Rafael Nadal on Doubt

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The Tennis Channel previewed an upcoming 60 Minutes interview of tennis player Rafael Nadal by Jon Wertheim, Tennis Channel commentator and Sports Illustrated executive editor. Nadal ended 2019 with a number 1 ranking in the world and with 19 Grand Slam titles, only one behind Roger Federer. The clip starts with Wertheim asking Nadal to talk about the importance of doubt in his game. Nadal: “If I don’t feel doubt I’m going to be in trouble. Doubt is very important to my success.” Wertheim expressed surprise at Nadal’s answer because Wertheim thought top performers wouldn’t claim doubt as their strength. Nadal’s reply: “If you don’t have doubt it probably means you’re being arrogant. I think it [doubt] is good for me because I feel alert. Tennis is a sport where things can change very quickly.”

I think what Nadal refers to isn’t doubt in oneself but doubt in the outcome, maybe even doubt in how well you will perform that day against that opponent. I also think Nadal is saying that you can’t assume you’re going to win a match against someone whom you’ve beaten before. By avoiding overconfidence you stay alert and not allow yourself to be lured into complacency. As is commonly said in professional sports that’s why the games are played: the outcome is not guaranteed. The underdog can sometimes win if they’re having a good day and the presumed winner is having an off day or doesn’t adjust to something their opponent is doing differently.

In an interview after the 2017 French Open Nadal also said that doubt drives him to improve the weaknesses in his game. This reflects his belief in an growth mindset in which you think you can improve with thoughtful effort as opposed to a closed mindset which believes our talents are set in stone and can’t be expanded. You think either you’ve got what it takes or you don’t. Nadal applied this open mindset when he changed his service motion before the 2019 Australian Open to boost the speed and penetration of his serve.

On the other hand if the doubt we feel reflects a fundamental lack of belief in one’s abilities it would undermine our performance in the heat of competition. It can make it even more likely that we will choke under pressure.

I’d summarize it this way. Doubt about outcome keeps us on our toes while competing and drives us to improve. However doubt in ourselves makes it more likely we won’t step up to the challenge.

Tennis Reminders

I originally posted this in January 2018 in my blog on Talking Sports and updated it today. It occurred to me that some of the ideas could also apply to flourishing and self-development so I've pasted the post below.

Tennis Reminders

In an earlier post, Can I? versus I Can!, I shared results of research on how people performed when they asked themselves the question “Can I do this?” versus coaxing themselves with “I can do this!” I mentioned that I apply this by asking myself “Can I play well today?” then answering “Yes!”

At the end of that post I also mentioned that I also use the acronym LIFE3 as part of my pre-match routine to remind why I’m playing: to Learn, Improve, have Fun and to Express myself, to Explore my capabilities and to Exercise.

The final pre-match self-talk covers key reminders on the techniques I want to use. I use two phrases, one for groundstrokes and one for serving. For groundstrokes I say, “Watch me Catch Butt.” This actually contains three reminders in one. Watch: reminds me to watch the shadow of the ball. Why the shadow? To narrow my focus to something specific on the ball, not the ball itself. (I actually don’t watch the ball over its entire flight. More on that in a later post. Hint: has to do with something called saccadic eye movements.) Catch: reminds me that on my forehand I’m holding my left arm across my body and basically parallel to the baseline as if I’m going to catch the ball. This forces me to turn my upper body, which sets up the coil needed to generate power. On the backhand I pretend I’m going to catch the ball with the butt of my racket. On volleys Catch reminds me to set up my racket as if I’m catching the ball with it. Butt: reminds me to pull the racket through contact to help generate racket speed.

Finally, when serving, I use the word UP to remind myself that I’m hitting Up on the ball and to Pronate.

By the way, in case you were wondering, here is a little background on my tennis playing ability and experience. When I’ve taken tennis lessons in the past couple years I’ve asked the four different instructors how they’d rate me on the NTRP (National Tennis Rating Program) scale. All of them say I’m at least a 4.0, maybe a little higher. Of course, all of them say this is based on what they see during lessons and that the rating could change depending on how I play in actual matches.

I constantly study the game by watching YouTube videos, reading many books and subscribing to a bunch of email newsletters of pros and instructors such as Wil Hamilton, Clay Ballard, Brent Abel, Peter Freeman, Ramon Osa, Jorge Capestany, and Ian Westermann. For the last three years I also have kept a tennis journal in which I rate myself whether I made incremental improvement in technique, tactics and my mental/emotional state. The journal also records observations on areas that need to be worked on for the next match.

