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No. All players have patterns. One of Fed's serving from ad side is (and it's not exactly a Fed-specific pattern):
- down the T slice serve
- inside in forehand
- approach
- volley short to opponent's ad side service box
As a lefty, I basically have the same pattern:
- kick serve down the T
- forehand DTL
- approach
- put away volley
Of course I prefer step #1 to be a slice out wide (and there are higher percentage options for step #2), but the kick serve as a lefty gets some floater returns I can step into the court on because of how the ball comes off the opponent's racquet at my level.
Note that step ##2, 4 effectively translate to "hit where opponent is not"
My copy is packed away in a storage facility right now, but I bet the pattern appears in this book
The Inner Game of Tennis is a book that was recommended to my roughly 20 years ago by a lifer of a pool player, even has his own nickname. His recommendation was based on similar problems that I was having back then. I have passed on his recommendation dozens of times and I still own a copy. It's a quick and easy read and applies to your situation. It doesn't really "fix" anything but there are many similarities between tennis and billiard games (and boxing too!) and it addresses some of the difficulties of the mental performance side.
If you want to work on your mental game I'd suggest this book.
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314
You can almost just replace tennis with pinball and it's still very accurate. The book applies to just about any sport.
More on the psychology side, but I'd recommend https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Ugly-Mental-Warfare-Tennis-Lessons/dp/067188400X
Ya I’m trying to convince myself that it means literally nothing to win or lose and to care about having a clean fun race and I think that might actually help make me faster. It’s always when you turn off that nervous “fucking win already” mindset that you find your groove I find. I had a good start today and then some bad splits and shit races and then a fourth in the second top split so I’m happy. I’m going to start imagining the other people as people just there to have fun and see if that helps. IRacing has revealed that I’m a really competitive person and I think I need to figure out how to fix that since, as you can see, it makes this less fun and more of a meaningless competition. If you’re interested, I’m reading a good book that is a classic book of sport performance and it has really great advice on how to improve yourself without resorting to the negative mantras:
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314
It’s about tennis but it applies to all sport and even performing arts. It might help.
The book "The Inner Game of Tennis" touches upon a lot of this (altho, its about a different sport). I think it will resonate with you.
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314
This is a book that has been going around in the Valorant community and is probably worth a read. It is designed to help you make sure you are always playing the best to your ability. You can probably borrow it from your library if you need to, a lot of libraries have e-books nowadays too that you can place a hold online for.
Having read this book and other studies, I am no longer confident in "evidence based" in a clinical psychology context outside of strictly behavioral disorders. You are free to continue hand-wringing as you wish, but having been familiar with your posts for a long time I really don't wish to engage with your rigid viewpoint further.
I have no doubt that if you're being thoughtful and intentional about therapy research you'd be able to get quality data and conclusions. The problem is... how many academic researchers are there that are thinking critically about this with lived clinical experience? Given that their career often depends on publishing, the deeper that the two of us dive into designing a quality therapy study, the further away we get from achieving what we may call significant and successful outcomes. Additionally, many academic researchers are divorced and separated from actual clinical work, so they don't often have the lived experience of questioning and evaluating the underlying premises of their methodologies.
This book was required reading in my program. I wish every researcher read it without feeling attacked and modified their methodologies accordingly, but unfortunately it's much easier to pump out short-term manualized studies.. I appreciate your passion for making therapy research high-quality though! We really need that.
This is going to sound a bit stupid, but read "The Inner Game of Tennis"
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314
It's not even really about tennis but about mastering the "inner voice" that's telling you what to do. It teaches you techniques about how to let that go and find an inner calm before you play. Basically, letting your body (in this case your hands) make the decisions while you become a passive observer to what's happening.
It's kind of hard to explain but IMHO it deals with exactly what you're talking about.
Are you getting enough vitamin C?
Your symptoms could be scurvy. Eat some oranges and lemons.
This book is about turning off the analytical part of your brain and letting your body do what it knows how to do. Changed my game.
