A very good book on the "selves" involved in learning, as well as how to learn naturally. Applied to tennis, naturally, but this can be applied to many things. This was a really good book on the fundamentals and techniques on natural learning (or "inner game" learning).

I found it goes pretty well with the dual process theory presented in Thinking, Fast and Slow, connecting "self 1" to "system 2" and vice versa.

If Pyscho-Cybernetics and The Mind Illuminated had a baby. All about outcome independence, letting go of judgements, developing concentration on the present moment, and trusting the subconscious “self 2” to take the reigns and play.

The first part till 80-90 pages weren't that revealing and interesting as the last part. From 90 to 140 pages. Great book!

I've played enought tennis that I can understand the references to the game but I was curious about why people say this is valid wisdom for any task. It is. The Self 1 and Self 2 terminology was clunky but I liked the general concept of letting go of instructions for processess while seeing what produces the desired outcomes.

The book mostly covers the idea that athletes perform best when they aren't thinking about the particulars of how to do things, but are simply performing at their peak without trying.
The biggest takeaway from the book is to have someone film you if you're struggling with an aspect of your sport. For example, if you're a runner and want to make sure your form is good, have someone record you running and see how you run.
I can't believe the author didn't cover this (which is why I'm giving it a low score), but the most effective way to playing the game with hyper focus (or in a state of flow) is to meditate. From the other books I've read and podcasts I've listened to being in a state of focus can be more easily achieved by practicing mediation.

Fairly mid. Nothing too crazy groundbreaking but a lot of it was a good reminder.

Brilliant, succinct collection of thoughts on performance-psychology

Yes, I know this is about tennis, and yet I've put it on my music and singing shelf. The first time I read this I'd never played tennis outside of learning the rules and bashing the ball around during gym class. The second time I read it, I substituted the word singing every time Gallwey wrote "tennis" and it worked. It's an excellent book for helping anyone involved in a physical activity requiring great skill AND finesse find their peak performance.

This book is amazing, wish I’d read it when I was younger. Tim has just destroyed my old way of thinking when it comes to learning new skills and getting in the zone.

"Every game is composed of two parts, an outer game and an inner game. The outer game is played against an external opponent to overcome external obstacles, and to reach an external goal.
Mastering this game is the subject of many books offering instructions on how to swing a racket, club or bat, and how to position arms, legs or torso to achieve the best results. But for some reason most of us find these instructions easier to remember than to execute..."

The Inner Game of Tennis was an interesting book, but unfortunately, I did not enjoy it nearly as much as some other books I've read about the performance mindset...

Author W. Timothy Gallwey has written a series of books in which he has set forth a new methodology for coaching and for the development of personal and professional excellence in a variety of fields, that he calls "The Inner Game." Since he began writing in the 1970s, his books include this one, The Inner Game of Golf, The Inner Game of Music (with Barry Green), Inner Skiing and The Inner Game of Work. Besides sports, his training methods have been applied to the fields of business, health, and education.

n  W. Timothy Gallwey:n
n  n


Gallwey writes with a somewhat decent style here, and the book is not too long. The new edition of the book I have features a new foreword by Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, which was a nice touch.

However, and despite the author telling the reader that the book won't be too focused on the mechanics of tennis - quite a lot of tennis mechanics are discussed...

The author lays out the book's thesis early on:
n  

"It is the thesis of this book that neither mastery nor satisfaction can be found in the playing of any game without giving some attention to the relatively neglected skills of the inner game. This is the game that takes place in the mind of the player, and it is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt and self-condemnation. In short, it is played to overcome all habits of mind which inhibit excellence in performance."

n
The book outlines a "self 1" and "self 2" dichotomy, that's basically analogous to the conscious and subconscious mind. Basically; the conscious and critical "self 1" can often impede the innate performance of the subconscious "self 2." Gallwey summarizes:
n  

"In short, if we let ourselves lose touch with our ability to feel our actions, by relying too heavily on instructions, we can seriously compromise our access to our natural learning processes and our potential to perform. Instead, if we hit the ball relying on the instincts of Self 2, we reinforce the simplest neural pathway to the optimal shot.
Though this discussion has been primarily theoretical up to this point, it has recently been confirmed by the United States Tennis Association Sports Science Department, as well as by almost everyone’s experience, that too many verbal instructions, given either from outside or inside, interfere with one’s shotmaking ability. It is also common experience that one verbal instruction given to ten different people will take on ten different meanings.
Trying too hard to perform even a single instruction not well understood can introduce awkwardness or rigidity into the swing that inhibits excellence..."

