Tag Archives: frank giampaolo tennis coach

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.

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.

Tennis Intelligence

Posted on June 21, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

The Psychology of Tennis Parenting
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Modern Intelligence

High-performance tennis success stems from the ability to pay attention to and respond to match dynamics. The same holds true for intelligence. Smart used to be one’s ability to memorize information. Nowadays, everyone has this covered. Athletes with cell phones have instant access to all the information they desire.

Modern intelligence now comes in the form of mental and emotional warfare. Does your athlete have the following mental tools developed in their tool belt?

Solution: Modern intelligence is:

  • Situational Awareness
  • Filtering Information
  • Troubleshooting Ability
  • Clarity of Goals
  • Preset Protocols to Handle Problems
  • Having Multiple Game Plans
  • Ability to Identify Inefficient Training Protocols

The good news is that modern intelligence is a choice and skill worth developing.

Tennis Parent Coach

Posted on February 15, 2023 by in The Psychology of Tennis Parenting

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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:

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

Praise Effort Not Results

Posted on February 5, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Psychology of Tennis Parents

Released on January 28, 2023

The Psychology of Tennis Parenting

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Chapter One Excerpt- Nurturing Happiness

 

Praise Effort, Not Results

When parents say, “Ethan, if you win the whole event, we’ll buy you a new computer game!”

The reality is that winning is out of Ethan’s control. An athlete can influence winning a tournament but can’t control it. There are far too many variables to manage in a match. Outcome goals create an anxious environment and obstruct the learning process. Parents should instead encourage process goals and view each match as a learning experience. The research is very consistent: praise effort, not results.

Solution: Replace this outcome bribe with an attainable goal, “Ethan, if you hit your three performance goals each match this event, we’ll buy you a new computer game.” Now Ethan is given a goal within his control.

After the tournament, parents should avoid discussing the laundry list of mistakes their athletes made during the match. This negative list of faults destroys your athlete’s self-esteem and confirms that they are broken and unworthy. Parents should send their match notes to their athlete’s coach, and the coach can address the issues during practice. Avoid a post-match verbal attack.

Lastly, parents avoid using their friend’s success against them. Praising their rival’s positive results compounds the pressure. Praising your athlete’s effort instead keeps them focused on the improvement process.

Coaching Brain Type Performance- Part 1

Posted on June 2, 2021 by in The Soft Science of Tennis

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

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Assisting the 4 SP Typographies

ESTP, ISTP, ISFP, ESFP

 

ESTP- Extrovert Sensate Thinker Perceiver

 

Challenge: ESTP’s are natural born entertainers and love to play on center court. To their detriment, they often choose to play to the spectators applying crowd-pleasing, low percentage, shot selections.

Solution: It’s important to allow ESTP’s the freedom to express themselves while keeping them in the match play modes of proper offense, neutral and defensive shot options. A critical game plan for thrill-seeking ESTP’s is only to hit the shot the moment demands.

 

Challenge: Focusing on the moment at hand is a task ESTP’s often struggle to sustain. These adaptable, outgoing individuals are usually physically gifted but are impulsive and get distracted from routinely sticking to high percentage plays.

Solution: Teach them to design and rehearse their script of customized percentage patterns of play. Educate them on the fact that if those patterns are winning 2 out of 3 points, there’s no need to interject change. Victories will pile up if you can get ESTP’s to hit the same old boring winners set after set.

 

Challenge: ESTP’s are not designed to stand in line and conform to the masses. They do not see the value in rigidly enforced nonessential rules. Lighten your sessions with laughter. This brain design doesn’t work well with excessively inflexible mentors. Due to their EP design, you can spot these unique individuals because they often choose flashy attire and beat to their drum.

Solution: Forget about extinguishing their unique flame. Focus on soft guidance versus ridged control. ESTP’s are flashy players who enjoy going for bold winners. Forcing them to stand 15 feet behind the baseline and grind week in- week out doesn’t fit their genetic design.

 

Challenge: ESTP’s often apply unnecessary risk in competition. They typically get bored without a challenge and occasionally go “off the boil” as our friends down under like to say.

Solution: Ask these athletes to apply a personal challenge when boredom creeps in. The mission is for the student to focus on routinely winning 3 points in a row. This mental drill forces them to eliminate their wandering mind as they zero in to win. Remind them of the WIN acronym: What’s Important Now!

 

 

Effective Listening- Part 2

Posted on April 21, 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 2Soft Science of Tennis_3D_Cover_version5

 

The method in which a parent or coach asks questions and listens is also important. If the athlete views the questions as an intimidating interrogation, they feel frightened and pressured. There is indeed an optimistic demeanor that encompasses effective listening.

Effective Listening Begins with:

  • Get down, physically, to the students’ level.
  • Take off your sunglasses and look them in the eyes.
  • Give them your time. Listen intently.
  • Assume you can learn from the student.
  • Accept their view (set aside your beliefs).
  • Allow them to lead, go with their flow.
  • If you don’t know the answer, say, “Let’s explore that…”
  • Understanding that talking “at” someone isn’t power. Listening is power.
  • Avoid speculating and jumping to conclusions.
  • Maintain their conversational pace and fight the urge to interrupt.
  • Allow them to finish their thoughts and sentences.
  • Focus on spotting key objectives and phrases to discuss later.
  • If you’re planning witty responses, you’re typically not actively listening.
  • Remember, some athletes aren’t seeking advice; they are seeking an empathetic ear.
  • After discussing the issue, ask them for their solutions before offering your solutions.
  • Ask them if they’d like to hear your thoughts.
  • Avoid one-upmanship statements to prove that your past experience trumps theirs.
  • Avoid saying, “I told you so!” Even when you told them so.
  • Facilitate your relationship by applying empathy.
  • Mirror their feelings within the context of their conversation.
  • Follow their train of thought with nodding, caring facial expressions, and body language.
  • Re-state their points to clarify that you understand them correctly.
  • Affirm their frustrations. “That sounds difficult, how did you respond?”
  • To keep the focus on them, ask, “How did that make you feel? Versus “Here’s what I would have done!”
  • Conclude with a summarizing statement to ensure that their information was received correctly.
  • Organize future, agreed-upon solutions, and job descriptions.