Ten Ways to Get the Most Out of TennisDrills TV
By Jorge Capestany, USPTA Master Professional & PTR International Master Professional
This article's purpose is to help you understand the many ways that you can leverage all the content on the TennisDrills TV website. We don't want our subscribers to pay for something that they are not using.
Whether you're the only coach from your program who is a subscriber or you're a corporate client with many coaches as subscribers, the list below has some great ways to get the most from your TennisDrills.tv subscription.
Many of these ideas came from the existing members, and others came from a brainstorming session I conducted with current corporate clients.
1. Drill of the Week (club-wide)
This is as simple as it sounds: you pick a drill from the website and send it to all your coaches. The goal is that they Implement that drill into their classes for that week, or it could even be for the month.
2. Course of the Month (quarter)
Here, you can assign specific course(s) your coaches want to go through. As you know, there are more than 140 courses in the Lab section of the website. Over 30 of those courses have a quiz, and if a coach passes the quiz, they can submit the certificate and get PTR and/or USPTA education credit.
This is a popular option, and many of our clients are spending less money by sending their coaches to fewer in-person conferences where they have to miss their regular classes, have the expenses of travel and registration fees, and, of course, the members don't get to take their regular lessons. Using the quizzes in these courses can save you more money than the cost of a subscription because you don't need to send your coaches to as many in-person education events.
3. Zoom Drill Reviews
This is another option for clients. This is especially effective if coaches are spread around a larger geographical area. All you do is have a Zoom meeting with your coaches and review some of the content/drills on the website. It could be as simple as reviewing a certain number of drills, going through a course, or even a part of a course that you find helpful.
4. Pro Drill Exchange
This is one of my favorite things to do at my club. It's working well for other clubs too. Here's when you get your coaches together on the court, and each coach demonstrates a drill from the website to the other coaches. Then, the coaches can talk about what they like about each drill while getting practice in delivering the drill to their fellow coaches.
You may even want to invite some club members to be the "guinea pigs" and demo the drills with them as the players. This way, you can charge your members and make money while training your coaches.
5. On-court Training Sessions
This is similar to #4 above, but now the focus is on learning to modify drills better. Learning to modify drills is the art and includes the ability to make a drill easier (regression) or more difficult (progression). This is a very important skill that many coaches struggle with. The ability to modify drills effectively is what sets apart a world-class coach from an average coach.
When we use this method, we demonstrate the drill and then ask some of the coaches to devise a way to make it easier (regression). Then, another group of coaches finds a way to make the drill more difficult (progression). We do this with their own PTM students at Hope College; it is one of the best ways to spend time with them on the court. Learning these modification skills is excellent training for pros of any experience level.
6. Internal Certification
We all know that the certification process for coaches in our country is more convoluted and confusing than ever. Many of our clients are considering doing in-house certifications, which means that they will review all of our content and decide for themselves what is important for their coaches to know.
With our vast array of content, including 2000+ drills, 140+ courses, and case studies, there's more than enough content for each client to create a pathway that they can use as an internal certification. Remember, corporate clients can have private dashboards built for them. This is not an option for anyone; only our corporate clients can tap into this. We currently do these dashboards with Cliff Drysdale Tennis, the Peter Burwash International Clubs, and Midtown Clubs.
7. Certificate Tracks
This is a similar option to #6 above (internal certification). However, this method allows each coach to customize their certification pathway. This means the coach decides which drills and courses he is interested in. Then, he presents the idea to his supervisor, who will give the final approval. Some clients may decide to use this extra education to give raises to their coaches. Rather than automatically giving a raise, you can only give it to those who are proving to better themselves through additional education.
Some clubs will do both, a normal raise and maybe a higher raise for those that have gone through more educational content. Each supervisor can decide how he will reward the coach for going through the extra training. This method allows the coaches to customize their education based on things that interest them. This also makes it way more likely that they will follow up and do the content instead of having to do the assigned content.
8. Fast Track Pathway
Another option is to identify a series of content (drills, courses, or case studies) you might want your coaches to review. We call this the Fast Track. In this method, the supervisor picks several drills and courses from the website and identifies them as a Fast Track. If a Coach decides to go through all the content in a Fast Track, it should lead them to a specific job promotion (or raise) faster than usual.
The supervisor himself will know what the club needs, so he can handpick the types of courses and basically internally educate his own Pro Staff to develop the types of leaders that he knows his club needs. For example, if a club needs a director of the little kid's program, you could set up a Fast Track that has lots of kids' drills and courses, and perhaps you can promote from within rather than having to do a national search.
9. Run Case Studies
Undoubtedly, one of the best features on the website is in the Lab under Case Studies. The Case Studies section was built to show people they could earn money using our proven turn-key events. Honestly, just doing ONE of these events typically pays way more than the investment you're making in the subscription to our website.
Plus, it has the added benefit of keeping your members happy with cool, new special events. We have clients who have assigned their coaches to run one of the special events from our case studies section at least once a quarter. Some clubs have made over $5,000 running these events.
10. Continuing Education = Save Money
As mentioned before, one of the significant benefits of being a member of tennisdrills.tv as a corporate client is that you can save money by having your Pro’s continuing education happen directly on the website. With more than 30 courses available for USPTA and/or PTR education credit, it's not hard to save money by having your coaches get their education from the comfort of their computer screens.
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