Visualization
Imagine you're in a room. And, in that room is a white table with a wooden chair next to it. Imagine you sit at the table on that wooden chair and you see a lemon in front of you on that white table. Now, you pick up the lemon with your left hand and hold it in your palm. Notice the color. It's a bright yellow. Now, with both hands feel the texture of the lemon - how it has indentations and knobs at the ends yet it's very smooth as well. Imagine you take the lemon with both hands and touch it to your nose and you smell deeply. Take in the smell of the lemon deep into your lungs and feel it against your nose at the same time. Now place the lemon back on the table and hold it by the left in with your left hand. Take a knife and slowly cut the lemon in half. Begin by cutting at the top of the lemon and slowly slice downwards. See the juice shoot out and feel some of it land on your hands. Now take the left half and put it up to your nose and smell it deeply as you did before. Notice how muh stronger the smell of the lemon is. Now quickly take a big bite into the lemon and taste how bitter it almost is. Did you make a face? If you did, then you did this visualization exercise correctly. That's because the body can not tell the difference between what is real and what is VIVIDLY imagined.
What does that have to do with sports, specifically with tennis? If you want to improve at a faste rate and at any level, you will want to use visualization to do it. When I was younger, I took up playing tennis and just couldn't improve after a certain point. I decided to copy my favorite tennis player (at the time), which was Bjorn Borg. I would visualize how he would hit his groundstrokes and his serve. Luckily, I was blessed with a vivid imagination having grown up reading comic books and watching cartoons; and I was able to "see" myself hitting with the same form I saw in Mr. Borg (Bjorn Borg not the Borg from Star Trek - "Resistance is futile!"). It worked. Eventually, I was able to improve to take top seed of my tennis team; and, more importantly, improve my game.
Visualization is simply imagining with detail. Yes, detail. In the exercise I had you do above, you notice I didn't have you bite into the lemon right away. I had you see it, touch it (remember the indentations?), and smell it before biting into it. Visualization has been used by olympic athletes that have to see themselves beating opponents from all over the world in four years. Imagine the discipline these athletes need to have in order to keep that goal in front of them for that amount of time. I heard of a bodybuilder by the name fo Frank Zane that used this technique in order to beat out the competition and win the Mr. Olympia title three years in a row. Mr. Zane also recieved his maters degree in experimental psychology from Cal State SB, by the way. Every day, he would imagine that day's workouts. He imagined that his biceps were growing all the way down to the molecular level. He would imagine the cells dividing and seeing his muscles not only grow, but grow the way he wanted them to.
In applying this to our sport, most professional tennis players make the comittment of visualizing as they go to sleep. This is the time where you are alone inside yourself and no one can really distract you. As you lie in bed waiting for sleep to come upon you, imagine the part of your tennis that you want to improve. See yourself hitting that stroke with infinite detail. Let's take the serve.
Imagine, as you are lying there, that you are on the tennis court. What color is the court? Are there leaves on it? Does the net have a tear in it? What time of day is it? It would be best to imagine yourself hitting at different times or in relation to a match or tournament you are preparing for. Are you serving from the deuce side or the ad side? Let's say you are serving from the deuce side. You walk up to the baseline, two feet to the right of the center line. Notice your sneakers. Feel their comfort. Bend down and re-tie them and feel them snugly against your feet. Point your left foot (if you are a righty) to the right net post and position your right foot shoulder width behind. Take a tennis ball out of your left pocket. What kind is it? You see it is a Penn 2. Feel that is is a brand new ball with plenty of fuzz. Feel it's texture in your hand and pluck some pocket lint off of it. Now see yourself going through the rest of the service motion as you would your favorite professional tennis player who's serve you would like to have. It doesn't have to be a professional, it could be someone local who's style you like. You can even imagine they are serving next to you and you are both practicing your serves in unison. Imagine a crowd forming and hear how they comment that your serves are identical. Now, with as much detail as possible, imagine there are three cones in the deuce service box on the other side of the net. Imagine they are bright orange. There is one at both corners (wide and up the "T") and one in the very middle. They are right on the service line. Imagine yourself serving three good serves to each one and hitting the cones every time. Your form is flawless and aesthetic. Imagine yourself hitting a flat serve, then a slice serve, then a top spin serve, then an american twist. You get the picture? The more detail you put into this exercise, the faster your game will improve.
This works for every aspect of the game. You can use visualization for mechanics such as your volleys and ground strokes; 
and you can also use it for tactics and strategy. Imagine yourself beating certain opponents. What are their strengths and how are you going to counter them? What are their weaknesses, and how are you going to exploit them. Imagine yourself playing someone who's slice backhand return of serve gives you trouble. Now imagine hitting a kick serve to their backhand in the ad court out wide. They go to slice the ball,but you quickly rush the net and put the ball away with a powerful backhand volley. See that played in your mind over and over. See the look of frustration in their face. Starting to get clear? This is also how I develop the website. I visualized what I wanted it to look like, drew it on paper, drew a trace image in photoshop then built it piece by piece in HTML (Hyper Text Mark Up Language). You don't have to imagine the same thing every night. Try different visualizations with different strokes, opponents, strategies, etc. In order to make tennis dreams come true..........you have to actually dream!
Contact Information:
Harlingen Tennis Center: (956) 428 - 2092
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