A key theme is mindfullnes, being aware and observant. Avoid self-judgement - quieten the inner voice that criticizes our actions and sets expectations.
We have an inbuilt natural learning system that's quite optimal. Children use this all the time. They're aware, curious, have a keen sense of observation and eager to explore without fear of failure. They use trial and error to figure things out. Somehow as we grow up we stop using those mechanisms. We become self-conscious and gives rise to a new inner voice - aka ego - that judges our actions, sets unnecessary expectations. This ego - Gallwey calls it Self 1 - interferes with our natural learning pathways and leads to subobtimal results. Gallway's techniques are a way to quieten the Self 1 and allow our natural learning pathways to be active again. Some of his tips are:
Gallwey has a nice analogy where he compares habits with grooves on a gramaphone. As we start doing things repeatedly - bad ones as well as good - the grooves get deeper and we get stuck in that routine. To "change" a habit, don't consider the existing one as a "bad" habit. Instead slowly start doing the new one instead and over time it'll form a groove.
The ideas in the book are not new. Some existing concepts it relates to:
The player of the inner game comes to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills; he discovers a true basis for self-confidence; and he learns that the secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard. He aims at the kind of spontaneous performance which occurs only when the mind is calm and seems at one with the body, which finds its own surprising ways to surpass its own limits again and again. Moreover, while overcoming the common hang-ups of competition, the player of the inner game uncovers a will to win which unlocks all his energy and which is never discouraged by losing.
In other words, the key to better tennis—or better anything—lies in improving the relationship between the conscious teller, Self 1, and the natural capabilities of Self 2.
Joan was beginning to sense the difference between “trying hard,” the energy of Self 1, and “effort,” the energy used by Self 2, to do the work necessary. During the last set of balls, Self 1 was fully occupied in watching the seams of the ball. As a result, Self 2 was able to do its own thing unimpaired, and it proved to be pretty good at it. Even Self 1 was starting to recognize the talents of 2; she was getting them together.
Getting it together mentally in tennis involves the learning of several internal skills: 1) learning how to get the clearest possible picture of your desired outcomes; 2) learning how to trust Self 2 to perform at its best and learn from both successes and failures; and 3) learning to see “nonjudgmentally”—that is, to see what is happening rather than merely noticing how well or how badly it is happening. This overcomes “trying too hard.” All these skills are subsidiary to the master skill, without which nothing of value is ever achieved: the art of relaxed concentration.
Note: These tips are relevant outside of Tennis too.
Listen to how D. T. Suzuki, a renowned Zen master, describes the effects of the ego-mind on archery in his foreword to Zen in the Art of Archery: As soon as we reflect, deliberate, and conceptualize, the original unconsciousness is lost and a thought interferes. … The arrow is off the string but does not fly straight to the target, nor does the target stand where it is. Calculation, which is miscalculation, sets in…. Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. “Childlikeness” has to be restored….
Note: The key is enjoy the doing (mindfulness) and the lack of judgement.
If you reflect upon your own highest moments or peak experiences, it is likely that you will recall feelings that these phrases describe. You will probably also remember them as moments of great pleasure, even ecstasy. During such experiences, the mind does not act like a separate entity telling you what you should do or criticizing how you do it. It is quiet; you are “together,” and the action flows as free as a river.
Note: Playing ping pong often brings this experience for me.
It is the purpose of the Inner Game to increase the frequency and the duration of these moments, quieting the mind by degrees and realizing thereby a continual expansion of our capacity to learn and perform.
Note: Practice till it becomes muscle memory!
For most of us, quieting the mind is a gradual process involving the learning of several inner skills. These inner skills are really arts of forgetting mental habits acquired since we were children.
What does this have to do with tennis? Well, it is the initial act of judgment which provokes a thinking process.
Note: The concept of explore vs exploit is related. A child likes to explore, trying different things using trial and error until they figure it out. They may even break that thing again and start from scratch a few times. As adults it appears we forget the explore option and try to go depth first into an exploit.
Think good learners know how to combine and balance both really well. Also relevant is this talk by John Cleese on leveraging the explore option more to unlock creativity https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/creativity-in-management-by-john-cleese
Be clear about this: letting go of judgments does not mean ignoring errors. It simply means seeing events as they are and not adding anything to them.
Judgment results in tightness, and tightness interferes with the fluidity required for accurate and quick movement. Relaxation produces smooth strokes and results from accepting your strokes as they are, even if erratic.
When the mind is free of any thought or judgment, it is still and acts like a mirror. Then and only then can we know things as they are.
