Quantity > Quality
About a year ago, I took the plunge to dive headfirst into a whole new world of Tennis. I went into this sport knowing fully that it would be tough from the get-go — Tennis is a demanding technical sport, after all.
I remembered how I got myself a fine Wilson racket early on and was all set to smash some solid hits on the court during my very first lesson. Upon meeting my coach for the first time, his gaze met mine with a familiar understanding, as if he had witnessed this eager anticipation in many students before me. He kindly directed me to set aside my racket and begin with footwork drills. I complied, thinking I could get this done over with quickly. Turns out my hand-eye coordination was almost non-existent and I had to dedicate several lessons solely dedicated to practicing footwork drills, without even touching my racket for the first three classes. I began wonder whether lugging my tennis racket to class was even worth it.
Alas, it has been 12 excruciating months, 56 classes diligently completed, yet I find myself still focused on refining the most fundamental aspect of tennis: the forehand stroke. For those unfamiliar with tennis, the forehand stroke is the most basic manoeuvre in the sport. Every lesson I would cycle through the entire tennis ball basket, which holds approximately 75 balls and in an hour I go through the entire basket four times which works out to be roughly 4x75=300 forehand strokes.
Reflecting on this journey, I am reminded of this article I came across from Ali Abdaal, where he wrote about The Parable of the Pottery Class, the article discusses how a pottery teacher who had to judge a pot from 2 groups of students — students from Group A who had to make a pot every day for 30 days, students from Group B who had to work on a single pot for the whole of 30 days. Of course, the students from Group A would be able to produce better quality pots because people who do pottery know that the mud goes to sh*t after much moulding but I think the point here is that when you start, and especially when you start, you really have to focus on the quantity and not quality — especially for beginners like myself.
A quote from his article that I really liked:
“Aiming for quantity has another benefit — it stops the fear of “what if this isn’t good enough?” from paralysing us. We accept that as beginners, we’re going to suck and that’s okay.”
In tennis, I often hear how you have to commit each move into muscle memory. When the ball lands into your court, your muscles must instinctively respond in different situations. Responding, reacting, recovering quickly is all part of the game. This often means a single stroke requires repetition tens of thousands of times before it becomes second nature.
While I look forward to learning more advanced strokes in Tennis, I ground myself in knowing that these repetitive practices go a long way in improving the precision of my strokes. Despite feeling bumped in my “leap of progress” I am determined that one day I will rally, and I will rally well, even well maybe after 348638726 attempts.
