Rob Gray is a professor of human systems engineering and a consultant to Major League Baseball clubs. Much of his career has been spent on one question: when a batter is trying to hit a ball travelling too fast to consciously think about, what should they be paying attention to?
The skilled athlete who thinks about their hands gets worse
In a series of batting experiments, Gray asked hitters of different levels to monitor their own movement — the direction their hands were travelling at a given moment — or to monitor something in the environment, such as the flight of the ball. Skilled hitters got measurably worse when directed inward at their own limbs. Novices did not suffer in the same way, because they were already attending to their bodies. The same inward attention was also what showed up when experienced hitters were slumping or under pressure.
The practical translation for tennis is uncomfortable for a lot of coaching: telling a competent player to "keep the wrist firm" or "get the elbow up" mid-rally can actively degrade the shot you are trying to fix.
What to say instead
- Give the player a target in the world, not a body part: the contact height, the seams on the ball, a cone deep cross-court, the sound of a clean strike.
- Cue effect, not mechanics — "make the ball dip inside the service line", not "brush up the back of the ball at 45 degrees".
- Save internal, body-focused instruction for slow, off-court, low-pressure blocks where the player is genuinely building a new shape.
Where this fits at Primal Active
Our coaches work from an athlete-centred, high-performance model: technical work exists, but it is deliberately scheduled away from live ball striking. In a rally, the athlete's attention belongs on the ball, the opponent and the space — the same place a professional hitter's attention belongs when a fastball leaves the hand.