How To Feel More Time In Tennis And Not Be Rushed

www.feeltennis.net/experience...
Hitting the ball late is one of the biggest challenges in tennis on a recreational level.
I will go more in depth on why that happens and how we can solve it in the future articles but today we're going to tackle just one aspect of that and relates to timing and seeing the ball well.
How much time we perceive and how we perceive the ball are very important topics for all players from beginner level all the way to around 4.0 NTRP.
There a simple way to improve the perception of ball and the perception of time that can work in just a few minutes.
You'll learn a couple of drills that you can do at the start of a lesson that will help you feel more time and therefore calm down and control your movements better and of course control the ball better.
Give these drills a try and let me know what you experience.

[@kDev7659]

My goodness, you are extra-terrestrial Tomas. You have a rare gift. To have the insight and then to communicate it clearly as you have done is truly special.

[@MikeydeLaraCovers]

Whenever this whole shutdown is over and we can all travel again, I’m going to come to where ever you are and take a ton of lessons. You’re the best and thank you for all your videos and instruction!!!

[@Contractedharry]

What a lovely comment!

[@FearlessPhillip]

I feel you man, but Tomas has given us free content with which to improve on our own without shelling out dough for a coach. Have you tried finding a solid hitting partner to work on fundamentals with, or hit against a backboard?

[@vintageoutboard1]

Serbia ain’t close by!

[@abhishekgoyal7309]

Shotgun! I am going first haha.

[@MikeydeLaraCovers]

@@FearlessPhillip Both, actually. And I've worked with some amazing coaches. And to get a chance to work with Tomas? What would it take to be so lucky? :-)

[@twinwankel]

When I was a beginner, I saw the ball well. The problem I had was the lack of good fundamental technique that prevented me from getting prepared properly. Once I learned the footwork and racket preparation, I didn't feel rush anymore.

[@hello2131991]

This channel is the best for tennis players!

[@robertkress6941]

Similar to what I’ve heard from Oscar Wegner, to really focus on the second curve after the bounce

[@speedypete4987]

Oscar is so good!

[@AJ-eu1ug]

Another prime example of how/why Tomas teaching "method & approach" @ Feel Tennis Instruction is so radically superior/superb! For 30 years I've known and have been told by my coaches that I'm constantly late! I desperately wanted and was motivated to correct it. We looked at & changed dozens of other technical aspects/elements of my game (footwork/strokes/etc). What usually occurred is that both me & my coach felt like failures. What is interesting is that despite "failing" in perhaps one of the most major "skills" (being early instead of late) I was & am still considered a very good player. I am easily in the top 5 to 10% of players in my age bracket. I am typically playing/competing 3 to 4x per week with much younger College Level Scholarship/Tennis Team players and/or other former college players, current/former tennis pros, etc. My point is NOT to brag, boast about myself; but rather explain/describe how remarkable Tomas' introspective, broad level approach to correcting one of the most important, fundamental skills necessary to advance/improve one's tennis game. A skill that I was 110% determined to correct/improve/master, but regardless of my and/or my coaches desire, dedication or dreams.......I was and am still often late! After spending thousands of dollars on lessons, consulting & playing with countless tournament level players, I eventually realized that I myself (me) was going to have to figure it out on my own. Thankfully, I was also a "student" & "Ambassador/Promoter" of Tomas @ Feel Tennis Instruction. I was constantly telling, showing other players, pros about his website and unique style, method + approach to what is otherwise an uber complicated, infinite # of precise, technical physical+mental skills, abilities required to advance, improve one's game. So, thanks to Tomas' radically different approach (usually) to addressing/correcting what are often "mental" rather than physical changes that need to be applied. It is these mental interpretations, understandings, images that Tomas utilizes which so often is the "key" or speedy/efficient/effective Breakthrough that has alluded the determined player, conscientious coach. By realizing & understanding that it is your MIND that must first tell your Body how/what to Do; and that by also incorporating how/what it is going to FEEL or Look like when the technical skill or detail is performed........Tomas' unique genius, teaching philosophy is to simply GO ABOVE, BEFORE, AHEAD of the intricate physical detailed "outcome" and recognize, see, feel and perhaps instal/change the "input" to achieve the desired output & result. The bottom line is this Video about how/why tennis players are so often late, is precisely what I had to finally figure out, realize on my own to begin the process of hitting the ball earlier and more correctly. It has catapulted my game quickly & drastically! I tried to tell my coaches it was a mental, eyesite, visual ball tracking/judging/perceiving skill or habit I needed to develop and/or break, rather than Footwork or Early Stroke Preparation. Once I started practicing, focusing on the correct issue/area/aspect......the "fix" and desired results started occurring immediately!

