1. Be “Pro” Active

Sure you have been teaching for years and may not need a lesson plan. But just as you would prepare to play a match, you still would need to review.  So, have a game plan for your student or opponent and think about your last lesson or match with this person and what needs to be done for this encounter to be special.

*See the Road Map – Check your day timer to visualize your schedule for the day so you can “see” your roadmap for the day. Be ready by arriving early to get your teaching basket, cones, targets and toys in place and take them to the court before your first lesson ever arrives.

*A State of Mind – when you have your equipment ready and your road map for the day in your head, it is time to prepare both the mind and body.  Prepare for the day like you would for a tournament match.  Get warmed up by going to the gym, ride the stationary bike, hit the rowing machine or do some dynamic stretching as you teach your students.  Prepare for today’s performance with your mind and body engaged for the events of the day.

*Get the Team Involved – Be sure to notify the front desk or staff of any expected guests who may come by to see you during the day.  Tell the desk where to send them and what time you will be available to meet with them.  Have a copy of your schedule available so staff can fill lesson times for you. They can advise clients when you will have breaks to answer questions. The front desk and staff do not like to be surprised by questions they cannot answer.  If you cannot meet with other teaching staff members before you start, leave them notes as to things you need done, or items to be aware of during the day or changes to previous plans.

2.  Prevention -The Best Cure

Injuries often come quickly but they are usually a result of cumulative effects of many small dings and nicks.  Most often injuries occur because of the lack of a proper warm up that prepares the body to move quickly and in balance. A small injury here will put stress there and recovery time begins to add up, affecting your confidence level and your desire to stay on the court.

*Get it warm – Get it right.  Even the way you walk can be a warm up.  Walk on the balls of your foot, lift teaching equipment as though it were a heavy object with your feet apart, back straight and using the legs to lift.  Go through the motions for all your strokes (physical rehearsal) to loosen up and prepare the muscles you will be using in your lessons.

*Safety always. As you begin your warm up with the students, move your feet like you ask and expect them to do.  Take 8-10 small adjusting steps between each volley and groundstroke like the playing pros.  Be aware of loose tennis balls in your area of movement as well as the area around the students.

3. Be Effective and Efficient

*Effective Ways to Feed – change your position.  Avoid feeding from the middle of the court near the service line all the time.  In a match, the ball seldom comes from that depth or position in the court.  Adjust your feeding position so the next feed ball comes back to your student from the angle that an actual rallied ball would be coming from.  If you feed a ball cross court to a student and ask them to return the ball down the line then your next ball to them should come from the down the line position, not from the initial cross court feed position.

Feed the ball as a volley if the student would be seeing your match play ball come to them as a volley and not a groundstroke.  If you are feeding from a position that would be a ground stroke, feed from a bounce and hit feed position.

*Effective Ways to Reduce Stress When Feeding – hold your body in a balanced or neutral position of posture.  Avoid slouching over with your shoulders rotated inward and your hips tucked under your body.

As a right handed feeder, feed balls with the right foot slightly forward of the left foot. Place the feed ball forward of your right foot and right hip using your left hand to feed.  This will create a contact point that will allow you to use your core, legs and hip rotation and not just your forearm.  Now your feed ball can be contacted in a match play point of contact.  Keep your shoulders back and your head centered over your body for a stress free feeding position.

*Efficient Feeding Tension.  When feeding, the tension level in your hitting hand should be around level 1 or 2 on a scale of 5. As you feed balls to your students, practice feeding with an early point of contact.  Try to fully extend your arm on ground stroke feeds after point of contact. Use your lower body to help propel the stroke instead of just your hands and arms.  This will take the stress out of the arm and elbow and distribute the work load to larger muscles like the core and lower extremities.

*Efficient Positioning of the Teaching Cart.  For a right handed feeder, keep the basket on your left hand side so you do not have to reach across your body to get the next ball from the basket.  Keep the teaching cart square to the net so that balls returned by your students do not bounce inward and hit you.  Never feed with the cart directly in front of you as balls may bounce off the cart and contact you in the eye, chest or face.

