Performance Guidance
One of the toughest things is deciding where your child, or children, should go for their training and coaching. Even when you have committed to a centre and its programme, it’s difficult to know if the service that you and your child are receiving is right for them and the best available.
Even if you do not have high-level tennis knowledge, don’t forget your good solid parental instincts:
- Is your child enjoying themselves?
- Do they like going?
- Do they seem to be getting better?
- Do the coaches seem professional and reliable?
In order to improve it is important to be in the right coaching and training environment.An ideal coach is one who can:
- inspire the children
- introduce players to competition
- create a fun and challenging environment
- teach the basics of the game
The coach should be hold a current LTA coaching Licence, and be fully up to date with the methods of teaching young kids. As well as providing the players with the fundamentals they will, as the children improve, take an active interest in their development through keeping a good communication link with the parents, helping in the planning of tournament schedules and training goals and go to competitions to watch some matches.
This will serve as a confidence boost for the player and allow the coach to assess how they are improving and developing. If your child is playing a lot of tennis and looking to reach a good level then I would look at the following areas:
Track record
History does tend to repeat itself! The best way to judge a programme is to look at what it produces.
How many players do they have that have made it into the qualifying or main draw of the national championships in the past few years? If the answer is none and they are billing themselves as being a high-level performance programme then I might look around a bit more.
Bear in mind though that different set ups specialise in different age groups, for example a centre may not have any players in Nationals, but they may have got lots of players started and then passed them on to other clubs where they have done well.
Don’t just look at the standard of players that a programme produces also look at the type of player and person that the programme produces. If the players are motivated, happy and love their tennis then there are clearly some great things going on at that venue.
All round programme
As players improve they need an increasingly rounded programme to carry on succeeding.
For a player to reach their potential their tennis programme needs to be first class, but they will also need a great physical programme, nutritional advice and mental skills work.
A programme where the player has a team around them providing this all round advice is the one to look for.
Individualised goal setting
Maximising your potential is an individual journey. It is great to train with the support of a team around you, but to really improve players need individual goals that are specific to their game.
A programme for better players should provide individualised goals for each player at least once per term. The whole of the team around the player should then be aware of these goals and work towards them.
Consistency in coaching team
As tennis grows the numbers of kids in the programmes grows and so does the size of the coaching team.
This is great in some ways, but it can lead to a player working on court with a wide variety of coaches in any one week. In my experience this rarely works, I would always look for consistency in terms of no more than 1 or 2 coaches working with a player in any week plus perhaps a physical trainer.
