Teaching Techniques

When teaching tennis, most pros have their own style. Some like to talk throughout the entire lesson, some like to only make comments when they see something that needs to be corrected. The most important thing is, find a style that works for you, but remember to ALWAYS give feedback. The worst thing a pro can do is turn on auto pilot and become a glorified ball machine. Students want feedback, that means both positive and negative. Don't focus only on what the student needs to fix. A lot of times, especially with beginners there is going to be a wide range of things that need to be fixed. Don't let this discourage the student. Reinforce the positives while you work on fixing the strokes.

The first thing I do when getting ready to teach is I have my students warm up. For some this means going right into the drills, for some it might be having their students take a few jogging laps around the court. My students have taken to mini tennis, or hitting service line to service line and then gradually working back to the baseline. Once they've hit around for a few minutes (no more than about 5 minutes) I bring them up to the net and tell them what the focus for the class is. I strongly believe in having a weekly plan and letting the students know that each week we're going to review the previous week and then learn a new shot. This keeps it fresh for both the student and the instructor. After I tell my students the plan I send them to the baseline, grab my basket and we're ready to start.

Try and focus on one MAYBE two things for each student to work on. Find the primary and possibly secondary issue with their strokes. The downfall of a lot of pros is over teaching. If you give your student too many things to think about during class they'll be overwhelmed and then quickly frustrated. KEEP IT SIMPLE!

Where you position yourself depends on your level of comfort, but I tend to stand around the service line so my feeds are straight ahead for the drills. I try and grab four balls at a time and keep the feeding fairly rapid so there isn't a whole lot of standing around. Once we've drilled for about 20-25 minutes we spend the next 30 minutes playing live ball games which I'll discuss in more detail later. We then serve and finish up with playing points with serves.

Keep it fun and Keep it Simple and you'll have students coming back each week.