says
Spin and more spin.
says
Spin and more spin.
Well-Known Member
Super Moderator
What do you think this coach did differently? 1 coach here started a new player in his 60s on antispin on the backhand to help him be competitive quicker (not sure if It's worked).
I have to be honest with you. I am not 100% sure what he did. I will explain some of what I saw. And maybe I will explain something I noticed in the few lessons I did with him as well.
With the woman, I really am not sure what he did, but I was impressed. She was taking lessons with someone my level who was coaching her for a while and it was clear she was having trouble getting the racket to connect with the ball on a consistent basis. And I did not notice much improvement till she started working with this other coach. But I never got to see the lessons. I just saw, after she started working with him she starting to get notably better.
With the guy, it was very interesting. He was quite stubborn and had in his head that he had to be trying a lot harder than he needed to be trying. And some of what the coach did was have the guy film the sessions and then tell him specific things to watch when he was trying too hard and it was clear and easy to see.
But it had to be more than that. They guy's serves started getting better. There was a point where he could not return any of my serves. And the coach would have me play games with him as part of his lessons to find things the guy needed to work on. And at a certain point, he was able to return most of my serves even as I varied them. So, his return of serve improved an amazing amount to the point that he was reading enough of the variations and deception to get most of the serves on the table and the returns were simple but they were a huge improvement from him just not being able to read what I was doing or compensate for the kinds of spin I was giving him. At that point, the serves that gave him the most trouble were the no spin or low spin serves. Whereas before, he handled them okay but responded to all the higher spin serves as though they had little spin. And if I just gave him serves with little spin over and over, he would begin to adjust.
But, the way I think about it, he was really able to see these two individually and read what they needed to work on. Because the improvements were whole game....not stroke skills or what they looked like. Tactics, serves, return of serves....things that made it so they could win matches against players that looked technically better than them where the other player would make a great shot and think the point was over only to find the ball actually came back.
But one thing I noticed with how he worked when he worked with me is: when we did multiball, my first thought was that it was too slow and too soft....that it was a little two easy. But he used that to get me to move to the balls better and do all the aspects of the multiball drills with more skill and slowly, and it crept up on me, I realized, he was slowly speeding things up as I was doing the drills with more competence and shoring up skills that had not fully gelled. So, I think, some of what he did well was really pay attention and watch even while in drills, and read the needs of the people he was working with, and then problem solve ways of getting them to improve on those things that were within their skill sets. Because it wasn't too flashy. And both players were playing with smooth on both sides so he did not use equipment to mask weaknesses. Although, if either had decided they wanted to play with special rubbers, I am sure he would have helped them know how to use them.
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