Repetition, Repetition, Repetition...

Bare with me on this one..it's a bit of a "stream of consciousness"!!!

On the odd occasion I have time (very, very rare these days!) I'm partial to a round of golf, although playing as infrequently as I have recently has played merry hell with my handicap! This weekend saw me with a rare Sunday with no coaching and therefore gave the opportunity to savour watching the final round of The Open Championship, from Royal St Georges, on the Kent coastline. I love Links golf (the term given to coastal courses) as the course and most often the weather provide a real and very different challenge to the players. This year the weather was particularly horrible, with driving wind and rain, requiring the players to shape their shots in a very different fashion than they are normally used to. After four days of competition Darren Clarke came out on top, his ability to change his ball flight to a much lower trajectory than normal and his ability to read and flight the ball on the wind left him the clear winner.

So, how does this relate to tennis I hear you ask?! Well, in my role I am often asked about talent and in the golf example the commentators talked extensively about how "talented" Darren Clarke must be to be able to change his "natural" shot shape. And it got me thinking (and researching), Clarke isn't more talented than Mickleson or McIlroy or any of the other great players - he has simply practiced those types of shots enough times that when he needed them, they were there, in his muscle memory, waiting to be called upon. And so you should practice to (not golf - tennis obviously!)

"Perfect practice makes perfect" is perfectly true - it takes between 3000-5000 correct repetitions for a neural pathway to be created for a given skill or action, there's a reason the pro's have hit thousands and thousands and thousands of balls, high forehands thousands of times, low forehands thousands of times, ISO forehands thousands of times (you get the picture...)! Those correct repetitions mean that when they need that shot, it's automatic, a sub-conscious process, borne out through countless repetitions.

The process is called "myelination" or to most people - muscle-memory and it links nicely into my last piece about a single topic per lesson - repetition of a skill, under careful scrutiny until it is repeatable, before moving on to a new skill set. This process is covered very well in Daniel Coyle's "The Talent Code" and if any coaches haven't read it yet, you really should!

Anyway, the point of this rather rambling post (sorry about that!) is, make sure when you practice, you practice with purpose and full concentration on creating the correct feeling. Learning a new technique takes full focus (initially) and should be really mentally tiring! A good coach to make corrections when required and help you understand your errors is also handy! It is a hard but ultimately rewarding process - embrace it.

Cheers

This way, that way, my way?

There has been some fascinating debate (lots of it constructive, some of it nasty, sadly) on tennis forums (or a certain forum specifically) recently around the validity of certain teaching systems or methods and I feel compelled to make a post around my opinions on this matter.

Firstly, let me nail my colours to the mast - I work for RPT Europe ( Registro Professional de Tenis) as a coach tutor, training coaches to teach tennis using a system developed in Spain and widely credited by coaches and players world wide, including Toni Nadal (Rafa Nadal), Antonio Martinez Cascales (JC Ferrero) and Emilio Sanchez/Sergio Casal (Sanchez-Casal Academy). I am a huge advocate of this method of teaching and if I were going to recommend a coach looking to do just one course of training, I would recommend an RPT course without hesitiation as I feel it gives the best overall training for coaches.

However, I would never recommend doing just one training course. Speaking personally I have certifications from the LTA (Level 3), RPT (Level 5), MTI (Level 4) and USPTA (Pro 1) and whilst I still believe my RPT qualifications were the best all around training, there are plenty of elements from each of the other courses that I have taken away and use on a daily basis.

To put it into context, 4 years ago, I thought I knew everything about teaching tennis, I had been coaching for about 12 years and had 'my system' down and I had a piece of paper to say I knew what I was doing. Then, whilst in Barcelona and working with a group of coaches from Spain and Argentina I realised I actually knew nothing, I had a closed mind to new ideas and ways of working! Over that week I gradually managed to open my eyes and realise there was so much more to learn. So, since then that is what I have done, absorb information from any source I can and even if I can only take one thing away from a training course, that's one thing that makes me a better coach than yesterday and hopefully helps my players one stage closer to their goals.

Now, whilst the RPT still provides the majority of my teaching method/teaching style, my point in all of this is that great coaches never stop learning, never stop looking for a better way, so instead of closing your mind to a 'new system' try it, there might be something in it you can use!

Cheers