skill – Grow Mindfulness

Discovering Pickleball – An Alternative to Tennis

I never thought I would be writing a post that elevates pickleball to a similar level as tennis. As a “tennis tragic” I thought that pickleball was not the “real thing” as it is played on a court the same size as badminton and is promoted as a mix of this sport together with table tennis and tennis. It clearly hasn’t the depth of traditions of tennis and the great battles of the Grand Slams and Davis Cup matches. My disparagement of pickleball was shared by many in my tennis fraternity.

Necessity is the stimulus for innovation and a mind shift

I found as winter progressed again in Brisbane that the arthritis in the middle finger of my playing hand had worsened to the point that I had difficulty holding my tennis racquet and playing tennis caused a lot of pain. Added to this, was the ever-present threat of exercise asthma caused by exertion in the cold air (I take a couple of puffs of my inhaler before playing to prevent an asthma attack occurring).

The arthritis in my finger makes it difficult to execute my tennis shots with any consistency to the point that the attraction of experiencing competence in the game of tennis is diminished considerably and is replaced by frustration at not being able to execute what I have been able to do previously without difficulty. The arthritic condition of my finger is aggravated by “allergic arthritis” brought on by my MCAS chronic illness.

I have not been able to use my first serve in tennis for a number of years as it puts too much pressure on my weakened back. A recent diagnosis of multilevel disc degeneration in my spine has made this even more critical.

Ageing and pickleball

As I age, I lose speed in my reflexes, stamina in my body, strength in my arms and legs and overall fitness. While I use walking, stretch exercises and Tai Chi to offset these diminishing physical capabilities, there is an inevitability about the downward trend owing to wear and tear over many years.

The experts in ageing tell us that we can prevent the onset of dementia by physical and mental activity, especially by learning new skills that involve a cognitive component. For tennis players, pickleball requires a new language (paddle instead of racquet, dink instead of a drop shot) as well as new rules. New rules to learn for pickleball doubles include:

You have to be serving to earn a point
With the exception of the first serve of a game, once one server (Server 1) loses a point, their partner (Server 2) starts serving until they lose a point (then serving reverts to the opposing team)
For the first serve of the first game, the first server is treated as Server 2 and once they lose a point, the serve immediately reverts to the opposing team (this can be difficult to get your head around!)
You are not allowed to volley in the “Kitchen” (an area seven feet from the net which exists on both sides of the net).
You have to serve underarm
Double bounce rule – the server must let the return bounce before hitting the ball (unlike tennis where you can volley a service return).

While there are competitions and international tournaments dedicated to young pickleball players, there are distinct advantages of pickleball for older people. These advantages include:

It is not as physically demanding as tennis
There is a strong social element to the game (if you do not play competition)
There are protocols for frequent rest breaks/drink breaks
The rotation system enables at least an eleven-minute break (the length of a game) when your time off the court arrives
You can take advantage of your competencies in other racquet sports acquired over the years
The Kitchen rules re volleying “keeps the athletically and physically superior from dominating the game”
It helps to maintain fitness and the motivation to keep fit
The underarm service action places a lot less pressure on your back in comparison to the overhead motion of a tennis serve. (This has proved important for me as a recent diagnosis of neuropathy led to the discovery of multilevel disc degeneration in my spine.)
Provides a chance to meet new people and extend your social network
It can be played at various levels ranging from social to Advanced (competitive and tournament play); “social” means social. As one Pickleball trainer/coordinator explained – in social pickleball you are meant to play to the level of the opposition (e.g. withholding more advanced shots when playing beginners) – an ethos rarely shared in social tennis.

Using pre-existing skills and competencies

One of the attractions for me in pickleball (being a new arena for me) is the opportunity to try out different shots each time I play. Unlike a tennis racquet, the pickleball paddle does not have strings and the ball comes off the paddle differently to a tennis racquet. While you may have competencies in spinning, volleying, lobbying and smashing from playing tennis, you have to make adjustments when using a pickleball paddle with a plastic ball.

The bounce of the ball is very different and requires a lot of knee bending. However, the challenges associated with a new “bat” and ball make it necessary to make adjustments to playing shots and to learn new skills.

Existing tennis skills such as anticipation and preparation can stand you in good stead when playing pickleball. You can also draw on different spins you have mastered such as topspin, backspin and slice. For those who have mastered the two-handed backhand in tennis, there are pickleball bats with an extended grip to enable two-handed shots.

Competency in devising game strategy is transferable from tennis to pickleball. For example, tennis drills designed to develop skills in controlling the net in tennis doubles can be drawn on when playing pickleball. This could involve drop shops (dinks), or playing the ball long, sliced or angled to place an opponent at a disadvantage. Other tennis drills associated with playing the ball down the line can come in handy in pickleball as very few people use (or able to use) this strategy in social pickleball.

