Traffic Light Tennis

Red light, green light. Sometimes we have to come up with interesting ways to entertain kiddos. Sometimes we have to come up with funny or easy to remember metaphors for every tennis player—in the education field, this is actually called building on schema. You may be unfamiliar with tennis, but everyone is familiar with a traffic light. Red means stop, yellow means caution, green means go. Similarly, at SHP we talk about red light as a ball that would be hit back when you are on the defensive, a yellow light as a rally ball, and a green light as an aggressive ball. I get it—but do you?

How do you hit a green ball, exactly? Yes, harder. But how? Most of the time when I ask this question, I get a pause and a quiet blink of the eyes, sometimes a brave shrug, but most of the time, a silence that beckons an answer from the coach.

So, let’s break it down. A red light ball is a ball that you want to hit when you are on the defensive. That typically means that you are on the run. I break down the red, yellow, and green light ball into percent effort—obviously, you’re giving 100% effort all the time, right? Now, I’m talking effort of your swing. When you tense up and put in your entire body into the ball, that’s a green light ball—80%. You never want to be hitting 100% strength on the ball because it’s hard to control. It’s known as a “slap” in tennis—a reckless, go-for-broke type of shot that we coaches frown upon. A rally ball is 50% of your speed. You are still swinging out, your shot stays the same, and you are still moving your feet, but the ball will be easier to control. On the run, like we started this paragraph, would be the red light ball—you’re out of position and can’t behind the ball as well as you should. It’s better to hit a red light ball, or a 20% effort shot.

Now let me reiterate—this doesn’t mean that you poke at the ball. Your swing will stay the same, all that changes is the effort behind the ball, meaning your muscle tension. Relax the muscle tension to hit a softer shot. Practice this—hit ten balls in a row at 20%, move up to 50%, get 10 balls in at 50%, then move up to 80%, hitting ten balls in a row. At any point if you miss two or three shots in a row, go back down a level.

The reason why I like this is a lot of junior players tend to go for broke even when practicing. It’s important to stay consistent and to know how to do that. You need to know how to dial back in speed. It takes effort and focus to do so. At a slower pace, players also tend to feel the ball better, and can adjust better when hitting the ball slower in terms of technique.

So while red, yellow, and green light balls seem like an arbitrary metaphor that is hard to grasp, 20%, 50%, and 80% swing effort helps you know exactly HOW to hit these traffic light shots.