The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679778314/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_SM70F0EZE8A66Y2SYPK3
Freud may be foundationally relevant to modern psychodynamic theory but that doesn't mean that the reputation and effectiveness of psychodynamic therapy is tied to "Freudian psychodynamics." I've completed two years of a fellowship at a psychoanalytic institute and Freud is barely mentioned. The type of psychodynamic theory that was taught and consulted on - family/parent/friend interpersonal history/dynamics explored with a focus on the therapeutic relationship as a vehicle for healing and change - is not what Freud was doing. To be frank, your critiques of the practice mimic those who don't have the curiosity or bandwidth to properly explore what psychodynamic therapists actually do. I have also found that psychodynamic intervention works quite well at most lengths of treatment outside of 1-3 session interventions.
I can see how practitioners who need to adopt a medical model for their own personal insecurities about the practice of therapy may be attracted to the shiny 6-8 session CBT interventions (and subsequently, clients looking for a quick fix) despite the gaping holes and bias in the research that "validates" the practice.
To increase flexibility, I recommend the book Stretching by Bob Anderson and Jean Anderson. It's a classic - they just released a 40th anniversary edition - and the illustrations and instructions are really clear. Here's the link to the new edition, but any edition would be good: https://www.amazon.com/Stretching-40th-Anniversary-Bob-Anderson/dp/0936070846/ref=asc\_df\_0936070846/
CBT is a highly Capitalist forms of therapy. It's all about individualizing socially caused distress, which obscures the social origin of the distress, and tells the client it's about their internal cognitive misrepresentations instead.
If you wanna understand this more, I'd recommend reading the book "The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami: Managerialism, Politics and the Corruptions of Science".
https://www.amazon.com/CBT-Cognitive-Behavioural-Managerialism-Corruptions/dp/1782206647
I am reading this famous book about how to manage your concentration and nerves and self-doubt and it’s helping my racing:
It applies to any performance sport or art. Otherwise I do some deep long breaths and stretches before I start the race right after qualifying and then concentrate on breathing during races
Edit: I wouldn’t advocate for less practice. Yes more racing helps but you do need confidence and that comes from feeling like you know the track
It might sound weird, but The Inner Game of Tennis is one of the best books I’ve read to help with goaltending.
The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679778314/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_PbwcCbKMP5KRC
It talks a lot about ways to get out of your head and stay in the moment. Ultimately you’ll hit a point where your body knows what it needs to do, and you just need to stop your mind from focusing on it.
I had a bad game last week where I let in a stupid soft goal. I banged my stick on the ice and was mad at myself. I thought I shrugged it off but a few seconds later they beat me on another soft goal, and a few seconds after that I got beat on a saveable one-timer. In sixty seconds I had mucked things up royally.
Between periods I joked with my team that the next time I stopped playing for 60 seconds I would just burn our timeout.
Consistency is the hardest thing to get down.
Just remember that you’re not defined by the worst game you ever played, but you’re also not defined by the best game you’ve ever played. What defines you is how those games average out over time.
During competition, less thinking is better. You want to pay attention to things happening on your lanes, and you want to be aware of yourself while you're bowling. But, you don't want to be up there trying to make your body do different things. That is what practice is for.
However. Most people only bowl once a week and practice time is hard to come by. If you have time to practice once or more a week great. Isolate what you want to work on for the day and do that. But, if league night is your only time you get to bowl during the season, you will have to decide how much you are willing to let your average dip. The goal being to bring it up higher later.
Also, I would get rid of the wrist device, unless you medically need it. The inner game of tennis is also a good read. Different ways to practice, improve, and clear your mind.
Yeah you're exactly right, a cancel is kind of like skipping the recovery of your attack by starting up another attack.
I can give you one big piece of advice that really helped me improve at fighting games. It's gonna sound pretty weird.
Do as little thinking as possible, even when you're playing against someone.
When you mess up a combo, don't think, "ugh I messed it up again" or "man, I keep doing that". Just keep playing. Likewise, when you finally land that combo you've been practicing over and over, don't think, "FINALLY!" or something like that. Just keep playing.
If you have the knowledge of what you want done, your body will naturally fix errors to that without you even thinking. In fact, thinking will actually make it slower for your body to adapt. The only thing that thinking stuff like, "I know I need to do this, but I keep doing that" will accomplish is making you frustrated. Just feel it out.
