Struggling with the Backhand
By Rehan Khan
25-08-2024
As someone who was born and grew up in Wimbledon about a mile from the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, there was an expectation from an early age that I would play tennis. And I did. I was an average club player, occupying the third team and sometimes being called up into the second team. Despite not being in the elite category of club tennis, the one shot I really prided myself on was my running crosscourt double handed backhand.
I could really whip a cross court backhand on the run, at full stretch, just like my tennis hero from the 1980’s Mats Wilander and boy did it feel good when it went pass my opponent. Especially that dumbfounded expression it left on their faces – priceless. But in recent years I have been having trouble with my once favourite shot and have resorted to a more defensive backhand slice.
Any skill we learn, such as playing tennis, is formulated by a chain of nerve fibres which carry an electrical impulse. Myelin is the white matter in the brain that forms an insulation around these nerves, much like rubber insulates copper wire, preventing the signal from leaking. When we practice a skill, such as the aforementioned running crosscourt double handed backhand, myelin wraps further layers of insulation around the neural circuit associated with that particular skill (i.e. the backhand). The thicker the myelin becomes, the more it helps to improve the signal strength along the nerve fibre, and in-turn improves the skill itself and the movements and thoughts that are associated with it.
When a tennis player hits that crosscourt backhand, an electrical signal runs down the nerve fibre, much like a voltage through a power line, but it also triggers other nerve fibres that are associated with the movement. In unison these nerve fibres then control the movement of the body in a tennis match, the preparation for the shot, the backhand, the recovery, the balance, the ready position for the next shot. When the signal running along the nerve fibre is leaky and slow, as a result of a lack of myelin insulation, then the performance of the tennis action will also be listless and slow. When the nerve fibre is well insulated, and the signal fast, then the subsequent movement performed by the tennis player will also be sleek and synchronized.
As we become better at a particular skill, the less we become aware that we are actually using it. You can see this in those who are well-heeled public speakers, they have practiced so often, that it becomes natural. When in fact, very few people are born with the ability to speak well on a public stage. They learn it, through hard work, mistakes, reflecting on those mistakes, then pushing themselves further.
Dr. George Bartzokis was a UCLA neurologist and myelin researcher who said: “All skills, all language, all music, all movements, are made of living circuits, and all circuits grow according to certain rules.” In other words, the more we practice a skill, the stronger the myelin insulates and the better we become at performing that skill. Of course, the reverse is true as well, which is probably the reason my crosscourt backhand has failed so miserably in the past few years, I am simply not playing enough tennis.
When we practice a skill with depth, we push our abilities further. At this performance edge we inevitably make mistakes, as we are operating at the peak of our abilities, but if we chose to examine these mistakes, we then learn to slow down the skill breaking it into small parts, this allows us to observe the errors we are making, fix those errors, and then keep pushing our performance edge further. That’s when, as in the case of tennis, our movements became graceful like Roger Federer.
These small incremental adjustments over time, allow us to make huge strides in our performance. Often, we won’t see the improvements in ourselves, but someone who we have not met for a while, will take note and say “you’ve changed” – hopefully for the better. In fact, the best changes, the ones that are most lasting are the small incremental ones, where we find ourselves consistently working hard. These are the ones that last, unlike immediate success, which can quickly lead to immediate failure. The best way to keep pushing that performance edge is to select a task just at the edge of your abilities. This might be a major presentation to a key client that you have not delivered before or designing an investment case model for a major transaction that you have not structured before. Whatever it is, choose something that requires you to dig in and that goes just beyond your current abilities.