Reflection

In a previous post I explained how tennis can help us to grow in mindfulness by developing our focus on the present moment, improving our capacity to pay attention, increasing our ability to act with intention and strengthening our resolve to “accept what is” (both our mental and physical capabilities at the time and those of our playing partner and opponents). Likewise, pickleball can provide growth in mindfulness as a rich fringe benefit, especially when we play socially and choose, on purpose, to play at the level of our opponents.

I have also shared how I have found that Tai Chi, as a regular mindfulness practice, can develop tennis competence by improving concentration, coordination, reflexes and the ability to tap into heightened insight and instinctive responses embodied in body memory. I’m discovering that this is true also of pickleball as I unconsciously access tennis skills developed over many years of tennis practice and playing.

In reflecting previously on my tennis game and skill, I wrote a poem called, For the Love of Tennis. Reflecting on my discussion of pickleball, I have now developed an Ode to Pickleball titled, For the love of Pickleball.

For the Love of Pickleball

Pickleball can be playful and fun:
Accessing our childlike creativity,
Building partner relationships.

It can promote growth:
Learning a new language, rules and skills,
Growing in mindfulness and sensitivity.

It can develop competence:
Using new tools in different ways,
Experiencing joy in execution.

It can enhance fitness:
Using new muscles,
Increasing motivation to stay fit.

Pickleball for quality of life and longevity:
Learning, laughing and enriching,
Moving beyond limited mindsets.

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Image by Nils from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Grit: Realizing our Potential

Angela Duckworth describes “grit” as the “combination of passion and perseverance”. According to Angela, high performers are separated from under-performers (as measured against natural talent) because they not only have determination but a direction inspired by a passion. In her book, Grit: Why passion and persistence are the secrets to success, she provides substantial research and multiple examples that underpin her perspective on “the psychology of achievement”. She argues exhaustively that talent is not the determinant of success – despite “the global war for talent”.

Talent is misleading

There are many people in numerous areas of endeavour who have what we call “natural talent” but who fail to realise their potential. Angela argues that we often resort to the word “talent” as a way to explain high performance or what we see as exceptional achievement beyond what is perceived as the norm. As I read this, I remembered an incident when I played social tennis recently – I had produced a winning running, cross-court forehand shot which elicited the unexpected comment from my tennis partner, “That’s just natural talent”. Little did he realise that I had been playing tennis for more than 65 years and that my brothers and I used to spend hours each week doing tennis drills, including practising endless cross-court shots.

Angela suggests that high performance or achievement is often described as “magical” because it serves to protect a person’s self-esteem and offers an excuse for not competing or attempting to match the seemingly unattainable level achieved by others. She contends that more often than not, exceptional performance or achievement is the result of grit – the combination of consistent hard work and persistence in the face of setbacks. She maintains that labelling high performance as “natural talent” can mislead us into not making an effort. She gives the example from her own teaching career where she was mislead into thinking that effort had to go into the seemingly talented at the expense of the “strugglers”. This absolved her and the strugglers from making the extra effort required to bring them up to speed.

Perseverance: the hard work behind exceptional performance or achievement

Angela gives many examples of people lacking natural talent who nonetheless are exceptional performers/achievers. For example, she writes about John Irving, author of 12 exceptional books (half of which have been turned into movies) and his struggle with dyslexia. In his school days, John was described as “lazy and stupid”. He overcame his disability by reading with his finger slowly which resulted in his ability to pay attention to an exceptional degree and to realise that repeating something over and over enabled him to understand that through such repletion “something that was never natural becomes almost second nature”. John indicated that his greatest ability as a writer is ”reworking” – having the willingness and stamina to do multiple redrafts of his novels.

Angela also highlighted the “work ethic” of Will Smith who claimed that he was “not to be outworked” – he would go so far as “to die on the treadmill”. He claimed that he lacked the smarts, talent and sexual appeal of other actors, but understood that effort, not talent, determines results. As Angela points out, there are many people who have a precocious level of talent who under-perform because they are not prepared “to put the work in” – it all comes too easy for them so they quickly plateau.

People often drop out before they realise their potential, whether they are attempting to achieve elite performance or just using their exercise bike, running track, weights or tennis practice. The defining personal quality for excellence is “stick-to-itness” which is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the ability or capacity to see a course of action through to its completion” – which translates into “dogged perseverance”. According to Angela’s research on excellent performance and achievement, “the highly accomplished were paragons of persistence”. She maintains that we can overlook the persistent, consistent hard work involved because we “see the performance but not the training”.

