Author Archives: Alex Slezak

About Alex Slezak

Tennis Coach & Fitness Expert

2 Kind of Coaches

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When you look at older and more accomplished tennis players, it is logical to believe that the best tennis players start out training from very young ages with great coaches.  That could not be further from the truth.  In fact, if you look at world-class performers they actually begin their journey with what many people believe to be average coaches.

Let me explain in a little more detail.  I believe there are two types of coaches (sometimes 3, but that is for another blog post) a player needs to achieve high levels of performance.  The first coach ignites the passion for tennis and the second coach builds the necessary skills consistently pushing the player to new heights.

IMG_0346The later coach is the one who is working with older athletes and reaps all the credit for developing  the player.  The truth is they deserve a great deal of credit because their skill set of being able to maintain motivation and develop training that pushes players to new heights is no easy task.  It takes a tremendous amount of knowledge, careful planning, and years of practice mastering their coaching skills.  However, I want to focus on the coach who lays the foundation because their role in a player’s development is just as important.

Tennis is not an easy sport to become really good at.  It takes years of practicing and refining technique, learning shot selection, and lots of losses that cause bumps and bruises along the way. So knowing this why would a child want to put in all this effort and work, because it certainly is not always easy or enjoyable.  The reason is someone has ignited a passion for the game of tennis.  That passion gives the children the motivation and energy to relentlessly purse their dreams.  Now think about what the first coach really does.  A kid may come into a tennis lesson or class and the coach greets them with excitement and enthusiasm.  Then teaches them some basics and praises them for their effort.  The children learn a valuable lesson equating effort with success.  They may even look up to that coach and aspire to be like them.  This coach has ignited a passion in the child and it is that passion that sets the stage for all the years ahead and for the second coach to eventually take over.  I hope you can see how necessary that first experience for a child is.

I have realized this in my coaching and is the exact reason my approach to teaching young kids and beginners is more about fun, excitement, and praising effort than getting good at tennis.  My goal is to ignite a passion.  It is only after that “fire in the belly” is burning strong I know I can very carefully and methodically shift to the role as the second coach.

As parents you may not know a ton about tennis but that does not mean you cannot help coach.  You can be a major part of the process by helping to ignite the passion by playing tennis with your son or daughter, showing the greats of the game on TV, and above all praising them not for their successes but for their effort.

See for yourself how myself and my staff, who I mentor at length on these concepts, this summer at tennis camp.  Maybe we’ll ignite that spark of passion in your son or daughter.  CLICK HERE to learn more.


Recipe for Developing Champions

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For many years I have been on a relentless quest for the secrets to developing great tennis players.  My search has brought me all over the place, taught me many things, and allowed me to meet countless people.  In fact, one man I met a few years back, Coach Chuck Kriese, shared with me the formula he uses for developing great players, and he has developed some great ones.

Ability + Desire + Opportunity = Athlete’s Full Potential

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Ability, desire, and opportunity are the key foundational ingredients to developing a player to their fullest potential.  Ability is basically a person’s genetics, it is what they are born with.  Some athletes will be 6’2″, some have more fast twitch muscle fibers than others, and some see the court in unique ways.  Desire is the “fire in the belly” that some players have.  No one really knows why but some athletes just have high achievement needs, more passion and desire to put in the necessary hard work than others.  The first two parts of the equation ability and desire are mostly centered around the individual, the last part, opportunity, is a little different.  Opportunity mainly falls on the parents and coaches.  They provide many of the opportunities for players to grow and continue growing.  The opportunities can range and depend on so many factors.  In fact, if you want to read a great book about opportunities and their effect on people check out Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success.  The real magic happens when an athlete is fully prepared with their ability and desire to take full advantage of an opportunity.  The equation sure does give context to this quote by Winston Churchill.

“To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents.  What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.” – Winston Churchill

Put all three of these things together and you get the athlete’s fullest potential.  The key is maximizing all 3 areas to their fullest.  An athlete with tremendous ability and desire with zero opportunities will leave something on the table.  An athlete with tremendous ability and opportunities but no desire will never reach their fullest potential.  Finally, an athlete with tremendous desire and opportunity will go far but will ultimately be limited somewhere along the line by their physical abilities.

I teach this formula to my athletes so they know they have some control of the equation.  I want them to equate effort with success.  I also think knowing how all 3 interact allows them to take full advantage of any opportunities that do come there way.  As a coach, this equation is also why I am constantly on a quest to get better and learn as much as possible.  I want to be able to give the athletes I am working with the best possible opportunities to reach their fullest potential.

For an athlete to reach their fullest potential its not all about fancy drills and high performance training, its about maximizing on their unique abilities, desire, and opportunities.  Sure makes the old saying “hard work beats talent, when talent doesn’t work hard” make a whole lot more sense.

Here is an opportunity to get better at tennis and valuable life lessons that go well beyond the lines of the court.  Coach Slezak’s Summer Tennis Camp – Click to Learn More.


