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Embracing Your Tennis Identity

Posted on September 11, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The Tennis Parent’s Bible
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Embracing Your Tennis Identity

Each individual brings a unique set of physical attributes, personality traits, and playing preferences to the court. As you progress in your journey, embrace your superpowers and tailor your performance style to align with your strengths and personality.

“Be smart enough to find yourself and brave enough to be yourself.”

3.1 Building Your Tennis Identity

Staying true to yourself emphasizes the importance of authenticity in developing a tennis identity. Training to play the systems that align with your personality profile maximizes potential. Embracing your personality on-court enhances enjoyment and fulfillment.

3.2 Exploring Different Styles of Play in Tennis

Your tennis identity begins with choosing the right style of play that fits your personality and body type. High-performance athletes develop their A-plan as well as a contingency plan. You’ll apply both nature and nurture to maximize your potential. So, who are you?

  1. Hard-hitting baseliners:

The characteristics of this style focus on leveraging baseline play to control rallies and set up strategic points. Ground stroke power is their weapon of choice. 

  • All-Court Players:

These individuals apply their versatility, adapting to various situations. These athletic individuals blend baseline play and net-rushing tactics to keep opponents guessing.

  • Retrievers:

These counterpunchers thrive on getting every ball back with their patience and incredible court speed. They’re happy to force errors and let their opponents self-destruct.

  • Net Rushers:

These powerful athletes are known for their aggressive net approach. They prefer short points as they pressure opponents and finish points at the net.

A typical battle cry from parents and coaches is, “Play Your Game!” Knowing your true tennis identity is your game. Practicing in the manner you’re expected to perform is “situational training.” Replace the typical grooving strokes with situational rehearsals that align with your game.

3.3 Developing Your Signature Shots and Strategies

Signature Shots and patterns are your go-to preferred plays. Exposing your strengths is a proactive approach. Everyone has signature shots; applying them on big points is a great strategic intention. Plan on spending a lot of time developing and strengthening your weapons.

3.4 Leveraging Innate Qualities

Identifying your strengths begins with reflecting on the four pillars of the game (strokes, athleticism, mental and emotional). Begin by deciding to capitalize on your strengths in the four pillars of the game. Addressing weaknesses starts with an honest assessment of the game’s four pillars. Work with your coaches to design targeted training programs to overcome those weaknesses.

3.5 The Impact of Mental and Emotional Alignment

Embracing the development of your software components is a key aspect of peak performance. Understanding strengths and weaknesses in your mental(thinking) and emotional (feeling) components is essential. Hire an experienced mental coach to help align your playing style with your personality leads to a more harmonious experience.

Chapter 3 has emphasized the significance of embracing individuality and tailoring a unique tennis style that aligns with your strengths, preferences, and personality traits. As you build your tennis identity, stay true to yourself. Nurture a style that brings joy and fulfillment to your game.

By combining individuality with strategic adaptability, you’ll create a distinctive playing style that sets you on the path to success in the world of high-performance tennis.

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Tennis and the Foundation of Talent

Posted on September 8, 2023 by in The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The Tennis Parent’s Bible
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 The Foundation of Talent

Recognizing that a combination of factors shapes the path to greatness is essential. While grit, patience, and great coaching play a significant role, it is equally important to acknowledge the role of genetics in developing your talent. Let’s explore the science involved in shaping your tennis identity. The fascinating world of genetic predispositions lays the foundation of your inborn talents that you’ll apply in customizing your best style of play.

“You don’t have to suffer from what’s happening to you, but you do have to suffer to become what you choose to be.”

1.1 The Role of Genetics in Athletic Abilities

Genetics, the blueprint of life, holds information that dictates your physical, mental, and emotional attributes. As we look at renowned athletes across various sports, it becomes evident that certain genetic traits contribute to their success. In the realm of tennis, genetic factors significantly impact your performance.

1.3 Physical and Mental Attributes

From a physical standpoint, genetic factors like height, body composition, and muscle fiber type impact your style of play. Fast-twitch muscle fibers are applied to explosive movements and serve velocity. Genetics influence your hand-eye coordination, balance, and agility. From the mental side, there are genetic links to your cognitive abilities and decision-making skills on court. There’s also a connection between genetics and mental resilience during high-pressure situations. Your genetics play a role in your temperament and patience in tennis performance.

1.4 Identifying Genetic Traits

Recognizing traits relevant to tennis can provide valuable insights into your development. Athletes within the same peer group all possess different physical, mental, and emotional attributes. For example, Josh is extremely patient- a factor in his retriever persona. Rebecca’s natural quickness aids in her court coverage. Peter is impatient, so hit shot tolerance is low. Discovering your inborn talents is key to organizing development and tennis identity.

