ZZZ

I asked one of my players what I should write about next in my upcoming blog. He promptly replied—sleep. I responded with “I bet you food is the next thing on your list.” He smiled and nodded. 

Lo and behold, the sleep blog. Yes, I am going to take up that challenge and write about sleep. At first, I was stuck. What can I write about that isn’t extremely obvious? Sleep is good! Sure! Too much sleep is bad!

Whenever I am stuck, I research. I guess that’s the researcher in me. I googled sleep, athletic performance, and even tennis and sleep. I found some interesting articles about how sleep not only is good for you, but also that it can, in fact, improve your athletic performance. 

See, just like athletes need more calories than an average person to fuel their training bodies, athletes also need more sleep, because during sleep is when our body repairs itself, and our internal organs that may have been working really hard throughout the day get to regenerate cells and gear up for the next day of hard work. 

How much sleep is enough, then? The average person should be getting between 7 and 9 hours of sleep, even though there are the strange anomalies that function best at 5 or even 10 hours of sleep. However, because of our action-packed lives and typically late work hours, whether as an adult or a student completing their last-minute touches on their projects or essay, typically people in the US get only about 5.5-6.7 hours of sleep a night. And sleep means actually falling asleep. It doesn’t count if you are just in bed watching TV!

So let’s do a study together. Add an hour to what you typically sleep, and see how your body performs with that hour. This hour should be a regular hour that you add on, either go to sleep earlier or get up later. A regular schedule is essential for athletes—contrary to popular belief, you can’t “makeup” sleep hours. So, if you are working on an essay all night until 4 am, if you sleep the next night from 6 pm to 6am, you still haven’t “caught up” with your sleep. The best thing to do, actually, is to continue on with your regular sleep cycle as best as you can. For example, if you sleep from 11pm-7am, and then you decide to hang out with friends at a sleepover until 2 am, your sleep cycle has been messed up, and you have to make sure you restart it. Go to bed the next night at 8pm or 9pm, and your cycle will get even MORE messed up!

So what’s the big deal? Why all this emphasis on sleep? Well, a study done on NCAA Division I basketball players shows that an additional hour of sleep a night for at least a week improved their speed by 5% and their accuracy by 9%! (Griffin, n.d.) Lack of sleep causes irritability, decreased energy (duh), but also hormonal changes and worse decision making and reflexes. 

Add that extra hour, and see how much sleep really does impact your athletic abilities.  

Griffin, M. (n.d.). Can sleep improve your athletic performance? Retrieved 14 April 2014 from http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/sleep-athletic-performance. 

Olive

She was the type of student that every teacher hopes for—a smiling face and a curious mind. I first met Olivia Stone on the tennis court, but my time getting to know her wasn’t through tennis at all, but rather in a 6^th grade Language Arts class as her teacher. There I found Olivia’s fascination with horses, her love for her family, and growing interest in becoming a veterinarian when she got older. In that class I learned how loved she was by her peers, and how her kind heart affected her teachers, always described as the one whom everyone had some sort of “soft spot” for.

Olivia played tennis with us at Seminole High Performance too—she excelled at an early age at the sport, with the power to hit the ball harder than most girls at her age then. Excelling in the sport early brought with it some niggling injuries, from strained muscles to twisted ankles, but her drive and passion keep her going and working hard. I particularly remember when I would work with her one on one and she would turn towards me and smile, newly un-braced, when after a small tidbit her serve would work better. “That’s it, Olive,” I had said, my nickname for her, beaming back, a proud coaching moment for any coach. 

 

But then I remember another moment, a moment that is the worst to experience for any coach—a quietly crying Olivia, not because she was having a bad day at school, not because she lost a match, not because she had a fight with her best friend. No, those things were petty teenage things, things that Olive should have been crying about, things that I could, like any nodding and understanding coach or parent, handle with a pat on the back and a quick hug, a “it’ll get better.” No, this was being in so much pain that she couldn’t be brave anymore, a struggle within herself to break down in a moment of weakness, typically a situation for an adult, not a young girl in her early teens.