[@SebastienPBoret]

That’s me! I have been struggling with this perception for so long...Your drills are excellent! Thanks a lot

[@rogansleftpeg]

This tip has improved my game immensely! Thank you!

[@jfollas698]

This is so so good. I just started playing this year and I thought I had to get my eyes checked because often the ball just appeared out of no where!

[@eno5330]

The best online tennis coach! Simple explained, easy to understand and to practice. Bought his online course as well, learning a looot. Thank you coach Tomaz!!!!

[@CoachAdrian]

Interesting way of speeding up ball recognition...very insightful!

[@Skama1975]

One of the most interesting material you posted!

[@mrugeshpatel38]

tried this yesterday and wow, what a difference. I've never been this confident with my forehand. I was moving really well and felt confident in every shot. Also, I was able to relax tensed muscle, allowing me to play for longer with a lot of accuracy! amazing tip. I knew I was late to contact (esp. on the forehand and it was evident since I'd trouble hitting cross court). I've tried many suggestions but this one takes the cake. Thank you for taking the time to make this video for us.

[@feeltennis]

And thank you for taking the time for sharing your feedback!

[@GrungePopRecords]

Absolutely divine tennis instruction

[@josecedeno5265]

Now, I understand my slow progress in tennis. Thanks again for making that clear to me.

[@feeltennis]

Happy to help!

[@viv364]

Very technically explained. Love all of your videos, Tomaz! Your suggestions have helped me a lot. Keep posting more content :)

[@gkanthraul]

God of tennis coaching...🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

[@DarkFreedomGaming3812]

Thanks Tomaz, this is an extremely powerful technique. You are a Professor of Tennis!

[@passionatetennis9149]

You are the best coach!

[@govindmanjunath3766]

My god! Can't believe how amazing you are! Thank you.

[@speedypete4987]

A beginner when playing a more advanced player will feel rushed because the ball appears to be and is coming at him faster. An advanced player in contrast will seem to have more time to respond to the beginner's shot because, in fact, the ball is actually moving more slowly towards him, giving him more time to prepare. So perception and reality are inter-connected. You can try to rush your opponent by either hitting your shot either 1) faster 2) directly at him 3) making the ball bounce at his feet or even 4) with a lower, flatter trajectory 5) disguising your intentions. You can give yourself more time by either 1) shortening your preparation swing 2) standing further behind the baseline or 3) concentrating more on the ball before it reaches your racquet and 4) anticipating the ball's bounce and movement.

[@jimichan4604]

Brilliant explanations, as usual. Thank you Tomaz!🙏

[@ahmedmahmouddd]

Thanks for these awesome tips. And giving us as beginners clear solution and shows us the ways of improvement. Thanks a lot

[@dammitol25mg19]

Fascinating insight. Thank you!

[@hawkins9326]

I'm heading to the court now, I'll be definitely trying this drill. Thank you, Tomaz!

[@christophejousse5394]

Wow ! 👏👏. Super simple and yet to the point .as always , thank you Tomas .

[@harishreddy2669]

Great to see a new video. Thanks.

[@jassay6435]

Amazing advice to higher the sample rate among the time-frames, I'll experience on courts next time!

