|
Recently, the WTA year-end tournament was played in Los Angeles, and the stands were nearly empty. This is symptomatic of where professional and amateur tennis is today. Why is it difficult for amateurs to relate to professional play? Two related facts stand out as possible explanations: first, the gap between the professional and the amateur has widened significantly over the past twenty years; second, the methods by which tennis is taught to amateurs have not kept up with advancements in science and technology. One approach to solving these problems is to address the way tennis is taught at the grassroots level. This will require a "partnership for improvement" between the teaching community and the tennis industry. While efforts in this direction have begun, none that we have seen are focused on the fundamental obstacles to improving teaching at the amateur level. We divide these obstacles into two areas: One is understanding how humans learn because this is where teaching really begins. Two is understanding how to carry out a systems analysis of high-speed video to pinpoint the students' impediments to progress. These two problem areas must be taken together to obtain the best results. By a systems analysis approach to high-speed video, we are able to identify, classify, and formulate solutions to problems in a framework of facts rather than rules. By understanding how people learn, we are able to convey these findings to the student in a form that the student can readily assimilate and utilize to improve. In this article, we address the human learning process by explaining key elements of that process and their significance for the teaching community. In a follow-up article, we will show, by example, how to carry out a systems analysis of high-speed video to formulate a framework for teaching the forehand that will close the gap between amateur and professional technique in a reasonable time frame (in some cases about one year). By closing this gap, without requiring that the average player to incur great expense or devote long periods of time to training, we believe the general public will regain an interest in tennis fueled by what they are able to do on the court. Limitations
of Human Visual Processing:
Eyewitnesses to crimes are notoriously unreliable. The same is true when players and coaches try to describe tennis strokes. There are at least two sources of this unreliability: One is related to the speed with which we see, which is about 30 frames per second. The second is that there are two types of vision1, peripheral and focal. Peripheral vision, the form most commonly used, is not sufficiently precise to hit a tennis ball cleanly.
Normal visual processing of about 30 frames per second is too slow to observe what is happening in any tennis stroke (about 200 frames per second would be much better). Further, there is no stop action in our visual processing, so even at 30 frames per second, we are unable to recall any specific frame. Hence, teaching pros, while instructing a student, are not able to see the most important part of a stroke due to its speed. The 30 frames per second visual limitation explains why traditional tennis teaching methods have divided the stroke into three parts: The preparation (taking the racquet back), the swing, and the follow-through. We can see the preparation, the follow-through, and the swing, but not the details of the swing. Unfortunately, it is during this high-speed "unobservable" portion of the stroke that most of the student's problems can be found. In place of explaining the details of the swing, traditionally oriented teaching pros have focused on the preparation and the follow-through. There arose a mistaken belief that if the preparation and the follow-through were right, then the swing would be right. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as high-speed video has revealed. The consequence of the visual limitation problem is that you can't correct an error that you cannot see. For this reason, high-speed video developed by Advanced Tennis, and also found on TennisOne, will play an increasingly important role in tennis instruction in the future. The second limitation is that, as we move around, we primarily depend on our peripheral vision. This point is of great importance to teaching tennis. Our brains do not process this form of vision very accurately since we require only rough information about our environment to move about successfully. To perform precise tasks, we use an entirely different form of vision, called focal vision, which is processed very accurately. The issue of peripheral versus focal vision is that to hit a tennis ball accurately, one must use focal vision to practice rather than peripheral vision. But most of the time we are practicing, we are using peripheral vision. It is the natural thing to do. Once in a while we will get into a state where we are using focal vision during practice and will have the best practice of our lives. However, for many players, as soon as we begin a match, peripheral vision takes over, and we begin hitting off center or worse. This can be confusing and discouraging if you do not know what is happening. The significance of this is that if you say "watch the ball" when a student hits the frame, you may be giving confusing advice. In many cases, the student is likely watching the ball, but with