Interesting stage

[hockeyscout]

Tennis coaches often say: "We need to teach the player how to play the game now."

A few coaches approached, and said told me my daughter needs to enter their Olympic certified training facilities and remarked: "You're daughter is big and athletic, now she needs to enter our system so we can teach her how to play the game."

I commonly ask the following questions:

- Tell me how points are won, talk about point construction
- What is the average rally time in a pro match in seconds
- Rest periods are how long
- What is the tempo of a match
- How much distance does a player run in a match
- How many stops and starts does a player do
- Explain to me patterns
- Tell me about zones on the court
- You mention constructing points, how many examples do you have for me of this in play?
- Do you have grids, charts, maps, analytic's to backup your claims
- How many minutes is the ball in play in a match

I hear a lot of, "I have coached twenty years, tennis is a unique sport, you need to listen to us and we've got the technical experience to take a player a long way."

Anyways, over the winter I worked with two buddies (one is a top 1500 ATP player who is done as a player, not achieving his potential and just now coming to grips with what really set back his career development, and the other is an 80 year old coach) who has a superb passion for this type of stuff!

I will explain it now:

- I created a chess board on the court (64 slots, 32 each side, as I thought I'd bring in Russian chess masters to teach how to read the game properly, memorize, patterns and hard wire certain aspects). As well the grid is easy to learn if you can successfully teach stacking. I have learned from Mike Tyson's training that they would train him by numbers, so Jab-Cross-Left uppercut-Cross would be a a 1-2-5-2 and a Jab-Right uppercut-Left hook-Right hand would be a 1-6-3-2 for example. A young Tyson number crunched better than anyone else, and had a solution for every problem. The best athletes obviously know the raw numbers, percentages, time and space needed to overcome that specific problem in their head.

So, I took a match of the best (old, Venus) and the up and coming next (Bouchard), and went to town.

- I charted where each ball landed

- I charted every points length (time)

- I charted the amount of balls hit in each rally (this shocked us)

- I charted the time of each rally where the ball was in play (this shocked us)

- I timed the break in between points (for rhythm and rest period)

- I charted where each point was won or lost

- I charted where the ball went if it was lost (and did my best if it hit the net
to chart where it went on the net)

- I charted where the feet were in relation to the ball

- I charted the pathway of the feet

- I've charted time, and obviously I can chart the running patterns, sort out the times in the running patterns, and work with Olympic sprint coaches and NFL coaches to better run these specific movements in all phases (and truly activate the correct muscle activation pathways needed to move properly).

- When I get this entered into a computer I will create a serious of chess cards for my athlete to look at (like chess players do), so they can learn to see the game in their head. I read Agassi's dad would play tennis in his head, so he was likely doing some very specific placement in certain zones, and teaching young Andre in a different sort of manner.

So, now my questions for all of you.

I need to expand this research. I will add the following to it (forehand, backhand, slice, pace, stances, angles of shots, mechanical errors etc, and I am get the wife who coaches running to figure out the technical non racket reasons for an error without even looking at the racket.

So, the million dollar question, if you had a dream of mapping things out what would you map out? In addition to what I am doing? How would you make our raw to the bone, underdeveloped and badly funded analytic program better?

The second million dollar question, what are some links to this type of research. I have had a hell of a time finding it? I found one guy was doing zones, but the tennis ball was small, and his zones were the size of the Atlantic ocean to me! People must have this data with hawk-eye now at the professional level yes? Does Hawk-Eye know spin rate, speed and velocity, man that would sure be useful to have, and my map charts would be a hell of a lot more accurate!

Regardless, I think when I am all done, and run some analytic data on it I will have a few more concrete solutions on how the game should be played from a pure numerical standpoint. It will be interesting when I get it put into a computer program, as it'll show me what needs to be trained, and what doesn't.

If I can chart a match correctly, over the long term I believe I can create a developmental pathway. I'm also going to love comparing the work - physical load outputs of a tennis player to a hockey, basketball, football and MMA player.

My best regards:
worldsworsttennismentorwhoknowsnothingaboutgripsan dwillhaveashortshelflikewithcoaches

[hockeyscout]

And of course, how to minimize the amount of work needed to perform at a high level (sprinting has developed tremendously because coaches have been so good at eliminating athletic chaos on all fronts - physical, mental ect).

[gsheiner]

I like this concept. I've had a similar idea about charting matches from a great player whose style matches the style one would like to play or teach.
Like you, I would chart footwork and look for repetitive patterns that could be isolated and worked on.

Also, I'd like to ask you how you intend to teach the serve. This is the most important shot in tennis and the one least dependent on movement obviously.

[gzhpcu]

Just my opinon: we live in an age of information overload. We now are on the verge of being flooded with a number of motion sensors for tennis rackets to provide even more information. I, personally, find all these statistics counterproductive. We never had them in the past and came up with great players. Humans are not programmable robots. Go out and play. Practice. Watch good players play.

You guys might be right, but I say: keep it simple. I much prefer John's visual tennis approach. Watch good players playing and let it sink in. Youngsters are even better at this than we are. Use a video camera to capture your strokes and see what looks wrong. Watch videos of good players.

