This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Tennis, is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical, and it will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to create the tennis technique you want without sacrificing your body.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
INHIBITION is one of the most powerful tools in the Alexander Technique. It gives the tennis player a tool to change any aspect of her tennis technique and posture that doesn’t work with what works. Inhibition helps the tennis player identify what is interfering with the tennis player playing with the most user friendly tennis technique and posture possible, and then to be able to change what isn’t working.
INHIBITION ALLOWS THE TENNIS PLAYER TO LET GO OF WHAT ISN’T WORKING, AND TO REPLACE IT WITH WHAT DOES WORK IN HIS OR HER TENNIS TECHNIQUE.
Inhibition is what you do after you’ve identified what is not working in your tennis playing technique. Let me explain. By the time a tennis player has discovered, after years of playing, that there are aspects of the tennis player’s technique and posture that are interfering with the tennis player’s ability to do the various moves without wear and tear and with accuracy, these destructive habits are as central to the tennis player’s playing habits as the productive ones are.
So, how do you throw out the bath water, without throwing out the baby? You identify and list what is compromising your tennis playing, and you also make a second list of what it is that works as you play, and you only keep the good list.
There are the typical big postural problems – a slumped or over-arched back, obvious tension throughout the body, from hands to legs. Then there are the much more subtle problems, which may be a matter of degree. What I mean, is there may be postural and technique things that you do that are not obvious to anyone but an Alexander Technique teacher.
Ex: If right before the tennis player runs, she locks her neck, then this can be pretty invisible to most people. If right before the tennis player hits the ball, she locks her hips, this can be almost undetectable. If the tennis player locks and narrows her shoulders as she hits the ball, this can be pretty invisible. If she shortens her spine as she watches the ball, this can put pressure on the nerves that originate at the spinal cord, and this can be hard to see.
So, what is the act of inhibition or inhibiting? If right before you do what you have always done when you play tennis, just before you play, you stop and choose to do something new, then you have just inhibited what isn’t serving you.
Ex: Just as the tennis player is about to hit the ball, she notices she locks her neck. The player stops. She now chooses not to lock her neck, and right after that new choice, she then hits the ball with an unlocked neck.
What I have just described is inhibition or inhibiting a habit. It very subtle and very powerful, because for the first time, the tennis player has chosen not to hit the ball with an unconscious bad habit.
She has chosen to hit the ball without unconscious tension and compression of the neck/spine. Bringing this into the tennis player’s awareness is moving tennis playing away from being something you fix, to being something where you are truly experiencing all of your subtle habits, good and bad, you have played with. Now you have the tool, INHIBITION, that will allow you to perceive and choose which habits you want to keep or release.
THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE DOES TWO EXTRAORDINARY THINGS. IT TRULY RAISES YOUR AWARENESS OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING WHEN YOU PLAY TENNIS TO A LEVEL THAT SHOWS YOU HOW YOU COMPROMISE YOUR PLAYING TECHNIQUE, AND IT GIVES YOU THE TOOLS TO STOP DOING THIS.