peripheral vision. They think they are watching the ball, so your advice may only make matters worse. Using high-speed video, you will be able to identify this problem. If they are watching the ball but hitting off center, a better approach might be to first discuss the two forms of vision so that the student will not be confused. And second, develop techniques for getting the student to use focal vision. The Ambiguity of Human Language: Another challenge to tennis instruction is the ambiguity of human language. The role of language in teaching a skill is that it makes it possible convey to the student the insights of those who have mastered the skill, reducing the student's learning time. The most well developed example of this can be found in the sciences, such as mathematics and physics. However, if in the course of teaching, the instructor uses ambiguous language, the learning time can actually be increased rather than reduced. To teach high-precision skills in the shortest possible time, one must use a high-precision language. Today, there is no formal language being used to teach tennis. What we do have is a set of ambiguous metaphors, templates, and rules that are used in place of a formal language. For example, the phrase "hit through the ball" has numerous interpretations, only one of which is useful for hitting a tennis ball. A student might spend many hours trying different ways of "hitting through the ball" and never get it right. Another example is "lean on the ball" which I take to mean "Hit the ball harder," or "step into the ball," or "lean forward while hitting the ball." But who knows what it really means? Modern technology provides the opportunity to replace the ambiguity of metaphors, templates, and rules with facts. Doing this will greatly accelerate the learning process. This requires instructors to examine more closely what they say and find precise ways of saying it. It would be useful for the USTA, the USPTR, and the USPTA to form a working group, much like the Object Management Group in software, to formalize the language of tennis instruction. The Problem of Associative Learning: Humans learn most quickly through relevance. If an action has a result that can be associated to a value or an observable outcome, it is learned more quickly than a meaningless action. For example, suppose by intuitively following a specific tennis tip, a player produces a well-hit ball during a lesson. Unless the tip has a rational meaning, the student will find it difficult to create a meaningful association. As a result, when the player leaves the lesson, he or she is unable to repeat that performance. A very common example is provided by pros who insist on a student developing a "follow-through." They are imposing a (well-intentioned) rule for which there is no associated value or meaning. This is because you can have a great follow-through without having good ball control, or even good ball contact. What is needed is is to use high-speed video not only to determine what is useful (as is being done) but most importantly why. It is in understanding the WHY that the student will be able to make significant reductions in the time it takes to develop professional-level strokes. The
Problem of "On-Demand" Recall of Reflexive Memory:
We have all had the experience of hitting a perfect shot only to realize we have no clue as to how we did it. This is because the human brain has very little ability to recall the details of a reflexive action on demand. This fact makes it almost impossible for Pete Sampras (or any expert) to tell a student what she or he does to hit a tennis ball. One well-known result of this fact is that great players are not necessarily great teachers. This problem is further exacerbated by the fact that most people firmly believe that they can recall, on demand, the details of a reflexive action. However, high-speed photography provides a different story. In countless situations, high-speed video has demonstrated that players do not have a declarative knowledge (a knowledge that can be accurately conveyed in words) of what they are doing to hit their shots. Using high-speed photography, it is now possible to develop a detailed factual record of the strokes of a large body of the best practitioners. Although this work is still in its early stages, it already shows the potential to help pros and amateurs alike overcome many of the inherent limitations of human perception. The
Problem of Intentional Action:
How often have you heard "hit the ball out front"? This (ambiguous) rule is repeated every day, and still many students have trouble with the execution, even if they interpret it correctly. Accurately carrying out an intended action that requires precision is inherently difficult. Even if one had prefect recall, and the teacher conveyed their actions perfectly, a human's ability to carry out an action intentionally as prescribed is initially quite limited. One source of the difficulty of intentional action is the absence of good visual feedback loop in our brains. This could be used to correct a sufficiently slowly developing action while it is being carried out. But we have no such feedback loop. Instead we must rely on developing an internal "somatosensory" memory—better known as a feeling—to tell when an action is proceeding correctly. However, even here there are limitations. Even if the feeling for a movement were to be developed perfectly, the speed of action on a tennis court greatly exceeds the speed of the fastest somatosensory feedback loop in the human brain. Even perfect somatosensory feedback would arrive too late in most cases to be useful in correcting an error in a stroke during execution. In tennis, players have to rely instead on an "after-the-fact" sensation to tell if what they did was correct. How all of this after-the-fact feedback works to improve performance is a current and very active area of research. The speed with which this research proceeds might depend heavily on pros conducting controlled experiments in this area and accurately recording the outcomes of these experiments. The
