How Do You Come Up With So Many Tennis Drills?
By Jorge Capestany, RSPA Master Professional & PTR International Master Professional.
One of the most common questions I get is:
“How do you come up with so many tennis drills?”
It’s a fair question, especially when you realize we now have over 2,000 drills on TennisDrills.tv.
But here’s the truth…
It’s actually hard for me to come up with drills on the spot.
If you asked me to sit down and list as many drills as I could from memory, I’d probably only come up with 20 or 30.
A Simple Exercise That Says It All
When I speak at workshops or coaching events, I like to run a quick exercise.
I ask coaches: “Write down as many tennis drills as you can in the next 10 minutes.”
Most coaches stall out around 20–30 drills.
Then I ask a follow-up question: “How many drills have you used in your coaching career?”
The answer is almost always: 100 to 200… or more.
So what’s happening here?
The Truth About Tennis Drills
The reality is simple. Coaches forget drills.
If you’ve been coaching for 10+ years, you’ve likely forgotten more drills than you currently remember.
I hear it all the time:
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“That drill reminded me of one I used to do…”
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“My old coach had something similar…”
And that leads to an important realization:
Some of your best drills are ones you’ve forgotten and can rediscover.
My Formula for Creating Tennis Drills
So how do I come up with drills? I don’t start with creativity.
I start with problems.
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What is this player struggling with?
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What is this group not doing well?
Some examples could be:
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Players are not moving back well on overheads.
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Inconsistent rally tolerance.
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Poor decision-making under pressure.
Once the problem is clearly defined in my mind, the drill becomes much easier to create.
Great drills aren’t invented, they’re solutions. Instead of asking: “What drill should I run today?”
Start asking: “What do my players need the most help with?”
Then find or build a drill that solves that problem.
What Makes a Drill Actually Work?
Not all drills are created equal. The best ones share four key characteristics:
1. High Ball Count
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Players need reps, and lots of them.
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The more touches they get, the faster they improve.
2. Clear Focus
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Every drill should have a specific purpose.
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Players should know exactly what shot or skill they’re working on.
3. Flexible Intensity (Cooperative → Competitive)
Great drills can evolve:
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Start a cooperative to build the skill.
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Progress to a competitive environment to test it under pressure
4. Realistic Feeding
The balls players receive should reflect what they’ll see in real matches.
If it doesn’t look like tennis, it won’t transfer to tennis.
Final Thoughts…
You don’t need to memorize thousands of drills.
What you need is a system:
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Identify the problem
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Apply the right solution.
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Reuse and refine the drills you already know