First week of camp- A grand success, quote of the week, and pictures too

The first week of summer camp is always interesting. We've gotten used to, as coaches, our seminole high performance kiddos, and it's always really nice to have some new faces and help our SHP kids play with some new players and have new experiences.

Working on serves!

Drills during camps!

Being goofy on the way to Chilis with the dorm group!

See that Russian flag in the background? Represent!

One of our communication and teamwork seminars paid off! :)

It was a sunny day on Sunday as we checked in our dorm campers. I smile as I remember some of them; a sweet nine year old who smiled shyly, a few players who have come back over the years, growing taller since I last saw them, a big hug for the coach they had last year, and a few older boys, nonchalantly waving off parents and eyeing the coaches, ready for some tennis and perhaps some ping-pong shenanigans later that night.

Looking for attention!

Of course, some of our kiddos want lots of attention! We give them all the attention they need and want.

Chiles was delicious that evening, and some well-deserved nutrition after a long practice filled with drills and their favorite games, olympics and pass-'em.

We are pumped for Davis cup!

Monday started the week of hard work. I had mostly ladies in my group, which ended up being super fun and exciting. We joked about silly things during resting time, and came up with riddles to entertain each other during lunch breaks. They still didn't get my riddle; if you have a pail that holds 5 gallons and a pail that holds 7 gallons, how do you get exactly four gallons? I suppose math over summer break doesn't sit well with some of the kiddos. :)

Some of the gold group ladies giggling during lunch break

Yes, I'm an awesome photographer, I know.

Between jokes and giggles, we worked hard. We did a lot of consistency drills, and worked on fine-tuning aggressiveness and volleys to put away well-fought points. Of course on Tuesday when I put on my hat to shield my head from the sun we got sent indoors, but it was fun to see how much they enjoyed getting out of the heat but still being able to work on some drills and games mixed in. They got some video analysis with Coach Dwayne too, which was fun for them, working on some serve motions.

After indoors we definitely needed to stretch, so we got some yoga in before we left. The kids loved it.

Yoga!

Thursday came too quickly I think, I was still pumped for David Cup and team mother Russia. My kiddos that switched out with my awesome gold group this week were nervous at first, but really got the hang of it, by day four swinging joyfully around with the Russian flag tied to their necks like a cape. Super Russia! Hard fought matches, but Germany took the title this week. In my heart Russia still won.


 Most memorable quote of the week:

Serving for the match!

"When boys are jealous, it's kind of cute, but when girls get jealous, it's world war three." - 10 year old Grady

Perrin is the queen of the lake reservation!

Great first week guys. We did great. You did great. We miss you already!

Golden ladies! 

Cheering on their Russia teammates!

Will, Grady, and Wyatt

Posing for the camera!

Giggles during break with the gold team. 

Smiles all around!

 

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.