Review of “The Inner Game of Tennis” by W. Timothy Gallwey
This classic book can change your pool game more than any other book or video you’ll ever buy. And it isn’t even written about pool! Go figure.
An 800,000 copy best selling book, in print for over 30 years, The Inner Game of Tennis is the preeminent book on the mental game in sport.
Whether your issue is a lack of confidence, nervousness, anger management, dealing with distractions or the inability to stay down on your shots every time, this book will put you on the path to the solution.
A leading innovator in sports psychology, Tim Gallwey explains why these things happen and why everything you’ve tried so far has been unsuccessful. Ironically, the harder you work at solving these kinds of issues, the more they haunt you and the worse your game gets.
You can think of your brain as having two distinct parts, what Galwey refers to as Self #1 and Self #2. Self #1 is your conscious mind, where you think, feel emotions, and consciously control your muscles. Self #2 is a nonverbal being, quietly managing the orderly running of the body, storing myriad experiences in memory and retrieving them appropriately without conscious effort.
I can’t recommend this book highly enough; it’s short, easy to read, and you’ll learn something you’ll value for the rest of your life.
Self #2 may be a new concept to you, maybe even one you’re skeptical about. This is not a religious or mystical book at all, but one based on things you know and see every day, you just may not have thought of them in this way before.
Have you ever truly been in the zone? Played out of your head? You weren’t thinking about how hard to hit the ball, how to stand or grip the cue. You didn’t analyze how far to bend down or which eye to put where, you just did it. And the minute you started to think about this fantastic performance you’d give your best cue to be able to do all the time, it stopped. The harder you tried to bring it back the more frustrated you got, but there was no sign of it, it had simply vanished.
This sad story happens to all of us at one time or another, several times to a lucky few. But if you read this book, if you do what it says, then you’ll begin to see your game move in that direction.
You see, everything that self #1 does, from telling you how to improve your game or berating you for your previous mistake, invariably made because you didn’t follow his instructions, or even telling you that you’re playing great, interferes with self #2’s ability to quietly and efficiently play the best game of pool you’re capable of at the time.
Everything that self #1 does interferes with self #2’s ability to quietly and efficiently play the best game of pool you’re capable of.
Using clear examples and relevant stories that you’ll have no trouble understanding and believing because things like them have happened to you over and over, Galwey makes a compelling case that in order to improve we need to simply allow self #2 to acquire the experience needed to learn to the degree required.
This gels perfectly with the ideas discussed in my previous post on quiet eye and deep focus where we learned that expert performance is highly correlated with a quieting of the left side of the brain, precisely the place where self #1 lives.
The value of these techniques is more than just their ability to improve your pool game. This stuff is applicable to almost everything you do, so once you begin to see results in your game just imagine how great it will be to learn to get self #1 to take a lesser role in your work live, you home life, or your love life.
I can’t recommend this book highly enough; it’s short, easy to read and inexpensive ($15.00 list), and you’ll learn something you’ll value for the rest of your life. Just realize that the techniques it teaches will be new and uncomfortable for awhile, and self #1 won’t want to take a back seat (after all, the ego resides there), so results won’t come immediately and they won’t come easily.
Related Posts
Driving to Excellence
Review of The Illustrated Principles of Pool and Billiards by David Alciatore, Ph.D
Review of UPscale One Pocket by Jack Koehler
Review of 101 Big Pool Shots by Gerry “the Ghost” Watson
Review of Play Your Best Pool by Philip B. Capelle
Review of The 99 Critical Shots in Pool by Ray “Cool Cat” Martin & Rosser Reeves
Loading ...
4 Responses to “Review of “The Inner Game of Tennis” by W. Timothy Gallwey”
Mike Sima
- January 28th, 2009
I couldn’t agree more with you about “The Inner Game of Tennis”. I read the book about twenty years ago and I was so impressed with it I made copies for everyone on my pool team. It will absolutely change your game and your outlook for the better.
Gary "Rethunk"
- July 12th, 2009
Nice review! I followed your link from a post in AzBilliards.com. I look forward to picking up a copy of the book.
John Biddle
- July 15th, 2009
I feel confident you’ll like it, I’ve read comments from at least a dozen, probably twice that number of people who loved it, and not one comment from someone who didn’t. There are probably a couple out there who didn’t like it, but they’re rare.
John Biddle
- April 14th, 2010
I use a modified version of Grey-Matter, a free theme I found. I’m currently looking strongly at Atahualpa and like it a lot, because it’s very configurable, but I’m going to wait for WP V3 before I make any changes.
Leave a Reply