Tag Archives: tennis training

Tennis and the Foundation of Talent

Posted on September 8, 2023 by in The Second Edition of 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.

Tennis- The Psychology of Listening

Posted on August 10, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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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.

Tennis Cognitive Ease

Posted on June 23, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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Frank Giampaolo

Cognitive Ease

As humans, the more we see, feel or repeat something, the more we view it as correct. By repeating anything over and over, it gets easier to accept. Being familiar feels good, even when it isn’t good for maximizing tennis potential at the quickest rate. A teaching myth dispelled decades ago was the saying, “Practice makes perfect.” Now we know that practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect. Practice makes permanent.

For example, Mr. Jeffry books the club’s ball machine weekly. He unknowingly solidifies his biomechanically flawed backhand over and over again. While Mr. Jeffry is getting a cardio workout, his practice is not correcting the defect. It is systematically ingraining the deficient backhand. To him, what he repeats feels like an improvement. As some readers know, repetition, even bad reps, starts to feel comfortable. It’s cognitive ease.

Solution: So, what stunts cognitive ease? It’s tackling anything unknown. This threat causes cognitive (mental) strain. Athletes looking to improve need this uncomfortable strain. Practicing what you’ve not already mastered is essential for growth. As I’ve mentioned, it is exposure to improving the weakness, not avoiding the weakness, that matters.

Tennis Intelligence

Posted on June 21, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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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.

Run Toward the Fire

Posted on May 29, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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Run Toward the Fire

Tennis players that rise to the occasion in those pressure-packed finals have courage and confidence in themselves and their training. These athletes tackle problems head-on and cope with the hardships of the sport in an unstressed fashion. Developing mental and emotional strength is essential for long-term tennis goals. Share with your athlete this analogy.

Ask them to think of themselves as a firefighter. Firefighters walk into the fire versus running away from it. Regarding your athlete’s fears, I recommend asking them to do the same. It’s human nature to avoid scary situations, so you’ll have to show your athlete how to face fears. If your child avoids difficult moments like closing out a set versus a better player, they’ll crumble in those moments unless they are trained to regulate their emotional state. Does this require exposure to the stressor or avoidance?

Solution: Athletes who thrive under pressure replace their mechanical thoughts like how they are hitting their forehand, backhand, serve and volley with focusing on emotional essentials such as managing momentum, maintaining intensity, focusing on the here and now, and retaining their positive mindset.

While solid strokes get the athlete into the events, the additional software skills enable them to hold up another trophy.

Red Flags

Posted on May 15, 2023 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Psychology of Tennis Parenting

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Red Flags

A red flag is a signal that goes off when something’s not quite right. A commonality in sports is when the students’ words often don’t match their actions. Their words say, “I want to be a professional athlete,” and their actions say, “I don’t want to actually work for it.”

If your athlete brings internal drama and is unpleasant and frightening to be around on match days, the family is in for a world of uncommon hurt.

Solution: Here are a dozen red flags we do not see in the top competitors. Be honest as you read the list of common stumbling blocks. Do any sound too familiar?

  1. Inconsistency in effort
  2. Entitlement issues
  3. Inappropriate anger issues
  4. Lazy choices/poor decisions
  5. Avoids solo training
  6. Negative attitude
  7. Faulty nutrition habits
  8. Poor sleep habits
  9. Substandard time management
  10. Lack of gratitude
  11. Second-rate preparation
  12. Chooses mediocrity


An age-old saying provides insight: “There are contenders and pretenders.” Which do you have?

If you have a pretender, it may be in everyone’s best interest to put an end to the weekend drama’s and enjoy a normal life with a normal child.

Secondary Tennis Strokes

Posted on January 3, 2023 by in 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
Available through most online retailers!

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QUESTION: What are secondary strokes?

 

Frank: Building a solid foundation is vital to your child’s success. Although this is not another “Mechanical Stroke Book,” a flawed stroke causes unforced errors, produces short vulnerable balls, causes injuries and inhibit your child’s growth into the next level of competition. If stroke production is what you seek, I recommend my bestselling book Championship Tennis. In this book, primary and secondary stroke production is covered in extreme detail.

 

“Efficient stokes aren’t always elegant strokes.”

 

Just as being tall is a prerequisite to playing in the NBA, efficient strokes are a prerequisite to playing in the highest levels of tennis. But, if just being tall earned you the right to play in the NBA, my cousin Big Vinnie wouldn’t be driving a limo at Kennedy airport. So, though fundamental strokes are important, they are only part of the puzzle.

Here’s a fun painter’s analogy. To this day, we can all run to the store and pick up a beginner’s paint set. These pre-packaged sets come with paper, a paint brush and a strip of a few basic paint colors. As we dabble and enjoy the art of painting one thing becomes evident, if only primary colors are used, the paintings will continue to look “amateur.”

Advanced painters have learned that to make a painting jump off the canvas and become “life like” they need to master the skills of applying secondary colors. Now, instead of applying one shade of green, they have multiple versions of green! They essentially have more tools in their painting toolbox.

 

Secondary Strokes

As parents and coaches, we have to assist in managing the time needed to develop each athlete’s secondary “colors”. I recommend encouraging, educating and developing both primary and secondary stroke principles. The following are the primary and secondary strokes in an elite tennis player’s tool belt:

 

The Six Different Types of Forehands and Backhands:

  • Primary Drive
  • High Topspin Arch
  • Short Angle
  • Defensive Slice
  • Drop Shot
  • Lob

The Three Types of Serves:

  • Primary Flat Serve
  • Kick Serve
  • Slice Serve

The Five Types of Volleys:

  • Primary Traditional Punch Volley
  • Drop Volley
  • Swing Volley/Drive Volley
  • Half Volley
  • Transition Volley

The Four Types of Lobs:

  • Primary Flat Lob
  • Topspin Lobs
  • Slice Lob
  • Re-Lob (Lobbing off of the opponent’s over-head smash)

The Two Types of Overheads:

  • The Primary/Stationary Overhead
  • The Turn & Run/Scissor Overhead

The 6 Types of Approach Shots:

  • Serve and Volley
  • Chip and Charge
  • Drive Approach
  • Slice Approach
  • Drop Shot Approach
  • Moonball Approach

 

The devil is in the details, they say. Maximizing potential requires the deliberate development of every tool in your child’s tool belt.

