The myth of bad habits

I encounter a lot of people who come to me and say that they have a lot of bad habits with their technique and that they feel there is nothing they can do about it .

Well a bad habit (if there is such thing) is a million times better than having no habit.

What is a habit? a habit is just the best way that our mind and body found to perform, with the awareness that we have at the time. With a limited awareness he have a limited habit. Habits are not bad or good. They are just as they are.

You cannot improve a habit, you can only find a new habit, perhaps a better habit!

How can you improve the habit of rolling your wrist on your forehand? Its impossible, as soon as you stop rolling the wrist you found a new habit, but you didn't improve it.

This is really important because we do not need to unlearn a habit before changing and finding a new habit. All we need to do is to be aware of our habits and find new ones. The same way a baby doesn't need to unlearn the habit of crawling to begin a new habit of walking, in fact during a transition stage he does both, then later he just drops the habit of crawling.

So how can find better habits on the tennis court?

First of all we have to be aware of what we do. For that we need to practice more until we know how we hit the ball and we can watch ourselves on video or even in the mirror. If you don't know that you have a funny walk, how are you gonna find a different walk?

There is no need to feel helpless on court, we just need to know what we're doing!