*More Efficient Positioning the Teaching Cart. Move the teaching cart with you as you go around the court so you can have immediate access to balls to demonstrate a point or feed a ball to a player. Use a “Slinghopper” on your hip that can hold up to 30 balls when you are coaching so you do not need to be tied to the teaching cart.  This item allows you to roam around the courts with tennis balls at you’re your immediate call.  Place the teaching cart well behind a group of players so they will have to move directly back to get balls for the next drill.  This will keep them from walking into the path of racquets or moving players.  This also keeps drills moving quickly and safely.

4. Making Teaching a “Moving Experience”.

*Move for Realistic Feed Drills.  Move around the court when you feed so players can receive balls from the same direction as they would be returned by their opponents.  This moving to feed can keep you from getting stale and stiff.  Players who only receive balls fed from one position on the court seldom can react well to points played in a match.  All of a sudden balls are coming from angles they never experienced in their lessons.

*Experience the Movement in Private and Group Lessons.  Move your feet as though you were playing the point.  This would mean 6-10 steps between each ball that you feed or hit to your students.  You will be amazed how your conditioning improves – while on the court.  And your students need to experience a ball coming from an opponent who is moving instead of standing in one place to play shots. The extra movement by you is part of training them to focus on the ball and avoid the distraction of seeing the opponent moving.

*Proper Position for a Proper View. When students are feeding their own drills or hitting “live” balls with another player, walk around the court to observe each student from the side and behind.  You will be amazed at what you can see from different angles.  This also allows you time to use your softer private lesson voice in a group situation as well as your more commanding group voice.

*Stay Involved Every Hour. Think of how many hours you are on the court teaching each day.  If you are moving as a player, in balance with small adjusting steps, you will teach your way into shape.  Seldom is there a more “stiffening” activity than standing and teaching for 6-10 hours a day.  You can hardly move at the end of the day.  When it is pick up time, do “split step and pick up” drills with your students or “lunge and pick up” drills.  Your students will learn the dreaded “spit step” with out realizing in and you will stay loose and add strength to your own legs.  “Do as you ask them to do!”

*Keeping a Cardio Record. Wear a cardio watch that tells you when you are in your cardio zone and how many calories you burn in an hour.  You can keep a record for the day and even download it onto your computer daily.  This will amaze you and motivate you to stay in motion on the court.  Try a Pedo-meter that tells you how far you walked today – get moving.

5. Eye Awareness

*Protection from sun and balls.  Wear special glasses designed for tennis.  The kerosene red lenses are great for tennis.  They do not reduce depth perception and they highlight the color yellow with out affecting your ability to drive on the highway with them.  They even allow you to see the ball in shaded areas and are often used by cyclist who needs to see objects in the road when riding in and out of shadows.

Lenses that are too dark make depth perception difficult.  Mirrored glasses make eye contact impossible and give the appearance of a highway patrolman. If you do wear sunglasses, take them off or drop them down when you talk to your students.  Eye contact shows your sincerity and is essential in communication.

*Practice Match Play Eyes.  When you are not feeding a fast paced volley drill, you can practice your “match play” eyes.  Look at the ball as you drop it to feed a ground stroke or toss it up to feed a volley.  See the ball or the “yellow streak” as it leaves your racquet just like you would in a match.  There is plenty of time to see your student move, prepare and contact the ball after a feed.  When your student sends the ball back to you, track the ball like in a match. Your secondary vision will allow you to read your student’s movement. You can still see all the essentials for teaching yet practice as you would read the ball and situation in a match

6. Develop a Synergized Team

*Plan time to celebrate with your staff. Whether it’s a birthday party, a    successful event or special occasion, plan an event to get together with your staff.  Congratulate them for all they do, help them to see where you are headed with your programs and how they can be a key part in the growth.

*Reward Outstanding Performance. Be quick to recognize staff that step up and go above the standard you have helped them to establish themselves in customer service.  Post pictures of all the staff so members recognize them by name and face, post something about them – where they are from, where they go to school, or recent achievements.

