What normally happens in the first lesson after a tournament?
The player comes back after a tournament and the coach asks:
“What was good and what was less good in the tournament?”
Often times the topic of the lesson will then normally be built on the things the player is less good at doing.
We think in the coaches’ team, that we should build the lessons much more on the strengths of the players
- It will build the players confidence
- It will build motivation
- It will keep them hungry to go play the next match, play the next opponent
We as coaches need to be clever enough to integrate the weaknesses, but the player doesn’t even need to realize it. So, the idea is to build their strength and to integrate the weaknesses. We are convinced the weaknesses will benefit the most in that way and then the motivation of the player is much better. Their confidence will grow and hopefully during the next match he will come back with new feedback to build on.
We need to think in the process of a whole year and the process of the development of 6–7 years between t12–18. We have to build their strength much more and discuss their weaknesses far less with the players. Doesn’t mean we don’t practice them, but throughout the lessons our communication is generally more over the strengths. We hope and we believe that the fun of playing tennis is a little bit higher. We believe building on strengths is the engine. That’s the drive for each player to become a better player.
How to break it down?
It’s not only the discussions on court, but equally so off court, in media analyses. If we check a match or part of a match where we filmed, it. So, it needs to be a culture to integrate it into the discussion with the player in this case, we think, and we hope, and we are convinced that the players will have a benefit.
Including parents
All these 12 principles will finally go on the home page. So, it means it should be open for the whole community. Swiss tennis and the community are the parents, the players and the coaches.
It’s very important to integrate the environment around the players. The parents need to understand all these points, because after a tournament, maybe the parent saw the match and they saw there were a lot of double faults, but then see at the practice court that we keep practicing the first serve because it’s a strong point of the player.
So, the parents, they don’t understand what’s going on, on the practice court, they will get confused. So, the parents, need to be integrated in the idea of how practice sessions are created why we do what we do when we do it.
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