Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Coaching High School Tennis

In coaching high school tennis, you must leave the players' strokes pretty much as you find them. For example, you can't change a player's serve or backhand, expecting her to win tomorrow's match with that serve or backhand that you've messed with. Renovating strokes takes time, time you don't have in season.

Which is why I love the Inner-Game-of-Tennis method for dealing with stroke problems in season. I therefore highly recommend the book The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey.



Here is an example of how I use it, to give you an idea how this method works.

First, a fact. Thinking about your form while you swing, or about where you're putting your feet as you run to the ball, IS A DISTRACTION. One that should NOT be encouraged.

That isn't what you should be paying attention to while you play a shot. You should be paying attention to the ball and to the feeling of what your body is doing.

Note the difference between thinking about what your body should be doing and feeling what your body is doing. The former is an attempt to consciously direct movement through thought, and the latter is body awareness through attention to sensation. In other words, one is thinking, and the other is feeling.

In the IGOT method, you focus the player's attention where it belongs – off thoughts and on what he's seeing and feeling. In other words, you raise awareness in him of the right things. That's all. Works like magic. Really. Try it, you'll see.

Here's a simple example. John comes over to me and complains that "I'm having trouble with my forehand. Will you come and help me with it?"

Of course I will, but I won't drop everything and go immediately. That would make a big deal out of his problem. So, I casually tell him, sure, I'll be over in a little bit.

When I get there, I just watch.

"I can't hit a forehand!" he says.

I'm not even going to respond to that. I just ask him to hit a few more while I watch. Then I ask him a question about his stroke. Usually, I ask him to show me about where his racket is contacting the ball.

Invariably, he doesn't know. Why? Because he wasn't paying attention to that. His mind was busy yakking at him.

He expects me to tell him where his contact point usually is, but I don't. So, he asks me to tell him where his racket usually is at contact. If necessary, I lie to say that I don't know or am not sure.

Why? Because my job to get him to focus his attention where it belongs. I tell him to go back and hit some more, paying attention to where his racket head is at contact, so that he can come back and show me about where it usually is.

Then I stand there and watch his forehand miraculously fix itself. As it does so, that contact point moves out farther and farther in front to where it belongs.

Before I know it, John is having a ball with his suddenly fixed forehand. He forgets I'm there. I have to interrupt him to ask him if he can show me where his racket head usually is at contact.

"About here," he says and shows me, as if afraid that I might tell him he's wrong.

But he's never wrong.

"Yup," I say, "It looks to me like that's about where it usually is, too."

Long pause. John looks confused. I guess I'm supposed to tell him whether that's the "right" place for his racket head to be at contact.

But what if I did that? Then he'd be right back where he started – thinking about where his racket should be and mentally instructing himself to contact the ball in the "right" place - instead of simply paying attention to where that contact point is.

So, I don't take the bait, even if he comes right out and asks me if that's the right place for his racket head to be at contact.

Instead I just say, "Well, it looks like a pretty good forehand to me. Don't you think?"

"Uh-yeah."

And so back to the court he goes, scratching his head and wondering how I fixed his forehand. I didn't fix his forehand: I just focused his attention where it belongs for natural learning to occur.

And that forehand really is fixed. He has confidence in it now.

The contact point isn't the only point in the stroke that you can have the player focus on. But it usually works, because adjusting it tends to correct any flaws earlier in the stroke.

Sometimes you need to ask where the ball usually lands on troublesome shot. In the net? Long? If long, about how far long? Six inches? Six feet? John never knows! Really. He's too busy with an inner dialog berating himself to notice where most of these shots are landing.

So, your question reaps the same result. When he goes back to hit some more so that he can answer your question, you get to stand there and watch his shots magically correct themselves and start landing in.

This is a fast and effective way to coach strokes in season.

You don't get to show off how much you know by issuing a long list of instructions, but that isn't the objective here. The TEAM objective is to win tennis meets, and the coach must have team spirit, too.

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