Olivia has severe scoliosis; more detail can be found at http://www.gofundme.com/7od0pc about her condition, but knowing Olive personally has made all of us at Seminole High Performance want to make a difference, to help Olivia and her family afford the expensive surgery that will help her. This is so much bigger than tennis, so much bigger than a sport. This is making a difference in a young girl’s life, whether she wants to pursue her dreams in tennis, cheer, horseback riding, or becoming a vet. Please help us help her and her wonderful family, who worry about her health every day, a caring and compassionate mom who only wants the best for her beautiful daughter. Whether this is a $25 dollar donation, a $500 dollar donation, or even just a word of compassion, let’s help Olive get back up on her feet.        

A Frank Talk

Goal setting makes me mad sometimes, as a coach. It’s beyond infuriating to watch a player with potential to absentmindedly swat at balls during practice, to take a weekend off right before a tournament. To not finish a sprint all the way to the line. It’s also infuriating to listen to big dreams and hopes to become a professional tennis player or a collegiate athlete and then see no determination to complete even the easiest of fitness routines. This isn’t to say that goal setting is bad, or that you should want to be a professional tennis player if you have the talent, or that you should not want to be a collegiate athlete. But from someone who knows what it takes to become a collegiate athlete and a professional tennis player, it is mind-boggling to hear a kid say I want to but then to not follow the advice of Nike and “Just do it.” 

Every coach at Seminole High Performance knows what it takes. It’s easy for me to say I’m probably the “tough love” coach. I’m not the sugar coating type, and I never will be, whether it’s on the court, in the classroom, or in my advising office. Are you meant to be a teacher? No, you aren’t. You are late to every class and are more focused on salary than actually teaching kiddos anything. Are you good enough to play division one tennis? Sure, if you put in at least 4 hours a day of tennis, not one. Are you ever going to be a professional tennis player? Definitely not. You don’t have the DRIVE to be one.

Do you see the trend here? I’m not talking talent. I wasn’t a talented player growing up. What I did have though is determination and work-ethic. I got a B instead of an A on a paper? Tell me what I can do better. I can’t seem to hit my overhead quite right? Let me hit a 100 more (not 10). You told me to go run for thirty minutes? I ran for forty. 

Goal setting is great, but it’s the follow through that is the most important aspect of goal setting. My dad (he’s a tennis coach, and brought me up as a tennis player as well as my brother, who is the bomb-diggity) sat down with me one day and told me that coaching is more than a business—it’s an investment in a child’s future. The worst thing you can do as a coach is to not be honest about what you and that player can accomplish together, and to not invest all of your energy, hope, and passion into every child you teach, reaching for the same goal they are reaching for. My success is your success. That’s why I think it’s funny to hear coaches from different academies talk to parents and their children and say “With my help your kid is going to be number one in the world/number one in Florida/number one in their high school. Just give me a year and X amount of dollars” Really? Apparently these coaches have a magic pill that I was never told about. The ironic part is when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, they are nowhere to be seen. When I (or any other SHP coach) talk goals with my players, I never promise anything. Instead, I say, what is it that you want to accomplish? Number one on your high school roster? How are YOU going to get there, and how can I HELP? I’m not ever going to be able to play a match for you. I don’t want you to become me. I want you to become YOU, a BETTER you, and I will share in your success of accomplishing what it is you want. Want to be a collegiate athlete? I’ll tell you what you need to do to accomplish that. If you’re slacking, I’m not going to say “Great shot, keep it up.” I’ll yell at you. I’ll make sure you never come to practice without a mindset to work again. Tough love—it’s because I actually care how you invest your time in this sport. It’s hard enough as a sport on its own; you don’t have to complicate it. 

