okay hello everybody Welcome to the online tennis podcast today I'm very honored to welcome Gavin McMillan onto the show Gavin has got a lot of experience with the most recent Grand Slam Champion Irina sabalenka and her serve Gavin could you introduce yourself properly because I think I'll see my biomechanics I might get your title wrong I think maybe give us a your own introduction if that's okay my name's uh you got my name right so we've got that that going for us but um I've been in the sports performance Venice business for 25 years something more than that or maybe longer um I grew up playing sports for predominantly hockey in Canada um but it was a different error back then you were encouraged to play multiple Sports unlike today and so it gave me a broader perspective in terms of you know not only having the skills to do different sports but how people played all the different sports I ended up playing tennis in college for San Jose State and then tried to play on a tour for a few years unsuccessfully and after that I started working my first tennis job was really as a teaching pro up in Northern California and then got hired briefly by Monica sellers during her comeback okay and uh yeah and I don't bring this I brought that up just for a specific reason because her father was uh really an extraordinary guy he was super nice to me and I was a very frustrated tennis player because you know from a skill standpoint nothing felt very good uh What I was taught I didn't make any sense to me he had kind of opened my eyes to the fact because he definitely said things differently and he definitely taught it differently and you could see it you know with Monica and I started looking at other people and how they did things and how like the best in the world did it one way and yet you were being taught to do something else and you know notably you'll figure out throughout your life that usually what everyone else is doing is not the answer specifically like in U.S tennis and Canada where I played some from a coaching standpoint you know you taught this down together up together scratch your back all this stuff and like you know and it was so natural for me to be able to throw a baseball that it felt so unnatural serving and so of course Under Pressure it's not going to function properly because it's got catastrophic um flaws in it whenever you see a fatal flaw in motions you know that this is it's just the the moment is going to reveal it and then people say oh you're choking or all these other things like when I watched Serena before we got together and I kept saying to her it was mental and it's this and that yet you're watching her match and she's fighting her ass off and it's mental anybody else it's double false like I saw it watched her match with golf she double faulted 23 times and yet last point right so clearly this isn't mental she literally doesn't know how to do it and then you know that process started and looking at her videos and stuff and for me at this point like the because I work with quarterbacks in throwing baseball pitchers and throwing the Motions are all the same it's just a different plane of movement that you're you're using or a different object that you're holding and what happens I think in the biomechanics or side of things and what people do is they they teach what they think they see and no one sits down and says okay well what is somebody doing from an anatomy standpoint and knowing like in baseball like your front arm is what really controls your location your accuracy everything it's not your pitching arm because the front arm wants to lift it like this if you pull it sideways well it pulls your arm around you start spinning instead of rolling over the top like you know all the best baseball pitchers in the world do well the only difference with tennis and serving is the plane of movement you know baseball is in a down angle tennis is an up angle like for instance the left arm you know we're never taught to make sure it was on the right side of your head if it's if you're a right-hander you don't ever say anything about that but you know in baseball pitching if your arm isn't over there you have no counter rotation of your upper spine so the only thing you can do is swing with your arm and Under Pressure that'll never work you'll have no power on it you'll you're literally saying prayers to try to get it in but the other thing was where's the arm going you know if your left arm Rises up and it falls flat this way well it brings your back arm down with it yeah and so in Arena's case like she was doing virtually everything wrong I should be clear by the way Gavin sorry um I bet into the show but for viewers Gavin is the man responsible for helping Arena out with her serve and obviously she had loads of problems last year double forward 14 times on average per match in the Australian Open comes back this year and obviously it was about four or five per match you know the the diff and the first serve as well of course was was Landing uh more explosively every time as well so it wasn't just the second serve but under pressure she showed she could she could use it so Gavin I mean responsible for a slam champ in a way here a piece and a puzzle you know I mean what I knew from the beginning from her was like when like I said is that hey you've got somebody that's willing to fight and you know she's you know and they're like oh we've got a psychologist helping her through this I'm like it won't change a thing she can spend 10 years with her won't change a thing and I can prove it and so when we take her video and you break down her left arm once she tosses it not only is it on the wrong side of her head she literally dropped it straight down and it would lock out straight pointing at her opponents so her right arm's falling down the minute she starts to swing at it so nothing is in an upward motion so the left arm like when you start looking at you know from Federer or Sampras roddicks and Roddick had the most efficient serve I think of anybody I mean you could argue it that it's even easovitch Roger is obviously up there in terms of its fluidity and his ability to hit things under pressure but there you'll notice when their toss arm goes up their palms actually that way and so it inverts