The Inner Game of Tennis

Posted by: stak
Tags: books
Posted on: 2013-05-12 16:07:18

The Inner Game of Tennis, by Tim Gallwey, despite the title, is not really about tennis. Well, maybe about 3% of the book is actually about tennis, but for the rest of the book he only uses tennis as a concrete example of how to apply the principles of the "inner game" described in the book. The "inner game" here refers to a number of things, but generally speaking covers the ability to unlock your full potential without being held back by your fears, doubts, anxieties, and other insecurities.

Although the book is not really specific to tennis, it is geared towards people who have tried to excel at some physical discipline. It describes the mental obstacles that such people will be able to identify with, and describes in good detail how to overcome those obstacles. That being said, the book does also apply to non-physical activities and daily life, but if those are your primary interests then perhaps one of the other Inner Game books by the same author will be more suitable (I haven't read them so I can't comment further).

Personally I read this book because I thought it would help me with the mental obstacles I encounter while training parkour. It certainly does address exactly the problems I've experienced, but goes above and beyond that. I found the book hugely insightful and would recommend it to anybody who practices a physical discipline (and if you don't, you should). I haven't yet actually tried applying the techniques described in the book so I can't say how effective they are, but even if they are completely useless to me the book was still well worth it for the additional insights it provided.

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