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Beating Pushers- Part 2

Posted on February 20, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!

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HOW TO BEAT MOONBALL/RETRIEVERSIMG_080_R_WHITE

Four Major Tennis Components:

1) Technical Strokes

Your child must develop world class “secondary” strokes. Patterns used to pull a retriever out of their comfort zone consist of secondary strokes such as: drop shots, short angle swing volleys…Etc.

Your child may have better “primary” strokes, but unfortunately, they are little use against a pusher. It is important to understand that often good primary strokes will only work in the pusher’s favor! A tool belt full of great secondary strokes needs to be developed.

Often your child’s loses are caused by their lack of secondary strokes. Each primary stroke has secondary stroke “relatives” that also need to be mastered. For example: A primary volley is the traditional punch volley. Secondary volleys are swing volleys, drop volleys and half volleys. These secondary volleys are needed in order to beat a retriever.

 

2) Tactics and Strategies

While the game continues to evolve, the foundation of strategy has not changed much over the past 100 years.

Jack Kramer taught this theory to Vic Braden, Vic Braden taught this to me and I am passing it on to you. “If your strengths are greater than your opponent’s strengths, then simply stick to your strengths. If your strengths are not as great, you must have well-rehearsed B and C plans to win the match!”

Example: If your child can out “steady” a world class moon ball pusher…simply pack a lunch for them and plan on a 3 hour “push-fest.” If your child can hit so hard that they simply blow the ball past retrievers …simply instruct them to hit a winners every point. If not, it may be in your youngster’s best interest to develop the secondary strokes and patterns used to take a retriever out of their game. Below are three patterns that work beautifully against pushers.

Best Patterns to Beat Retriever’s:

  1. Moonball approach to a swing volley.
  2. Short angle building shot to drive winner.
  3. Drop shot to dipping passing shots or lobs.

 

“Often the weakest ball a crafty retriever will give your athlete is their serve. I encourage your athlete to focus on the above three patterns while returning the retriever’s weak serve.”

 

 

Beating Pushers- Part 1

Posted on February 18, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!

 Click Here to Order

HOW TO BEAT MOONBALL/RETRIEVERSfrank

 

No matter what you call them…retrievers, defensive baseliners, counter punchers, moonballers, or pushers, they have one common distinction at almost every level of the game-they have all the trophies!

In my workshops, I seek out competitors re-occurring nightmares- problems that happen over and over again. I then systematically destroy the nightmare by offering self-destruction solutions. One nightmare that seems to be on the top of almost everyone’s tennis list, around the world, is “How to Beat a Moonball/Retriever.” Let’s look at some common key characteristics that separate most of “us” from them.

 

Retrievers versus the Rest of Us:

  • Patient versus Impatient
  • Satisfied to let the opponent self-destruct versus Having to hit bold winners to win
  • Energy conserving versus Energy expending
  • Responds after reasoning versus Responds before reasoning
  • Inspired by the real/practical versus Inspired by the imaginative
  • Found in the present versus Found in the future
  • Concerned with the task versus Concerned with the outcome and how other will view the outcome?
  • Organized in their plans versus “Uh…we’ll see what happens.”
  • Avoids surprises versus Enjoys surprises

 

As you can see, the psychological profile of a retriever may be a little different than your athlete. Tactically, retrievers prefer to retaliate instead of instigate the action. Armed with the knowledge of the actual unforced errors to winners ratio in the sport, this tactic is actually quite intelligent. Lucky for us, having a firm understanding of a retriever’s brain has allowed us to organize a wonderful plan of attack!

Please keep in mind that your child loses to retrievers because your child is not fully developed. There are most likely holes in one or more of the four major components of your athlete’s game. Below I’ve re-listed those four components and their corresponding success principles.  Ask your child’s coach to develop these and your athlete will routinely defeat these pesky opponents.

Tennis Slump?

Posted on February 11, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!

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QUESTION: My son is in a slump. How can we help him through this stage?

 

Frank: The best way to achieve improved results is by shifting your son’s developmental plan. A new plan will help motivate a new mindset which will intern cultivate new beliefs, actions, and results. Below are ten focal points to address to ignite continued growth and maximum potential.

1) Focus on Improvement.

Ask your player and entourage to let go of winning and losing and focus their energy on improvement.

2) Accept that Rivalries Encourage Growth.

Understand that your child needs rivals. Begin with local, then regional, then national, and lead into international. Rivalries encourage growth.

3) Train Adrenaline Management.

On match day, managing the systematic building and calming of adrenaline is often the deciding factor that often pulls an athlete into the winner’s circle.

4) Choose a Supportive Like-Minded Entourage.

Top athletes have an entourage. The entourage provides a “team effect” to an individual sport.  Their collaborative efforts help to inflate the athlete’s confidence and fight while supporting the athlete when they need to the most.

5) Role Play Against Various Styles of Opponents.

Parents, I’ve touched on this topic before, plan on paying slightly older better players to play sets weekly versus your child while role-playing. (For instance, “Here’s $25.00, please play 3-sets versus my son …and be the most annoying pusher possible. My son’s going to rehearse the patterns used to pull a crafty retriever out of their comfort zone. Thank you.”)