I also use the Babolat POP wrist sensor to track my strokes. The POP collects average and maximum speeds of groundstrokes and serves, the kinds of groundstrokes (top spin, slice or flat) and gives an overall rating based on spin, speed and style. (I record this information in a spreadsheet to look for trends.)

All of this information aims to show that even though I might not be a 4.5 or higher rated player my constant study has resulted in my game continuing to advance. I believe I’m playing better now at the age of 67 than I have ever played before in the 50+ years that I’ve played this sport. And I’m not done!

UPDATE 1/2/2019

Since writing this a year ago I've tweaked and added to my pre-match routine. The UP reminder for serving now is PUPSS which stands for Point at the toss, hit Up, Pronate, start the serve take back Slowly and try to keep my body Sideways longer. I added these to my pre-serve reminder because I was finding myself starting the take back too fast then stopping or slowing down and my body was opening to the court too early which I think caused my first serve to go into the net too often.

The following might sound hokey but I also ask why am I playing. The answer is LIFES. This stands for to Learn more about the game and myself, to Improve, to have Fun, to Explore, get Exercise, have Excitement and Express myself with Style. The Style reminder is to get me to focus on playing smoothly and on the process of hitting the ball rather than the results. I got this idea after reading Gabriele Wulf’s Attention and Motor Skill Learning in which she describes the results of her research on the difference between having an external focus rather than an internal focus in performing athletic skills.

Here is how Amazon summarizes her book. “Attention and Motor Skill Learning challenges traditional views that the method of learning a motor skill involves focusing attention on each part of the skill and internalizing proper execution. Instead, author Gabriele Wulf argues that the learning of new motor skills suffers when attentional focus is on the coordination of movements. When attention is directed to the desired movement effect, however, performance levels rise. Not only is a higher level of performance often achieved faster with an external rather than an internal attention focus, but the skill is retained better.”

Her book discusses experiments she conducted with people doing a variety of skills such as standing on a balance bar and trying to keep it steady. The internal group was told to try to keep their feet as steady as possible while the external group was told to try to keep two lights that were on the balance beam as steady as possible. The external group consistently did better than the internal group and maintained this advantage when tested days or weeks later.

You could argue that my emphasis on making my shots with style actually is an internal focus but I would say it’s more of an external focus. By thinking about making my strokes with smooth style I’m thinking about the result, not on the mechanics of how to play with style. And I’m thinking mostly about how the forehand, backhand or serve look when they’re completed rather than the whole stroke. Bottom line: I think it works, at least for me!

The Science of Productivity

This short article, The Science of Productivity by Gregory Ciotti, covers a lot of bases and gives good advice (I think) based on recent research on our the brain works. Ciotti leads off with the finding that willpower is a limited resource and "can be used up in it's entirety!" So it's important to manage this limited resource with the techniques in this article.

Before continuing I should note also the work of Jonathan Haidt who shows that there is a reason why we run out of gas with willpower: the subconscious mind, based on the oldest part of  the brain, represents thousands or millions of years of evolution while the conscious, rational part of our mind came much later. Haidt likens the relationship between the two as an elephant being directed by a rider. The evolutionary momentum of the ancient elephant can often over-power or out-last the will of the rider.

I've covered the limits of willpower in the review of Roy Baumeister's book, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.

Ciotti then talks about the role of "deliberate practice," a concept coined by Anders Ericsson who studied the practice habits of world-class violinists versus others. The key difference in how they practiced is that the top performers spent more time working on the hardest tasks, not just practicing on what they're already doing well.

This leads to Ciotti's key point: "discipline is best maintained through habits, not through willpower." From there he goes on to offer additional advice on how to break up practice sessions, break up projects into manageable, bite sized steps using an Accountability Chart and planning your next day's work the night before. He also shows how we fool ourselves into thinking we can multi-task when research shows that people who try to do more than one thing at a time actually accomplish less.

If there is a theme I'd say Ciotti recommends breaking things into small steps: from taking the first step on a project to breaking the project into small steps to taking breaks every 90 minutes or so.

Read the whole thing. It’s well worth reading.

The 50 Best Social Psychology Books on Persuasion, Influence and Understanding Your Brain

The 50 Best Social Psychology Books on Persuasion, Influence and Understanding Your Brain

This is an interesting list of books. I've read 19 of them, seven of which fall in the top ten, so I'd say it's likely I'd like most of the other books he recommends. In case you're interested, I've read the following books on his list.