and the reason that happens is your left scapula then rolls up over your shoulder and extends and now it can actually pull you down so the arm should come down this way and no different than a baseball pitcher he rolls his scapula over and it comes here as well because now it lines your right arm up perfectly with where assuming the Ball Toss is in the right place and hers wasn't like hers was out in front she was trying to slice everything so you know what happened is I got a phone call on a the Thursday I think it was golf she lost too and then in Toronto and you know would you meet us in Cincinnati and I got on the plane the next day and we started Saturday morning and she had to play Tuesday we I literally just the first day just showed I want to prove to you that this isn't mental because I don't want to have to talk about this again the people you know and from the coaching standpoint I think that the biggest mistake that we make is invariably we blame the student when they are not able to do something under pressure it's my job to fix it I said that from the start if it doesn't work then I'm the one that has to take the responsibility for that I said we're just going to do three things today work on your left arm make sure you're you know pronating with the right finish with this practice with 10 seconds the second serves in a row and until you can hit 10 in a row we're not leaving because you have to success has to be built it can't be bluffed and that's why this you know things with psychologists psychiatrists I mean I guess they have some role in in certain other situations but in sports you have to actually be able to do it you have to be able to execute your tasks and your skill if you can't your brain knows it so saying somebody's choking no the pressure of the moment is revealing what their preparation is what their skill set is if you've set apart like your day of every single day I'm serving for 20 minutes we're specifically going at Targets we have specific goals in mind in terms of kicking it are you working on a slice today are we working on targets what is it you have to build success on the on the court then you have a chance of having success under extreme duress because there is not an athlete in the world that rises to an occasion ever you are exactly who you are in practice and I've seen in every sport that I've been involved in there's no better example of that than the fight business and because you know there one punch changes everything so your your preparation what your tactics are your physical conditioning all these things have to be taken as a way of eliminating your ability to lose you're eliminating to take that you know that one terrible shot and so when you come from backgrounds like that where there's not a lot of room for error you know tennis is a different animal because especially among the women so few of them can serve well and they don't women don't grow up throwing like men do and so it's not as natural emotion and then when you add in typically how it's coached or taught I think that that makes it even worse Rod Aquinas for instance her arm action and her right arm action is really really good her left arm causes her problems in terms of you know again this is a a percentage sport so even though your Motion in one side of it might might be good if there's a problem in the front side and there isn't super consistency there then it shows up in the percentage it makes so before this tournament started after she won Adelaide you know I texted Anton and just said listen it's still too many double faults there's the percentages too too low to win the tournament her average days or whatever you want to call them have to be 65 percent good days have to be 70 percent for sure percentage Yeah the double faults have to be somewhere below five because you can't start giving away two games especially under the pressure of that moment and he knows this Anton's like a really good human being first of all and I I think you know she's been fortunate in that going through these these extraordinarily difficult times um she had somebody from her hometown that knows her also played the sport understands what the mental size of it are and was really a key part of keeping her together through this entire entire process because I don't think too many people you know could have pulled that off and hats off to him for that because he's he's still really young in his business but at 27 is now the primary coach of the Grand Slam Champion like you know it's an extraordinary accomplishment no matter how you look at it and um I'm sure he'll continue to do um great things anyway so she finished um she finished that practice session hit her 10 couldn't believe she'd get 10 in a row in and you know at least it you start getting confidence with who you're working with because it's a trust business and if there isn't success then obviously how would there be trust so anyway sure first match out she only double faulted five times um which was a significant Improvement obviously from the week before and that's how you know she could start you know building this but you're still always dealing with most people are are afraid you know they're afraid of am I really that good and can I really actually do this and you know what we kept pushing and I kept pushing with her is like you are what your habits are this this sport is won and lost on what your 85 game is whatever that is is what's going to show up when it matters and to be honest the biggest change wasn't our service or it's her forehand her forehand was very linear very flat Under Pressure it would fly all over the place on her understanding like that you know again we're all taught you know bring the rocket back rackets pointing straight back well there isn't an elite forehand in the world that does that so you look at it alcaraz has got one of the best novax is probably the best you know with Rafa's right behind it Roger's the cleanest ever they all hit it the same way everybody thinks it's different it's not there are simple fundamentals they all do the same and that's the rocket head is vertical the first movement isn't to pull your rocket back it's actually to turn and if your arms in a 90 degree angle all it's got to do is invert so as