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Tipping Point Tendencies

Posted on January 3, 2020 by in The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!  Click Here to Order 

 

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TIPPING POINT TENDENCIES

 

Experienced champions have developed seemingly hidden skill sets I call, Tipping Point Tendencies. To the untrained eye, as the athletes warm up, opponents may appear to be equally matched with similar physical abilities. It is during match play that tipping point tendencies become apparent. The game is on and “playing catch” is over and playing “keep away” begins. These pre-developed skill sets are the critical factors that tip a close match in one’s favor.

The tipping points are those hidden moments in each match when an emotional energy shift is about to happen.

 

“In close tennis matches, positive and negative energy and attitudes flow back and forth.”

 

Most intermediate athletes and their parents don’t even realize that this critical struggle for power is taking place. That is… until now! Mental readiness is required to control the positive energy.

Think back to the last few times your athlete lost tight matches. Chances are you blamed the losses on bad luck, or the opponent cheated, or your kid just did not have the “feel” that day, or for you superstitious types… you went to Quiznoz’s instead of Subway. Those re-occurring close defeats are most likely due to your child’s incomplete training and not lunch meat. Tipping point tendencies are essential learned behaviors that athletic royalty must master.

An athlete that shifts focus to the following tipping point tendencies, accelerates the learning process and a competitive warrior is born. Close matches are often decided by a handful of points. Let’s look a little deeper at ten of the top “hidden” tipping point tendencies that can help tip your athlete’s matches in their favor. Once again, these are terrific conversation starters for your athlete and their coaches.

The Mental Component: Strategies and Tactics- Part 2

Posted on December 29, 2019 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!  Click Here to Order 

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Stylistic Strategy

Stylistic strategy is your child’s ability to adapt tactics depending on the current style of the opponent. Remind your child not to change their winning tactical system just because the opponent changes game styles. A change is only made if the opponent starts to win and the momentum switches to the opponent’s favor. Styles include retriever, hard-hitting baseliner and all court players. It is imperative that high-performance tennis players develop and rehearse patterns used to beat each style of opponent.

If your athlete has spotted the opponent’s style of play and is still struggling, I recommend shifting focus to the third tier called custom strategy.

A smart competitor will change a losing style of play (shift to plan B). Has your child developed rock-solid B and C game plans? The players who are winning national titles also have solid B and C game plans. Please remind your athletes to rehearse all three styles of play.

Encourage your child to play lesser players in practice sets. This will allow them to rehearse their B and C game plans- often your child’s A plan (hard-hitting baseliners-style) is exactly what the opponent enjoys and playing that system is a losing proposition. Shifting to plan B (steady retriever- style) may be ugly but is the exact system the opponent hates playing against and an extremely difficult match becomes another routine win.

 

Custom Strategy

Custom strategy is your child’s ability to adapt to the day. Your child has to customize to different environmental elements (wind, heat, and shadows), court speeds, brand of ball, elevation as well as the particular strengths and weaknesses of the current opponent (See Opponent Profiling later in this section.)

A common word in the custom strategy phase is tendencies.

To borrow from the boxing world, your child needs to spot what is causing the opponent to “bleed” and then do it more. It is just as important for your child to spot what is causing their own “bleeding” and systematically stop the bleeding.

 

When to Modify versus Change:

If your child is competing well in every game and often has the winning shot on his/her racquet, it is in their best interest to modify their tactics slightly while keeping the current strategic style of play. If they are losing and are not even in the points or games, a much larger shift of complete-game styles may be in order. (For example: Take a bathroom break then change from a hard-hitting baseliner to a steady retriever style of play.)

 

Strategy Basics:

1) Get 66% of your first serves in and preferably into the opponent’s weaker side.
2) Simply return deep balls high, heavy and deep.
3) Attack any ball landing inside your short ball range.
4) Apply the laws of offense, neutral and defensive shot selection.

The Mental Component: Strategies and Tactics- Part 1

Posted on December 27, 2019 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!  Click Here to Order

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THE MENTAL COMPONENTS: STRATEGIES AND TACTICS

 

High-performance athletics demands strong mental skills.  Top competitors regularly train their customized mental game components which are their personal best patterns, strategies, and tactics. Well-rehearsed patterns make for a mentally fit competitor.

STRATEGY MADE EASY

Strategy can be so easy yet so complicated. Strategy is changing, adapting and yet ritualistic.  It is science and art. It is psychological yet physiological. It can be beautiful and oh so ugly. Strategy applied correctly allows your child to meet the opponent under advantageous conditions. Applying strategy keeps your child focused and in the correct optimal performance state of mind.

