Practice Makes Permanent

We’ve all heard the saying, “practice makes perfect.”  Unfortunately in tennis or in any other muscle memory related activity this isn’t always the case.  Tennis is a sport that requires technique and technique is learned through the repetition of performing the same movements over and over again.  We refer to this repetition as muscle memory, the more you practice the more the technique is ingrained in your brain.  When learning something new in a lesson, it is vital to your continued improvement that you do not revert back to your old habits going forward.  Oftentimes we will work with our students on restructuring their stroke technique during a lesson and developing new muscle memory.  However all of the progress from this lesson is lost if the next time they play with their friends they revert back to their old technique reinforcing the old muscle memory.  Many players believe that the more they  practice, the better they will become, or that practice makes perfect.  It is critical to realize that anything less than perfect practice when in the transition of changing your technique and muscle memory will actually cause you to backtrack, undoing the new muscle memory you worked so hard to achieve.

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