1.5 Inheriting Traits

Physical, mental, and emotional genetic characteristics often pass on from generation to generation. Heredity plays a role in your tennis “makeup.” Your genetic predisposition is an increased likelihood of developing particular strengths and weaknesses. For example: If Kelly’s father has ADHD, it’s likely that she may also possess inherited focus concerns in competition.

1.6 Nature’s Impact on Athleticism

Certain genetic predispositions shape your physical talents in competition. Genetics play a role in your height, coordination, and movement capabilities. It drives your unique metabolism, recovery speed and is responsible for your predisposition to injuries. There’s a fascinating relationship between your genetic traits and the synchronization of your brain-body connection.

1.7 Leveraging Your Genetic Advantage

Customization of your physical, mental, and emotional training is key. Research shows that matching one’s style of play with their genetic predisposition found three times better results than those with mismatched training plans. It’s obvious that the old-school, one size fits all approach to training is obsolete.

We’ve explored the foundational role of genetic predispositions in tennis. While genetics lays the groundwork for your potential, it’s essential to remember that genetic factors do not solely determine success in tennis. Hard work, determination, and the correct nurturing environment provided by coaches and family play an equally critical role. Recognize and leverage your genetic advantages. Train within your genetic blueprint. By combining nature and nurture, you’ll set the path to maximizing your potential.

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Tennis- The Psychology of Listening

Posted on August 10, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The Psychology of Tennis Parenting
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The Psychology of Listening

For a youngster to mentally process your message, the athlete must pay attention to the essence of the ideas. Most children never get past their parent’s tone of voice and nonverbal clues. Digesting the message isn’t easy for most junior athletes. Once the message is perceived as negative, they stop listening. So use a bit of reverse psychology and apply optimistic solutions instead of the laundry list of their problems. This method detaches the athlete from their ego.

Young athletes are typically lost in their judgmental thoughts, so the listener often distorts the message.

“One who understands what to say has knowledge; one who understands when to say it has wisdom.”

Magnifying the negative and forgetting the positive is a typical communication obstruction. Every athlete, parent, and coach have a unique communication style. There are four basic communication styles (passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, and dominating). It’s important to understand that if your style isn’t working, change your communication system to fit your listener.

Solution: Understand your communication system. Try to downgrade your tone of voice to a calm, relaxed cadence to get your meaning heard. When choosing to discuss their failures, switch the problems with the solutions. Add player accountability to problem-solving using the “Ask, don’t tell.” teaching method. After all, top athletes are nurtured to solve their problems.

Try to focus on giving without expecting, argue less, stop comparing your child with their peers, avoid participating in gossip, eliminate judgment, and choose not to live vicariously through your child.

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Junior Tennis- The Investment

Posted on August 5, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The Psychology of Tennis Parenting
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The Investment

Andy: “My kids are getting interested in tennis. Why was your daughter so into it?” Did she win all the time?”
Frank: “While she was top in the National rankings and played the US Open by 15, she lost most weeks.”
Andy: “So, why did you keep her in it?”
Frank: “To help me teach a moral compass, positive character, and life skills.”
Andy: “I hear tennis is an expensive sport?”
Frank: “Chasing greatness in anything comes with a high price. Being mediocre is easy.”
Andy: “So what did you and your athlete get out of it?”

Solution: Parents, you’re not paying for tennis. Let’s be clear; tennis is just a vehicle. You’re paying for opportunities to help you develop life skills. The investment is in their physical, mental, and emotional hyper-growth. These attributes developed through tennis are what college coaches and later employers seek. Participation in sports covertly helps develop world-class leaders. You are spending money placing your athlete into challenging situations, such as when they want to quit but persist. When they don’t want to go to practice at 6:30 am, but they do. When they’re “too scared” to battle but they learn to fight on and preserver.

Parents investing in raising an elite tennis player are also investing in superior life skills, such as:

  • Building the discipline required to develop the physical, mental, and emotional skills necessary to be abnormally great.
  • Gaining the learned experience of personal goal setting, resiliency, and dedication to a craft.
  • Learning good sportsmanship- to be humble when dealing with victories and be classy in defeat.
  • Instilling a strong work ethic through years and years of hard work on and off the court.

Accomplished athletes will have more success and life experiences in their teens than some people achieve in their entire lives. Developing a world-class person is difficult at best and doesn’t happen overnight, but what is the alternative? Your child can be on the tennis court or sitting on the couch in front of two screens thumbing through social media on their phone, eating cheese puffs while playing the latest video game on their computer.

