Reflexes and "Natural" Tendencies

A reflex is a built-in movement. A reflex is something a person is born with. Some common reflexes are useful in a tennis stroke and some individuals have movements that are assembled from reflexes that accurately approximate a tennis stroke. We refere to this condition by saying that the person has talent.

Our research shows that a person who does not have a natural stroke can develop one in aboujt six weeks. In other words, talent is not a blessing and lacking talent is not a liability. Any normal human can develop top quality strokes that rival any so called "talented" player.

So what good is talent? Talent is just a head start in developing and assembling components to form a stroke. Normal people can catch up in a very short period of time when they are provided the right information. Note also that there are many stroke components that need to be learned to be a professional player and there is no documented case of anyone who has been born with a full compliment of components.

Some people are born with feeling comfortable with this elbow position. Most are not. It takes about six weeks to get use to it and incorporate it into stroke production.

In fact, some great players such as Hingis are not born with power components in place, but could learn them in a short time span.

Some common components we observe that are "natural" to some players are the elbow position (see the figure above), the use of the shoulder to strike the ball, leg movements, and wrist positions. Most humans who are born with some of these movements as natural reflexes never pick up a tennis racquet in their lifetime and so yo never know they could be great players.