n
He closes the book with this quote:
n  

"Regarding the Inner Game with capital letters, i.e., the development and applications of the methods and principles articulated in the Inner Game books, I believe they will become more and more important during the next century. I honestly believe that during the past few hundred years, mankind has been so absorbed with overcoming external challenges that the essential need to focus on inner challenges has been neglected...
...In short, I believe we are still just at the beginning of a profound and long-needed rebalancing process between outer and inner."

n
**********************

I did enjoy this short presentation, but as mentioned above; there are other, better books on the topic.
There was also quite a lot of esoteric tennis minutia presented here, despite the author saying there wouldn't be.
Thankfully this one was not too long...
3 stars.

Kırk yılın başı Bill Gates efendi bir işe yaradı, güzel bir tavsiye verdi.

Dikiş iğnesi gibi bir kitap bu: dikiş iğnesi nasıl arada kumaşa girerse, bu da öyle arada tenise dalıyor, daldığı gibi de geri çıkıyor. Yazar, kitabın hatrı sayılır bir kısmında kişilik özelliklerimizden, arayışlarımızdan, tereddüt ve endişelerimizden, görmüş geçirmiş bir amca olarak bahsediyor. Çok beğendim.

Dokunduğu konular: Self1 ve Self2 meselesi; teniste self2'yi öne çıkartmak. Sadece vuruşlarda değil, hayatın karar anlarında Self2'ye başvurma becerisi kazanmak.
Eğitimde ve doğamızda görselliğin rolü.

Stres doğuran anlarda birazcık farklı düşünmenin yarattığı -olumlu- neticeler, ve bu anlarda Self1'i görmezden gelmenin önemi. Tek bir doğru tenis vuruşu olmamasının, yaşamın tüm boyutlarına yansıyor oluşu. Ve tenisin (ya da diğerlerinin!) hayatımızın en önemli meselesi olup olmadığını kendimize sormamız... Rekabetin bıçak sırtında gezinen ve yaşamımızı, dünyayı görüşümüzü olumlu ve olumsuz etkileyen yönü.

Son olarak: diliniz şu an ağzınızın içinde hangi pozisyonda???

Beğendim, güzel kitap.

I read this book on the recommendation of "The Ringer Fantasy Football Podcast," which is where I get all my reading ideas. It's exactly what you would imagine if I told you a guy born in 1938 in California wrote a book that's kind of about tennis, kind of about meditating, and kind of about business, but I am thinking about this exact genre of self-help book as... kind of a market inefficiency I can exploit.

Like, when they were current (with people my parents' age) I dismissed them because they sounded like Boomer Woo, and now they are not current because the world has grown perhaps overly impatient with boomerism in all its forms. So I am minimally exposed to them, so's everybody else, and if there's anything good in there I can take it with no regrets and maybe get a little edge on people who aren't willing to admit that "Centerfield" is the best song about baseball ever written because they're mad about housing prices.

What I am proposing to you, I guess, is that it's possible that the current Forgotten Wisdom Of The Ancients is the annoying self-actualization stuff that surgeons who cheated on their wives read in 1981.

The book itself is very brief and doesn't get in its own way. It's a good refresher course on stuff that your soft-spoken guidance counselor might have told you in 1994 but that has been swamped by a new genre of therapeutic language that, I don't know, seems less interested in making it possible for you to do stuff. There is a Self 2 who instinctively does stuff, learns from watching and imitating, and is very capable of making you good at tennis or other things. There's a Self 1 who acts as your internal monologue, complaining about Self 2 and making you tense up and trying to get things done itself because it is afraid. It's bad at everything and it's not clear from this book what purpose it might even theoretically serve.

A weak version of this that I would endorse without the run-up is that there's certainly a part of me that is eager to demonstrate its own self-awareness about its limitations to other people, and that probably doesn't make it any easier for me to learn to play tennis.