long as you have internal rotation now the racket's going to roll around in your hand and it's going to whip out and so under pressure is if you just set it here it only has one way to go now it can only roll out with acceleration if you go straight back like that you have to muscle it and the second there's tension in a moment I mean you play the sport you know what's going to happen and it's all about trying to create your biomechanics around what can withstand the pressure of the moment so that there's fluidity in the stroke if you can do that then you can replicate under the most difficult moments and so now you'll notice like that her forehand Cross Court is it's a dominating shot it's got spin it's got depth same thing with their backhand shoot the racket head was pointing straight back to the fence it wasn't vertical and it has to be verbal you look at all the backhands the best backhands in the world they're all doing it the same way because we're all Limited in terms of what our joints do you know our arm is a ball socket joint and so I was very um definitive limitations on how it can create power and so what invariably happens in in tennis is like I said earlier is that you know we're pushing like just fight just do this you either have a hundred and 17 mile an hour serve that you can get in or you don't you either have a forehand that you can hit with depth and span and power or you don't and whatever that is that's what you're playing with and so that you know the whole thing and the whole structure became around not asking you to back off in fact I want you to continue to swing away with power but it has to be within the she's been told this before but you have to actually have to show her how to do it she you know was very capable of um learning things quickly it's and again you're dealing with people's past histories right of whatever background they come from that whatever how they've been coached before how they perceive information which you don't know and so you're just doing the best you can with it and um but you know with who she is from a physical standpoint um for her size she's very athletic is she the best athlete she can be at this point no that's the scary thing for the rest of the tour because if she gets her lateral movement better understands a few different few things in terms of the return side a little bit better all these things they work in your favor as the you know the the match proceeds you know today on the run she probably missed I think four or five slice backhands that normally Under Pressure she gets back in and she makes you hit another shot and that's the definition of Applied pressure because the sport is won by applying consistent pressure even when the points almost lost forcing your opponent to hit another shot and make them finish it don't give it to them um if you look at the difference in her winners to unforced errors ratio today uh it's significant you know I think it's 51 or 53 to 28 whereas last year in the center or two years ago in the semis of the US Open against Fernandez I mean she had 50 something on four stairs you simply just can't win that match with those many mistakes right the funny thing is that the serve in the forehand they're really the same thing the arm angle is pretty similar but the grip's different and obviously one you're you're swinging at waist one you're swinging above your head but both require you to internally rotate your right arm and she wasn't doing that either her right arm used to lock out dead straight and she would Point her racket to The Back Fence then she would pull it in and try to cup it because she you know as an athlete like something doesn't feel right and you're trying to find it and she would get it to hear and this part you know it was better but because her left arm was pulling herself down you can't hit up on it but the back to the statistics side thing you know she serves 65 for service today which is a huge Improvement in terms of especially considering that level of moment um I hope she can soak that in because you know to go from where she was at and then you turn around and you know with the whole world watching and fortunately she had had you know Cincinnati she got to the semis played well in spots but didn't play great and lobster Garcia in three when she got to the US Open you know she had one of the best comebacks in the history of women's tennis she's down to kanepi 6251 and then finally just you know let go of her nerves and started honing in and ends up winning that match somehow she played really well against political in the quarters first match I think she's had on the pro tour where she didn't have a face of break point what and you know against Switzer that you know she lost that match Switzer didn't win it she just got enough balls back in place and Arena just didn't trust it and but all those things you know one thing with her even though she doesn't say it is she's learning and she's paying attention to the things that that didn't work and then she went and you know what went from being this completely lost season now miraculously she uh qualified for the WTA tour finals which he was out of the running for yeah and she number one number two number three players in the world and lost the Garcia in the finals and the tennis in the final with her Garcia was really really good um and quality was excellent they both served well Arena just in those tight moments didn't quite trust it and but to her credit like we had three days to get to try to fix it in Cincinnati we had five to get ready for the US Open then everybody went their separate ways and then we went back to Florida and had about seven or eight days to get ready for San Diego and um so she didn't really have like this committed amount of time to where you're getting the volume in to where your brain really recognizes like just let this motion continue without a hitch and he'll be all right and so we did the preseason in Dubai and had a couple weeks there and again she was practicing it every single day and that's really what it takes like to to be able to replicate it when you have to do it it's what your daily habits are and more importantly there her daily habits became off the ground significantly better um the pressure she was