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Tennis- Successful Parental Habits

Posted on July 30, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The Psychology of Tennis Parenting
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Successful Parental Habits

Tennis parents rarely get the spotlight, but without their influence and leadership, most athletes wouldn’t even make their local high school squad. I chatted with the parents of my top nationally ranked juniors to find out what they had in common. These parents teach their children ownership of their tennis careers. Below are six commonalities found in the parents of top competitors.

Solutions:

  1. After each tennis lesson, these parents ask their athletes to teach them the concepts they’ve just learned. Learning by teaching solidifies their knowledge, which improves confidence. Communication skills enhance memorization.
  2. For each private lesson their athlete takes, they schedule a hitting session or a practice match utilizing those improvements. Solidifying stroke adjustments takes repetition. Memorizing new material in the form of plays and patterns takes time.
  3. Successful tennis parents have their athletes play sets with paid college hitters. The parent hires the hitter and instructs them to play the style their child has trouble with in competition.
  4. These parents ask them to rehearse their secondary tools, and contingency game plans in group training sessions. They know if their player doesn’t rehearse their plan B, it likely won’t hold up under pressure.
  5. If their child despises playing a retriever, they ask their coaches to stop simply grooving to each other in practice and develop the keep-away patterns used to pull retrievers out of their game.
  6. Successful tennis parents replace some of the hours of drilling with completing practice sets. Practicing in the manner, they’re expected to perform requires a different set of skills than most academy training. Software management stems from being judged, and that involves competition. Being a great competitor is different from being a great stationary ball striker.
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Tennis- Conversation with Players

Posted on July 23, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The Psychology of Tennis Parenting
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Always & Never

“Always” and “Never” statements are frequently used by parents to emphasize their points of view. While using “you always” and “you never” as opening statements, they convey emotional intent, but they also tell a lie. While parents know the “always and never” phrases aren’t meant to be literal, their youngsters may not see it that way. The exaggerations open a floodgate of negative emotions among young athletes. I recommend exchanging “always and never” for statements easier for your young athlete to digest.

Solution: If you must share your insight, start your review with “This is just an observation… not a condemnation. I want to share what I thought I observed, and you tell me if I’m off base or not. Ok, by you? Or, “Here is something to consider ….”

Avoid using the “always or never” opening assertions to prove your point. In the coaching world, as in life, there are exceptions that shadow every rule, and a defensive athlete will try and find the exception to prove their point. These inaccurate statements typically ruin the true message of what you are conveying. Arguments ensue as your youngster tries to prove you wrong, or worse, they shut down.

Replace the “always and never” statements with questions to open a dialog. Your athlete will then be motivated to apply their own solution-based problem-solving.

Correct Conversations

Parents want to help and should be a part of their athlete’s team. That is, if they are not creating pressure. Do you know if you are unintentionally adding stress? Conversations should be based on the performance needed, not the outcome.

It’s the parental role to create accountable young adults- a common theme throughout this book. Your young athletes are best served by attempting to solve their own problems. We want to nurture them to apply solution-based dialog to increase confidence and resiliency. Please keep in mind that parents and coaches are often “planting seeds.” These mental and emotional skills often need years to develop.

Here are some match day correct conversations for your “Weekend Coaches.”

Solution:

  1. Warm Up Correctly. Come tournament day; your player should be mentally, emotionally, and physically ready for peak performance. The match day starts with a well-planned physical warm-up session. This includes warming up general athleticism and their tool belt of strokes. I also recommend warming up hitting offense, neutral, and defensive situations on the move. After nutrition and pre-hydration needs are met, mental and emotional visualization of preset plays and protocols are warmed up before they step into the club.
  • Gifting Away Matches. A great question: Am I losing, or is the opponent beating me? If your athlete makes things easy for their opponent through unforced errors, they are losing. If their opponent is outplaying them, they’re getting beat, and there’s a big difference. Often winning in junior tennis is error reduction. It’s your athlete’s job never to become the most valuable player for the other team!
  • Today’s Elements. Explain why they should adapt to the elements. Smart players avoid complaining about the court, the sun, the wind, the ball, or other elements they cannot control.

Here is a typical conversation regarding the elements. Your junior is in a clay court tennis event, and it just rained. Discuss how the clay court is going to play very differently. The ball is going to be heavier. They may want to adapt by using the lowest tension racket in their bag. They adjust their game accordingly by simply viewing the conditions as part of the game that day. Ask your athlete before matches to identify possible element issues and to be prepared to plug in the correct solutions.