[hockeyscout]

Mr Heiner

Interesting two points. I think if your awesomely passionate about it, these devices will just enhance it. When you love something that isn't ever information overload.

To the footwork, and serve question.

I am charting the patterns, and then I think I will work with some NFL running coaches and Olympic sprinting coaches to best understand how to properly, and scientifically run those routes. I guess I will call them routes. It'll be interesting to see what commonalities I find, as I can best skill set work around those routes, see what speed they are executing them at, and find shortcuts to better run these movements more effectively (just as NFL receivers do).

I think movement is # 1 on the serve, or at least that's the way I do it. When you're serving, you need to get to your offensive next position very quickly.

My focus on the serve at this point is transition (I got a kid who is close to 160 cm having just turned eight, arms down to the legs, double joints and heavy, so that's not a concern as the tools are in place).

I think serving at a young age is about the transition (and teaching it). Quick serve, run it out, half volley deep for a winner and then into the net for a hard volley (no swinging) straight to the back line deep, and then a quick cut to the left or right, for a cross court volley.

I don't like to serve and stop as it's way to hard on a young body and I don't want buckling. I also want to promote a natural flow into the next. So, in short, I am a firm believer in the next to next, and flow, and creating it at a young age.

I spend so much time on the return to serve. In fact, it's our major focus. The numbers don't lie. You'd better be able to win that ball in the 1-3 -5 shot, or 2-4 or you're not going to win in the woman's game. I was shocked to find in my research how quickly the points ended.

I read about McEnroe the USTA guy saying you need to rally 50 balls, and all the rest, academy balls, spin and all the rest, however, we focus to be on wall ball, low, hard, a few inches over the net and for a sound winner.

Everyone teaches spin, spin and spin. Mom, dad and the USTA love the rallies, and I see McEnroe chatting about hitting 30 rallies. Everyone is happy, content, Jimmy is coming along so good, however, it isn't tennis development.

The ball needs to be hit an inch over the net, low, hard, flat and landing near the right or left side of the back baseline conistently. I figure if you practice high percentage tennis at a young age, you'll do it when your older on instinct. At a very young age I cut the net away, and left the tape, and whenever she misses by an inch or two I just say, "In seven years you will be 6'6" and those won't miss anymore." Taking away the psychological element of net helped a lot, if you don't want to cut it then you can just pull it up and wrap it up. If you have kids your coaching it works nicely, as hitting the net doesn't stop your drill as well or flow. , you can keep going and the kid doesn't get depressed he missed, and has another shot at it.

As well we use dead balls, that are dyed black (no one wants to use them or steal them), so it's tough first off to see the ball, and then to hit the ball hard (its dead), get behind the ball and in the right position to succeed.

AIR balls we refer to as, "Man, America, that ball is flying back to California."

Tennis people say spin, spin and more spin. It's great, however, I want hard and flat.

Mind you I do spin and backspin with my ball machine, although I'd like to make it a bit more intensive.

Of course, I make things a bit more difficult ...

On the serve and return to serve focus for me is pretty important, so I come to the court with two speakers, one is playing metal like pantera, the other one plays punk or rage against the machine, and when they are mixed their annoying beyond belief. And, as well I have a soccer blow horn that goes off as soon as the ball hits the ground (its a signal, you need to be hitting that ball as the horn goes off).

Tennis players are nice, quiet, easy going and I kind of decided that wouldn't work long term for a kid who was going to be the size of Coke Machine, a daddy who thinks like a hockey player. I kind of want to teach a tennis player under hockey conditions (come to a Canada hockey game, man, loud, moms, dads, horns, cowbells, its insane).

I got a great ball machine, however, I hated it, so we made some modifications. I rev it up to the top speed, put it on a platform, raise it 18 feet in the air, and put a couple pieces of wood under the back end and let it fire down into the court. I got her playing a game with Quick Strike (her racket's name) called Counter Strike where she's got to pound into that ball as quick as she can and hit an absolute winner with a horn and music blaring.

You can also do some pretty radical moon balls when the machine is 18 feet in the air as well, and we try and hit it asap as soon as it hits the ground on the rise.

Its all fun.

We can pull this off because the guy who runs the tennis courts doesn't know the first thing about tennis and lets us do what we want. A few people mentioned the music and horn is disturbing, and the administrator just looks at them and goes, "Are you a sissy?" What do you expect, this isn't Wimbledon, it costs 3.45$ an hour to rent the court." If we were in the States treating the tennis court like our own skateboarding playground we'd be banished to Siberia, and told that's not the way it is done here. Here we can really have some fun, however, the purest wouldn't be big fans.

When my child first started I watched a documentary on the ZBoys, and I decided those skateboarders knew how to innovate - develop talent, and I would copy them.

Watch this if you ever get a chance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpaw__fOOtA

Watch this video starting from 45:00 to 51:00.


My best regards:
worldsworsttennismentorwhoknowsnothingaboutgripsan dwillhaveashortshelflikewithcoaches