This month's article is an interview with Dr. Calvin Nii done on June 14th, 2006. Although Dr. Nii has a Ph.D. in biology from UCLA, he has used his time there to further his study in his true love, tennis, from his mentor and Hall of Fame coach, Bill Zaima. Today, he is one of the most astute observers of the game of tennis and is a hidden gem of coaching.
Dr. Calvin Nii
Dr. Nii possesses the unique qualities of having a passion for knowledge that drives him to study the game from a scientific and academic perspective while also being athletic enough to have played and coached the game at the professional level. This has allowed him to truly understand how the game at the professional level differs radically from the game at the recreational and/or the junior levels. This knowledge is utilized in his coaching and a result, he has students such as Ikaika Jobe and Chris Lam making it to Division I tennis in college and continuing on to begin their careers as professional players.
The unlikely marriage of his intellectual pursuits in biology and enthusiasm for tennis has resulted in a discovery that may someday revolutionize the way tennis is taught.
Kelvin: How did you get your start in tennis?
Dr. Nii: I started tennis pretty late at 14 years old... Didn't play very much junior tennis locally (my parents didn't support my involvement in athletics growing up - sports distract from classroom success, right?). Didn't really get started playing competitively until college. No intercollegiate sports at the school where I did my BA (Reed College, Portland, OR), so I played a few local events, and then I played in several pro satellite events in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Kelvin: That's unusual for a tennis player to start so late. Usually the kids start as soon as they can walk. Tell us a little about your biology studies.
Dr. Nii: At UCLA, I studied the physiology and cell biology of sea anemones and corals that possess symbiotic algae. My Ph.D. supervisor (Dr. Leonard Muscatine, now retired) was the world's leading expert on coral physiology and symbiosis. I also did postdoctoral research (at the University of Chicago and at UH-Manoa) on the evolutionary origin of muscles by studying the development of muscles in these primitive animals (jellyfish).
Kelvin: That's interesting. How about your tennis-teaching career? How did that get started?
Dr. Nii: I started coaching when my brother decided that he wanted to give pro tennis a go... He and I had a deal where I would learn the coaching and business aspects of the sport so he could focus solely on playing. I have always been studying the game from the beginning so it wasn't much of a stretch to get started in coaching.
Kelvin: That's interesting. What did you learn from your experience coaching your brother?
Dr. Nii: What the casual (recreational player) players and many tournament players don't understand or appreciate is how much of a business aspect there is when you want to become a high-performance competitor (college and/or pro tennis). Pro and college tennis is a business, so you have to know how the business works if you want to get into it, much less get ahead once you're there. I was also quite lucky that I had a very experienced and very successful college coach Bill Zaima, take an interest in me and "show me the ropes" of coaching when I started out. Bill built the very successful women's tennis program at UCLA and was one of the pioneers of women's collegiate tennis.
Kelvin: I'm sure this knowledge has helped your students in Hawaii.
Dr. Nii: Yes, locally, I wanted to focus solely on helping players who were interested in being successful high-performance players (National Junior, college and pro players). I've been fortunate to coach a number of very successful juniors here who have won multiple USTA Sectional and State HS Championships. Most of them have also gone on to play college tennis (one was a starter on a NCAA D1 Championship team) and a couple of them are now out seeking their fortunes on the Futures circuit.
Kelvin: That's great. I'm sort of interested in what might make Hawaii kids or even U.S. juniors better or able to compete with the Federers and Nadals of the world. What do you see as the future of tennis?
Dr. Nii: The future of tennis is already here ... What I mean is, that the game - on the men's side - appears to be reaching or has already reached its limits from a performance point-of-view. Unless they change the physical dimensions of the court (i.e. lengthen the distance between baselines, shorten the service boxes, etc.), the overall speed of the game is very close to its practical limits given racket and ball technology.
Pro tennis has evolved from its "country club" roots and has become a true athletic event like the Olympics, NBA, NFL, etc. Until the early 1990s, only the game's great champions were the great athletes: strong, fast, and explosive. The majority of tennis touring pros, even in the recent past, were great competitors and ball-strikers but were only marginal athletes - like high school varsity-level athletes when you compared them with other pro athletes.
