Interior and Exterior Thinking

 I'm stealing some of this from a golf video I saw on YouTube.  

Interior thinking is "I want to hit this shot down the line with some top spin.  Let's see, to do that I need to rotate my body and swing from low to high and then..."

Another solution to this problem is available.   Consider just writing something down.  We know all the letters and we've done it before, so we just start writing.  We don't internally think about the shape of the letters or spacing to make it all fit, we just imagine what we want and it happens.  And this is what the golf pro defined as external thinking.  The desire or goal drives the mechanics and the less you interfere with it, the better you are.  

Now back to a PB point and we can "see" the ball scooting up the line and then we just do it.  Ben Johns has been quoted as saying, "When I'm playing, I'm not thinking."  

Now this is not a perfect method as we might not have the skills needed to hit the shot we can "see," but I'll suggest that if you embrace this view and feeling, that it will work surprisingly well.  Dinking skills are based on strength, but it's delicate work and you have to be fearless to do it well.  The same with drop shots, trust and go for it are the proper attitudes.

I spent a couple of minutes at the driving range using this for golf practice.  I'm pitching the ball about thirty yards and I want to just carry it over a small hill.  As soon as I adjusted to just doing that it happened and I could do it many times in a row.  I played around with other shots and was quite happy with the results.  My golf skills are roughly on par with my pickleball skills.  So I'm thinking that more of "I want the ball there" rather than "how do I hit that ball there?," is the way to go.  

There are a couple of areas in my PB game that I would like to improve and they are dink consistency (I usually hit the ball too low), and service returns.

I'm going to go more with a "shot shape and destination" and less with a stroke generation model of play.  Time will tell if I have sufficient skills or trust to bring this off.

Now is this a good way to develop skills?  There is some evidence for this in the golf area as well.  "How do I hit the ball lower?"  Here is the classical answer: "You reduce the loft of the club and get your hands further forward, add some pressure to the left leg and then quieter wrists through the shot."  (Very complex and how does that really help even if it's all true?)  Or with an external approach. "Here is a ball, you've played with balls in three different sports, so step up and hit it lower.  You can do this."  The second approach has much merit and is usually successful.  The teacher can add in all the other bits after the skill is "discovered" if required.  

If we  divide up the world into player types, we have those who are technical and those who play by feel.  The feel players frequently can't tell you how they do something, but they can repeat it.  The technical guy can probably describe the whole thing, but I'd guess loses the ability to perform well on occasion.

There is a series of books written by Timothy Gallwey called "The Inner Game of xxxx."  He wrote about golf and skiing and maybe one other sport.  His terminology is backwards from the internal v. external.  Thus he wanted you to embrace your inner voice and liberate it.  He said that you have one of the greatest processors and hardware systems every created and if you trusted it, you could get it to work for you and quite well.  I've read his golf book and there are some interesting methods for creating your own feed back loops, etc., and if you are serious about performance in sports, you might find it quite useful.  He embraced the "imagine the shot and then hit it" approach.

I'm signed up to teach at one of the pickleball 101 clinics this weekend.  Shall I try: "Ok, here is a ball and a paddle, bounce the ball on the paddle."  That works.  "Stand here and hit the ball to the right side of the court...  Now hit it to the left.  Not too difficult, was it?  Now, let's move to the kitchen line and we want to hit the ball to the right, then left then forward and we want it to land at the other kitchen line."  

"How do we do that?"  

"You already know enough to do it..."  

Will that work?  It can't be worse than, "Keep your wrist firm, rotate your body to the left, swing in an underhanded fashion."   Probably will work great for artists, not so much for engineers!  We shall see.