By Jorge Capestany, RSPA Master Professional & PTR International Master Professional.
I talk to a lot of tennis players who tell me they feel they have stopped improving.
After four decades of teaching players and more than 63,000 hours of on-court teaching, I have learned why I believe this happens to so many players.
So here I’m going to show you 5 reasons you’re not improving at tennis.
1) Your overall practice regimen does not include enough match play.
Research shows that American players take more private lessons, participate in more drill classes, and buy more equipment, but the one thing we do less of than any other country is… PLAY matches. This is why so many players struggle in competition and often feel they perform better in practice than in actual matches.
2) Your intensity level at practice is often too low.
I work with many high-performance juniors. I typically see them in our after-school clinics. If you track their day, you realize that most of them get up at 6:00 a.m., go off to school for a long day of classes and studying, and then end up at my tennis center for a class from 4-6 p.m.
It’s not uncommon for the kids to be already exhausted from a long day when they get to our class.
But this is a chance for them to understand that life is difficult: even when they are tired, they have to bring their best effort to the court, even if it is not easy. This is one of my favorite life lessons that tennis teaches players. The players who can do this are the ones who have the most success.
3) You’re more concerned with winning now than developing your game for the future.
We see it all the time. Players say they want to get better in the long run, but in classes and in matches, they forget the necessary new skills they are working on for winning at that moment. This can even happen in a drill class (practice) when they don’t want to rotate down one court lower.
It’s easy to say that you want long-term improvement, but it takes a special commitment to be willing to take a step backward so that you can eventually take two steps forward.
4) You’re not adding or acquiring more USABLE tactics to your game so you can beat a wider range of players.
You don’t have to have every tactic in your arsenal to be a good tennis player. But you need more than one.
The best players have a favorite way to play, but they also need 2-3 other ways.
By USABLE, I mean something that you can actually deploy and use in a match, not just something that you can do in practice, but that you are too scared to deploy in competition.
5) When you practice on your own (without a coach), you waste valuable practice time by not having a specific purpose.
Practicing with the coach is very important. But the very best players put in additional practice time without a coach.
Those times are critical, and I have found that the best players make the best use of those practices when they are away from their coach. Having a specific plan and a set of drills to follow is key to improving during this time. It is not enough to go out and hit with your friends.
You have to have a purpose in your practice.
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