Tag Archives: athlete coach communication

Physical Skills Versus Life Skills- Part 1

Posted on July 13, 2021 by in The Soft Science of Tennis

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.

Click Here to Order through Amazon

Frank Giampaolo

Physical Skills Versus Life Skills

 

Marcus is a gifted tennis player from Phoenix, Arizona. At 16 he possesses incredible athleticism. He’s 6’3” and is ripped. His speed, agility, and stamina are off the charts. His tennis-specific skills are also above average. He possesses a huge serve and a killer forehand. Marcus’s UTR is hovering around 10.8. College coaches recruiting should be salivating for him, but sadly for Marcus and his folks, tennis scholarships are not being offered.

The red flags that the experienced college coaches quickly identify are underdeveloped character traits and life skills. You see, Marcus can’t communicate with others, and when he does, a storm of pessimism engulfs everyone around him like a dark cloud. As for his life skills, the college coaches quickly pick up on the fact that he’s late for their meetings, unorganized, and blames others for his downfalls. On-court Marcus shows irrational anger, reckless shot selections, and a lack of perseverance, adaptability, and resiliency even in practice match play. Due to Marcus’s underdeveloped software, his D-1 College dreams won’t be coming true. It’s within the job description of coaches and parents to teach positive character traits and life skills along with their tennis skill sets.

High-performance tennis is the combination of four required skill sets: character skills, life skills, athleticism, and tennis-specific skills. Customized training focuses on all four of these components, however, the degree of focus is based on the athlete’s specific needs. It is the job description of a progressive coach to navigate the mastery of all four of these skills effectively.

1.Character Skills

Character skills are productive personality traits. These habits include empathy, interpersonal skills for communicating and interacting effectively with others, a positive-optimistic attitude, ethics, morals, and leadership traits.

2. Life Skills

Life skills are defined as the ability to thrive within the challenges of an athlete’s everyday life. These include cognitive skills for analyzing performance and personal skills for organizing developmental plans and managing oneself.

3.Athletic Skills

Athletic skills are defined as the physical qualities that are characteristic of well-rounded athletic individuals regardless of the sport. Athletic skills include upper and lower body strength, fitness, stamina, speed, core balance, and agility.

4.Tennis Skills

Tennis skills are the particular skill sets that define a high-performance-tennis-specific athlete. Experts in this field possess a complete tool belt of strokes, tactics, strategies, and of course, emotional aptitude to compete at the higher echelons of the game.

 

Effective Listening- Part 4

Posted on April 27, 2021 by in The Soft Science of Tennis

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.

Click Here to Order through Amazon

Effective Listening- Part 4

Soft Science of Tennis_3D_Cover_version5

Verbal Communication in the Digital World

It’s no secret that modern adolescents are obsessed with social media, tweeting, and texting. Kids are nurtured from the cradle to communicate through screens instead of interpersonal communication. They prefer texting over talking. It’s the world in which they live.

Research in the field of communication found that a third of American teenagers send more than one hundred texts a day. They want to feel a personal connection, engaged, inspired and understood…they just don’t know-how.  The combination of their ineffective speaking skills combined with our weak listening skills is hurting the development process.

 

Listening “Between” the Words

Exceptional listeners filter through conversations to identify the true meaning behind their athlete’s words. The ability to “listen” between words helps the listener discern if the student seeks constructive criticism or only a sympathetic ear. Attentive listeners recognize anomalies that enable them to identify the beliefs, attitudes, and feelings behind words. This allows them to interpret the athlete’s spoken truth, fiction, optimism, pessimism, expectation, intentions, trust, past mental habits, and belief systems.

 

“An athlete’s belief system crafts their future. Every syllable they speak engages energy towards them or against them.”

 

As novice parents and intermediate coaches gain wisdom, they become more in-tune listeners. They discover hidden belief systems behind their athlete’s dialog. Great listeners know there is “subconscious” energy behind words. Pessimistic behaviors are not difficult to spot because all too often, those very same negative thoughts, tones, words, and actions stem from those nurturing the athlete. As the athlete’s thoughts become their words, those words determine their beliefs and play a deciding role in their performance, especially during stressful match conditions.

When effective listening is applied, the athlete’s sequence of thought-speech-action becomes very clear to the “in-tuned” entourage. Please pay attention to the belief systems habitually used by your athletes. An athlete’s affirmations and inner dialog can be categorized as optimistic or pessimistic. It should be painfully obvious that their self-coaching either builds them up or tears them down at crunch time.