There is a certain mundanity about the hard work involved – repetition of seemingly boring tasks done daily over an extended period. Angela cites Dan Chambliss who studied Olympic Swimmers and wrote a report titled, The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers. Dan concludes, after three years of research, “Excellence is achieved by the doing of actions, ordinary in themselves, consistently and carefully.” The actions are done with care to ensure they are “correct” but are repeated ad nauseum to enable them to become “habituated” and combined in performance to achieve excellence. He stated that “superb performance is really a confluence of small skills or activities”.

Passion: the driver of perseverance

Angela describes high performers and achievers in her research as people “chasing something of unparalleled interest and importance”. Passion drives persistence. A singular focus maintained over time requires an underlying passion. I used to tell my PhD students not to start a thesis unless they are passionate about the topic – without the passion they will inevitably “run out of steam”. As Dan points out in his report, ‘a dissertation is a mundane piece of work” and the real test is whether you can complete it to the point of submission (which explains why some doctoral attrition rates [dropping out] reach 50% or higher).

Angela cites the work of Francis Galton who undertook a longitudinal study of high achievement in fields such as law, science athletics and the arts. He concluded that exceptional zeal and “the capacity for hard work” enabled the “outliers” to “demonstrate exceptional ability”. Angela also notes that Charles Darwin, Francis’ cousin, agreed that zeal and hard work are “the eminently important difference” in high achievement, not intellect. Darwin claimed that he was not so remarkably clever but his “industry” (application to observation and understanding) were exceptional. He indicated that what drove this persistence and perseverance was a “love of natural science” that has been “steady and ardent”. As Angela points out, it’s not just a love of, or passion for, an area of endeavour but the ability “to stay in love” with it that counts in the final analysis.

Angela describes the work of George Vaillant who persisted with following the Harvard Medical School’s Study of Adult Development (which was undertaken over 75 years). George who was the director of the study for more than 30 years published key insights from the study in three books, the latter of which was Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study. He claimed that he was “not naturally persistent” but undertook the Harvard study on a consistent and persistent basis. He maintained that he was “totally fascinated by the Study” and stated that “there is nothing more interesting than watching people grow”. His passion drove his perseverance.

Effort – the determinant of skill level and achievement

Angela contends that talent can determine how quickly skill is improved if you put in the effort. However, effort builds skill and also enables us to make that skill productive. As skill develops through hard work, we are better able and more willing to use our acquired skills. Angela illustrates this theory of skill development and achievement through effort, with the work of Master potter Warren MacKenzie (considered an American Treasure). Warren initially attempted with his wife Alix (Alixandra Kolesky) to try different arts such as jewellery and textile design and decided to focus on pottery. He thought that excelling at one thing would be much more satisfying than being amateurish at many things. So together he and his wife concentrated on ceramic work “because that was where we felt our true interest lay”.

Warren invested effort in making about fifty pots a day and indicated that the first ten thousand pots were difficult. Each day his skill grew and his achievement in terms of what he considered good pots grew. Looking back on his early pots he viewed them in hindsight as not very good, lacking the richness that he was looking for. Being a potter for most of his adult life (he died at age 94) he was able to apply his expertise and insight to teach ceramic arts at the University of Minnesota over a period of 37 years.

Warren showed that his hard work and application – making pots every day and trying to improve his art – led to skill mastery and enabled him to apply his skill to not only excel in his chosen art form but also to become an esteemed Professor and teacher.

Reflection

Angela cites William James, American psychologist and philosopher, who maintained that people very often failed to actualize their potential – “we are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources”. The gap in actualization, according to Angela, often comes down to a lack of willingness to persevere with the hard work that is required to turn passion and interest into skill, mastery and application. She encourages everyone to put the work in to pursue their passion – an exhortation echoed by Naomi Simpson in her book, Live What You Love: When Passion and Purpose Change Your life.

I found by applying myself to writing this blog (over 700 posts) that writing has become easier – I can more readily focus on a topic, integrate material from multiple sources (podcasts, novels, videos, articles, blogs) and create an original post. The act of writing has become easier as I have refined my writing process through perseverance (despite many setbacks and distractions) and pursued my passion to grow mindfulness. I continue to learn about being mindful in everyday life and have learnt to adapt my mindfulness practices to changing circumstances. I am always on the lookout for mindfulness exemplars.

When I look back on my tennis experience over more than 60 years, I can see how Angela’s theory of skill acquisition and application through hard work bears fruit in terms of high performance. I have played over 1,000 sets of tennis and practised individual shots over numerous hours over my lifetime. Even when no one else was available to play a game of tennis with me, I would take a bucket of balls to a tennis court and practise my serves and shots up and down the forehand and backhand sidelines as well as crosscourt. Even today in my seventies, I can complete tennis shots that surprise the people I am playing with (such as a backhand half-volley drop shot or a backhand half-volley lob). I find that mindfulness, especially Tai Chi, improves my game.

