How to Practice Tennis Like a Natural

When was the last time you walked off a court thinking, “That was amazing”?

Not the last time you won. The last time you were so completely inside the hitting that everything else disappeared, the ball was slow, and you came off with more energy than you brought on. If you have to think back a long way, this guide is for you, because that state is not a mood. It is a place, and most tennis practice is designed to avoid it.

Where flow happens

Csíkszentmihályi, a Hungarian-American psychologist, spent decades studying the state he called flow: full immersion, complete engagement, time passing without being noticed. People report it running, surfing, in chess, and, very often, playing tennis.

It happens at a precise spot. The challenge has to slightly exceed your skill, enough to demand the best of you, while you still believe you can pull it off. Recall the moment you felt most inspired on a court and I will bet it was one where you thought, “I might actually be able to do this.” That belief is what lets you commit fully. And full commitment is what makes the session count, because you cannot practice beyond your level half-heartedly. It is not possible.

Too far below that spot and you are bored, on autopilot, and, strangely, drained faster than by a hard session that excites you. A comfortable rally at a comfortable pace uses half your capacity and tires you more than a demanding one you are lost in. Too far above it and you are frustrated, flailing, learning little. Being challenged and being frustrated are two different things.

Now look at the standard club session. Rally crosscourt with the same partner at the same pace. Some serves, mostly first serves. A set. Where in that is the spot?

Why you protect the backhand

Nobody decides to hit around their backhand. A bias decides it.

Humans are roughly twice as motivated to avoid a loss as to pursue a gain. When you started, you had nothing to lose and every ball was an attempt. Once you had a forehand you could count on, you had something to protect, and the session quietly reorganized around not losing it. Hit the forehand. Rally where it feels good. Save the second serve for matches, where at 4-4 it does exactly what it has always done, because at 4-4 is the only time it ever gets tested.

Progress comes from one thing: adapting to a demand beyond what you are used to. The comfortable rally carries no such demand. It maintains. It does not build. And the weakness you protect is the only part of your game that could change the score.

Who you hit with

Here is the part of practice tennis players control more than almost anyone, and use least.

You become who you surround yourself with. This is not a slogan; it is one of the most replicated findings in social psychology, and on a court it is literal. Hit only with people you can handle and your whole game is calibrated to that level. Hit regularly with someone two or three steps above you and every rally is at the spot where flow lives: demanding, possible, and impossible to coast through.

Naturals do this instinctively. They make friends with players at the next level, or several levels beyond, and progress follows almost by itself. Kobe Bryant sought out Michael Jordan. It is not comfortable. Better players show you sides of yourself you have been avoiding, and they will see things in your game you cannot. That is exactly the point.

There is a second reason to seek them out. Naturals may not be able to explain how they practice, but they can spot your flaw in one rally: the grip, the late preparation, the toss drifting left. Their bodies know the ideal form so completely that any deviation stands out immediately. Show them a serve and ask. The correction will be faster than a month of self-diagnosis.

And watch for the opposite. Every club has its crabs in the bucket, the players who greet a new grip with a joke and a serious attempt at improvement with “take it easy.” The more you improve, the more visible you become to them, because your effort reflects the effort they are not making. Your circle is your ceiling.

The serve is a chain

A serve is not one thing. It is a chain of components, and the book uses the serve itself as its example: physical (shoulder flexibility, core strength, leg power), technical (grip, toss, swing path, follow-through), coordination (the kinetic chain, the timing of the weight transfer, rhythm), perceptual (tracking the ball, knowing where your body is), and cognitive (placement, reading the returner, the decision under pressure). The chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and when you serve the whole serve, your strengths compensate for that link and hide it.

That is why the serve is fine at 2-1 and gone at 4-4. Pressure loads the one link that practice never touched. A hundred full serves a week strengthen the parts that were already strong. Finding the link, isolating it so nothing can cover for it, and putting it back into the full motion without losing the gain is a four-phase process in the book, and it is why the players who fix a serve fix it in weeks rather than seasons.

The serve that is almost there

The second serve deserves a word, because tennis players lose seasons to it. The first stretch of any stroke comes relatively fast. The last stretch, where it holds at 4-4, takes far longer, because a stroke you nearly own no longer challenges you enough to adapt. A hundred second serves a week at the same difficulty is a hundred repetitions of a demand that has faded. Naturals handle a stroke at that stage very differently, and it is the reason their strokes become reliable without endless drilling. That rule is one of the seventeen in the book.

What I cannot tell you

I am a juggler, not a tennis coach. I cannot tell you what your toss is doing. Your coach can, and the best player at your club probably can too. What I can tell you is why your best hours on court have been spent below the spot where you improve, why the serve breaks at 4-4 and nowhere else, and how the people who improve fastest choose their partners.

What to look for

List everyone you hit with last month. Next to each name, mark them: I handle them, we are even, they handle me.

If the third column is empty, you have found the ceiling, and it was never your backhand. Then think about the last time you felt flow on a court, and who was on the other side of the net.

The story of how I found these patterns, from the best performers in every discipline I could get close to, is Part One of the book. Part One is free.