Problem of Neuronal Disassembly and Neuronal Encroachment:
Have you ever gotten your serve down pat on a Saturday and then found it impossible to hit a decent serve two days later? This is likely a result of the curious feature of the human brain has of partially disassembling, overnight, the knowledge of an action learned the previous day. Since brains learn the basic components of a procedure and a method of assembling these components to execute the procedure, it has no need to store (remember) the procedure as a complete unit. If you learn your serve as a complete unit or template, you are going to easily forget it. However, if you learn your serve or any other stroke as a set of elementary relevant components, it will be easily reassembled each day you go out to play. But it will require time to reassemble, and you must allow for this, without getting frustrated. In fact, frustration can significantly delay reassembly of a stroke, just as would be the case when reassembling a rifle. The natural disassembly process is a nuisance that must be respected if we are to learn a procedure as quickly as possible. But there is another dynamic of the human brain that is just as annoying. Every action or thought requires an assembly of neurons to carry it out. However, neurons assembled and devoted to one task can be co-opted by neurons developed for an entirely different task, depending on your priorities in life. A good example is when a person who has lost his hands learns to use his feet to perform many of the same tasks. If the original learning event was based on insufficient information, ambiguities, or purely reflexive conditioning, it can be easily forgotten, and any attempt to reproduce it by referring to the imprecise information is usually futile. The solution of this problem is to teach stroke components. This will be illustrated in the next article. But it is worthwhile for each pro to use high-speed video to break down the "swing" stage of their stroke into meaningful components just to develop some insight into why tennis is so hard to teach. Stress
Breaks Down Reflexive Knowledge:
Have you ever come off the court after a particularly stressful match and said, "I forgot how to hit a forehand"? If so, you probably learned your forehand by rote repetition or conditioning. It is a fact that procedures learned by rote and reflexive conditioning are easily forgotten under high stress. A particularly good example is found in Professor Walter Freeman's book Society of Brains, page 124, involving the seminal work of Pavlov. What is poorly understood is that, during a tennis match, the levels of mental and physical stress can reach crisis proportions. This fact makes tennis a useful venue for stress research. The significance of this is that rote conditioning will not necessarily carry you through a tough match. About the only solution known today to quickly remedy the breakdown of a stroke is to have a verbal knowledge of the individual components of a stroke that can be used to restart your reflexive processing. If you have time on your side, some form of mental relaxation might eventually restore your stroke; however, this can take as long as 20 minutes, and so the match might be over before you recover. The solution to this problem is a new approach to teaching based on experimentation, exploration, and individual initiative rather than the traditional metaphors, templates, and rules. One source of help in understanding this approach can be found in Chapter 4 of the book The Power of Mindful Learning, by Professor Ellen Langer. Professor Langer presents an exceptionally insightful analysis of the problems of rote learning and their implication for the future of education generally. In short, tennis instruction must move away from templates and rules to purpose and reason. We must put more responsibility for learning in the hands of the student by providing more facts and encouraging experimentation, exploration, and individual initiative. The learning process should be an exploratory journey of teacher and student if the student is to excel at the highest level. I believe that this was the thrust of Vic Braden's advice—to have fun along the way while you learn tennis. The
Problem of Layered Learning:
No one can tell you exactly how to hit a tennis ball. What they can do is convey some idea through words and examples of how it might be done. This is because language is imprecise at best: we have a limited ability to convey our actions in words, and humans learn in a series of successive approximations. We have addressed two of these challenges above, so we will address the third here.