Let’s look at strategy in a simple but effective format. Below are three categories of on-court strategy that elite players must understand and master: generic, stylistic and customized.

Generic Strategy

Generic strategy is simply applying the player’s core strengths with pre-planned patterns and strategies. The goal is to expose a player’s natural strengths and force their opponent to respond to those strengths. Generic strategy consist of your child’s optimal serving patterns, return patterns, rally patterns, short ball options, and net rushing patterns. These tactics are identified and practiced prior to match play and will be used January through December, from the first round through the finals, in Miami or Moscow, on clay or on hard courts. The Generic strategy is your child’s every day “nuts and bolts” game plan. Learning to apply one’s genetic tactical assault, will lead to your athlete hitting the same old “boring” winners match after match.

If your athlete’s generic (day-in-day-out) strategy is working, there is no need for change. In fact, juniors who change a winning strategy usually suffer the consequences. If it is not working, then it’s simply time to shift into the second phase of strategy called stylistic strategy.

 

 

Finding the Right Teaching Professional – Part 2

Posted on December 22, 2019 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!  Click Here to Order

 

Facts to Consider When Selecting a Pro

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Finding a Pro is easy. Finding the right Pro will require more thought and leg work. You may be using different types of Pros for different reasons. Below are a few insider tips to help you hire your entourage of coaches:

 

  • In every region, only a very small percentage of pros actually teach the top players. (There are very big differences between teachers and recruiters.)
  • Look for a coach who’s enjoying what they do, it’s contagious.
  • Seek out a Pro that is so busy, that they don’t need you.
  • The 10,000-hour rule applies! Being a master coach is a learned experience.
  • Seek out a Pro who understands your child’s unique Brain and Body Type (Genetic Predisposition).
  • Make sure the coach is asking questions, customizing and targeting their lessons.
  • Ask every player that beats your kid, “Great match…who is your coach? Where do you train?”
  • Ask a prospective coach, “We’ve heard great things about you, may we come and observe a few of your lessons?”
  • Pay the coach to chart a match and devise his game plan for improvement. Meet regarding his observations and suggestions.
  • Ask for a resume and who they trained under. (As a teacher- not as a player.)
  • Look for a coach that encourages independent thinking versus dependent thinking.
  • While there are exceptions, a former ATP/WTA challenger player does not always translate into a great teacher. The most successful tennis coaches were not the most successful tour players.
  • Be wary of a Pro that discourages you from hitting with other pros, hitters or trainers!

 

SPECIAL NOTE: To avoid confusion, employ one coach per job at any given time. Two different coaches employed to fix a serve may prove to be extremely confusing for your child. Conflicting information and battling egos spells trouble!

 

“It often proves beneficial to secretly observe a coach or academies without the coaching staff knowing you are a future client.  This experience will provide you with
an honest assessment of their program.”

Finding the Right Teaching Professional

Posted on December 21, 2019 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!  Click Here to Order

 

FINDING THE RIGHT TEACHING PROFESSIONAL

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“When selecting a pro, you’re not just paying for the hour on court…but hopefully, you’re paying for the thousands of hours of experience the coach has acquired solving similar issues.”

 

Initial instructors are usually chosen by proximity, cost, and availability. Once your youngster moves into the competitive stage, it’s time to identify the styles and personalities of coaches that fit your child’s needs. Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to have more than one coach. In this day and age, top players have an entourage of technical teachers, hitters, mental and emotional experts, off-court athleticism experts and physical therapists.  The key to success is unity among the entourage.

 

A great example is ATP star Sam Querrey. When I worked with Sam in his early teens we focused on the mental/emotional side of his development. His parents Chris and Mike always employed a terrific team of hitters, coaches, and clinics to provide world-class instruction for their son.

 

Profiling a coach before a relationship begins is recommended. Most confident coaches will welcome you to simply sit and observe their lessons before committing to lessons. There are many factors to consider when seeking a new coach. The first is what personality and style best suites your athlete?  Listed below are eight types of coaches that you may be employing along your journey.

Coaching Styles:

The Detailed, Analyzer

The Off Court Fitness Expert

The Kind and Fun Loving Coach

The Hitter

The Emotional, Psychological Coach

The Strategizer

The Academy Recruiter

The Drill Sergeant

Keys to Accelerating Learning

Posted on December 18, 2019 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!  Click Here to Order

 

KEYS TO ACCELERATING LEARNING

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How do you take a kid with potential and develop them into a proven champion? What predetermines their success? How do you convince them that they’re special? What factors build passion? How do a parent and coach develop a consistent winner?