[@keithgray3352]

this lesson and the release lesson >> I find myself before matches warming up with my opponent getting stiff and even missing balls but Im learning to play more naturally and have fun while doing so and this help tremendously

[@alkam74]

Brilliant! Thank you for sharing those ideas

[@tritang7298]

Your tennis solution is always helpful, thanks coach.

[@erichuang2310]

The best technique I have used with my daughter (age 12) is the classic calling out of "bounce-hit" with the variation that she calls it out on both sides of the court. This makes her focus on where she hit the ball, what is happening to the ball when it hits the opponent's racquet, and early initiation of the swing (as soon as the ball bounces on her side of the court.) By now, I expect she does it in her head, but when her movement gets jerky (rushed, uncoordinated), I make her say it out loud again. Works every time! It's from Tim Gallwey's - The Inner Game of Tennis.

[@drkrueger]

Thank you Thomas. Your instruction has made remarkable improvements in our play. Your explanation and delivery is excellent! Thanks again.

[@higgsboson2280]

What a brilliant lesson. Absolutely brilliant.

[@abhishekgoyal7309]

You are one of the best coaches out there Tomaz! I can't thank you enough, these small things have taken my game to the next level. I wish my coach had taught me this when I started a few months ago! Would seriously love to come train with you for a couple weeks, once travel restrictions are over.

[@kimle7216]

Thank you so much, it worked.

[@pvmilk]

Amazing analogy of perception of time with a CPU speed!!

[@K4R3N]

Nice, new upload from Tomaz! Best instructor on KZbin. Will visit Slovenia someday for private lesson!

[@josely26]

Wow... cant wait to try this out.

[@Ivorberry]

sounds a great tip. will try it .

[@MrIvanbrewer]

great content here, thank you!

[@g5gmoney]

Thank you Tomaz, this a very practical technique to not be rushed when hitting ground strokes. When I rush a shot I tend to use a lot of arm and no body rotation.

[@zicotu9407]

Awesome instruction! This is the kind of tips you never found anywhere else and it is super helpful! Thanks so much Coach.

[@feeltennis]

Glad it was helpful!

[@zicotu9407]

@@feeltennis Absolutely Tomaz. I applied this technique yesterday and could successfully hit a lot of hard balls back in play, with pace. Thanks much.

[@tjones1305]

Awesome!

[@johnscheibel278]

Once again Tomaz your technical insights into technique are impressive. Time-space perception in the brain are originating in different structures which are encoded in elsewhere in the brain and not as clocked time units. Instead the brain compresses time by focusing on events and other instinctual survival reactions when under stress. Forcing awareness of time results in the breakthrough perception that 'you have more time than you think.' Which then follows nicely your second point of how are you moving to take advantage of this newly found perceived time. The use of progressions from hand tosses to gradually higher speeds from different distances and relative positions builds the tennis motion-space-time matrix. Please no equations!!

[@PeterFreemantennis]

great video mate

[@alhaqqIndy]

Thank you. I find myself in the reactive mode 90% of the time..I am playing a 3.5 league right now and this will help me a lot.. Very well explained.

[@hossamyasser8651]

You are awesome! I want to thank you so much that you share these nice tips for us. God bless you!

[@user-qy8mx7ec1b]

Genius! Tomaz, you have the gift of seeing a challenge from multiple perspectives. Sometimes one of the several descriptions you share in a given video at first seems more suited to me, but as I have progressed, and return to view it again, another description has become more relevant. This was particularly the case for one of your serving videos which I returned months later able to understand what you meant by giving up control in order to achieve a full range of motion and ultimately, racquet head speed. The concept was way over my head during the first viewing. Bravo! and thank you, Matthew

[@feeltennis]

Much appreciated!

