Yesterday we began our journey discovering what RDS (Rating Distortion Syndrome) is, what causes it, and how it can be cured.
I listed three of the most common symptoms and got “That’s me!” replies from tennis players all over the world…
…told you this is a huge epidemic!
(If you missed that episode I posted it for you here)
I closed that message by suggesting that Roger Federer plays a role in causing RDS, and he does!
Let me explain…
At the end of the day the reason why so many of us and our peers have a warped perspective of relative ratings and levels is due to what we take in with our eyes, and what we experience internally when we play.
Let’s start with “what we take in with our eyes”…
Most of us love watching professional players on TV or on the internet, which is great, but few understand exactly how elite those athletes are. Their footwork, stroke technique, balance, and rhythm is next to perfect.
To accentuate that even more we live in a “highlights” focused culture, that obsesses endlessly over the most incredible shots and minimizes the errors and mistakes our favorite players make.
The result: we have this running demo reel of tennis perfection in our mind’s eye, and somewhere back in the depths of our thinking, if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that our ego believes we’ve gotta look something close to those players….right?
After all, we’ve been taking lessons for years, from the BEST pro at our club, and we keep getting better and better…
Shoot, you just got bumped up, right??
How far off could you possibly be from looking like those Federer or Serena Williams highlights?
(It sounds silly saying that out loud…but internally I know you can relate)
That brings us squarely to the second problem that causes RDS: the Grand Canyon sized gap that all of us have between our internal experience on the court and the reality of how we actually look.
I need to rephrase that for emphasis….please read carefully:
YOU have a massive gap between what you feel like you’re doing on the court and what you’re actually doing!
If I’ve learned nothing else during my tens of thousands of hours on the court helping passionate, amateur adult tennis players improve its that they have very low awareness of how their body is actually moving…
All you need to do is watch any of our VIP coaching videos to see examples of that, regardless of level, or how long somebody has been playing.
Student after student THINKS they’re performing a stroke in a certain way, but the reality is very, very different.
So…
You combine the perfection visuals in our head, with the low awareness of what we’re actually doing and you have….Rating Distortion Syndrome!
This is why most tennis players watch their peers and think (or even say out loud to the person standing next to them) “Wow, take a look at the service motion on court 5…thank God I don’t look like THAT!”.
Or…”There’s no way I can loose to Sally, she’s such a hack!”.
It’s an almost universal problem among tennis players, and the worst part is it keeps us from improving at the rate we should.
Why?
And most importantly: HOW DO WE FIX IT??
Those questions will be answered in the next episode đ
Yours Truly,
-Ian
