I had the opportunity to be the featured guest on Chuck Kriese’s show American Tennis. We spent 45 minutes talking about high school tennis and how to grow the game. Click below to listen the show…
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, 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.
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.
Losing 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.
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.
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.