High performance coaching is usually connoted with completing grueling drills with little scope for error, provision of incessant feedback, and a constant (almost impractical) search for perfection. This is somehow thought to mentally condition a player to be a high performer.
Instead, at Aspire, we believe that high performance comes down to the attitude and mindset each player has going into a session. The overarching habit we like to cultivate is persistence of thinking. Persistence of thinking precedes your physical prowess and/or tactical acumen. It is what gives direction to a session and shapes your approach to practice.
Here’s how you can put it into practice:
Are you showing up for the sake of showing up, or do you have goal for that session that you’d like to accomplish? Keeping the big picture as your north star, you should be able to distill your long-term goals into smaller time-based goals until you arrive at a goal for each individual session. At Aspire, coaches and players collaborate to come up with a training agenda. When you take accountability for your training, practice will be smooth sailing.
Does your training become more challenging over time? You don’t get better by doing the same things over and over again for weeks and months. As your level rises, the challenges you set for yourself should rise as well. Training yourself to be repeatedly successful under increasingly challenging situations is what cultivates confidence. You need to normalise pressure in practice to build resilience and foster competitiveness.
Are you okay doing things badly for a start? If you take accountability for your practice and play with intent, you should’nt mind failing forward. At Aspire, we don’t like calling players out on the things they did badly. We encourage them on the things they did well. For example - you did the right thing by moving forward to the ball, but if you prepared earlier your timing could have been a lot better. This way, players don't feel like we are demanding from them what they don’t (yet) have. Give yourself the permission to make errors when you’re trying to get better at something.
Are you bringing enough intent and intensity to every practice? The energy you bring to practice can be seen in your desire to move to the ball. At Aspire, from the first ball of practice players show intent by:
Moving forward to hit the ball
Setting up with the right stance and transferring weight effectively
Meeting the ball between hips and shoulders, and
Recovering towards the most ideal position
Every practice begins with focussing on these fundamentals. We ensure intent before we progress further. Do what it takes to set yourself up for successful execution of every shot.
Is your mind as tired as your body at the end of practice? Tennis is a perception based sport. You need to anticipate, read cues from the environment, react, make decisions, recover and give yourself feedback for every ball over the course of the match. All this takes considerable mental effort and forces you to become a good problem solver. Work on your problem solving and decision making skills just as much as you work on your technical skills. Your mental faculties don’t just end when practice ends. You need to analyse what you did well and what could have gone better to guide the planning of your next session.
Conclusion:
High performance coaching is more importantly about how you do something than what you do. Our approach to training high-performers starts with understanding and transforming their approach to training. We can be seen doing basic drills at lighter intensities and even imperfectly. But to us none of that matters when there is purpose behind every shot, thought behind every decision and an intent to persist - through legs and heart.