  • Paying Attention. Ask your mature athletes to pay attention to the opponent’s tendencies by spotting their top patterns – opponent situational awareness. Mentally tough competitors are allowed to be surprised by an opponent’s shot option once or twice, but after a few times, the shot is their tendency and not a “surprise” but a lack of match awareness. For example: If the opponent is killing them with a drop shot to lob pattern, and your athlete doesn’t know to drop shot a drop shot, then how to combat common patterns should be in your athlete’s coach’s future developmental plan. Ask your athlete to spot key serving patterns, returning patterns, rally patterns, and favorite short ball options. Just as it takes years to develop strokes, it takes years to be a mentally tough competitor.
  • Self-Coaching. Discuss how to adjust to mistakes with proactive solution-based dialog. If they complain “out loud” about the problem, ask them to “flip it” and talk about their solution. Be careful about your “weekend coaching.” Athletes who broadcast their issues during play are usually parroting a parent or coach that begins every sentence with “The problem is …” An athlete’s self-coaching is often a mirror of the parent’s and coach’s past dialog.
  • Change. Insanity is defined as doing the same thing but expecting a different result. Discuss how and when to change a losing strategy. Here are two very different changes. Knowing when to activate each one will help win matches. If your athlete is running great patterns, controlling the court but not executing the last shot, I recommend sticking with the strategic plan but applying better margins. If they are playing well but still find themselves on the losing end, it is time for a different strategy- their second contingency game plan. At least two styles of well-rehearsed game plans (Plan A and B) should be available for each match.
  • Letting Go of the Outcome. Ask them to focus on winning the performance battle, and the outcome will take care of itself. This principle focal point is essential for parents as well. Let go of USTA rankings, UTR rating numbers, and tournament seedlings. The consistent chatter about who’s ranked where pulls your athlete into the outcome frame of mind, sabotaging the quiet performance-based goals you seek.
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Tennis Pattern Blocks

Posted on July 13, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The Psychology of Tennis Parenting
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Frank Giampaolo

Pattern Blocks

Let’s go back in time. I was fresh out of School and wanted a career in coaching.

I drove to California as many do to seek the “Promised Land.” My goal was to track down Vic Braden, whom I watched on PBS television. The Vic Braden Tennis College was more of a tennis Mecca, a tennis Olympic village, than a typical tennis club. Inside the Coto De Caza gates were the state-of-the-art Research center, tennis classrooms, dedicated teaching courts, and the 18-lanes ball machines. I truly felt like I had found my tribe.

There were hundreds of tennis research projects, but I’ll review the Length of the Point Project for this piece. Juniors to adult recreation players to college and professional athletes took part in the study. Back in the 1980s, the average length of a singles point was 3.8 hits. Doubles was 2.9 hits.

In the 1990s, Computennis took it to the next level with very similar results. Today IBM Watson provides the statistics. Today’s stats also say that most points don’t last longer than four hits. So, what does that mean to you as a parent of an athlete desperately seeking an edge? If approximately 70% of all points end by the fourth hit, your athlete must drill in short, pattern play training blocks versus the typical endless grooving of groundstrokes. Now, I’m not saying consistency isn’t important. It is. But the question I’m posing is, “Consistency in what context?” Here are the pattern blocks I’ve been coaching since the 1980s.

Solution: Trade in grooving groundstrokes to pattern block repetition. You see, tennis points are won by inserting the correct protocols the millisecond demands.

I recommend modeling a private lesson in this format:

  • Take a two-hour lesson to replicate the length of a difficult match.
  • Arrive ten minutes early and do a quality dynamic stretching warm-up, mental rehearsals of top patterns, and upper body band work.
  • Thirty minutes -Rehearse the serve+2 quick stroke patterns. Typically- hunting forehands.
  • Thirty minutes – Rehearse the return of serve +1 patterns off both first and second serves. Typically- hunting forehands.
  • Twenty minutes – Rehearse, hitting deep groundstrokes receiving, and delivering on the run.
  • Twenty minutes– Rehearse short ball options (Approach, crush it, swing volley, drop shots and transition volleys).
  • Twenty minutes – While the athlete is doing their static stretching routines, do a lesson review. Ask the coach if it’s okay to record the review on your athlete’s cell phone dictation app so they can commit the lesson to memory.

This private lesson format trains situational awareness and protocols, not just the strokes. For instance, offensive, neutral/building shot, and defensive situations.