Today, in men's tennis, if you aren't a true, pro-caliber athlete in terms of fundamental athletic ability, you probably won't make it in today's pro game, much less become a champion ala Federer, Safin, or Nadal. At the highest levels of tennis (in singles), a player has to have legendary ball-striking skills to overcome a shortfall of athleticism - ala Agassi and Sampras. Even then, a great ball-striker can have his/her game neutralized by a superior athlete with less-than-legendary ball-striking skills today. If you're not a great mover, your ability to succeed in singles will be limited.
To show you how important athleticism is for pro tennis success today, just look at the current ATP singles rankings - 5 of the world's top 10 singles players rely mainly on their foot speed and consistency to win their matches. These are players who really don't have a huge stroke weapon. Instead, they are lightning-quick, super-fit athletes who rely mainly on consistency to win. In the end, success at all levels of competitive tennis is based on consistency, which is mainly determined by your ability to move quickly and efficiently.
A good mover can neutralize a big hitter even at the pro level unless you're like Federer who's both a great mover and a powerful hitter. With the court surfaces being slowed down at the tour level, you see more pros who play like Nadal or Nalbandian than (Andy) Roddick or (Taylor) Dent. The greatest modern players possess both great movement and big stroke weapons. These are the players - Federer, Safin, Nadal, etc. - who will consistently be contending for the biggest prizes in the game.
Kelvin: So speed, quickness and movement are extremely important. What about the strokes? What's changed? Or how does it differ from what the recreational player does?
Dr. Nii: In pro tennis, every element of a player's game is maximized: power, control, fitness, mental discipline, everything. As far as (stroke) technique is concerned, American tennis is pretty much "behind the curve" when it comes to understanding how to be competitive at the world-class level. One of the most fundamental misunderstandings in U.S> tennis is the purpose of topspin.
For a number of "cultural" and "historical" reasons, Americans just don't seem to grasp the concept behind the proper use of topspin. Topspin in US tennis is seen as "slowing the ball down" and is associated with slow, defensive play. Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal (the world's number one and two players) seem to understand that topspin is the primary means of "controlling their power" and the basis of their consistency. Both players maximize their spin production as a means of controlling their enormous racket speed. Can Federer and Nadal vary the amount of spin they apply to their shots? Of course, they can! But, by and large, they play with more spin.
Bottom line? Federer and Nadal use topspin to maximize both the power and control of their shots. Without all that topspin, they wouldn't possess the control and consistency that they show match after match. At the most fundamental level, Roger and Rafa can swing as fast as they like and not worry about their shots flying out - that is the whole point of maximizing topspin. Otherwise, they would be spraying shots almost randomly outside the lines and into the back or side fences.
In tennis, power without control is useless... so maximizing topspin is crucial to maximizing the player's ability to maintain control over their ever-increasing racket speeds - unless the laws of physics suddenly change.
Kelvin: I see but let me get this straight. Federer maximizes both topspin and ball speed right? He's not hitting a slow topspin ball. He's got a high ball speed as well as a high spin rate. I believe you mentioned the number as being close to 5000 revolutions per minute on Federer's forehand.
Dr. Nii: Yes.
Kelvin: So what are we Americans going to do? What are the Europeans doing that gives them an edge?
Dr. Nii: In a nutshell, there is a fundamental difference in the overall training philosophies between the Americans and the rest of the tennis world, particularly with the Europeans. American tennis focuses on tennis-specific training (i.e. working on strokes, strategy and tactics, and on-court movement drills) and off-court training (conditioning and general athletic skills development) is secondary. The rest of the world, the Europeans in particular, do more or less the opposite. They focus on developing the overall athletic skills and conditioning of prospective athletes first, then try to "direct" these athletes towards sports that maximize their athletic skills.
So, that's why you when you hear that so and so (i.e. Federer, Nadal, Safin) from Spain, Russia, or France had to "choose the sport" they wanted to pursue in their early teens, and ended up "choosing" tennis over another sport they played (usually soccer). In the US, once a kid chooses a sport to pursue, they typically specialize only in that one sport, and don't really participate in others. So, if they choose tennis, tennis is it. In Europe, the tennis kids start as early as they do here, but the difference is that they don't specialize so early. They continue to participate in other sports and end up becoming better overall athletes by being exposed to and being challenged by learning a wide range of athletic skills.
