Chapter 4: Acquiring a Skill

Chapter 4

Acquiring a Skill

Now we know what skills are, how they are distributed, and how they evolved; next we must ask how they are acquired. This topic is more practical than the previous topics, and probably more appealing to the reader interested in improving his or her skills. What is the best way to become good at something? Of course, the answer will vary according to the skill, but some general lessons can be identified. I will focus on tennis, using a story about myself. My right shoulder and arm had been in trouble for a while—pain and reduced mobility. I had to have physical therapy for it and steroid injections; I wanted to avoid surgery for obvious reasons. It had got to the point that I was no longer able to serve in the standard overhead manner; it hurt and my arm was reluctant to go up that high. I had ceased serving in the usual manner. Not good for a tennis player. The diagnosis was arthritis with no cure. I googled it and found that three activities lead to this kind of problem: tennis (check), drumming (check), and kayaking (also check). I restricted myself to non-serve shots and got by reasonably, enduring the pain and weakness. Then things got much worse: I had to have an operation on my neck (cancer) which damaged the nerves to my right arm, rendering it semi-paralyzed. I couldn’t hit a decent right-handed shot anymore. I realized that my tennis days were over unless I learned how to play two-handed, i.e., trained my left arm. This was not easy, because I am strongly right-handed. Still, I persisted.

The story now gets interesting (not just tragic): I practiced regularly, almost every day, and my left arm steadily improved—slowly, gradually. It took a couple of years before I could hit a two-handed backhand tolerably well. Meanwhile I had taken up knife throwing and had to use my left arm; gradually I began to throw decently with my left hand. This seemed to help with my tennis. To cut a long story short, I am now a better tennis player than I have ever been in my whole life (at 76)—with a defective right arm. My left arm has come into its own, proved its worth (it used to be so shy). What lessons can we draw from this inspiring story? Persistence pays. Recovery can be slow. You must keep at it. Don’t give up if there is a way forward. Learning a new skill is time-consuming. It’s never too late. Use your intelligence. These cliches have their point. Listen to your body and make it listen to you. Bend sinister[1] if necessary.

What is the best way to teach a skill like tennis? I favor a granular approach: teach the components of a skill separately; don’t try to do it all at once. Break the skill down and practice its elements in isolation. Then try to put them all together. I often tell people to practice in their living room with no ball; just learn to move your body in the right way—hands, feet, torso. By all means try to hit whole shots on the court, but accompany this with a more analytical strategy; otherwise, you will never reach true competence, let alone excellence. A complex skill involves a variety of simpler sub-skills and these need to be learned and absorbed separately. Reject holism! Skill atomism is the way to go. Apart from anything else, there is just too much to remember if you try a more holistic approach. Your unconscious will take care of the basics if given time; then you can concentrate on the whole situation, including what your opponent is up to. I would say a forehand in tennis has around ten components to get right—too many for the conscious mind to handle simultaneously. Repetition is of the essence, the simpler the better. I also believe in combining the intellectual with the practical: don’t just practice a movement blindly; understand why it is the right movement. Know why you are doing what you are doing. Knowing-how should be accompanied by knowing-that. Knowing about spin, say, is essential, not just causing it. Intelligence as well as physical ability. Skill is a subtle mix of the intellectual and the practical. There are no dumb professional tennis players.

I have two further precepts: concerning proprioception and imitation. You need to be aware of your body and its movements as much as of the environment—you need to know what your body is doing. Are your feet correctly spaced, are you rotating your torso properly, are you well balanced, what is your non-dominant arm up to? Tennis players are exquisitely aware of their posture and movement; they walk athletically. Proprioception should become second nature. Imitation, too, is vital: we learn by copying experts. Discursive instructions are important, but simple imitation will get you there sooner. So, you need to become observant and a good mimic. Don’t let anyone tell you that we all play differently, and you must find your game. This is rubbish—you need to absorb the game of expert players. Mimic everything about them (I say the same about learning philosophy). Unashamedly copy your heroes, then you may become one. I do a nice impersonation of Jannick Singer’s walk, and I swear it helps me hit better (I used to do a decent Rafa Nadal).

Finally, transfer of training: one skill affecting the acquisition of another. Psychologists distinguish positive and negative transfer of training—the kind that helps and the kind that hinders. Mostly skill transfer is positive, but it can produce negative effects. Thus, if you are already a proficient table tennis player, this will help you with some of the basics of tennis—eye-hand coordination, ball understanding, spin, etc. But it may also cause you to strike the ball in an overly contracted manner, limiting the power of the shot. The swing in tennis is much larger and more energetic, because the tennis court is much larger than a table tennis table. Each skill has its specific demands, some like other skills, some different. Be aware of this and correct your technique if necessary. Most tennis players are poor table tennis players (Roger Federer is an exception), and vice versa, so beware of transfer of training—it can screw you up. I learned both skills separately, so I don’t confuse them. Still, I feel one whenever I play the other, because both are wired in.

Let me add that learning skills is a fairly mysterious process; there is no solid science of it. Still, there are general principles that are well established. Generally speaking, the better you have learned a skill the less conscious you are of it. Skill is the domain of the unconscious. I will come back to this in chapter 7. For now, I will say that I have been entranced by the way my body and brain adopt the skills I try to instill in them, mysterious as it is. I want to say thank you to them.[2]

[1] Bend Sinister (1947), a novel by V. Nabokov.

[2] This chapter is shorter than I would have liked because little is known of skill acquisition of any substance and it is a subject of great fascination to me. I wish I had an algorithm I could convey. I am reduced to saying you should play several times a week over several years if you want to become a decent tennis player—and get a good coach.