No-Brainer-Get A Trainer!
If your goal is to not be concerned about fitness in a competitive match, you have to be concerned about fitness in practice! In plain English, your practices have to be physically harder than your tournament play!” I often recommend my athletes get a personal trainer. These trainers are an interesting breed of cat. They […]
Side Switching Doubles
Today’s Tip of the comes from an email asking me if switching sides in doubles has any advantages. The reader is referring to the practice of “double serving” one side of the opponent’s doubles team. My answer is yes, in some cases there is a distinct advantage to the double serve tactic. Case in point: […]
Timeout! Now? Later?
When should I call a timeout? This one I get quite a bit. The problem is, there are no definitive rules for this. Each game and each match is an entity of its own with its own set of rules. I think you have to “feel out” a situation. I like to have my athlete […]
Be a Good Detective
Be a good detective! Next time you play someone watch carefully during the warmup. You can find a lot out about a player by how they warmup. Are they hitting any backhand ceiling balls? No? Well probably they cannot execute that very well. (Okay outdoor players-please resist the temptation to bust my chops here). […]
Side-Steppin’ Blues
One of my athletes is playing in a tournament and they get advice from a Coaching contemporary of mine. This coach is telling my athlete to step to the side wall to hit a backhand. My athlete tries to explain they are coached by me and Coach does not like stepping to the side wall. […]
Shot Selection-Senior vs Junior!
I have the luxury of working with several up and coming players. As my junior players start to play open, one thing stands out and that is shot selection. Case in point: This morning I am going over a video vs a national level age division player. My junior athlete is getting schooled. My junior […]
Get Better, Faster!
Things to help you win more. Lately I have been very busy because the players who come to me are moving up in the world at all levels and their improvement has been noticed. When I take on a new player, I work as hard as I can to get them sizeable skill improvement because […]
Coach Helping Coaches
Some time ago I was asked by a parent to write five things to say to a junior player during a time out. That is hard to do but I will attempt it. 1. Calm him or her–winning or losing-calming remarks. 2. Calming remarks are different things to different people. What might be a […]
Happy Feet
An old friend of mine was working on their PHD and rapidly became an expert on athletic movement. Since I used to coach this athlete, they knew I’d be excited about the knowledge they were picking up. So this person calls me and immediately we launch into an in-depth conversation about court movement and athletic […]
Build Your Mission Statement
Want to get mentally tougher? Why not build your own acronym? An acronym is a collection of letters that stands for something but forms a word. PUP-I put this on my shoe and folks thought I was an animal lover. I am, but PUP stood for Poise under pressure. Often in tight matches I would […]