The Training of an Eight Year-old..

David W. Smith, Senior Editor TennisOne

As a teaching pro for over 30 years, one of the most often asked questions about tennis is from parents wanting to know the best way to train their kids in the sport. It is not rare to see parents who play tennis seek tennis instruction for their children. Parents in general, want their children to learn better techniques than they did so their children can reach higher levels of play.

While there are variables that affect how a child will learn, from attention span to innate athletic ability, there are some very concrete methods I have developed, used, and tested within a wide range of these individualities that have proven to be very efficient in their use and productivity in nearly all kids.

But, it might be more helpful as well as enlightening to follow the training of a child within these methods for both a historical reference (to be used for years to come) as well as a litmus test for the very methods I have developed and which I am sharing in this series.

As many of you have witnessed, I have included my 8-year old daughter in several articles on TennisOne. Her name is Kyla and she started playing tennis with regularity about six months ago. However, I introduced her to proper tennis strokes about two years earlier, using many of the methods I will discuss later in these articles, methods that involved very little time work for nearly all children. Many might say that because she is the daughter of a tennis pro, she gets to play tennis several hours a day, many days a week, and is a product of specialized attention. Let me assure you that Kyla has had far less training than many kids her age. She divides her time between school, piano lessons, gymnastics, musical theater and vocal performance and many other things as well as tennis. Tennis is not her main interest, but she enjoys the sport more than I had hoped and is excited to practice when she has the opportunity.

I have heard many pros discuss the various philosophies they have in the ‘proper’ approach to working with children. Among my 117 books on tennis and many videos and DVD’s, few take on a realistic or a dynamic learning system for teaching little kids to become skilled tennis players within a fun, learning environment. On the contrary; many books that focus on little kids spend more time on the element of fun, and very little time focusing on skills necessary to develop a tennis-playing junior.

In today’s American society, there seems to be a significant shift away from challenging youngsters to become the best they can be. While I believe you can and should provide some success within a teaching module, the idea of lowering the standards associated so everyone can have some level of success seems counterproductive. We have had great success in participation, retention, and productive learning. Lowering standards in any way has proven to be unnecessary! In fact, I have found just the opposite to be the case: youngsters thrive on most challenges and they enjoy hitting more effective shots, more consistent shots, and they pride themselves in the longer rallies that result from their efforts. (More on this later!)

There are many articles that promote various drills and strategies for kids. However, there has not been a comprehensive guide to move children at young ages through a complete developmental program. Within this series, I am putting my own philosophy to the test! And we will be able to document the progression and results over time. And, understand too, that many, if not most of the drills, learning patterns and progressions, and strategies within this series can be used to develop beginning adults also. In fact, this series contains the very skill-building drills and progressions we use in working with the adult beginning students within our academy.

Understanding the Learning and Development Process

Before we begin this in-depth look at developing a beginning player, we must look at the way people typically learn and develop. There are certain methods that contribute to reaching one’s potential but there are many ways—many more ways, in fact—that can prevent a player from progressing. I have discussed many of these elements in previous articles, but it would serve any reader well to review these key elements so that this series makes more sense in its purpose and design.

Determining Potential

Over the 32 years I have been teaching and coaching tennis, I have discovered many tools and progressive teaching patterns that help kids and adults reach their "potential" in terms of tennis development. I say "potential" because there are many variables that control what that potential might be. While I have written about these variables before, I will revisit them briefly so you can relate to this concept.

Potential is defined by four main components:

1. Athleticism: The ability to control body movements and extremities.
2. Opportunity: Having the items necessary to play and practice tennis. This includes racquet, balls, court, partner, etc..
3. Desire: Having the necessary heart and dedication to pursue tennis in order to reach desired goals.
4. Education: Knowing how to practice and what techniques will lead to a person reaching his/her potential.

Kids have a great propensity for developing proper strokes when introduced to them early on. We will be using the Advanced Foundation in training Kyla.

The Advanced Foundation

I have trained over 3500 players. However, it has been interesting to employ the methods of my “Advanced Foundation” (the cornerstone of my teaching philosophy), to my own child!

The general concept of an Advanced Foundation is one that introduces beginning tennis players to main patterns that do not need to change in order for them to reach skilled levels. The vast majority of tennis books introduce beginners to simple methods that make it easier to gain immediate success in hitting a tennis ball to a general area of the court, must change at some point if the player expects to achieve more advanced levels of play.

In this light, every book recommends a specific change, usually in the grip and/or swing pattern of many shots at some point in a player’s development. The problem is, once they start actually playing tennis, players will revert back to their most comfortable and familiar methods because the element of "winning" in any competitive environment is stronger (at that moment) than the need to improve. This explains why there are so many millions of tennis players who can’t or won't change their techniques even while they so desperately wish to move to higher NTRP levels.

Cross-training

Kyla has been introduced to tennis in exactly the manner I teach all children and adults. While Kyla is not one of the best “athletes” I have worked with, she makes up for it in desire to please. Obviously, every child will have a different propensity to want to practice tennis. As I mentioned earlier, my daughter participates in many other activities. I mention this again for two reasons: One, she obviously isn’t focused just on tennis! And, two, these other activities, I believe, contribute to her improvement in tennis.

For the past five months, I have averaged about 45 minutes a day, four days a week working with her on tennis (I train a group of elite players and don’t have much additional time to dedicate to Kyla’s training.).

I believe that children should be exposed to many different activities and skills. Musical instruments are, in my opinion, excellent for teaching children the processes of training the mind and fingers and to develop choreographed skills related to melodic principles. Any form of dance, be it ballet, tap, etc., helps kids develop balance, rhythm, and fluid body movements. Gymnastics helps in the same way; developing body control, balance and strength. Other activities such as badminton, ping pong, soccer, Martial Arts, and other sporting activities provide hand-eye coordination and movement control and balance.

