your master brain timing circuits, your brain can process anywhere between 10 and 30 frames per second.
How About A Golf Story?
I worked with a golf professional to improve his rhythm and timing. He was not a tour pro. He operated a golf course and he trained golfers. He had a very busy training schedule and he never even had time to play a round of golf during the 6 weeks that we worked together. He did hit a bucket of balls each week, so he knew that his swing and his accuracy improved over the course of his training with me. I had secretly hoped that his golf scores would improve so that I had referral information about using this training to improve golf play. But the surprise was that his golf training students dramatically improved their results during and after his rhythm and timing training with me.
What happened was that he was processing about 15 frames per second as we started and was processing almost 30 frames per second when we finished. This means that for an average golf swing of one of his students, he was seeing perhaps 7 frames when he started the training with me. He was seeing about 15 frames per swing as he finished getting his own rhythm and timing circuits fine tuned with me.
Actually Seeing More Of The Cards
Because he was seeing more of the frames of his students swing, he was able to make more fine discriminations of his student’s movements. He was able to actually see more of what had been happening with his students swing, so he was able to make more fine and more appropriate distinctions of the movements in his student’s swings.
This means that his brain was not giving him as much ‘made up’ information as before. Because he had more precise information about the swing, he was able to give more precise training interventions and his students were able to dramatically improve their own golf scores.
Getting The Right Information Makes All The Difference
Challenging the Line Judge’s calls is tricky business when you didn’t actually ‘see’ where the ball landed. Many times in the matches at the US Open this year, we see a player challenge when a ball is called ‘in’ because they perceived that the ball was ‘out.’ And when the replay shows us that the ball was straddling the line, it is easy to come to the conclusion that the challenging player needs to improve their basic rhythm and timing brain circuits.
I watched Maria Sharapova in her three set victory over Heather Watson on the opening day of the 2011 US Open. Her coordination was erratic. She had almost twice the unforced errors of Watson (58 to 30) and four times the number of double faults (8 to 2). Yet, she had a lot more aces (5 to 0) and winners (41 to 9) than Watson.
Of course, she had other match statistics which show us an erratic performance, but you can get the picture from these. Sharapova was the winner, but she was erratic. She is a great player and because of that she was able to win in spite of her poor coordination. As I watched the match, I saw her shift back and forth between poor and good coordination. Sometimes she was on and sometimes she was off.
For many tennis players, poor coordination or an erratic performance is the difference between winning and losing a match. What causes lapses into poor coordination or this kind of erratic performance and what can a player do about it?
Keeping Track Of Your Rhythm And Timing
In my former TTT post about Improving Coordination, I talked about a player’s level of rhythm and timing as the basis of their level of coordination (and accuracy). Tennis players test and reinforce their rhythm and timing by bouncing the ball before their serve and swaying or dancing before they receive a serve. This is a good test of their current state of coordination and when their rhythm and timing are in good condition, it is a good way to reinforce that state.
Many Things Affects An Athletes Rhythm And Timing Performance
Emotional State: Calm confidence is generally the best emotional state for maintaining the highests levels of the coordination which comes from excellent rhythm and timing. Any other emotion can rob the player of their best set of resources. This is why Sharapova has her ritual between each point in a game. This helps her regain her calm confidence.
We see many players lose their calm confidence after a bad line call (or some other perceived problem) and some get so stuck in that upset state that they cannot play well enough to continue to win the match. Emotions like fear, anger, and dread interfere with the athletes signal transmission and processing equipment and change the rhythm at which the athletes brain is operating. One of the most common reactions involves acceleration of these processes and that changes the athletes rhythm and timing.
Some athletes seem to have better performance when they are angry (Nadal) and others seem to fall apart (Serena Williams, Andy Roddick). But, most athletes lose the match when they lose that calm confidence.
Hydration, Nutrition And Conditioning: Of course, hydration, nutrition and conditioning play a part in the maintenance of our effective rhythm and timing. If you have not effectively prepared your body for the match, your body may not have the physical resources to perform effectively. Your rhythm and timing is not only related to your conditioning, if you don’t have the appropriate hydration and nutrition, you body may need to shut down to survive.
Environmental Factors: This can include the weather and temperature and we all know that when conditions are too hot (or cold or wet or dry) it can affect the players performances. But, there are other environmental conditions which can affect the athletes performance.
Do you remember the ATP Rome tournament a couple of years ago when many players came down with some kind of flu-like illness? My belief is that something happened in the environment at that tourney which affected many of the players. My guess is that the players dressing rooms were freshly painted or had new carpeting or something like that. I have seen this kind of response in organizations, schools, and businesses, where some new chemical has been added to the environment and many people have flu-like symptoms in reaction to these chemicals.
Our reactions to environmental factors do not have to be raised to the level of illness for us to have our performance affected. Many athletes lose their good rhythm and timing because they are responding to some factor in their environment. This is one of the significant reasons why athletes can have really great coordination (rhythm and timing) in one match and the next day they have lost their coordination.
I believe that this susceptibility to environmental factors is one of the main reasons that many high level athletes have a rigid structure in their tournament lifestyle. They like to stay in the same room at the same hotel and eat the same foods and wear the same clothes. Many call it superstition, but for me it is a desire to keep all the environmental factors under control.
What can a player do in the middle of the match to get back on track?
One of the things we know that Sharapova does between each play in the game is walk away from the court, look at her racquet, and make a fist with her left hand. My guess is that she is using a technique to focus her mind and to connect to a state of excellent performance before the next serve. She has done this technique for years and overall it seems to be working for her.
But, when a player’s rituals are not working, what can they do to get back on track with their state? I can suggest a few things which will help break these inappropriate states for you.
