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.   

Cross-Training

Want to be stronger and faster, and improve your tennis skill? Play soccer! Swim! Go to a spin class! Cross-training in sports has been around for a long time, and is an important way to develop muscles that typically are underused in tennis but can help you become stronger and fitter. One of the best sports to cross-train with is soccer. This doesn’t mean that you should join a soccer league, but rather, use soccer as a warm-up or play with tennis friends over the weekend when you have a free chance. Not only is it intense and a good work out, but the footwork in soccer mimics the small steps necessary in tennis as well. Balance and coordination can improve, and, did I mention, it is fun! The only thing that you should adjust is the length of the field—play on the court from net to fence, constructing two small goals at either end, or mimic this set up on field. Make sure rules are very strictly enforced—oftentimes, players get overzealous with soccer and end up breaking a foot or twisting an ankle. A hard jab from an opponent from foot to shin isn’t pleasant, but when played right and carefully, soccer can be a great cross-training sport for tennis.

Swimming is another great cross-training sport. It’s low-impact, so players with injuries that prevent them from running for fitness can utilize water sprints that enhance upper body strength and fitness level. Any kind of swimming will do, but make sure you’re in the pool for extended amounts of time, between 30 minutes and an hour, and swim laps either as a replacement for a slow jog or court sprints, which necessitate high speeds and short breaks rather than continuous slow movement. If you’ve ever seen a swimmer’s body, you’ll notice their large shoulders and thin legs—tennis players need shoulder strength, but don’t necessarily need to lift a ton of weight to get these muscles. Swimming naturally develops these shoulder muscles, and can be a great cross-training tool.

Spin (otherwise known as biking) is one of my favorite cross-training tools. Spin is interactive because it’s typically done with music and an instructor in a gym setting, where the bikes are stationary and have adjustable weighting to push your legs as if you were pumping weights. The extended session and adrenaline rush is an intense work out, and not only burns calories but develops fast-twitch muscles and a great way to tone butt muscles, quads, and hamstrings without a million squats. I personally love spin and biking exercises because you still feel like you are working out but you also are low-impact on your joints. I was bike-bound in college because of a leg injury. I gained so much speed and explosiveness due to the bike sprints that I did with our trainers. 

Tennis is great, but it also can get intense, and fitness can become boring and tough. Cross-training keeps you fit, ready for the court, and also rests your head mentally from the sport while training your body. Soccer and spin typically are team-orientated, while swim and biking can be done for people who prefer to work individually.  

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.