In the light of this, it seems inappropriate to call our bodies derogatory names. Self 2—that is, the physical body, including the brain, memory bank (conscious and unconscious) and the nervous system—is a tremendously sophisticated and competent collection of potentialities. Inherent within it is an inner intelligence which is staggering. What it doesn’t already know, this inner intelligence learns with childlike ease. It uses billions of cells and neurological communication circuits in every action.
Getting the clearest possible image of your desired outcomes is a most useful method for communicating with Self 2, especially when playing a match. Once you are competing it is too late to work on your strokes, but it is possible to hold in your mind the image of where you want the ball to go and then allow the body to do what is necessary to hit it there. It is essential here to trust Self 2. Self 1 must stay relaxed, refraining from giving “how-to-do-it” instructions and from any effort to control the stroke. As Self 1 learns to let go, a growing confidence in the ability of Self 2 emerges.
You may feel foolish, thinking that you already know the proper follow-through, but it is vital to give Self 2 an image to imitate. Having done this, it might also be useful to shut your eyes and imagine as clearly as possible your entire forehand with the racket staying flat throughout the swing. Then, before hitting any balls, swing your racket several times, letting the racket stay flat and allowing yourself to experience how it feels to swing in this new way. Once you start to hit balls, it is important not to try and keep your racket flat. You have asked Self 2 to keep it flat, so let it happen!
Note: It’s incredible how the mind and body are connected.
In short, if we let ourselves lose touch with our ability to feel our actions, by relying too heavily on instructions, we can seriously compromise our access to our natural learning processes and our potential to perform. Instead, if we hit the ball relying on the instincts of Self 2, we reinforce the simplest neural pathway to the optimal shot.
The more awareness one can bring to bear on any action, the more feedback one gets from experience, and the more naturally one learns the technique that feels best and works best for any given player at any given state of development.
So the question that remains is how one person’s greater level of experience can help another person. The short answer is that a valid instruction derived from experience can help me if it guides me to my own experiential discovery of any given stroke possibility. From the point of view of the student, the question becomes how to listen to technical instructions and use them without falling into the Self 1 traps of judgment, doubt and fear.
Note: Learning the underlying reasons - identifying the first principles that led to that approach seems to help here. I’ve seen people who are great learners question techniques and try to understand why a specific technique is used and connect it to fundamental knowledge.
The first step is to closely observe your own footwork especially as it relates to one of the variables in the instruction, say, weight transfer.
It is not helpful to condemn our present behavior patterns—in this case our present imperfect strokes—as “bad”; it is helpful to see what function these habits are serving, so that if we learn a better way to achieve the same end, we can do so.
But when we stop trying to suppress or correct the habit,we can see the function it serves, and then an alternative pattern of behavior, which serves the same function better, emerges quite effortlessly.
It is a painful process to fight one’s way out of deep mental grooves. It’s like digging yourself out of a trench. But there is a natural and more childlike method. A child doesn’t dig his way out of his old grooves; he simply starts new ones! The groove may be there, but you’re not in it unless you put yourself there. If you think you are controlled by a bad habit, then you will feel you have to try to break it. A child doesn’t have to break the habit of crawling, because he doesn’t think he has a habit. He simply leaves it as he finds walking an easier way to get around.
Nevertheless, I do not believe that ultimately the mind can be controlled by the mere act of letting go—that is, by a simply passive process. To still the mind one must learn to put it somewhere.
The instructions I gave students were very simple. “Say the word bounce out loud the instant you see the ball hit the court and the word hit the instant the ball makes contact with the racket—either racket.” Saying the words out loud gave both me and the student the chance to hear whether the words were simultaneous with the events of bounce and hit. As the student said “bounce … hit … bounce … hit … bounce … hit … bounce …,” not only would it keep his eyes focused on four very key positions of the ball during each exchange, but the hearing of the rhythm and cadence of the bouncing and hitting of the ball seemed to hold the attention for longer periods of time.
I was reading a description of the zone by Bill Russell, the famous basketball player for the Boston Celtics: “At that special level all sorts of odd things happened. … It was almost as if we were playing in slow motion. During those spells I could almost sense how the next play would develop and where the next shot would be taken. Even before the other team brought the ball in bounds, I could feel it so keenly that I’d want to shout to my teammates, ‘It’s coming there!’—except that I knew everything would change if I did. My premonitions would be consistently correct, and I always felt then that I not only knew all the Celtics by heart but also all the opposing players, and that they all knew me. It seems less odd to me now. It seems more like, yes, that’s the way it is, that’s the way it should be all the time. We can be focused. We can be conscious.”
Another way to look at the zone is that it comes as a gift. It is not a gift you can demand of yourself, but one you can ask for.
I used to think that whatever was present in that state would leave me, was ephemeral. Now I know that it is always there and it is only I who leave.
Note: Author is talking about self 2 or “the zone” or “flow state”