PaddlePlayer.com Video Series

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I recently just finished up a video series available on PaddlePlayer.com.  The series of videos is aimed at teaching paddle players how to take better care of their joint mobility and avoid those nagging low back, knee, and shoulder issues.  However they work for any and everyone.  You can watch them all right here.


Be a Failure to Become a Winner

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I tell the athletes I coach all the time that it is perfectly ok to fail.  In fact, I go as far to tell them that they have to fail if they truly want to get better.  Failing is an enormous part of growth.  Successful people in sports, business, and elsewhere often have stories of big failures or a series of failures before they finally break through. Too often in Junior Tennis we are focused so much on the product of winning that we can sometimes lose sight of how valuable a loss can be.

In training I tell players all the time to take risks.  Hit shots a little harder or a little closer to the line instead of worrying so much about never missing and being perfect all the time.  It is a whole lot better to test the limits of your skills and make mistakes in training than in an actual match.  When a player constantly pushes themselves to the point of failure they test the limits of their current skills, at the same time improve by pushing themselves past the edge of their abilities and then bringing themselves back.

IMG_0338Losing in matches may be the biggest catalyst to improvement a player can experience.  Too often players actually hold back in competition as a means to protect themselves.  They actually do not give it 100% rationalizing that if they lose without really giving it their all it somehow will protect their self-esteem and confidence.  Players have to come to terms with the fact that they are going to lose and that is not a bad thing.  Certainly, it hurts when you lose a match when you give it your all.  It hurts anytime in life when you give it your all at something and fail.  However, it is what you do with the failure that becomes the catalyst for change.  Players who blow off losses never learn the valuable lessons by looking at the loss.  Players who use the loss as a means to improve always get better.  Players who figure out the reasons why they lost whether it be fitness, shot selection, or stroke production now know exactly what to laser focus on in their training.  If they frame the loss as a valuable insight into where they are weak, practice that weakness relentlessly, and use the whole process as motivation to get better, they get better fast!

Junior tennis is developmental, not professional.  At the professional ranks of the ATP and WTA tour winning and losing matter a lot and it should but you have to remember these professionals have spent their entire life developing their games.  Even then professional players still learn from their losses.  Your junior player is not a professional, they are in the developmental process, and losing is a part of that process.

I tell players all the time they have to be willing to give it their all in their training and risk it all in competition.  Failure is a part of the process, it hurts to fail yes, but in the end it is one of the biggest catalyst to improvement in the game.

Even if you child has no aspirations of playing on the professional tour losses are an important part of the improvement process.  Even more important think about the life lesson  your child can learn from this.  They learn that failure is a part of growth.  Now fast forward in life to when your child has a new idea, fails a few times with it, uses those failures to improve, and then breaks through and develops the next iphone, hybrid car, cures cancer, or something even greater.  Being a failure is definitely a part of the process to becoming successful.


To Serve a Bigger Purpose

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I am going to be completely honest in this post, very early in my tennis coaching career I was focused on things that simply were not very important in the bigger scheme of things.  As I have grown older and wiser I have been fortunate to have learned the real value in coaching.  The real value lies in using tennis to serve others, developing the person first and the tennis player second.

What I mean by using tennis to serve others is simple.  In my humble but biased opinion tennis is the greatest sport in the world.  The life lessons and character that a child can learn and develop by pursuing tennis is truly priceless.  Here is a link to a previous blog about the Life Lessons Tennis Teaches.  I feel very fortunate to have learned through my experiences lessons such as developing a strong work ethic, dreaming big and goal setting, and I pass these and so many more on to young athletes.  Instead of focusing on self-serving aspects like how I can benefit from coaching tennis, I focus simply on how I can use tennis to better each player as a person first and tennis player second.  I find that in the process I am much more fulfilled and many of these young athletes happen to turn into champions of life and pretty good tennis players as well.  It has been amazing for my coaching because it gives me such a wonderful sense of purpose and fulfillment.

This way of thinking about my coaching has allowed me over time to develop some very powerful mentoring relationships with young athletes.  I have a system or curriculum I use to develop tennis players.  I teach things in a progression and have a methodology that I follow.  However, what I have found is that it is not the system or specifics about technique that makes instruction great.  Instead, what makes instruction great is the relationship between athlete and coach.  When athletes truly respect their coach and learn deeply from them this is what makes instruction great.  It takes time to earn trust and respect, as it should, but I have found that when a coach cares about the person first and tennis second it makes it much easier to develop a player to their fullest potential.  It is only when you have that relationship built on trust and respect that the real magic with the tennis starts to happen.  They say, “No one cares what you know, until they know you care.”  I think that quote sums up what I whole heartedly believe in as one of the foundational pillars in my coaching.


The Bridge

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Watch the video above and take special notice to the bridge on the violins.  The bridge is the little piece of wood that raises the strings from the resonating chamber.  It also transfers the vibrating energy of the string to the resonating chamber.

Now that you understand a little about the anatomy of a violin imagine that the violin is in the hands of the greatest musician alive.  The musician has all the knowledge, skill and talent to create beautiful music.  The violin’s resonating chamber has the capability to produce beautiful sounds.  But what if the bridge is missing?  Without that simple little bridge all the knowledge and skill in the world will not allow the chamber to resonate beautiful music.  The bridge is the key that links the knowledge of the musician to the inner capability of the instrument.

