Effective coaching means different things for different people–if you teach everyone the same you are headed for trouble. Here are a couple of things that happened to me recently. Two athletes, two different issues, but both athletes had injuries. Because of their injuries I modified their mechanics and I modified their serve. What is the sense of continuing to reinforce an old injury that will not go away?
I had to come up with a solution to both issues. It came with mechanics and serve.
Now if you are a coach, you have to be creative. Too many coaches use a cookie cutter approach to game management.
Example: Years ago a hall of fame player asked me for advice in a close tie-breaker in the nationals. Since I played this guy all the time I told him he went to the ceiling 98% of the time off the serve. I simply told him to shoot the first serve opportunity he got. He did, he got the serve, and he won.
However, conventional wisdom would have told him to keep going to the ceiling. Could he have won that way? Maybe, but he was not winning that way in the tie-breaker.
Creative coaching and thinking outside the box dictates changing it up and going for it.
Here is another. Super Coach tells me he wanted his athlete to serve to his opponent’s strength in a 10-10 tiebreaker. The reason? To catch this opponent by surprise.
My thought? Are you crazy? Match point make the athlete beat you with their worse shot. That is exactly what happened but giving them their favorite shot at match point is not being creative; it is over-thinking.
Create but do not-over-create!