Is This “Just a Game” – Or the Best Practice You’re Not Doing?

One of the most memorable exercises I can recall from my Suzuki days was the one where I was asked to flip my bow around and play while holding it at the tip instead of at the frog.

I remember it being more challenging than it looked (and it sort of freaked me out that I might break the bow), but this memory popped into my thoughts the other day and I started to wonder…

Was this just a goofy creative thing my teacher did to keep me engaged, or is there a research basis for something like this?

A study!

A team of Spanish researchers (Hernández-Davo et al., 2014) recruited 30 youngsters with about 2-3 years of tennis experience to see if they could improve the accuracy and velocity of their serves.

Each player started out by completing a baseline test of their serving abilities. Standing on the left (“ad”) side of the court, they were given 20 serves, and the instructions “Serve at the highest speed and with the highest accuracy possible” while aiming at a ~20-inch-diameter target in the service box.

Then, the players were randomly assigned to one of two groups, and over the course of the next 4-6 weeks, completed 12 practice sessions with 60 serves per session.

Two approaches to practice

The consistency group practiced the serve while standing in the exact same spot, using the same movements, in an effort to produce as consistently accurate and fast a serve as they could.

The variable group did the same amount of practice, but introduced all sorts of wacky variations and challenges into their practice. Things that they’d never actually do in a real match.

For instance, they practiced serving on one leg, changing the width of their stance, and standing on a thick mat to increase their height. They also served from a position several feet in front of or behind the baseline, near the center of the court, or way off to the left. They tried serving with the ball tossed in front of them, behind them, to the left, to the right, really high, or really low. They even served while facing 45° or 90° away from the net.

So was there any benefit to practicing these goofy variations? Or was it just a waste of time?

A final test

After the final training session, everyone completed another performance test.

Just like before their 4-6 weeks of practice, they hit 20 serves from the left side of the court, aiming at a ~20-inch-diameter target in the service box.

Results: speed

When it came to speed, both groups improved. The consistency group was hitting serves that traveled 4.8% faster than at baseline. And the variable group increased their velocity by 7.68% (though this difference between groups was not statistically significant).

And what about accuracy?

Results: accuracy

Well, even after 12 practice sessions, the consistency group’s accuracy did not improve at all.

Meanwhile, the variable group’s serving accuracy improved by quite a bit.

They went from an average error score of 2.67m before training to 2.21m after. Meaning, these participants were now serving the ball about a foot and a half or 18 inches closer to the target than they did before the training.

What?!

How could practicing serves one-legged, behind the baseline, and with the ball toss all over the place – “incorrectly,” in other words – lead to better performance?

Why wasn’t it more effective to practice exactly what they’d have to do in a match?

Why did this help?

“Schema Theory” suggests that in learning a motor skill, our brain develops a Generalized Motor Program (GMP), or a basic template for a particular movement pattern.

So instead of having one motor program for hitting a tennis ball which comes towards us at waist height with topspin and a second motor program for a ball which comes towards us at knee height with backspin, we have a single program which we can adjust and tweak in the moment and apply to both types of balls.

The unique variables of the ball (height, speed, spin, etc.) are the “parameters” which determine what sort of adjustments we have to make to our Generalized Motor Program. So when we practice, not only do we need to develop a generalized program, but we also have to ensure that this GMP is adaptable and can be used successfully across a range of parameters. A process which some have called “parameterization.”

In the case of these tennis players, both groups already possessed a basic GMP for a serve. And while I imagine there’s always going to be some benefit from refining one’s GMP, it seems that the variable group’s practice emphasis on parameterization gave them an advantage over the consistency group.

So somewhat paradoxically, it seems that we may be able to increase consistency in performance, not by practicing the same old way all the time, but by working to develop a more flexible skillset. So that you can make a phrase sound exactly the way you want whether you’re playing in a hall has the acoustics of a bathroom or a sound-proofed panic room.

Pianists already know this?

A few years ago, I had a chance to ask pianist Julian Martin about how to adapt more quickly to unfamiliar pianos, and his take was that we need to practice producing the effect we want for a note, measure, or phrase in more than one way. So that even if the piano we are performing on feels nothing like our piano at home, our technique is flexible enough to adapt to the piano in front of us. Much like this tennis study suggests.

And how might one develop such flexibility?

He noted that Claudio Arrau’s teacher Martin Krause strongly believed that his students ought to be able to play a phrase with a huge range of dynamics and at a wide range of tempos – even if this means playing it (at least during practice) in a way that is totally inappropriate for the context of the piece.

Because this way, we at least have cultivated the option of playing it in whatever manner we feel is most fitting to the context of the music, regardless of how dead or live our performance piano may be. Or how subpar our reeds are that day. Or how fast our heart might be beating in the moment.

So how might this look in practice?

Take action

Well, I don’t know that you have to practice arpeggios while hopping on one leg (although you could).

But playing on different pianos, using your backup bow or subpar reeds, playing faster, slower, louder, softer, with more or less vibrato, and any number of other creative challenges you could throw at yourself, could all be good practice. Ultimately preparing you for that day when the hall sounds like the inside of a middle school library and your duo partner seems to be insistant on taking a very different tempo than the one you thought you had agreed on…

And besides, it’ll likely make practicing more challenging, way more interesting, and more fun too!

A book – and how you could shape it

This is one of the posts I plan to draw on for a book I’m considering. One aimed at addressing those oh-so-frustrating “but it sounded better at home” moments, with research-based guidance on how we can shrink the gap between how we sound in the practice room and how we sound on stage. The idea is short, focused chapters, each addressing a specific frustration, with concrete action steps.

The community is central to this project, as each chapter will close with real-world examples from students, teachers, and professional musicians – showing how the principle plays out in actual practice, performance, or teaching.

If you’ve applied any concepts from this post to your own practicing, performing, or teaching, and found them helpful, I’d love to hear your story. Like, what seemingly goofy games or challenges have you tried, that might be inline with what the participants in this study did, or the equivalent of upside down bow or that scene from Amadeus, where Mozart played the piano upside down, backwards, and cross-handed? 😁

A short note is totally fine! Because if your story seems like a good fit, I’d love to set up a short conversation to hear more.

Additional reading

Still wondering what this upside-down bow thing is all about? Here’s an entertaining account of a Suzuki alum’s experience of this exercise:

Upside Down Bow – Balanced Bow: Notes from my studies with Dr. Shinichi Suzuki @Stay Tuned

References

Hernández-Davo, H., Urbán, T., Sarabia, J. M., Juan-Recio, C., & Moreno, F. J. (2014). Variable training: effects on velocity and accuracy in the tennis serve. Journal of Sports Sciences, 32(14), 1383–1388. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2014.891290