Stop Your Stinking Thinking: If you have lost your calm confidence, that is the most important thing you need to recover to to be able to get back on track. If you hold on to your anger, fear, dread or other emotion which is interfering with your match, you must stop thinking what you are thinking (which is holding you in that inappropriate emotional state). One aspect of being in the wrong emotional state is compulsive and repetitive thoughts which hold you there. You have to take control of your thoughts and erase what you have been thinking from your mind.
If you don’t know how to stop your stinking thinking, There are professionals who can teach you how to do that. Of course, it is difficult to learn this during a match. You know if you are prone to stinking thinking, you should learn these techniques so you know how to stop it during your matches.
Develop And Use An Anchor For An Excellent State: This is what I think Sharapova does when she makes a fist with her left hand before each serve. She has connected a high-performance emotional state to the experience of that fist with her non-dominant hand. You really need someone who knows what they are doing to help you establish this anchor for you. Ask around to get someone to help you do this. You will find it very helpful for you to get back on track.
Racquet-Tap To Reset Your Energy System: Tap your racquet as if to test the tension of the strings. But, don’t tap it with your palm. Use the side of your hand (like a karate chop) and tap the strings at least 5 times. Don’t do it so hard that you hurt your hand (or your racquet). There are energy meridian points on your hand which you stimulate with this activity and this resets aspects of your energy systems. This is very helpful when your coordination is off and you can do this before every serve until you have got your rhythm and timing back on track.
Splash Cold Water On Your Face: If you recognize that you are losing (or have lost) your rhythm and timing, splash cold water on your face when you take your rests. This is is usually more powerful than the Racquet-Tap to get your rhythm and timing back on track.
It is common for your rhythm and timing to come and go during a match. But, these tools and techniques can help you get back on track.
For most of us, coordination is something innate and we don’t believe it is possible to improve it. Let’s look at coordination and see what new concepts and what kind of training is available for it.
Hand-Eye Coordination
We have experienced an evolution in our concepts of coordination. I remember first reading about hand-eye coordination three decades ago. This was the idea that explored the relationship between what we saw and what action we were able to take as a result. So, this concept talked about seeing the ball and being able to take a swing and hitting the ball. It was a very good concept for helping us understand that there was a relationship between what we saw and what actions we could take because of it.
Rhythm and Timing
The latest ideas about coordination are based in the concepts of rhythm and timing. This concept gets us a little deeper into the relationships between our brain circuits and the rest of our body. This concept explores timing circuits in our brain and how they relate to our muscles, our sensory mechanisms, and our perceptions.
It looks at something called “motor sequencing and planning.” Basically, our coordination is about which muscles are fired off, in which sequence, to achieve some action. Coordination happens when those muscles are contracted and relaxed in the proper form at the proper time. I know that this all sounds very complex, and in reality it is incredibly complex. But, we don’t have to know exactly which brain cell or which nerve path, or which muscle gets involved with these actions. All we need to do is swing the racket and hit the ball where we want it to go.
What are Rhythm And Timing?
Timing is about the action happening at the appropriate moment to achieve the outcome. In a tennis serve, if the athlete hits the ball too early, the ball will go beyond the line and if the athlete hits the ball too late the ball will hit the net. Timing is about hitting the ball at the right time.
We often hear broadcasters telling us that an athlete has lost their timing. They (and we) see this when the player starts making double faults and unforced errors. The athlete is not hitting the ball at the precise time needed, so the ball is not going to the appropriate place.
Rhythm is about the flow of events. For the highest level of performance, an athlete needs to recognize and enter the flow of the play (often referred to as the rhythm-of-the-game) and then match it or manage it. Roger Federer is a master at entering into the rhythm of the other player’s game, and then changing the rhythm and ‘confusing’ the other player, which causes the other player to make an unforced error. Broadcasters often refer to Roger “stealing” the other player’s rhythm.
Athletes with the highest capability in rhythm are able to enter any rhythm, can change their rhythm whenever they want, and are not confused when the rhythm changes. The most common problems in rhythm is inability to recognize and match the rhythm of the other player and the inability to maintain themselves steady in their own rhythm.
Scott Hamilton talks about an ice skater entering a jump for 3 revolutions and “popping-out” after only one revolution. I really like that term to describe what I see when an athlete loses their rhythm in the middle of their play. As they lose their rhythm, they stop their own flow of play. Maintaining a steady rhythm and adapting to the existing rhythm are essential for the highest level of play.
What Affects Rhythm And Timing?
Poor rhythm and timing can be improved with proper training. This training involves tens of thousands of reps of very simple exercises maintaining a precise rhythm. It involves testing to track improvement in rhythm and timing.
Good rhythm and timing can be reduced by a variety of things. Injury, surgery, and some illnesses can disrupt the timing relationships between brain circuits and muscles and this requires training to re-establish the proper timing relationships.
Improper diet, environmental toxins, and emotional or physical trauma can temporarily degrade rhythm and timing. These can be avoided with proper precautions or overcome with some mental and physical techniques.
Rhythm And Timing On The Tennis Court
Want to see your favorite tennis player testing and activating their good rhythm and timing? Watch the player prepare to serve the ball. Notice the bouncing they do before the serve? They are verifying their continued good rhythm and timing. If they cannot maintain a good rhythm in that bouncing and catching exercise, they will perform poorly in the next point.
The same goes for receiving a serve. The swaying back and forth is a way of verifying and activating their own good rhythm and timing. Some (like Juan Martin del Potro) even do a little dance to test and re-connect with their good rhythm and timing, when waiting for a serve.
Rhythm and Timing, So What?
From my perspective, Novak Djokovic is doing so well this year because his rhythm and timing are so precise. And, Roger Federer, James Blake, and Andy Roddick are players who could move up dramatically in the standings by improving their rhythm and timing.
