The Inner Game
The Inner Game
A New View
Most players talk to themselves on the court all the time. ‘Get up for the ball.’ ‘Keep it to his backhand.’ ‘Keep your eyes on the ball.’1Gallwey had been a top player as a junior, so he knew that this sort of thinking rarely helped. What mattered was awareness.
Whatever increases the quality of awareness in an individual also increases the quality of learning, performance and enjoyment. Conversely, whatever interferes with or distorts awareness of things as they are detracts from learning, performance and enjoyment.”2
A New Approach
I wouldn’t give him an analysis of what is wrong and then instruct him, “Take your racket back sooner,” or “Hit the ball farther out in front of you.” Instead I might simply ask him to put his attention on where his racket head is at the moment the ball bounces on his side of the net.3His aim was to prompt his students to relax and simply pay attention to what was happening.
The quality of learning is directly proportionate to the quality of feedback one receives from experience. A mind that is busy worrying, criticising and comparing will block feedback, just as a clogged filter will prevent air from flowing through it. The more active the mind, the less feedback the body will receive and the slower it will learn. The key to natural learning is to quiet the mind so that awareness is increased.”4Gallwey identified three things he could do to foster his students ability to learn:5
- Help them increase their awareness of what is (and decrease interferences that distort perception). He wanted his students to learn “to see ‘non-judgmentally’, that is, to see what is happening rather than merely noticing how well or how badly it is happening.”6
- Help them become more aware of their immediate goals.
- Help them trust the natural learning process.
The ‘Inner Game’
It is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt and self-condemnation. In short it is played to overcome all the habits of mind which inhibit excellence in performance.7Performing well in different activities requires different outer games, since there are always different real-world obstacles to overcome. Actions have to be found that embody the specifics of what it will take to achieve success. The inner game, however, is pretty much the same for all activities. The mental obstacles to overcome are universal — doubts and distractions — so the skills learnt in one arena can often be transferred to another.
The Birth of Coaching
Gallwey’s first book, The Inner Game of Tennis, was published in 1974 to widespread acclaim. Over the next few years, Gallwey extended his approach to other sports. Inner Skiing was published in 1977 and The Inner Game of Golf in 1981.
By the late 1970s, Gallwey was surrounded by a group of acolytes who shared his passion for the inner game, and in 1979 John Whitmore and Graham Alexander took the inner game to Europe. They were interested in using inner game techniques with business leaders — after all performance was just as important to them as it was to those who played sports.
The phrase ‘inner game’ was problematic, though. “The British were terrified of the concept of the ‘inner game’”. So Whitmore and Alexander were left using the word ‘coach’, which British managers found much less threatening.8
In 1986, they took on the consulting firm McKinsey as a client. Their initial work included sessions of coaching on tennis courts, and when this proved successful they started developing a framework for coaching that would enable their approach to be used elsewhere in the programme.
They focused on the elements of the inner game that Gallwey had identified, such as clarifying immediate goals and awareness of the current reality. Their initial formulation followed McKinsey’s existing 7S Framework, but it became unwieldy, so they simplified it down to the acronym GROW, with each letter representing one part of a four-stage process — Goal, Reality, Options and Will.
Whitmore made this model the cornerstone of his 1992 book, Coaching for Performance, and it subsequently also became the cornerstone of the coach training courses that bodies such as the International Coaching Federation would accredit. The world of accredited coaching still uses this 4-decade-old model as the conceptual basis for granting its stamp of approval.
It’s a shame that the inner game’s time in the spotlight seems to have passed, for it provides a powerful approach to enabling people to learn freely and to perform at their best. Perhaps it will have a time in the cultural spotlight again. There are certainly many people who are keen to perform well in many areas of their life. But even if it doesn’t, Gallwey’s work will continue to have a major impact through the world of coaching it gave birth to.
References
- W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game Of Tennis, London: Pan Books Ltd, 1986. p. 18.
- W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game Of Golf, Pan Books Ltd. 1986, p. 75.
- W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game Of Tennis, London: Pan Books Ltd, 1986. p. 32.
- W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game Of Skiing, London, Pan Books Ltd. 1987, p. 44.
- W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game Of Golf, Pan Books Ltd. 1986, p. 75.
- W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game Of Tennis, London: Pan Books Ltd, 1986. p. 21.
- Ibid., p. 11.
- “Nos quedamos con el apelativo deportivo de “coach” … porque a los británicos les aterraba aquel concepto de ‘juego interior’”. Interview with John Whitmore, Psicosoluciones Sistémicas, 2001.
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