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Tennis Six Anticipatory Skills

Posted on July 10, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The Psychology of Tennis Parenting
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Six Anticipatory Skills

Anticipatory skills are techniques advanced tennis players use to decrease the amount of time it takes them to respond to the structure of a point. Anticipation relies on conditional awareness, broad vision, mental processing speed, score management, ball-tracking ability, and spotting tendencies, to name a few. Anticipating a competitive event begins with how well the athlete has prepared for pressure. Preparation includes the physical, mental, and emotional demands of training to compete at one’s peak performance level for approximately twelve to fifteen sets in a three-day event.

These awareness skills fall into the athlete’s software development.

Solution: The following are advanced concepts, so start “planting the seeds” of anticipation by discussing:

  • Broad vision clues include where the ball will land in the opponent’s court, the opponent’s intentions based on their court position and strike zone, and the opponent’s swing speed and swing length. All these millisecond clues tell a story that advanced players size up each time the ball crosses the net.
  • Mental processing speed involves self-awareness (recognizing the quality of their shots, what’s working -what’s not working) and opponent awareness (recognizing the quality of their opponent’s shots – what’s working and what’s not working).
  • Score management relates to knowing when to play bold or grind based on the score. There are both positive and negative game points. Consider the scoring situation and the observations of both self and opponent awareness when managing the correct play, depending on the score situation.
  • Ball tracking ability relates to the ball’s speed, spins, and trajectories. Athletes need to anticipate the incoming ball’s flight path and depth. Athletes move and space properly and decide on the correct swing length, adjusting their swing path and speed based on their ball-tracking skills.
  • Spotting tendencies relate to both your athlete and their opponent’s shot choices. Recognizing the opponent’s style of play, their favorite patterns, their strengths and weaknesses in strokes, and court coverage would all assist in anticipating their possible future tactical choices. Paying attention to how the opponent anticipates your athlete’s game plan and manages the score also plays a vital role in your athlete’s anticipatory skill sets.


If you’re thinking, “Wow, this could take a while,” You’re right. Plan weekly classroom sessions with a high IQ coach to discuss these advanced software skills.

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Tennis Kobe’s Approach

Posted on July 7, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The Psychology of Tennis Parenting
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Kobe’s Approach

I’m from Southern California. I’m not necessarily a Lakers basketball fanatic, but I was a huge Kobe fan. As a lifelong student of high-performance sports, I was fascinated by his approach to greatness. He realized that you need a different approach than the rest to become the best. His developmental plan was very detailed, and his pre-game preparation was exceptional. His self-awareness and opponent awareness were insane. He studied his past game videos and future opponents’ game day tapes. The extra work he put into his job outside the team’s regular training was sheer discipline.

Solution: Apply Kobe’s discipline to your athlete’s developmental blueprint. He called it the “Mamba Mentality.” He said it’s all about focusing on the process and trusting in the hard work when it matters most. His Five Pillars of the Mamba Mentality:

  1. Resilience
  2. Fearlessness
  3. Obsessiveness
  4. Relentlessness
  5. Passion

His above five pillars are more about strong character traits than lessons in the fundamentals of basketball. He states that hard work outweighs talent every time. Kobe said, “Mamba mentality is about 4 a.m. workouts and always doing more than the next guy.” Can your tennis athlete learn from a master in another sport? I think so!

As you know, tennis isn’t an easy game to play. It is even harder to master. Without the help of a well-educated tennis parent like you, your athlete has very little chance.

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Tennis Training Anticipation

Posted on July 3, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The Psychology of Tennis Parenting
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Training Anticipation

Competitive tennis is a violent game of keep away, not catch. Plan on each match being a 2-hour dog fight and plan on multiple matches daily on tournament days.

Yes, your athlete’s legs and lungs need to be at their peak performance level but preparing your athlete includes more than cardio endurance, speed, and agility. Factor into the equation anticipatory speed. This hidden skill set holds many benefits. Anticipation assists your athlete with their ability to quickly and accurately predict the outcome of actions even before that action occurs.

Roger Federer rarely appears hurried when executing strokes. The high-speed film confirms that he reacts and moves earlier than most competitors. His ability to apply agility and stability with his body and head through the strike zone is legendary. His early detection is essential for delivering and receiving on the run. So, how do top players like Federer do it?

Solution: Professionals acquire knowledge of their opponent’s favorite sequence of shots in particular circumstances. Athletes at the higher level all have preferred options of plays and patterns. They use pre-match video analysis and scouting reports to predict performance. If your athlete is preparing to play in the high-performance arena, I suggest uncovering ways to develop this incredible, secret skill set of predicting possibilities.

When my daughter played her first 14’s finals in the Hard Courts in Georgia, six fathers of her competitors videotaped her performance as a future scouting report. Yes, acquiring knowledge about opponents starts early.

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