[@solaire9512]

Thank you Tomaz for your insightful and helpful videos, I am a beginner and have had a problem with timing the ball since I have started. My coach has not been able to address this effectively, but watching your series of lessons about timing, play speed, and hitting in the contact zone have helped me immeasurably. You deserve many more subscribers, as you are one of the best KZbin coaches!

[@feeltennis]

Happy to help!

[@PaperZenCeceliaLouie]

Night and day difference!!! I am forever in your debt for helping me see and track the ball longer. I was seeing it exactly as you described and now I have a whole new world open to me. THANK YOU so much for your generous advice - this has made the biggest difference!

[@feeltennis]

Wonderful, thanks for the feedback!

[@bbogdanmircea]

Nice tip about counting.

[@COLEPTERE]

I will try it tonight

[@JamesDavisakaRemguy]

Excellent subject and extraordinarily well presented! KZbin has so much instruction on technique that I think we become technique-focused instead of ball-focused. One look at Hsieh Su-wei or Daniil Medvedev should convince us otherwise...

[@countgismond]

super tip.

[@hoikingwong2938]

Get more consistency after focusing on the whole ball flight. Thanks for the great video.

[@lucaseresina9638]

I think I love you. One thing for sure is that I love your content.

[@Whisper555]

This is certainly 1 aspect. Projection and reception skills will help to create the time to execute good technique. That being said 2 things I see on a consistent basis especially with beginners, they make their movements much more complicated than they need to be. (Tomaz's excellent NO RACQUET series is very helpful here) That is to say, if a talented, skilled & well practised player attempted to do the technique the same as the beginner, they would hovering on the edge of failure as well, and the other issue partially addressed here is that the beginner players attempt to do nearly all their technique AFTER the bounce on their end of the court, where as intermediate to advanced players are ready to execute their technique at or before the ball even crosses the net. Certainly a lot of thought has gone into this video, which is to be expected in these times. We definitely need more content that addresses what the limitations are for beginner players and a comprehensive pathway for improvement whilst having solutions that have been tried and proven to be successful for beginner students in the past OTHER THAN just hit a lot of balls.

[@Whisper555]

@dh baughman I'm pretty passionate about using the split step to solve a lot of these issues we see. They nearly all disappear or are significantly diminished if the student split steps at the correct time as it gets the student focused on opponents contact and moving well into a good unit turn and positioning judgement, without the student having to think too much. Pretty much without fail all my students judge & hit better if they correctly split step and alternatively have less success when they do not split step. I fail because my definition of fun is to be good at what your are doing, most people just want to have fun regardless of the outcome. Oh well. I'm bad, cie la vie

[@tenniswarrior12]

Hello Coach After hitting should we start focusing ball going out of strings and crossing net ?

[@daveclifford7895]

Very interesting . I wonder whether this is what happens when I complete . I get nervous and maybe don’t track the ball nearly as well as when I’m relaxed .

[@HKK651]

Brilliant!!!!

[@eduardomt3823]

Is there a way I can practice this kind of movement perception out of tennis court? What about those irregular rubber balls that bounces uneven?

[@jlook6070]

How can you see the ball's path before they hit the ball? Would there be any cues to pick up on?

[@reneabe]

🤔 This is very interesting. So is it all about the brain to process the visual information from the ball? And when you keep training, the brain learns how to handle all this information? Very interesting!

[@denabdullah2678]

Good day. During warm up volley or hitting i seem to see it well but during game i feel the lack of time

[@doosrajawad]

So I went out yesterday and hit with a friend for two hours. My goal was to do the camera frame-rate/CPU speed drill on each shot. My observations: 1. This is the most brilliant idea ever. I am easily impressed with new ideas 2. I only remembered to "count the frames" in about 1/4 of the shots. In 3/4 of the shots I simply forgot to do the drill. This will improve with time. I did it on all kind of shots; fast volleys, serve toss etc. The best were lobs dropping down into strike zones 3. At some point my attention will need to shift from what the ball is doing in those 10 frames, to what my own feet and hips are doing in those 10 frames 4. That last frame where I see the ball in the strike zone, could be further split into 10 sub-frames. I bet that is how Rafa feels on clay 5. Even meaningless movements like hopping around, twirling the racket, chewing gum before receiving serve now have a purpose. They are synching the CPU clock. I play doubles today, and will think about it some more. Fun

[@feeltennis]

Thank you very much for this wonderful feedback!