2.) Influence: Science and Practice

3.) Yes! (50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive)

4.) Thinking, Fast and Slow

5.) Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard

8.) Stumbling on Happiness

9.) Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

10.) Predictably Irrational

11.) Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

12.) Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

23.) The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

29.) Mindfulness

30.) Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

32.) Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving

34.) What Makes Your Brain Happy (and Why You Should Do the Opposite)

35.) Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

38.) Blink

44.) The Tipping Point

46.) How to Win Friends and Influence People

47.) Strangers to Ourselves

Bounce, Clutch and Choke: Reviews

Why do some people perform well under pressure while others don’t? Why do some bounce back from adversity or come through in a clutch while others choke? That is the subject of three books, each of which tackles the subject from a different angle. Each author has different credentials as well.

The books are:

Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To by Sian Bielock

Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success by Matthew Syed

Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Other Don't by Paul Sullivan

Sian Bielock is a professor who conducts research in this field. Matthew Syed, the author of Bounce, writes for The Times of London, is a commentator for the BBC and was three time Commonwealth table tennis champion and a two-time Olympian. Syed can speak from direct experience about performing under pressure. Paul Sullivan writes “Wealth Matters” column for The New York Times. So you have someone whose career studies performance, someone who performing at the world class level of table tennis and a financial columnist. As you can imagine each one looks at this issue a bit different and each author finds different reasons why we come through in a clutch or choke.

Bielock concludes that practicing under pressure enhances performance, even cognitive performance. She tells us the ability to control our thoughts and images play a crucial role. Bielock lists several tips to help us prevent choking such as reaffirming our self-worth, meditating, pausing before acting and reinterpreting our reactions. As an example of this last tip she encourages us to reframe a reaction such as “I am freaking out” about facing a challenge to “I am pumped for this test!”

Bounce also talks about the importance of practice. Syed draws on the research of Anders Ericsson, psychologist at Florida State University, who coined the term “deliberate practice.” Ericsson noticed that world class performers practiced in a different way than others. “When most people practice, they focus on the things they can do effortlessly. Expert practice is different. It entails considerable, specific, and sustained efforts to do something you can’t do well – or even at all. Research across domains shows that it is only by working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become.” Syed calls it purposeful practice. Why? “Because the practice sessions of aspiring champions have a specific and never-changing purpose: progress. World-class performance comes by striving for a target just out of reach, but with a vivid awareness of how the gap might be breached.”

This emphasis on purposeful or deliberate practice parallels Bielock’s recommendation to practice under pressure.

Bounce also ties in works I’ve reviewed here: Colvin’s Talent is Overrated, Coyle’s The Talent Code and Dweck’s Mindset.

Syed introduces another term as well: doublethink. Unlike many writers who urge us to focus only on the positive, Syed tells us we need both positive and negative thoughts. We need a positive focus to protect our self-belief while also noting our weaknesses that need to be improved.

He also explains how our brain has explicit and implicit systems. When we learn a new skill we operate on the explicit, conscious level. As we become proficient and develop mastery of a skill the brain hands over the performance to our implicit, subconscious system. It takes thousands of hours of purposeful practice to cement a skill into an unconscious mode. We choke when under the intense light of pressure we try to push the skill back into the explicit, inherently slower and more error prone system. As soon as we start to try to consciously control something we had automatized we run into trouble and can choke. Golfers call this a case of the "yips."

Sullivan’s Clutch draws some general conclusions by using examples of high performers in various fields. He believes people who choke share three traits: 1. They don’t take responsibility for choking, 2.They over think what they’re doing, and, 3. They fool themselves with overconfidence.

He then identifies five key traits of people who perform well: focus, discipline, adaptability, presence and being motivated by fear and desire. Sullivan’s last trait is similar to Syed’s recommendation to properly use both positive and negative thoughts.

So where does all of this leave us? Each book lays out somewhat different approaches. Are there common denominators? I think there are. While none of the ideas appeared in all three books there were several that popped up in two of them.

1. Practicing purposefully and under pressure.
2. Proper use of positive and negative thinking.
3. Being fully in the present while performing. This allows us to focus on the outcome instead of worrying about how we going to get to our goal. However we need to sharply focus on technique during purposeful practice. The combination of these ideas helps us avoid over thinking and overconfidence.
4. We need to be adaptable and use judgment when applying our principles.
5. When performing we can lessen the pressure by telling ourselves we’re not, say, serving for the winning game of the U.S. Open. We’re just serving any other game.

If forced to choose one of these books it would be a tough one but I’d lean towards Bielock’s Choke. I’d do so partly because her career is dedicated to learning why some people choke and why others don’t and because she offers more practical tips. Having said that any one of these books will help learn how to perform under pressure.