Tennis in the Cold

For some tennis coaches, having a practice or match in cold temperatures may seem strange - I'm talking to you, Arizona coaches; but for a lot of us, coaching in winter-like temperatures can be a painful reality.  Recently, where I live, we had a very abnormal cold spell hit us.  We were playing in beautiful 70-80 degree weather every day, then suddenly it was in the 40s.

As high school coaches, we struggle enough as it is to get our players to move properly.  When the cold hits, it makes it even harder.  You can't really blame the kids, people move more slowly in the cold.  In case you need hard facts - which I respect - here is a brief article from some folks who did little bit of research: How Cold Weather Impacts Your Running.

While getting kids to move in the cold isn't easy, it will be necessary at some point.  Here are some adjustments I made in our cold weather practice that had a positive effect:

1. A thorough warm-up. While a good warm-up should be a part of every practice, it is even more important in the cold.  I normally have the kids just go through a typical pre-match warm-up (groundstrokes, volleys, overheads, serves, returns).  In the cold, however, I added in some sprints, side shuffling, backpedaling, and quick footwork drills.

2. Mid-practice workout. If you sense your kids are slowing down, or you've just finished a drill that was a little less movement-oriented, I think it's a good idea to stop the tennis for a moment and move your body.  About halfway through practice I'd reached this point, I had my guys put the rackets down and do a brief about 400m run and then did a couple sets of lunges and squats.  It was very effective to get the blood pumping again.

3. Cardio-focused drills. This is often the focus of my drills anyway - keeping the kids moving, but again, it's extra important on a cold day.  Singles drills: start them in one corner and feed it to the other so that they start out in a sprint.  King-of-the-court type drills: feed the ball as soon as they are going to switch sides so they have to spring to get over there.  A lot of it is common sense, you just have to be thinking twice about moving extra during the drills.

These three things, among others I'm sure, help drastically to keep your kids motivated and moving in a cold-weather practice.

High School Tennis Coaching Resources

There's a number of different places I go to learn a little bit more about tennis.  I have a couple youtube channels that I often check when I've been asked a question I couldn't answer or just want to expand my knowledge base.  There are some listed below and I will likely add to this list when I come across new, good ones - or remember other ones:

1. Jeff Salzenstein - This is probably my favorite.  Succinct lessons with easy to remember cues and breakdowns: Tennis Coach TV

He also has a separate website, it's a little clunky and I haven't completely delved into it, but probably worth checking out: jeffsalzensteintennis.com

2. Tommy Tran - along with your racket, you'll probably want to grab a bowl of popcorn.  These videos are LONG, but thorough.  If you've got the time and drive to learn the entirety of something, this the guy to go to: Tommy Tran

3. Essential Tennis - Another good youtuber with a mission to help tennis players improve their game.  He does a good job of using different visuals and some slow motion video to teach.  Easy to watch and easy to learn: Essential Tennis


Additionally, here is a little playlist of footwork drills I compiled a while back.  A source of some good ideas to help your players move a little better: Tennis Footwork

Some New Drills (to me, anyway)

This is a group of a couple "drills" I put together in a progression to show the importance of good serves and returns as well as being aggressive getting to the net.

Part One: Spread out (12 players - four to each court) and serve from one half of the court.  So we have four guys on one baseline serving to an empty court.  We scored our serves as follows:

Out - 0 Points
In, second bounce inside the court - 1Point
In, second bounce outside the court - 2 Points
In, second bounce hitting the fence/wall - 3 points

First person to reach 18 points (or whatever you decide) wins.  It was a fun drill.  The guys hustled to get to the baseline, but they obviously had to slow down to focus when it actually came to serving.  I feel like it was a good mental challenge on top of good serving practice.  Some guys went for the slow and steady approach of dinking serves in and consistently getting one point. Those guys landed in the middle of the lineup (see below.)  The guys with the power serves and some consistency were all at the top.  And, well, we know who was at the bottom.

Part Two: I had the players line up in order of the points in the serving drill.  I had the 1st and 4th person be partners and play against the 2nd and 3rd, 5th and 8th play against 6th and 7th, etc..

We did tiebreakers, but with some twists.  (Anytime I try a new drill, there is almost always things I don't think of until we put it to action.  This was no exception, so we really made some adjustments as we went along.)  The main twist was that your winners only count if you hit it from inside the service line.  This was to encourage players to get up to the net, as I discussed in a previous post.  Double faults, aces, and errors all counted as points; but if there was a winner or forced error it only counted if the person who hit it was inside the service box.  The winning team would move up a court, losing team would move down.

I was met with some success in this drill.  It definitely forced my baseline backboard type players to get up to the net.  It also, definitely frustrated some of my better singles players who aren't too keen on not ripping the ball as hard as they can from the baseline.  I do plan to return to this drill - or some variation of it - someday, with a little bit better handle on the rules.

The second main twist was taking away the second serve (or first serve, depending on how you want to look at it) which was kind of fun.  They still had to get to the net, but that takes on a little bit different of a look when you only have one serve.  The intent was to show players who are going for 120mph first serve at 20% and 20mph second serve at notmuchbetter% that a solid, consistent serve is better than a sporadic great serve.

After a couple rounds of each variation we played a normal tiebreaker, mostly for the sake of my players' sanity.