*Keep the Roadmap in front of them. Have your mission statement posted, review your goals and mission in staff meetings.  Let the staff be a part of helping to create the roadmap, they all bring different points of view to your business and how to grow it.

7. Networking for Your Safety Net

*Become the Resource Center for your Students.  Identify key people at your club, school or center who might help your students.  Attorneys, doctors, chiropractors, deep tissue professionals, real estate agents, mechanics etc. are examples of professions whom your students often seek recommendations.  During lessons, the conversation can turn to needs your students have in their real life.  You can become the information center for your students and increase your value in their eyes.

*Preparing for your Second Career.  Just as many people prepare to leave their current jobs and retire to teach tennis, a teaching professional you may also discover your second life’s calling from all the people you meet.  Because of their communication skills and extensive client base, tennis pros are often recruited by businessmen to join businesses outside of tennis.  While I may never leave the teaching profession, I have recruited many of students to become tennis teaching professionals.  In fact, 80% of all my teaching staff in my 35 years of teaching has come from club members.  They have experienced success with my method of teaching, shown an interest in tennis, have displayed an aptitude for sharing knowledge and motivating others.

*Loving your Life.  Can you believe it?  Your friends come to visit and they bring you money.  You are outside most of the day in the beautiful weather, incredible scenery and working with people who want to hear what you have to say.

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What is important is to make our day to day living the path that leads to our dreams. To go some where you must first decide where it is you would like to go. Once that is decided, you can now decide how you want to get there and how fast it needs to happen. Know that there will be challenges along the way, things you forgot to consider, road closures and distractions from your destination.

How you deal with these “disconnections” will be determined by your resolve, your commitment to your destination and plan of action. Most of us are driven by the need to just survive each day. But let’s say you really want to be more in control of your life and where you are headed.

Here are 3 steps to help you:

1. Take a look at where you are now. You can’t decide where to go until you determine where you are now. Let’s say you are a club player rated 3.5.
2. How long have you been there? Are you recently bumped to that level or have you been that level player for the past 4 years.
3. Where do you want to be? Your goal is to become a 4.5 player.

Once you have determined where you are on the map and where you want to go you can begin to determine your course for getting there. How long you have been where you are will be the motivation for moving to the new destination.

Here are 3 questions that will help in deciding what your path might be:

1. Potential, do you have the athletic or supreme resolve to get where you want to be?
2. Resources, do you have the financial, professional, friend or family support to help make this happen? Do you have the necessary network?
3. Time, do you have the time to begin the journey full time or do you need to do it part time for a period of time?

Now that you have taken inventory of these questions, let’s see what will help keep you on your path on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Here are 7 factors to consider:

1. Motivation, what is your true motivation for your decision? Is it fame, money, pride, or sense of achievement?
2. Improved skills, is there a plan on how you will develop the improved skills necessary to continue your journey?
3. Support system, do you have a network of people that you can confide in, ask questions, and want to see you succeed in difficult times?
4. Recognize nay-sayers, do you know how to avoid situations and people who will try to discourage you along the way? There are many who do not want you to pass them on your way and many who cannot see what you see.
5. Create a winning environment, create a visual on the wall of others who have succeeded, read motivational biographies, talk to “can do” people and tell others of your plan so they can help you keep your commitment.
6. Create a reward system, just like you have to plan rest stops on your trip, take time to reward your self for progress made.
7. Re-evaluate and recommit, take time to look how far you have come, rest and go again with renewed energy.

The achievement of your goal will be a journey with many unexpected interruptions, challenges, achievements and surprises along the way. Should you reach your goal, you may find it was the journey that was as satisfying as the achievement of you destination.

The important part of a resolution is the process of evaluation, the commitment to make a change and the courage to make it happen.

My tennis resolutions for 2009 are 3:

1. Play tennis 3 times a week
2. Have a conditioning plan for strength, flexibility and speed
3. Keep a journal of my tennis journey to help my awareness of my journey and to be able to reflect upon my experiences

What are your tennis resolutions for 2009?

Happy New Year to you, may 2009 be the year you do!

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