6) Play Practice Matches.

Remind your athlete as well as their entourage that success in competition requires protocols that simply aren’t found in simply hitting back and forth.

7) Reinforce Playing Smart.

Regarding competition, educate your athlete that having the presence of mind that missing the shot the moment demands is ok. It’s those reckless, uncalled for shot selections that will make them early-round losers.

8) Learn to Play Through Fear.

Elite competitors control their fears and ultimately their destiny. Intermediate athletes allow their fears to control their psychology and physiology as it steals any real chance of peak performance at crunch time.

9) Adopt a Warrior Mentality.

For some people, the competitive fire is innate, they flourish under stress. For others; they wilt under the very same environment. For these athletes, developing their fighting spirit is a learned behavior.

10) Use Competition as a Learning Tool.

Competition is the best facilitator for improvement. It’s the engine that awakens each athlete’s hidden reserve of effort which later is seen as “talent.”

Spotting Tennis Burnout

Posted on February 8, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!

 Click Here to Order

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QUESTION: How do we spot tennis burn out?

 

Frank: Did you know that even the very best in the business don’t stay in their “Optimal Performance State” year around? ATP and WTA tour professionals rarely play more than three events in a row. They need the critical “down” time to recharge, heal and fix flaws.

It’s not in your child’s best interest to force them to try to stay in their peak performance state 365 days a year. Taking a week off to re-charge the physical, mental, and emotional batteries may help your child peak when it counts most. This is part of the periodization cycle. Yes- taking time off may help them to be more committed and focused when their tennis training commences- leading to better results.

 

NOTE: The number one reason junior players report that they want to quit tennis is due to overzealous parents unknowingly pushing them past the healthy limits.

While developing high-performance athletes, I am constantly on high-alert for the warning signs of burnout. The signs of burnout can be physical, mental or emotional. Let’s look at some typical signs to assist you in knowing when it’s time for your athlete to take a break from their tennis quest.

20 Signs of Tennis BurnOut:

  • Multiple injuries.
  • Reduced flexibility in their body.
  • Complaining about fatigue.
  • Reduced concentration.
  • Fear of competition.
  • Lack of emotional control.
  • Poor judgment.
  • Decreased opponent awareness.
  • Negative verbal or physical outbursts.
  • Lack of motivation to practice or to hit the gym.
  • Unwillingness to compete in a tournament.
  • Poor equipment preparation.
  • Appearing slow and heavy with no energy.
  • Lack of anticipation and agility.
  • Short attention span.
  • Inability to concentrate.
  • Lack of concern about performance goals.
  • Low patience.
  • A sense of hopelessness.

 

In my opinion, if your child is showing several of the above negative signs and seems to be in a downward spiral, it may be in their best interest to put down the racquets for a while. A true contender can only stay away for a short time. Parents, allow them to heal. Then slowly re-start a deliberate customized developmental process.

 

SPECIAL NOTE: During your child’s time off court, encourage them to stay in physical shape by enjoying non-tennis cross-training.

Re-Commit to Tennis- Part 3

Posted on February 1, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!

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QUESTION: How do we help our daughter re-commit to her tennis? (Part 3)

Encourage your athlete to stretch beyond their comfort zone and try new approaches by:

  • Putting your goals and plans in writing.
  • Acknowledging that the better choice is often the harder choice.
  • Identifying possible negative influences.
  • Cutting out trouble making friends and instigators.
  • Limiting time spent with negative people.
  • Establishing the rules in troubled relationships.
  • Flipping negative talk: “I don’t know” or “I don’t care” or “I hate…”
  • Letting go of “I can’t, I’m terrible, or I am not good enough.”
  • Addressing difficulties as challenges and not defeats.
  • List solutions, not problems.

 

The above proactive behaviors are not necessarily tennis issues, they are life issues. I find that we’re all too often addicted to our old comfortable thoughts. Behavioral changes stem from changing those unproductive negative thoughts.

 

“While your athlete can’t go back and change the past … they surely can start over and create a better future.”

 

Your athlete’s tennis re-birth begins as soon as your athlete commits to improving!

Re-Commit to Tennis- Part 2

Posted on January 30, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!

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QUESTION: How do we help our daughter re-commit to her tennis? (PART 2)

Begin your one-month organizational plan by reminding your athlete to:

  • Flip their negative words and thoughts to positives.
  • Take ownership and be accountable.
  • Let go of past failures and be future-orientated.
  • Believe in their plan. (The athlete is more likely to believe in a plan if it is their plan.)
  • Commit to daily and weekly planners.
  • Complete a nightly focus journal.
  • Accept that change is uncomfortable…but that’s where growth lives.
  • Take away destructive behaviors.
  • Celebrate positive behaviors.
  • Identify proactive behavior and destructive behavior.
  • Choose to chase excellence, not perfection.
  • Acknowledge that today’s results stem from past choices.

 

“Every choice your athlete makes either pushes them closer to their goal or further away from their goal.”

