I’m a firm believer that the training to a great extent should simulate especially movement patterns and the general way you’re going to be playing in a match.

Now, it doesn’t mean you don’t do drills that overload you. You have to do a variety of movement patterns. ‘ll take, for example, approaching the net. You have a coach that is feeding you a ball on one corner of the court and they feed it to you. Crosscourt and you hit the approach down the line and the coach feeds the next ball from that crosscourt position. Your whole movement and the following ball is completely disrupted.

It may look good on the sideline if they’re feeding you 5 balls and you’re running and moving, but in reality, you’re unlearning the positioning. The reading of the ball off the racket and how you should approach the ball. It completely messes you up, even though it looks good.

That’s the kind of attention to detail in drilling and training I’d like to have. So, I would rather see say it, coach, feed the ball, cross you go down the line and you have an opponent there so that you learn to time your split step. You position yourself according to where your approach shot landed and then you see the court as you would in a match situation.

Having said that, I love overloading sometimes

For example, while a player stands inside the baseline while I am volleying at them and they have to hit groundstrokes right back at me. The objective there is for them to be quicker and to be able to handle the short reaction time. That’s a positive type of overloading. I don’t want to do things that are going to inadvertently have a player unlearn movement patterns that they would use in a match.

Want to listen to the full episode w. Nick Saviano👇🏻
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