Overhead Smash And What Goes On In The Mind
I need to avoid a paralysing effect when it comes to the overhead smash.
I can do it very well if relaxed, but this is not the usual case. I tend to sabotage it.
Sometimes we paralyze, when our mind fights between two ideas.
This happens with smash because the first idea is to hit hard. You’ve seen in it on TV and overhead smash is supposedly an easy shot.
That’s of course far from the truth. In fact, it’s probably THE most difficult shot.
Why?
Because the flight of the ball (if I exaggerate a little bit) is perpendicular to the path of the racquet.
So you need to time the movement almost perfectly to meet that ball and racquet. Compare this to groundstrokes or volleys where the flight of the ball and the “flight” of the racquet are in the same plane.
Even if you mis-time the stroke, you’ll still hit the ball and very likely hit that big court over the net. 
Ok, back to the conflicting thoughts. The other thought that you may have is that your smash is not that good.
Maybe it’s based on your experience and maybe it’s just a belief.
But in any case you know that cannot hit the smash really hard “like you are supposed to”.
So now you are fighting in your head: “Hit hard!” and “I am not so sure about my smash…”
This paralyzes you.
Solution? You don’t have to hit hard.
The objective is to win a point. Do what you need to do to win the point.
Maybe you’ll have to smash with less power and finish the point with another volley.
In summary:
1. Do you know where you want to hit an overhead smash?
2. Are you fighting in your mind or do you know exactly with what speed you are going to smash?
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