 

I got to know Tiger Woods a bit when I was the tennis director at Sherwood Country Club, in Westlake Village out-side of Las Angeles. We hosted his multimillion-dollar charity event at Sherwood annually. Before each round of golf, Tiger practiced every club in his bag. He often, secretly, flew to the site a week or so before the actual event to experience the courses uneven fairways, the speed of the greens, the feel of the sand traps and elements such as the wind.

 

“Winning is persistent, customized preparation.”

 

Advanced players have worked to develop their secondary strokes along with their primary strokes. With their complete tool belt of strokes, they apply these tools in shot sequencing patterns used to torture the opponents as they control both sides of the net.

If a deliberate, customized developmental plan is followed, it takes an average of two years to develop these “secondary” tools into reliable pattern-play weapons. If your child is simply grooving primary strokes…well, they’ll stop progressing and never actually realize their true potential.

To assist your youngster in controlling the court and the match, meet with their coaches and discuss their opinion regarding shifting focus in practice from only grooving fundamentals to developing a champion’s tool belt of strokes.

Like Tiger Woods, remind your athlete to warm up every stroke in their bag before each tournament match. Winning a close tie breaker is often decided on a few points. Making that crucial swing volley in the tiebreaker versus missing it is often a matter of confidence.

Coming in January The Psychology of Tennis Parenting

Posted on December 22, 2022 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

WISHING YOU A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY HOLIDAYS, AND THE VERY IN THE BEST NEW YEAR!

COMING SOON

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TENNIS PARENTING

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The New Year is a great time to re-evaluate your tennis game and organize your training to maximize your tennis potential. Successful competitive tennis demands great mental and emotional skill sets. Be sure to include mental and emotional training along with your technical and athletic training.

Wishing you the Best, Frank Giampaolo

Tennis Training Organization

Posted on December 19, 2022 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential

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

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QUESTION: My Son isn’t that serious. Does he still need a plan?

 

Frank: I still highly recommend organizing a weekly schedule. Regardless of a player’s long-term aspirations, whether it is to play as a professional or simply play as a hobbyist, an organized blueprint will maximize potential at the quickest rate through discipline.

Completing a weekly planner and being accountable for their time and actions are essential life lessons.  A disciplined player may excel and find a passion greater than initially expected or choose to redirect their passion, either way important life skills are nurtured through the discipline of organization.

 

For those parents and coaches saying, “What about the child that only wants to be a high school player?” I remind them that I’ve yet to have a parent come to me and state: “My wife and I want you to train our daughter to be a completely average tennis player!”

 

“An athletes schedule may vary depending on their goals, but their organizational
skill sets will become permanent assets.”

A Peek into a Top Tennis Player’s Training Schedule

Posted on December 16, 2022 by in 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
Available through most online retailers!

 Click Here to Order

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QUESTION: What does a top player’s weekly training schedule look like?

 

Frank: A player’s training schedule is one of the most important aspects of the tennis parent’s job description.  Managing each component of a player’s organizational plan will provide accountability to all members of the player’s team. Remember, the tennis parent is the CEO of the organization and ultimately in charge of their child’s life development.

I encourage parents to customize the training to their player’s needs. The training requirements of younger players will vary dramatically based on their physical, mental and maturity levels. Additional factors to consider include the player’s personal growth development schedule and how well they digest information. (An experienced coach can help to identify your child’s levels.)

 

“There is no one-size-fits-all formula to maximizing potential at the quickest rate.”

 

Assisting your child in organizing their weekly schedule will help them to develop time-management skills that will prepare them for life on and off the courts. I highly recommend holding a meeting with your athlete’s coaches to get updates from them in regard to your child’s progress. Their opinions will help you to better manage your player’s schedule. It’s important to remember that the estimated success formula to becoming world class at any talent is about twenty hours a week for about ten years.

Following is a sample week of one of my top nationally ranked U.S. Juniors. His long-term goal is to play Division I college tennis and then progress onto the pro tour. His weekly schedule shifts between 20 and 30 hours a week depending on his tournament schedule.

 

Sample Training Week

Practice Sets/Tournament Matches: 4 Hours

It’s important to schedule different styles and different ability levels of opponents.

Technical Stroke Lessons: 4 Hours

Correct flaws in their primary strokes and begin to build their secondary strokes.

Mental & Emotional Training: 4 Hours

During live ball sessions, focus on between point rituals as well as proactive patterns to beat the 3 styles of opponents.

Video Analysis: 1 Hour

Video tape a tournament match, then have a pro do a video analysis lesson. Chart to spot tendencies. (This will be covered in great depth later in this book.)

Off-Court Gym: 3 Hours

Core and upper body strength is more important than ever. Hit the gym to prevent injuries as well as build muscle mass.

Off-Court Cardio: 4 Hours

Cross train with short sprints, up hills. Use a random directional approach to clean up hesitation.

Watching Tennis on TV: 2 Hours

Chart the pros, spot styles of play, analyze footwork, and decipher patterns and tendencies of players.

 

Total Training in One Week:  22 Hours