When you hear those cool kung fu quotes like empty your mind, this is more or less what they're referring to.
The time that you do want to think is when you're trying to figure out a complicated problem or when you're learning something new. Like you just lost a match to someone spamming the same move over and over. You'd want to go into training mode and think, "Okay, how do I beat that move?". Don't think that during a match though, unless you're not trying to win and just trying to figure out how to beat something. When you're too focused on fixing one thing in the middle of the match, the rest of your gameplay gets way worse. Either think about that stuff in between matches or in training mode.
It's a bit more complicated than this, there's a lot of subtle aspects to it. If you're interested in this topic, I'd recommend reading a book called "The Inner Game of Tennis".
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314
If you have 2000+ hours in the game you definitely have the muscle memory for aiming and game knowledge decently solid already, but a big thing I find is that the mental side of my game can make me play from godly to dogshit. I think the mental side of the game is pretty underrated to everyday players unlike aiming/smokes/etc., and this book is a huge help for achieving what's called "effortless play". If you've ever felt very calm in a game and just hit ridiculous shots without thinking about them too much, you know what it feels like. Great book on a topic that's not valued as much as it should be.
If you are serious about tilt, these two books are probably the highest rated books on this topic:
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314
https://www.amazon.com/Mental-Game-Poker-Strategies-Confidence/dp/0615436137
Those two books apply to more than just Brawlhalla, of course.
Awesome reply, I'll definitely check out Inner Game of Tennis and Gladwell's article. For other's who might be interested but lazy, here's some links:
Thanks!
Sounds like he needs to work on his mental game. Have him check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Inner-Game-Tennis-Performance/dp/0679778314
It is a short read and you can find a pdf of it online. It uses tennis as an example to talk about mental fortitude in competition in general.
Already been done. It's called Playing to Win by David Sirlin. http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/
P2W is IMO slightly less useful than Winning Ugly by Brad Gilbert
That sounds pretty common actually, for someone who has depression in a serious way. How much do you worry about that side of things? By that, I mean how "meta" has this become? Getting negative about doing your work is a depressive thing. Getting worried about getting negative about doing your work is another level up. I think there is some merit in acceptance of your depressive behaviour. I know, I know, we all suck at accepting things we don't like about ourselves. But I am beginning to see how useful it can be to "observe" ourselves a bit more objectively, and think about our behaviour almost as if observing it in another person. I first got this idea from a book called The Inner Game of Tennis, strangely, recommended in a music class in relation to public performance problems. I am the very opposite of the sort of person who reaches for self-help books, and in fact wouldn't bother reading this one again, because I believe that the whole thing could probably have been successfully distilled into just a few pages, at most. But the important part to me was that issue of "detached observation". So, rather than think "oh, my god, I'm doing that thing again. Why am I so stupid? I do that every time!! I suck so much at this". We are so self-critical, we sabotage ourselves in the process. Instead, you practice "Interesting. So I'm doing that again. What might be the trigger to that? Does it follow after anything else? Hmmm. Time to reflect".
Not sure if that's any help, but it works for me, if I make it. I am a very, very dedicated procrastinator, and need sometimes to reflect and work out why I'm doing it.
> I have messed up joints.
How bad are they messed up? I was able to fix my shoulder problems with some exercises in a crappy book from the 90s I found at my local library. I know it sounds kind of dumb but maybe it can help? The only problem is it is a lot of work. I continue to do about 45 minutes of physical therapy type exercises every day just to counteract my relative sedentary lifestyle and maintain healthy joints and posture.
I don't know if this is complete bunk or not. Nobody else seems to know anything about this guy and there is no medical papers or science to back him up. :/
>Although, each game is different, sheeple! The 49ers have played 1/2 of a game well, gelling as a team. We can't take this display to mean more than it does for this game alone.
Has anyone read Brad Gilbert's Winning Ugly? Winning is tennis in about who is doing what to whom.
Football is about 11 guys playing together, doing what they need to do better than the person they're playing against. Its made more complicated because the teams have to play in coordination with eachother. Both are hard as hell