When Cross-training can be Detrimental

One problem; however, I see when kids take many activities is that some of them will quit an activity when it gets too hard and move on to another until they find the new one difficult as well. I see this happen a lot in our community. Where parents believe they are exposing their children to new things, sometimes the effect on kids is that when the going gets tough, it is time to quit. I believe that prior to the age of 8 or 10, letting kids participate in many different things is quite advantageous; however, by that age, kids should be encouraged to stay in their activities even when struggling or having difficulty. Every parent will need to make their own decision on this topic, however. No one knows their own child better than a parent. Some kids will overcome such challenges where other kids might have a traumatic experience if they are forced to stay in an activity. Parents will need to make these evaluations over time.

Defining Fun

I don’t believe in a "militaristic" approach to training our players. However, as I mentioned earlier, I often see too many pros focus on making tennis as much fun as possible and limiting the challenging aspects in fear of turning kids off from tennis.

This philosophy of focusing on fun over proper fundamentals (or in our case, an Advanced Foundation) does just the opposite. Consider other sports; few, if any, lower the challenging protocol of any sport and focus on a fun-only mentality. Kids want to learn sports they are familiar with in ways that they can emulate their sport heroes. While tennis pros, indeed, possess some advanced swing and stroke patterns that would not be recommended to youngsters starting out, there are ways to train kids in progressive patterns in which they will evolve into hitting the ball like the pros within their individual abilities.

Why teach kids to use simple techniques just because they are comfortable, familiar, and easy, if that form will have to be abandoned at some point for more advanced play? They, like their adult counterparts, will have a difficult time changing to more advanced grips and stroke patterns when they recognize or are told such changes need to take place. I have found that the few kids you might lose if indeed you made your program more challenging are the kids that will probably quit anyway, no matter how much ‘fun’ you initially made the sport seem.

And fun can be defined as more than just perceptual pleasure. To me, long-lasting fun is a result that comes from reaching goals; from hitting a ball the way you know you should, from seeing a slice serve curve into the box for the first time using a continental grip, from hitting a sharp-angle volley instead of pushing the ball down the middle of the court.

I believe we need to return to a system of teaching that provides challenging aspects along with the tools to master those aspects as quickly as a player is capable. Avoiding certain grips, swing patterns or stroke methods because they are "too hard" is a ridiculous strategy if we want to learn those very techniques! Avoiding something for 10 years will not suddenly and spontaneously create the learning of it. The longer we use an inadequate method, the harder it becomes to eventually abandon it and take up a new method!

Even among today’s "gotta have it," limited attention span society, success still stems from accomplishing things that we deem valuable and significant. Accomplishing rudimentary shots in tennis just so we can play tennis is like learning to ride a bike for twenty years with the training wheels on! The issue for anyone teaching tennis, from teaching pros to tennis-parents, is that kids and adults alike can indeed learn more effective and more challenging methods and still have fun! In this series of articles, I hope to show how this can be accomplished.

Parents working with their own children

I used to recommend that all children work with instructors other than their parents. And, in many cases, I still recommend this approach, especially for older kids. However, younger kids often are so excited to please their parents, it can be a wonderful experience and motivating factor to have the parents take part in the teaching of their kids. It must be understood, however, that this is a double-edge sword. If you push too hard or you get upset with your child, he or she can withdraw completely or become reluctant to want to learn from you.

The philosophy I will be offering in this series won’t work with every parent/child combination. However, it will be an excellent guideline for parents to use, a blueprint, if you will, for following a progressive methodology that provides for a fun way for parents to take part in seriously helping their kids become excellent tennis players.

A Good Place to Start

Nothing is harder than introducing a child to a sport they have little or no reference to or perception of.So start by introducing your child at a young age to short tennis segments. Most 4 to 6 year-olds don’t have the attention span to watch a set or match of tennis. However, show them clips from TennisOne of players hitting shots as well as some points on television.

The next thing is to get the kids interested in keeping score. Tennis has probably one of the most abstract forms of score keeping there is in any sport. Here is a simple drill that not only teaches scoring, but also introduces the child to hand-eye coordination that will come in handy for tennis…and can be done anywhere with almost any object.

Toss and Score Game

When Kyla was about four, we would toss objects, such as Beanie Babies, rubber balls, tennis balls, even golf balls and stuffed animals, back and forth to see how many we could catch in a row. I taught her tennis scoring in one ten-minute session of this by giving her a point for each catch, and me a point for each drop. When she was young, her hand-eye coordination was suspect to say the least! But, it was just right for us to play a "set" where we would keep track of her catches as 15 love or love 15 if she dropped the object and so on.

Kyla couldn’t get enough of this game and would ask me to play a set with her all the time! We would play tie-breakers the same way. As she got better at catching, I made it more difficult, from backing further away to making her catch two and then three in a row for her to get a point. From the age of four, Kyla knew how to keep score better than many adults and even knew how to score a tie-breaker!

From this humble beginning, Kyla was hooked on tennis even though she hadn't even hit a ball yet!

As you will read in my next article, using this same concept of "keeping score" we transitioned to the court very easily. In fact, Kyla still begs me to "play a game" with her using this same method of scoring when we are doing drills. It has proven to be a great way to keep her working on proper technique! In addition, this system proved to be a great method to mentally train her at the same time. If she was behind, she would concentrate more on making the catch or the shot. We would discuss the importance of focusing early on so she wouldn’t fall behind. We also incorporated ways for her to learn how to play safe as well as how to hit more effective shots and learn the value of both.

I will describe these on-court games and drills in the next article.

Stay tuned!

Your comments are welcome. Let us know what you think about Dave Smith's article by emailing us here at TennisOne .

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