This is what “true” coaching is really all about, finding a bridge between the coach and the player.  A coach can have all the knowledge in the world and the athlete a tremendous amount of talent but nothing happens unless the two can establish a connection or bridge.  The coach needs a way to allow what he is teaching to resonate with the athlete.  The athlete also needs the bridge to be able to provide subtle feedback to the coach.  This is the secret that truly great coaches know.  It is not the knowledge they have or the talent the athlete already possess, it is the bridge that allows it all to happen.  So what exactly is the bridge in coaching?  The answer is it is different for everyone and it is the great coach who actively searches for that unique bridge with each athlete, whatever that may be.

To conclude here is my good friend and mentor Chuck Kriese explaining the bridge.

The Bridge from Kids Play For Good on Vimeo.


Med Ball Rotational Throws

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I can attempt to “coach up” a young athlete on the correct forehand technique with all kinds of words but I have found it is much easier to get them to feel coordinated movements than to try and explain it to them.  I always say “you cannot see yourself hitting, you can only feel yourself hitting.”  I recently gave an athlete homework to do rotational medicine ball throws against a cinder block wall and I thought what I explained to him would make a great blog post.

Rotational sports like tennis and baseball are all about creating power.  This power ideally is created from the ground up meaning it is generated in the lower half of the body and then transferred through a stable core into the upper body where it is directed out into the arms.  This is what happens when you swing a tennis racket or baseball bat.

For youth the very first step is that they must experiment with coordinating this ground up power movement pattern.  I could explain it all I want but it is so much more effective just to allow them to feel it.  Young athletes often do not know what it feels like to fire their muscles in the sequence needed to efficiently create the movement pattern, it just takes some time and practice.  You see the brain does not work in isolated muscles it works in whole movement patterns.  An athlete can work on leg, core and upper body strength in isolated exercises but all that new found strength does not transfer over into an explosive rotational movement unless that pattern is already coordinated.  Once they can coordinate the pattern it becomes very easy to get real world transfer into a rotational sport like tennis or baseball.

I use all kinds of foam balls and light medicine ball rotational throwing movements to let young athletes feel the movement pattern.  I use foam balls with young children and a lighter med ball with others because too much load will stress their systems, creating a compensated dysfunctional movement pattern.  Most of all I want a functional pattern because this is the foundation that everything will be built upon.  For that reason, I am more concerned with the movement pattern becoming coordinated than how much weight they are throwing.  Once they hit the right training age and own the movement pattern I’ll load them up to develop more power.

An added benefit to med ball throws compared to other rotational exercises is that there is a release at the end which leads to a young athlete being able to decelerate after the release.  This is incredibly important to injury prevention.  There are other exercises that can help in creating rotational power but without the release athletes do not learn how to decelerate their flailing limbs.  Just think you can hit a tennis ball really hard and the harder you hit it the better you need to be at decelerating all that momentum or you are bound for an injury.

Finally, this is fun to do and a great stress reliever.  Give a young athlete a med ball and tell them to throw it in a rotational pattern as hard as they can off the wall.  They get coordinated without even knowing it because the body loves efficiency and with enough practice finds that most efficient ground up coordinated movement pattern.  All the athlete needs to know is that slamming a ball as hard as they can off the wall is pretty fun because you cannot do it at home.


Avoid Burnout…

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Every time I get a chance to learn from a world-class tennis coach like Vesa Ponkka from the Junior Tennis Champions Center I jump at the opportunity.  Burnout can happen in the career of a tennis player and really to anyone in anything.  Think about it, adults burnout in their careers all the time just like kids burnout in sports.

Vesa has a theory about burning out.  He believes that people burnout when they stop learning new things.  As long as they never stop learning they are engaged in their work no matter how many hours or years they have been doing it.  I would say that I personally agree with that idea.  I have never burned out in my coaching because I have an improvement mindset.  I do not just go through the motions.  I am constantly seeking to learn more from other people, reading books, and inventing new things on my own.  I have been coaching tennis for 10+ years and not once have I truly felt like I was burnt out from doing it.  I attribute that to always learning new things.  It keeps me excited to train players and put in the long hours doing so.

I think it is critical to impart that mindset into players from a very young age.  Children in the sport of tennis need to have an inquisitive mind about the game.  They should be focused less on winning and losing and more about improving each time they step on the court.  Vesa says, “Children should know they have lots of time, but no time to waste.”  I think that is a profoundly wise statement.  Coaches should be imparting that message to their kids, presenting new information and ways to think about the game.  I know that after all the years of playing and coaching I am still learning new things, there is defiantly no shortage of things to teach and learn.  The game is so complex from the unique scoring system, stroke development, fitness, aspects of competition and the mental/emotional skills.

Avoiding burnout is easy, all you have to do is focus on improvement and constantly seeking to learn new things.  It is when you stop learning new things that you start burning out.