Serve and Volley!

Anybody with a little bit of knowledge of tennis doubles knows that winning team is almost always the one that controlled the net better. Why is it so hard to get this across to my players? It seems like I say it multiple times every practice and match and they are still reluctant to get off the baseline.  A couple theories why:

Laziness:  It's a lot easier to not run up to the net.

Bad experience: Maybe getting hit by a ball or badly missing a shot on the way up, leading to a thought like, "Coach has no idea what he's talking about, I'm going to play my game at the baseline."

Timidity:  Sprinting up to the net immediately following a shot (serve, return, or what have you) does take a little gusto, I will admit. Some people aren't exactly wired with that bit of ferocity needed.

I'm sure there's others, but those are examples that I definitely see.

Idea for a drill to encourage moving up to the net: play some tiebreakers where points can only be won if the the player who hit the winning shot was in front of the service line.  If a winner is hit from the baseline then the point is null.  Obviously this would be a little tricky with rotating every six points and normal tiebreaker routines, but the idea of making those points worth more is, I feel, a decent motivator to teach the idea.

I had planned to do this today, unfortunately, there was brief but violent thunder/hailstorm that cleared us out of there pretty quickly; but I am determined to try drills like these. I will let you know if I am met with any success.

What to Say to Losers

Well, no wins yet.  I'm still optimistic we will get (at least) one before the end of the season, but for now, losses.  What do you say to a team that keeps losing?  It's tough.  Personally, I'm beginning to feel like a bit of a broken record:

"Tough match, you played well, but he was a tough opponent"

"I know it's no fun to lose, but it's alright - use this to motivate yourself to get better"

"Time to get back to practice and get ready for our next match"

"Shake it off"

"It's alright"

"We'll get 'em next time"

and so on...

I think the best you can do is just do your utmost to stay positive.  As soon as you let the losses start to bog you down then there's a slim chance your players can keep a positive attitude.  Optimism is a coach's duty.

Losing

I hope it's not too long until I get to talk about winning, but for now, all we have is a loss.

It was a close one! We played a team that was supposed to be better than us by a long shot, but it came down to just one court.  Overall I'm happy with how my guys played; but even with some good tennis, losing is never fun.

I'm an extremely competitive person and sometimes it's hard for me to stay positive after a loss.  My main motivator for staying optimistic is (cliche?) the kids. Young athletes take cues from their coaches more often than we probably realize.  If a coach acts like a jerk while losing, then the kid will think that that's how adults can act when losing.

So, even if it's hard, taking the high road and losing with as much class as you can muster goes a long way in helping to shape your kids into classy ones. That's my thought on the matter anyway.

Hopefully there isn't much dispute on that point. I think most people would agree about that, it's just that some coaches don't really realize how important it is to be aware of their actions after a loss.

My thoughts for the day.

The Lineup

The only thing I appreciate about deciding the lineup is that you get it out of the way at the beginning of the season.  For me, this is the hardest part of coaching.

I'm not sure how long I get to play the I'm-new-here card, but being new to this program made deciding the lineup extra difficult.  At the start of the season in previous coaching positions I've had, I'm familiar with the team.  Before the first day of tryouts I already have a pretty good idea in my head where everybody is going to fall in line.  The way this season worked out, however, I had one week to analyze every player and stack them all against each other.  There were the obvious bests and worsts, but all those guys in the middle....let's just say I did a lot of crossing out and arrow-writing in my notes today.  All that being said, I did get a lineup to my guys today - one day before our first match. There were lots of challenges to making the final decision, but two I'd like to talk about right now:

The Brothers

I have twin brothers on my team.  They are similar in appearance, play style, and character.  Unfortunately they were at the bottom of the lineup.  Things worked out just wrong so that one would play and one wouldn't.  I had had them playing as doubles partner throughout the week, but for unforeseen reasons (see below) a spot above them got taken.  Fortunately, in this situation, it was obvious what needed to be done.  This is the time to say no to your soft side and get it done.  I had to have them play against each other.  They duked it out in a one set to six with no-ad scoring (what I've used this week for challenges - both fast and telling) and we had our winner.  I'm glad it wasn't a close one, it makes it a little easier when one obviously has the upper hand, but seeing the dad at the match just might be a bit uncomfortable. Such is tennis coaching.

The Ringer

A Swiss foreign exchange student with eight (EIGHT!) years of playing experience, joined our team today.  He came to me last week on Friday to see if he could still join.  He got all of his paperwork done by today (which is, like, record time for a high school guy) and joined in on practice.  Do all Swiss guys play like Federer? After today I think they just might.  This was tricky, he hadn't been at practice all week, he hadn't run, he hadn't been a part of the team and put in the work that they had.  What he had done, however, was prove that he was a good tennis player.  Is this fair to put him over the others?  In a lot of ways the obvious answer is no, but if you think about it a little bit, maybe you can justify it.  Think about those eight years he played, when clearly many others on the team had not.  While he hadn't put the work into the team that the others had, he had put plenty more work into the sport, to me, that's good enough.

I'd welcome any thoughts on these.  Am I ruthless for splitting up brothers? Am I unfair for putting my new, talented player into the lineup?  I feel as though I made the right choices, but I will admit it's not so black and white.