At the time, I was deeply immersing myself in topics related to motor learning - and experimenting with this player in particular (he was quite open to new ideas).
One area that stood out to me was the topic of feedback - and its impact on learning.
Viewing entries tagged
forehand
There are no shortages of training videos these days. Just open your Instagram or Facebook app and within seconds you’ll be inundated with more drills than you know what to do with.
The question is, will these drills help your tennis?
This is a sample of a lesson from my new resource - Beyond the Swing: Online Tennis Course. The course is set to release this week. Stay tuned for more info.
While there’s nothing normal about the current competitive tennis calendar, a few of my players are in a situation where they’re able to play a competitive league - organized by Tennis Canada.
I received several replies and comments from last week’s post on ‘why was I late’. Some of these were more ‘technical’ in nature. Others focused on the perceptual abilities that tennis demands (which if you haven’t noticed already, I can’t stress enough).
I recently wrote an article for ALTIS - an education platform & elite athlete training facility - where I outlined how I use their Kinogram Method with tennis players.
What I didn’t do in that post, however, was show a step-by-step approach of how to actually develop a kinogram - which is what I’m going to do here.
By this point, if you’re a tennis player, it’s no secret that you’re itching to get on the tennis court. Who wouldn’t be? It’s that time of year. Warmer weather. Flowers blooming. Outdoor tennis is around the corner.
Unfortunately, however, many players go about it the wrong way. Most, after a long layoff, are so eager to get back to the tennis court, they schedule multiple sessions that first week. Not only that, they’re so fired up that they hold nothing back. Running from side to side, hitting with that new found strength they’ve developed over the winter.
Over the years, whenever I’ve been in the weight room with young male tennis players, the following question always seemed to come up - “when are we going to bench?”. No surprise here as most teen boys are eager to work on their ‘pecs’ (and in case you’re wondering, it’s not to improve tennis performance).
But is there a place for the bench press in the training programs of tennis players? There are many that believe it’s completely useless; some even take it to the point where programming push-ups for players is taboo (FYI, doing push-ups for tennis isn’t bad; doing poor push-ups, with incorrect technique, at the wrong times, and in excess, is bad...but more on that rant in another post). Others do bench 3x a week, trying to get that ‘pump’ feeling.
Many in tennis are fanatical about technique. Everything from a player’s grip, to their elbow placement on the forehand, to the degree of knee bend on the serve and everything in between. Some coaches take it to the point where you need a ruler, a protractor (and perhaps a PhD) just to analyze a basic groundstroke.
While I too believe that technique and mechanics play a vital role when it comes to playing high calibre tennis, we must respect the uniqueness of each individual. Take any 2 players on tour and compare them side by side, you’ll notice that variations exist - even when attempting to execute the same shot!