 

Let’s use my stepdaughter Sarah Fansler as a quantifiable example of gauging the development of a kid’s potential. Most would agree that Sarah had a flair for the game. She was ranked top in the nation. Sarah won multiple gold, silver and bronze balls. She won a total of 10 U.S. National titles.  She’s played the junior U.S. Open twice and the adult U.S. Open once before the age of 16. She was honored as the NCAA College Freshman of the year while at USC.

Now, let’s uncover her underlying story and take a deeper look at Sarah’s training regimen. As a junior player, Sarah had spent six years training full time. That’s about 20 hours a week or a thousand hours a year practicing in the manner in which she was expected to perform. Sarah only followed a deliberate, customized developmental plan.

Sarah did a private lesson with me from 6:30 am -7:30 am before getting ready for school. Sarah’s after-school regimen included playing full matches against paid college players and/or off-court training at a specialized gym called “Get Fit”, a Vert system off-court training center. After dinner, Sarah and I drilled for an additional hour and a half. On weekends, Sarah played tournaments.

Sarah followed my Customized Player Evaluation (Found in section VII) – a formula for deep accelerated learning. Her training regimen was more intense than the typical training program of an average high-performance player. The hidden factor to her tennis success was her hard work on and off the court each week. The accelerated learning process catapulted Sarah above her rivals.

 

“You can’t simply place your athlete in with the group… if you actually want them to get ahead of the group!”

 

So, was Sarah’s success due to her natural gifts or was it earned through a planned process? My answer is that approximately 20 percent of Sarah’s junior success was due to her natural talents, 80 percent was due to her learned behaviors. The development of life lessons was a major factor.

So talent is actually measured by the preparation before the performance. Often professionals say “I didn’t just win this event today…I won it through the last three months of customized preparation.”

So, my question to the parents and coaches is: What’s your deliberate, customized developmental plan for your athlete?

Navigating the Athlete’s Pathways – Part 2

Posted on December 16, 2019 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!  Click Here to Order

 

Navigating the Athlete’s Pathways – Part 2

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Talent is a kid with potential. No, it’s even more than that. It’s a kid with potential with parents who were deeply involved in the development of skills and the stimulation of passion. So, what does this new definition of talent mean for the rest of us mere mortals? It means that if a child has parents who are determined and passionate about the game and extremely patient and persistent, they’ve got a real shot at greatness!

In every field talent is a learned behavior. What do Wayne Gretsky, Yo-Yo Ma, Bill Gates, Bobby Fischer, Tiger Woods, Mozart, Miley Cyrus, Bruno Mars, and Michelangelo have in common with tennis greats? They were all children who developed a remarkable talent from an early age. A spark became a flame as they persistently developed their talent. What seems now like a god-given natural gift is actually a deliberate, customized learned behavior.

In my opinion, most of the ATP and WTA professionals you watch on television did not demonstrate early phenomenal promise.  You can YouTube most of today’s stars playing tennis at the earliest stages. Guess what you’ll see? A bunch of average-looking kids enjoying the process of learning. They simply were solid athletes, with potential who were nurtured the love for the game.

 

“Talent is determination, passion and persistence.”

 

A question often asked during my tennis parent workshops is, “How do we motivate our athlete?” When it comes to instigating the hunger, it may prove wise to understand what “buttons” to push as you encourage your special athlete. There are two very powerful psychological forces, extrinsic and intrinsic that parents and coaches should identify when motivating their athletes.

Extrinsic Motivation: Implies being motivated by outside forces. Examples include praise- and lots of it!  Belief in their abilities by the entourage, trophies, awards, playing for a D-1 NCAA squad, ensuring a better future, money, and/or fame.

Intrinsic Motivation: Implies being motivated by inner forces. Examples include a love for the mastery of the game, the need to win or the hatred of losing, keeping up with successful siblings, seeing someone just like them succeed so they believe they can also succeed, finding the journey challenging and enjoyable.

 

Navigating the Athlete’s Pathways

Posted on December 14, 2019 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!  Click Here to Order

 

NAVIGATING THE ATHLETE’S PATHWAYS

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Regardless of the stage of development, parents should seek coaches and trainers with high tennis IQ’s and optimistic attitudes- which will stimulate growth and happiness. Hire great educators to join your elite team and they will take your child beyond your wildest dreams.

 

Identifying and Motivating Talent

So, you’ve got a promising young talent, that’s a great start. Now how do you manage that talent, their entourage of coaches, academies, and teams?