putting you know on her forehand with people and hitting with men uh that we were practicing with her uh hitting partner Andre who was there all two weeks and when he she starts pushing him around the court you know you have something because the whole goal is to try to play as much as like the men as possible and the percentages so you're not seeing Novak hit very many flat balls because there's just the risk reward is not there if he's really feeling it he may rip you know back hands up the line they're fairly flat but when you see how he's hitting it there's still rotation on it and so the more you stick to the you know those patterns and that was interesting to see as the match went on she started getting back to really establishing her Cross Court off both sides because you have to push them back that way because it's just pure geometry right if I can't push her back that way I can't open up the other side of the court and when you start pushing your opponent into a defensive position cross-court now the game gets a little bit simpler same goes on the serve you know if you're pulled out wide on the deuce side the rest of the Court's open no matter where she hits that return unless which she did twice tonight rips those up the line winners and she also did that on serves that Arena got in that weren't very effective so making sure you know you understand like what the geometry is what shots to hit when is a huge part of this sport maybe the biggest um I don't think anybody does that better than Novak you know he sticks to the things that he knows gives him the best percentage chance to win in that moment and now with the improvements in his serve which are dramatic if you look at the difference in his serve in 2012 compared to today yeah and I've said this to anybody that'll listen but if Novak serves well you can't beat him because he's going to break you and when he gets rolling on it his accuracy is excellent his pace is significant because I'm sure you know this having played the sport if you hit are hitting your spots right whether it's the T whether it's the out wide serve anything over 110 on those spots is virtually unreturnable it doesn't matter man or woman if you hit it at 120 there's zero chance it's coming back if it does it's a duck um so after that much more Pace it's way more about the accuracy and where you're putting it and also with spin you put on it because you can't you can't just serve flat if you're serving flat in the men you're hitting it flat ball skips and it's waist level high it's in their wheelhouse these guys are so good they just they'll use your power and manipulate it you have to get it out of their Strike Zone above their shoulder away from them it can't be in their contact Zone where they like it because the the men's game now is so literally unforgivable Novak said it best like a year ago or two he just was like look this this sport can come down to one shot in the men's game now the women's isn't there yet but tonight or today's match you know you had two people swinging away at a high level both of which are hitting more winners than errors you've sent a message to everyone else that if you're wanting to compete at this this is what you're going to need to do to stay there and hopefully like what arena does is she takes this and takes a couple weeks and really lets it soak in because you know coming from what where she came from and how much she's had to fight through and uh the aggravation of of just being humiliated on a tennis court is what was happening and to come out the other side of it you're not going to see this type of story too often in sports it's too hard to pull off and it takes a real um it takes an extraordinary you know ability to continue to fight through it no matter what and that's why I said from the beginning you'll know exactly how good she is mentally once she actually knows how to do this then you'll know but until due of course you're anxious of course you're nervous of course you're flipping out you know you're this is your profession and you can't you're you can't get the most important shot in the sport in the court so once that happens and you take that fear away now she's actually focused on beating her opponent instead of focused on herself which trying to get us to serve in the court you know now she has even though she missed the on on the Run slices of fair amount those are more defensive uh slices or slice backhand is super effective now she can come in on it it's served her really well in crucial moments when she needed it throughout the tournament her overhead which she'd always struggled with you know was just a simple little turn of the hand and now I would say it's one of the most the best overheads in the game and she hit that overhead from the Baseline at a really important moment and you know to see her pull that off that once she hit that then I was like okay I think she can win this because it's those little battles right you're trying to convince yourself you can do this it can go the other way you know and that was you know what was happening in the first step because she didn't she didn't play well yeah it's five double votes and that's it yeah and it's how you double fault right you're hesitating and all those type of things like you know that could be double faulting he's usually it's because he's too aggressive getting a little too confident there isn't a flaw in there so much so but what really turned around you know when she came out in the second and started going back to making sure she kicks that serve in because just because Rob akina hits One winner off a second serve doesn't mean you change how you get your second servant you change where you put it right try to maybe be a little more aggressive kicking it um but you got to get it out of her Strike Zone and from that moment on like Rob akina was having trouble getting anything on her second serve so I think that really changed the mentality in terms of okay if I just trust it and fight I got a shot here congrats to her that that she you know was able to do that I just really implore to take this time off and get back to the drawing board because this girl this girl can be a dominant number one yeah and because when they first approached me you know with other