In the last five years I have had the chance to work a lot with teenagers between 12 and 18.
We ask the kids to be focused, to have a certain mental endurance and maintain focus for a long period of time on and off the court every day. If you then look at their reality and how they live on a daily basis, it’s not that at all. They are extremely smart, and they are able to multitask. They do a lot of things, sometimes even at the same time.
They have the capacity to watch a video and study at the same time. They can change from one task to another with a capacity that I’m completely not able to do, which I find extremely interesting.
When you then put them in a situation on the court where they are asked to focus for a long period of time that is extremely difficult for them because outside of the court in the daily routine they don’t have that same clear structure and they don’t need to be concentrated for extent periods of time. Compared to 20 years ago I believe that this is one of the biggest challenges for tennis coaches when coaching junior players.
The amount of information that Junior Players or even professionals have to deal with in today’s society is so big. An amount of data that junior players are not yet old or mature enough to manage.
The brain cannot yet process all of the information and the brain is not fully formed yet.
Therefore, we have to remember as tennis coaches that we can’t coach like we did 20 years ago anymore. It’s not because the kids are not smart, or they don’t care or mentally that they are not able to concentrate, but on a daily basis they are not used to concentrate for longer periods of time anymore.
So as Tennis Coach you need to find a way to keep players in the same topic without making them feel like they are doing the same thing all the time, which is very challenging. That’s why it’s really difficult today to put in structure in a young tennis player.
(Inspired by the podcast episode #73: “Creating a Coaching Relation” w. Carlos Rodriquez on The Adam Blicher Show — Dissecting High Performance in Tennis)
Want to listen to the full episode: http://shorturl.at/jktA8