 

Competitive Tennis Dramas – Anger Part 2

Posted on January 18, 2021 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!

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COMPETITIVE DRAMAS: INTERNAL STRUGGLESFrank Giampaolo

 

Champions Experience Failure

Discuss how most tennis champions have probably lost way more matches than your child has even played. Ambitious people experience many failures. One of my past students is Sam Querrey (ATP top player). He’s been playing full time on the ATP tour for ten years and has won 7 ATP singles titles and a handful of double events. That means, most of the time, Sam goes home losing week in and week out. Would you say he’s a loser? Not a chance- Sam is a top touring professional!

Never Outgrow Fun

You often see top professionals battle and still smile in the course of a match. Negative thoughts, stress, and anger clutter an athlete’s thought process and tighten muscle groups, both of which decrease the player’s ability to perform. Pessimism affects both an athlete’s physiology and psychology. Optimism is a coping skill used to combat the negatives that are found in one-on-one competition. Smile, laugh, and enjoy the competition.

Tennis Is a Gift Not a Right

Discuss how there are millions of natural-born athletes that are the same age as your child that will never get the opportunity to compete at a high level. Tennis isn’t fair, right?

But has your child thought about how lucky they are to be able to play tennis and have a family that wants to support their passion?

Good Judgment Comes from Experience

So where does experience come from? The ironic answer is bad judgment. Talk to your child about how it is far less painful to learn from other peoples’ failures. After a loss, stay at the tournament site and chart a top seed. Analyze their successes and model them and their pitfalls and learn how to avoid them.

Rehearse Focusing on the Solutions Not the Problems

Ask the athlete to allow you to videotape a few matches. As the athlete and coach watch the matches, ask them to spot unforced errors and then categorize them into their cause of error chart. Ask them to recognize negative thoughts, loss of concentration, or an emotional breakdown on the court. Now, remind the coach not to ask the athlete to think about NOT repeating the problem. That only draws deeper attention to the problem. Instead, discuss the development of the solution to the problem. Then simply focus on the rehearsal of the actual match solution.

A Genius Simplifies the Complex

In the higher levels, most lessons should be focused on “trimming the fat” off of strokes and/or off of the player’s thought control. Going from really good to great is not always about adding more. There are often hidden contaminants that bog down gifted athletes.

 

Maturing the mental and emotional components is a life skill.  Athletes need to manage anger and stress.  The old Buddha saying is “Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Merry Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2020 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

I WISH YOU A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY AND HEALTHY NEW YEAR!frank

ALL THE BEST, FRANK GIAMPAOLO

Tennis From The Parent’s View- Part 4

Posted on December 6, 2020 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, Preparing for Pressure

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s Amazon #1 New Tennis Book Release, Preparing for Pressure.

 Click Here To Order through Amazon

 

 

Keep Your Athlete On-Script before CompetitionPreparing final cover 3D

 

“Your athlete’s script is their repeatable dominant patterns.”

Let’s go a step deeper into how parents can assist their athletes in preparing for pressure. When your athletes are uncertain, they play confused and fearful. Fear is the enemy of peak performance. When your athletes and their coaches design scripts (with clear physical, mental, emotional protocols), these intentions breed confidence. Focusing on their script of pre-set patterns and solutions serves two purposes for the athlete.

The first benefit is that a proper headspace distracts the athletes from the onslaught of contaminating outcome thoughts. Worrying about the possible upcoming catastrophe gets most athletes into a horrible mindset. While they can’t really stop themselves from thinking, you can purposely distract them from outcome dreams and nightmares. It’s important to note that often, the parents are the instigators of the contamination.

The second benefit is strategic- pre-setting rehearsed patterns and plays prior to competition. This is accomplished by asking your athlete to review their current performance goals, strategies, and contingency plans. Mental rehearsals through visualization is a terrific way to assist the athletes to adhere to their script mentally and emotionally before competition.

 

Great performances begin with an optimistic organized mindset.


 

Tennis From The Parent’s View- Part 3

Posted on December 4, 2020 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, Preparing for Pressure

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s Amazon #1 New Tennis Book Release, Preparing for Pressure.

 Click Here To Order through Amazon

Is The Parent a Source of External Pressure?Preparing final cover 3D

 

“It’s no secret that a large portion of pressure comes unknowingly from tennis parents.”

The tennis parent is the second most important entity in the athlete’s entourage (The athlete being the most important.)

The parents are the CEO, the manager of the entourage of coaches, and the facilitator of the player’s customized developmental plan. With responsibility comes pressure. This is especially true when the parent is bankrolling the journey. All too often, tennis parents become overbearing yet don’t see themselves as the leading source of frustration.

Communicating with an adolescent competitive athlete isn’t easy. A relaxed demeanor versus a stressed appearance matters deeply. In fact, current studies show that approximately 7% of communication is verbal, while 93% is made up of tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language.

While it’s natural for parents to be on high alert for any possible signs of danger, it’s essential to understand that the athlete needs a calming influence.

 

Parental pressure can be both real and imagined. In the end, it’s the perception of the athlete that matters.