Learning is somewhat like climbing a series of hills, where the next hill can only be seen after one reaches the top of the one before it. The first approximation of a stroke will usually be crude and inefficient. But because you have a first approximation, you have a basis for an improvement that would not be possible without it. It is not possible to jump from never having hit a tennis ball to hitting a tennis ball efficiently. It must proceed in stages. The challenge to tennis teaching community is to formulate the best possible set of stages of learning. This must start with the best (by present standards) set of components that can be approximated and conveyed in words and actions. The components must be simple and relevant if the student is to learn quickly. It must be possible for the student to practice these components, like learning musical scales, on their own on a backboard for example, without supervision. The most important point about layered learning is this: If the learning process is rushed, and if the student is not given ample time for exploration and experimentation, the layers will be easily broken down under pressure, or they will be broken down by the natural disassembly process we spoke of earlier. Another important implication of this fact is that the teacher should not think that they can impose a rigid template regime on the student from the start and presume that this will promote learning. The first approximation will not be perfect. It might even violate all of the traditional rules. If so, it should not be discouraged! If the student's initial attempts to hit are crude and uncertain, it is most likely due to uncertain information, not a lack of ability. How people find their way to a correct concept is mysterious and varied, and this must be respected, not rejected. We find that most problems clear up without our attention if we focus on the facts and what is relevant. For example, we find that students learn correct footwork without our ever mentioning it. Footwork is not the cause of a problem, it is a symptom. Get the right layers in place with clear explanations and examples, and the initial approximations of a stroke evolve into good approximations. The
Problem of Component-Based Learning:
In early childhood development there are no templates, metaphors, or rules to guide the development of physical or mental skills. A child learns by exploration and experimentation. In this experimental trial-and-error process, the child develops many "action components," which do not necessarily constitute a purposeful act but which become useful later when their environment begins to enlarge and change. This might be described as component-based learning. It is the natural learning process and ensures the ability to adapt to new environments and circumstances before they are encountered. If, for example, walking templates and rules were imposed on a child during their early developmental years, the results would be disastrous. The fact is that our brains do not operate effectively from templates and rules, precisely because they restrict our ability to adapt. The same is true for tennis. If we make templates and rules the basis of teaching, the learning process will be retarded accordingly. We have found that this fact does not only apply to tennis, but to education in other fields as well, such as mathematics. The challenge to tennis professionals is to define the right components from which to start the teaching process. This requires us to systematically replace every template, metaphor, and rule with relevant and meaningful components, facts, and data. Many professionals have been nudging the tennis profession in this direction for years. Notable in this regard are Vic Braden, John Yandell, Dennis van der Meer, Jim Loehr, Jack Groppel, and others as well. However, what has not been done is to organize the experimental findings and insights of these researchers around the mechanics of human learning that have been discovered by such eminent researchers as Professor Walter Freeman at Berkeley, Professor Ellen Langer at Harvard, Professor Anders Ericsson at Florida State University, and many other scientists who have contributed to our understanding of the human brain. What this means is that the scientific research must be used to translate tennis into specific procedures that are not just a matter of personal opinion, as is the case with much of teaching today. The procedures must be as simple as possible, unambiguous, reproducible, and transferable, and they must allow the student freedom to explore and experiment independently of the instructor. We must replace metaphors with facts, templates with components, and rules with reason. The Bottom Line: Understanding the nature of human learning is a significant challenge even when scientific facts and precise language are available. The problem is not with the student; we are what we are due to years of evolution. Our challenge is to reinvent professional teaching to fit the human learning process. If we do this, children and adults alike will develop the skills to play tennis in less than half the time now needed. 1. See Kandel, Schwartz, and Jessell, Principles of Neural Science, third edition, p.460, for a scientific discussion of this point. This a convenient single-source reference for scientific discussions of several other points in this article and neuroscience generally. Another compendium of neuroscience is The Cognitive Neurosciences, edited by Michael Gazzaniga. Most texts in neuropsychology are useful references as well. |
||