Let’s look deeper into the facts and myths of talent. There are a lot of myths surrounding the word “Talent.” If sheer natural talent was gifted to an individual, then the naturally talented would drift to the top without effort. Unfortunately, by the time a junior reaches the competitive stages of the game; their sheer physical talent isn’t enough. Why? Because at the high-performance level, most of their competitors are also solid athletes, but with great work ethic, deep desire and a deliberate, customized developmental plan.

I know… many of you reading this may be thinking:

 

“Yeah but…My kid was endowed by my superior gene pool; they inherited my awesomeness …so they are obviously destined for greatness.”

 

While that may be true, success at the higher level demands a bit more than genes. It takes years and years of applying a customized deliberate developmental plan.

Talent is considered by most to be a genetic predisposition, a sense of natural ability handed down through the family gene pool. Expert educators in various fields agree that every decade one truly gifted individual walks through their doors. Does this mean that most truly successful people aren’t genuinely talented or does it mean that talent is more than merely good genes?

“Junior talent is only a foreshadowing of  future greatness.”

 

Managing Accelerated Learning -Part Two

Posted on December 12, 2019 by in The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!  Click Here to Order

Managing Accelerated Learning -Part Two

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“A common mistake I witness around the globe is the obsession of focusing solely on acquiring perfect fundamental strokes in a block learning environment.”

 

I recommend introducing multi-tasking drills and problem-solving situations as soon as possible. This is a form of stimuli overload. Examples include: Adding a stress-related emotional element to a stroke production drill. Combine on-court quickness with a specific sequence of patterns. By overloading the athlete’s stimuli in practice, the uncomfortable becomes more comfortable. Being okay with feeling uncomfortable prepares the player for the integrated approach needed in match play.

Different sports require different brain functions and development. A world-class figure skater or gymnast simply focuses on recreating the exact sequence. Their performance goal is to match their exact predetermined routine. In their performance they only recreate, they don’t create. So, would they train with flexible-skill sets? Not likely.

Should a tennis player train flexible-skill sets? You bet! Playing sports like basketball, hockey, soccer or tennis are requires random split-second decisions making skills. It’s about adaptation, creativity, spotting options and aborting missions. Flexibility and millisecond decision making “on the fly” are critical functions in flexible skillset dominate sports.

Managing Accelerated Learning

Posted on December 9, 2019 by in The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!  Click Here to Order

MANAGING ACCELERATED LEARNING

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It’s our job as tennis coaches and parents to organize accelerated learning.

“Accelerated learning is the art and science of applying quality over quantity.”

Accelerated learning starts with you, the parent. The first step in managing the process is digesting the information presented in The Tennis Parent’s Bible. Once you have immersed yourself into the process of athletic development, you are better equipped to assist your coaches in prioritizing and accelerating your athlete’s learning curve.

A marvelous example of applying accelerated learning is recognizing when the athlete should stop focusing solely on block learning repetition and shift to the multi-tasking harmony of integrating each component together.  Accelerated learning starts with managing the development of consistent skillsets through flexible skills training.

Consistent skill set training is simply focusing on developing one component of the athlete’s game in isolation.  Examples include:

  • A motor programming sequences that need to be followed to ensure a sound fundamental stroke.
  • A specific mental strategic-shot sequencing pattern designed to beat a retriever.
  • An emotional protocol rehearsed to help close out a 5-2 lead.
  • An athletic component such as agility around the tennis court.

Flexible skillset training is integrating the “games approach” to learning. High-level tennis players have been taught to quickly quantify game situations, make multiple pre-set situational decisions and execute the correct responses. Cognitive processing skills need to be integrated early.

 

“A common mistake I witness around the globe is the obsession of focusing solely on acquiring perfect fundamental strokes in a block learning environment.”

 

I recommend introducing multi-tasking drills and problem-solving situations as soon as possible. This is a form of stimuli overload. Examples include: Adding a stress-related emotional element to a stroke production drill. Combine on-court quickness with a specific sequence of patterns. By overloading the athlete’s stimuli in practice, the uncomfortable becomes more comfortable. Being okay with feeling uncomfortable prepares the player for the integrated approach needed in match play.

Different sports require different brain functions and development. A world-class figure skater or gymnast simply focuses on recreating the exact sequence. Their performance goal is to match their exact predetermined routine. In their performance they only recreate, they don’t create. So, would they train with flexible-skill sets? Not likely.

Should a tennis player train flexible-skill sets? You bet! Playing sports like basketball, hockey, soccer or tennis are requires random split-second decisions making skills. It’s about adaptation, creativity, spotting options and aborting missions. Flexibility and millisecond decision making “on the fly” are critical functions in flexible skillset dominate sports.