sports I work in you're looking at things that can work and like you look at her and you know like if these basic things get fixed watch out yeah um because who does anybody on tour have a better for him than her no are there other good forehands of course but they're not better and same thing I would say with their back end I mean her backhand especially when she's focusing on just ripping it cross-court two feet over the net heavy with spin dictating it she has the best inside out and up the line backhand on tour and now the serve you know is the same thing you know you're tonight you know if she hits 17 Aces yes she double faulted seven times that has to come down because that will bite you in the ass eventually but after the first set it was only two if she didn't get broken so in the second or the third and she was broken I think a total of eight times in the last uh in the tournament so it's a significant upward turn so the way you put the vision in someone's head is like look I understand what you have accomplished but how good do you want to be if she can see the vision of like I still think tonight I think she played at about 80 of what she's capable of if she gets that bar up another six to eight percent keeps improving her return and so it's all about being able to make those shots and get them in when it matters right you're taking away these opportunities of your opponents to beat you because if you're serving big I'm gonna have you know one bad service game a set that's all I have to navigate now I don't have to navigate four of them you know she hurt herself at the end of the second not breaking there but she didn't get any of those returns in in the future she continues to get better at that and she will everything starts working more in your favor it gets harder and harder to beat you because you have fewer and fewer places to go at someone I think that you know tonight like she was able to instead of trying to create an extraordinary shot because what invariably happens when you're nervous or you don't have confidence is you just try to hit some crazy winner just because that's the best shot I got but when you step over and just say no I'm just going to rip this cross-core heavy with Sven put all the pressure on you and I'll just keep doing it until you crack now you got a chance because and that's where I tell you like that I 100 believe that she can be a dominant one the exciting thing for me to see her like that tonight is not that she's so much pulled that off it but what she's capable of going forward because if she has you know continued more time to keep putting in this and really keep improving the the fundamental basics of what the sport is there's only a few people that can beat her and that they're going to have to do something really really good to pull it off if she's engaged because you know what is she I think she had 17 Aces tonight like that's four free games you get right yeah it just changes the whole dynamic in the math of what you're dealing with out there the surfaces like and hopefully Wimbledon but hopefully she's given the opportunity to play there because it's a great surface for her and obviously so is US Open and and so is the red clay which she's you know done really well on overtime so she becomes a threat you know on each surface and the goal when you start I started with her and you know it's easy to say it's a goal but you know if you want to be number one this is the things you got to do and you have to just consistently do well each week you won't win every match you won't but if we get your winning percentage up above 70 percent now we're in we're in business because week after week of pulling that off and it's the accumulation of points and uh all these things that make a significant difference in terms of you know continuing to rise because it's so easy to think the other way which was you know okay I'm still hating the world oh my God if I just stay like this I'm still top ten it's a it's easy to fall into that trap and fortunately she didn't do that and I will definitely urge her to continue to stay on this path of improvement and for you know take these two weeks and enjoy it and really take it in in terms of what it what it means and and then forget it and get back to work because it's a business it's a job and there's a lot of people that want to pull this off and you're going to have to keep fighting for it No One's Gonna hand this to you Jason who was the one that contacted me about helping her his career conditioning coach and Andre and you know the people that have kept her up mentally during this horrible time and kept encouraging her and we're open to help having somebody come in because that's also a weird dynamic for anybody that's worked with a tennis player for a weird period of time and I'm just glad it worked so I hope she keeps going you know I won't keep you too much longer obviously I've definitely taken more of your time than I promised already so thank you very much for talking and but before you go I was gonna say before you do go if you could tell us a bit about sports science lab if anybody wants to get in contact with you for example maybe drop your contact details what how can people get in contact with you yeah I mean that's our website is sports science.com and um that like I said I our business focused around human performance and performance only improves two ways it's either physical so you improve speed and movement or you improve the biomechanical efficiency of what you're doing and it doesn't matter whether it's serving running jumping hitting a baseball hitting a tennis ball all those type of things the two have to go together and when they match then you can get significant and significant Improvement so I appreciate you asking that but um on sub and fortunate with the people that I get to work with and you know it they make you look uh smart you know maybe enough fair enough I don't like Gavin but fair enough if you see so being modest for sure and Gavin it's been an absolute pleasure thank you very much for coming on appreciate it no worries and everybody else thanks very much for tuning in again like And subscribe All That Jazz uh this has been the annoying tennis podcast we'll catch you next time cheers thank you