When you then start looking at the details of what kind of training is actually done, what you find is that in America, you pretty much have the "conditioning and fitness experts" trying to adapt the training methods developed for football or basketball to tennis players. This is particularly true in college tennis, where the strength and conditioning staff are predominantly from football backgrounds.
So, in US tennis, players even at the pro level do pretty much the same things that other American pro athletes do - football-centric training. Have you ever heard of a football player who is a good tennis player? If you want to look at other American sports for conditioning ideas, it would make way more sense to look at sports like basketball, baseball and sprints (track and field).
Kelvin: Sounds like a good idea. We can't train like football players and expect to be better tennis players. It's got to be specific to tennis, which brings up the SpeedChains. You did a pilot study to measure the effectiveness of the SpeedChains. What are your thoughts after the 10-week study?
Dr. Nii: I have to admit that I was skeptical at first about whether or not using the SpeedChain was going to make an impact on racket speeds and court movement. The concepts and theories behind the SpeedChain are sound, but there is no better proof than results.
After meeting you in late January, and working together through a formal pilot training program with two of my students, I am a true believer. Results don't lie. Training with the SpeedChain and the Torso Burner measurably improved the racket speed (on serves and groundstrokes) and on-court quickness and agility of both players.
SpeedChain has the potential to revolutionize off-court training for tennis (and other sports) and this device has great potential to change the way players train for tennis. Training with the SpeedChain also fits really well into the touring lifestyle of competitive tennis because it's very portable. I don't think you can carry a Cybex machine or a set of dumbbells or barbells very easily.
Kelvin: That's awesome! How does is fit in with your ideas on the groundstrokes and serves?
Dr. Nii: Who doesn't want to swing faster and become more powerful? Of course, when you can swing faster, the ball flies further unless you can increase the spin rate to force the ball downward to the court faster. This means that you need to learn how to maximize (top) spin on your shots to maintain control and keep the ball in play. The problem might then might be who's going to teach you how to generate that additional spin so you can control your newfound racket speed? The majority of tennis coaches and teachers in America teach players to minimize topspin, so a lot of players could be SOL (sadly outta luck). Maybe, with the introduction of the SpeedChain, Americans will finally learn how to swing properly and embrace maximizing topspin on their shots!
Kelvin: Sounds great. I've talked about the new paradigm as it relates to golf. What are your thoughts on the new paradigm for tennis?
Dr. Nii: Working with the SpeedChain, every aspect of the training process, i.e. the overall learning process, is intensified and accelerated. Players not only make breakthroughs in overall racket speed and faster court movement that were inaccessible with previous training methods, but they can do it in less time. If you are changing your strokes, training with the SpeedChain helps you make those changes faster. The neurological aspects - namely, the accelerated learning and retraining of established movement patterns - of SpeedChain training are something that's truly remarkable. As a scientist, this learning acceleration warrants a closer look.
Overall, the fundamental concepts of training with the SpeedChain are absolutely consistent with what's known about the science of muscle function. If you want to get faster, you have to train using fast exercises. Your muscles adapt to the kind of training you perform because that's how "Mother Nature" designed them to work. If you consistently subject the muscles to fast, intense exercise, your body automatically adapts to the challenge by "converting" slow-twitch muscle fibers to fast-twitch ones. This phenomenon is called "muscle plasticity." If you train using slow exercises, then the reverse happens, and you become slower as fast-twitch fibers are converted to slow-twitch fibers.
The vast majority of resistance training for tennis (and most sports), as well as general conditioning exercises (long-distance running, stationary biking, etc.) is performed slowly, so I think you know what the outcome of most conventional conditioning training is going to be. And that outcome is the opposite of what any player wants.
Kelvin: I remember you talking about your studies of the jellyfish's neurological pathways and evolutionary development of muscles in the primitive animals. I find it fascinating that your biology background has come full circle to influence and advance your tennis teachings. Thanks for your time and sharing your knowledge.
Dr. Nii: Thank you.
If you have more questions or want to learn about the tennis specific workout program he has developed for high performance tennis players, send an email to Dr. Nii at mailto:calvin@tennisspeed.com?subject=Feedback from AroundHawaii.com or visit his website at www.tennisspeed.com.