[@photobearcmh]

I can't wait to try this, I always feel rushed.

[@edison8309]

As a professional level player, how could you still know or remeber so much about beginer's feeling? This is exact what I felt that the ball kinda fast forwarded right after the bounce.

[@robertblount1377]

Another realization is that from the time the ball leaves your racket to the time it is back on your racket is usually about 4 seconds. 4 seconds is a long time. And a one, and a two, and a three, and a four.

[@francoisboutet1183]

I've always felt that on my backhand side, I see the ball as an experienced player, it's very strong. However, on my forehand, I feel like a beginner and perceive the ball in the same way as shown in your video. Is there a reason why I perceive it differently between the two sides? Could it be that I've always viewed my forehand as being at a lower level, and the stress from this perception influences how I see the ball?

[@feeltennis]

Yes, the stress definitely affects perception. You could also be looking at the ball too much with your non-dominant eye on the forehand and that also affects perception. I actually recorded the video on eye dominance today so it will be published soon. Subscribe if you haven't yet and you'll be notified when it's published.

[@cherisseferrer2720]

So this explains why pros return super fast serves and they're still calm. Just wondering if thinking fast like will be mentally taxing or add to the physical exhaustion? Let me try it to find out....

[@richardvanvliet2287]

I think it’s slightly different. While the exercise may have you thinking in the beginning, the goal is to have you focus on the ball. Once that is ‘mastered’ it should become a subconscious thing. And the result is that you experience more time. Thinking is probably the worst thing for your strokes in tennis ;-) In ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ Timothy Gallwey talks about “relaxed concentration”, meaning you have full concentration and let your body do the work without your conscious I interfering (great book).

[@yxd00181]

which video editing tool do you use?

[@feeltennis]

Cyberlink Powerdirector

[@mellx8124]

wow.... !

[@speedypete4987]

In my experience, the best way to develop a sense of having MORE TIME and to not feel rushed is to practice playing shots that are hit from very close to you - for example by playing games such as pickleball or table tennis you will find your tennis reaction times improving remarkably. The other option is to practice volleys and half volleys while standing only 3-4 feet away from a practice wall.

[@Skama1975]

Those help too but the point is to start the preparation as soon as you see if the ball is coming to your fh or bh.

[@keithgray3352]

I also think part of my problem when practicing or rallying is focusing on the other person instead of just focusing on watching the ball better

[@djordjekojicic]

Good point. On a bad day when I'm not feeling the ball I actually find myself doing "lazy snapshotting"

[@PeterDamianLevy]

Tomas come to Jamaica and coach me

[@williefernandez6425]

How many tennis instructors start out with “Watch the ball.”? That should be the first, continuous, and last intruction for any part of the game. The message: Stop thinking. It’s beyond tennis. To get a “feel” for this read the last chapter of “The Inner Game of Tennis” by Timothy Gallwey (1974). Then continue reading from the first the first chapter. Preview: “Bounce, Hit, Bounce.”. If you have read it, read again. Self 1 or Self 2-your serve.

[@JK-wz7uj]

OK, so I need to basically overclock my brain

[@Robbie0415768067]

It may feel this way in the beginning but it will pay off the the grand scheme of things. Treat it for what it is: a skill that your brain needs to acquire so that your body has more time to execute those well grooved strokes. If you can't read or anticipate, those well grooved strokes will be useless.

[@richardvanvliet2287]

Wouldn’t call it overclocking, think it’s more like stopping the (unconscious) multitasking :)

[@FairwayJack]

like

[@runzhongye8432]

i think coach math is good