If you’ve read my blog in the past, you’ve likely seen my post on attentional focus cues – and the research + implementation that goes along with it.
You may have also read my take on the importance of cueing in general. And why the right cue – given at the correct time – is often more impactful than the perfect drill (although combining the right cue with a great drill is a recipe of success).
Personally, I prefer simple cues – either a word (said aloud or in one’s head) that brings a performer’s attention to the most relevant areas of a skill or situation being practiced.
Beyond trigger words, I believe targets are underutilized in many practice settings. When using targets we can use something as simple as a cone or an area of the court. Alternatively, we can challenge players further by having 2 targets. For example, if I am practicing my slice wide serve on the deuce court, I might have one target in the service box (where I want the ball to land) and another on the baseline somewhere (where I want the ball to travel through).
The latter cues are example of external cues. In this post, I want to highlight why using external cueing is my preferred strategy for accelerated learning. But before we get into that, first a little recap.
Internal vs External Cues – A Recap
For those that need a refresher, broadly speaking, there are 2 types of attentional focus cues – internal and external:
Internal:
Bringing attention / focus to a body part or segment (ex: focusing on your wrist position at contact).
External:
Bringing attention / focus to something in the environment (ex: hitting past a target, like the service line, for instance).
Experienced coaches use a mix of both types of cueing, depending on the player, the situation and their own expertise. Below I will outline my take on this debate but before we get to that, let’s dive deeper into each cueing type because there are layers to both external and internal cueing.
4 Subcategories of Cue Types
Nick Winkleman, in Language of Coaching (2020) outlines the research on attentional focus cues and further subdivides the 2 broad categories we’ve outlined. As both a coach or player, it’s important to understand these subcategories as they provide granularity when it comes to what we should be focusing on when on the practice court. Let’s dive in:
Note – quotes are taken directly from Winkleman (2020).
Internal Narrow
“Fully zoomed in, a narrow internal cue asks the athlete to focus on the action of a single muscle or a single joint. This cue prioritizes the part at the possible expense of the whole.”
What Nick is saying here is that we’re really boiling down to a very specific area of the body with this cue type.
Examples that are relevant to tennis include, “squeeze your hand muscles when volleying” or “focus on having your elbow straight/locked at impact” and perhaps “make sure you use a heel to toe step on your topspin backhand”.
Internal Broad
“A broad internal cue zooms out a level and asks the athlete to focus on the action of an entire limb or a global region of the body. These cues don’t comment on the action of any one muscle or joint; rather, they provide general guidance on where a limb or body region should move or be positioned in space”.
Notice that here, Nick is suggesting that we take a step back and ask the performer to look at gross movements of the body, rather than focusing on a very specific body part or joint/muscle action.
Examples in tennis might include the following – serve: “extend your legs as you accelerate to the ball” or stance: “keep your back upright and legs wide during your ready position” and groundstroke: “rotate your upper body about 180 degrees when hitting your forehand”.
External Close
“Zooming out of the body, a close external cue asks the athlete to focus on a feature of the environment that is close to them”.
Ultimately, in tennis – the implement (racquet) + ball – will typically be the focal points when it comes to close external cueing.
For example, instead of focusing on a body part during the prep phase of a groundstroke, we might attend to the tip of the racquet (ex: “make sure the racquet is pointing up and away from your body”). We could also attend to the ball – “hit the ball in the center of the strings” or “hit the ball on the rise”.
When it comes to movement, we might ask players to “push the ground away explosively” during the acceleration phase of the serve. Notice that this brings more attention to the ground rather than the legs. These are all examples of close external cues.
External Far
“Completely zoomed out, a far external cue asks the athlete to focus on a feature of the environment that is far from them. In this case, ‘far’ is relative to the goal of the task”.
In tennis, there are many ‘far’ cues we could attend to. We could focus on the trajectory (or shape) of the ball – i.e. how we want the ball to look as it travels across the net. Or we can focus on a target on the other side of the court (like a cone or designated area). Or we might focus on our opponent – i.e. where are they standing given the situation at play.
