When I was in elementary school I enjoyed completing mazes. I had numerous books filled with these intricate puzzles that I would enthusiastically devour, maneuvering from start to finish as quickly and accurately as possible. When these books were completed I began making my own mazes, and I filled the backs of all my school notebooks with this confusing, winding graffiti.
Some of these mazes I developed became so complicated and convoluted that I couldn’t even remember the safe pathway through. Determined to conquer my own creations, I eventually found a solution to my problem. By approaching these highly difficult mazes from the finish and working my way to the start, I discovered I could navigate the puzzle successfully.
On the tennis court we are constantly presented with ever evolving challenges and, as I found with mazes, occasionally you need to look to the end in order to know where to start. Learning to approach our challenges from an opposing perspective can help to provide clarity to difficult situations, which in turn can assist in troubleshooting your tennis game. The following are a few of my favorite ways to view two common coaching challenges in order to help my students navigate their individual tennis mazes.
Start with the Whole
One of the most common challenges that I believe goes overlooked on a daily basis can be found in how coaches structure the daily individual and group practices for their students. My observation here isn’t a negative reflection on the preparation of the professional or their lesson plans. Rather, it’s more of a fundamental approach in how I believe the deepest skill acquisition is achieved.
For example, often I will see coaches conduct their lessons by focusing on a technical or tactical skill that they want their students to achieve through a closed drilling component, and then attempt to apply this skill into an open competitive game environment. There is nothing inherently wrong in structuring one’s teaching in this closed to open manner, and sometimes it’s completely necessary. However, I’ve found the learning to be far more effective and lasting if one employs a game based approach moving from an open to a closed environment, and then progressing back out to the original open scenario.
By starting with the whole and then narrowing the focus as necessary, I’ve observed that both the students and I have a better understanding of what skills and tactics are successful versus unsuccessful in their games. This allows us to spend our time more wisely on court and to attack the issues that will provide the greatest gains in their competitive games. Frequently, the student will become aware of their most glaring shortcomings without me even informing them, which provides the added benefit of creating a tremendous amount of investment and buy-in on the student’s part when we do have to break things down technically or tactically to a fundamental level.
Furthermore, in my experience how you train is how you play when it comes to competition, so I want my students to have a sense of that competition right from the start of our lessons. In a closed to open environment you are prioritizing skill acquisition over skill application, which can lead to the pitfall of becoming too involved with technical/tactical minutia, or a “failing to see the forest for the trees” type scenario.
Unquestionably, a strong technical foundation is essential to competitive tennis success, but the pursuit of technique is a means to an end, not the end in itself. I want my students to develop a broader conception of their individual competitive tennis games, and then break that down into the need and purpose of learning specific techniques. By approaching these daily practices with the end goal in mind, you treat skill application and skill acquisition in a more symbiotic way, which helps these students to become great competitors, thinkers and ball strikers.
Strengths and Weaknesses
A second common trap I witness players falling into on court is placing an overemphasis on weaknesses instead of strengths. While an acknowledgement of personal shortcomings is undoubtedly necessary for improvement, only focusing on weaknesses instead of strengths can prove to be incredibly limiting.
Whenever I work with a student the first thing I attempt to do is help them identify their greatest strengths as a player, and then I try to devise a plan to utilize these strengths as much as possible. Taking this alternative approach helps to focus my student’s energy on what they do well, which immediately provides structure to their competitive games and psychologically instills confidence in their skills. Ultimately, by keeping the end in mind I’m assisting my students’ development as players who understand what they need to do to win, rather than emphasizing what they need to do to avoid losing.
Once the student appropriately prioritizes their strengths and understands how to apply them effectively they are better prepared to tackle their shortcomings. How we address weakness is one of our most daunting challenges, and once again I attempt to approach this situation with the end in mind.
Essentially, my final goal is for my students to be able to execute, self-correct, and train their weaknesses as effectively as possible without my supervision. In other words, the student should be able to expertly teach this skill to others, and I need to teach myself out of a job!
Therefore, after the initial corrections have been addressed, instead of providing regular feedback on what isn’t happening I attempt to have the student explain what should be happening. By providing as few negative observations as possible and reframing my observations as effective guiding questions, I’ve found my students learn how to find solutions instead of merely rehearsing their problems. Furthermore, these students develop greater ownership over their training as well as a more optimistic outlook towards their challenges, crucial elements for success on court.
Competitive tennis provides endless challenges and how we view our problems on court is essential to developing effective solutions. As players and coaches, looking at situations from a fresh perspective is crucial to navigating the twists and turns in our personal tennis labyrinths, and sometimes the end is precisely where you need to start.