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Image by Shahid Abdullah from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Developing Mindfulness through Playing Tennis

I have enjoyed playing tennis since I was about 10 years old. It is only recently that I have come to realise what an opportunity playing tennis represents in terms of developing mindfulness.

Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness in the following words:

Mindfulness is awareness that grows through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally.

Paying attention

With tennis, you learn to focus and concentrate on the tennis ball and to tune out other distractions – planes flying overhead on their approach to the airport, voices from other courts, the sound of tennis balls being hit on courts, near and far.

If you entertain distractions – stop paying attention – you lose concentration and invariably mishit the ball, or worse, miss the ball entirely.

In this day and age, with “disrupted attention” and the decline in our capacity to focus on a task, practicing paying full attention to a tennis ball is a great way (and enjoyable means for some) to redress that declining capacity.

On purpose

Well, even in social tennis which I play on a weekly basis, the purpose is to win the point or the game for yourself and your partner. There are times when you are more mindful, the purpose is the sheer enjoyment of playing the game.

It is only when you lose something that you really appreciate having had it. Many years ago, when my back collapsed and I could not walk, let alone play tennis, I began to really appreciate the opportunity to play when I was fit enough (18 months later). So now I remind myself what a privilege it is to be able to run and hit the ball and just enjoy the act of playing tennis and its associated pleasures – the conviviality of other social players, the new relationships that are formed, and the sense of satisfaction from the exercise and demonstration of some aspect of skill and competence in the game of tennis. This certainly develops a sense of gratitude.

In the present moment

Sometimes when you play tennis, you become very aware of your surroundings – the feel of the wind, the freshness of the air and the smells of flowering plants and trees and freshly cut grass, the sound of birds flying overhead or the laughter and enjoyment of others.

You are really in the present moment in terms of your external environment. At other times, your focus on the ball makes you really conscious of what is happening here and now.

There are times when I just marvel at my mind’s capacity, almost instantaneously, to read the spin and speed of the ball coming to me, to get my body into position to return the shot, to assess the balance and positioning of the opposing players and to determine and execute a responding tennis shot with the right spin, angle and speed – certainly an instance of unconscious competence and a cause for delight in the moment.

Non-judgementally

On the tennis court, as in life and work, we can experience negative thoughts and doubts, emotions that distract us from the task at hand and cause us to lose concentration and focus. You might be undermining your confidence and competence by the thoughts that pass through your mind – “I’ve missed three returns in a row!”, “What will my partner think?”, “The other players seem to be so good, can I give them a decent game?”.

So, you have to learn to let these thoughts pass you by and not entertain them or they really negatively impact your game. You gain self-awareness about your anxieties and concerns, your self-evaluation and your assumptions about others and their needs.

You also learn self-management in terms of not getting upset or “sounding off” (or, in the extreme, smashing your racquet), when you miss a shot or fall behind in a game. You have to learn to control your emotions – disappointment, frustration or even anger – and to channel the negative energy to a more positive focus.

In my situation, where I am older than most of the other social tennis players, I have to learn to deal with the negative impact of their assumptions. Some people who have not played against or with me before, assume that being older I am slower to the ball and not able to hit a decent shot, so they will not hit the ball to me because they think that I will “muck” up the rally. Others, who have played with me or against me on a number of occasions (or who know that I played competitive A Grade tennis for years), will not hit the ball to me in a rally because they are concerned that I will hit the winning shot and finish the rally. The net result is the same – I feel excluded from some rallies. I have had to learn to stay focused, to enjoy the moment and stay uncritical about these assumptions and how they play out for me.

Being mindful

What served as a catalyst for this post, is a description of being mindful during tennis which was recorded in a novel, Purity, by Jonathan Franzen. Purity, or Pip as she was called, was having an extended hit of tennis with her hitting partner, Justin. Franzen describes Pip’s mindful experience in these words:

Pip was in an absolute groove with her forehand…They had impossibly long rallies, back and forth, whack and whack, rallies so long that she was giggling with happiness by the end of them. The sun went down, the air was deliciously cool, and they kept hitting. The ball bouncing up in a low arc, her eyes latching on to it, being sure to see it, just see it, not think and her body doing the rest without being asked to. That instant of connecting, the satisfaction of reversing the ball’s inertia, the sweetness of the sweet spot…she was experiencing perfect contentment. Yes, a kind of heaven: long rallies on an autumn evening, the exercise of skill in light still good enough to hit by, the faithful pock of a tennis ball. (p.545)

Playing tennis can help us to grow in mindfulness if we maintain our attention and focus, be conscious of our purpose in playing, experience and enjoy the moment and learn to manage our own negative self-judging and associated emotions. It is a great learning opportunity for mindful play and the development of skills that can transfer to other arenas of our lives.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of skeeze on Pixabay