A while ago I wrote about goal-setting. It’s important, I know. You can’t just be randomly floating around in tennis without at least an inkling of what you want out of it. So sit down with one of your SHP coaches, have a chat, discuss these things. We’ll tell you how to get there, and more importantly, we’ll stand by your side while you do it.    

It's supposed to be fun, right?

As a teacher, I am always trying to find something that inspires me for class. I stumbled upon this quote yesterday, and rather than thinking about my classroom, my thoughts instantly streamlined into tennis, and life in general (I know, super philosophical). 

“Promise me that you will not spend so much time treading water and trying to keep your head above the waves that you forget, truly forget, how much you really love to swim.”

I thought back to my playing days, when I was so tired of tennis, so tired of losing, so tired of sore muscles and arguments with myself that ended in teary eyes. Then I thought about players now. Sometimes it feels like your fight is your own fight and you have no one that understands you, and really gets your frustration, your love hate relationship with this game.  I disagree, because I guarantee that every coach at Seminole High Performance has once felt what you have felt as a player, and understands the quote above, how sometimes it gets so hard that we forget that tennis, is, in fact, a game, and it is supposed to be fun. I know, huge revelation, right? So when you are about to bang your racquet, give up on trying, or are frustrated to the point of tears, remember how much you really love the game. 

It’s true for every aspect of life—I wrote a blog about equilibrium a little while ago and how everything needs balance. There is such thing as drinking too many vitamins, having too much fun, working too hard. Sometimes it takes a day off from tennis to understand the game better, to rest your head and your muscles enough to get back to the court the following day a little more clearheaded rather than so clouded with frustration that focusing on anything at all. 

So don’t forget your roots—why you started this game, what you love about it, and what will always be a part of your life. Because if you are competitive as a junior player, you know that tennis is more than a hobby—it is an essential part of your life, but even that essential part of your life is supposed to be fun.     

The Watch This Phenomenon

          I call it the “Watch this” phenomenon. Anytime one of my players says “Hey coach, what this!” I know that a.) I will get hit, b.) They will hurt themselves c.) They’ll hurt someone else, or d.) they will look stupid. And that’s putting it lightly. Typically the “Watch this” phenomenon doesn’t have to do a lot with tennis but rather with things that involve the racquet, the ball, and/or the cart. Typical “Watch this” moments include trying to hit the ball through/over/on top of an inanimate object (which, of course, begs the question—why?), trying to do something “fancy” like bounce the ball against the frame of the racquet, or hitting the ball against the fence, only to mishit the ball, hit it against the pole that holds the fence up, and narrowly missing death with the ball grazing the hair on the top of the head. Ah, never a dull moment. 

But the “Watch this” phenomenon trickles into tennis as well sometimes. I see it most at the net. A player will set up the point well, hit a great approach shot, get the soft, high volley that they want to easily put away, only to try and hack at the ball in a way that it bounces “all fancy” or drops just below the net, of course missing their valiant attempt at what I call an “ESPN shot,” which I may or may not have borrowed from my college coach Jen Hyde. 

              

  Once in a while I see an ambitious player try and hit a drop shot off of a ball they clearly should have simply tried to hit through. Once in a while I see same said ambitious player try and hit a tweener (through the legs) during a tournament match. Once in a while I see the sneaky attempts of an off pace shot when one is simply not necessary. Tennis, even though we can make it super complex with our talk of fitness, technique, nutrition, mental game— is a simple sport. The concept is even easier—get the ball in the court more than your opponent. When you have a simple put away volley, shot, or approach shot, just put it away. There is no need for the “Watch this” phenomenon, whether it be on the court playing or on the court thinking of something to do that warrants a “don’t be stupid” teacher look. 

                Putting away high volleys is the toughest part, I think, of shot making. The biggest element to this shot is to avoid the “Watch this” that may take over. Don’t swig, but rather, add a little bit more of a decisive push forward with your feet, and add a little bit more angle down to the volley to get it in, without flipping your racquet head over.