The primary goal of a tennis lesson isn’t to make your student a better player in the single hour you have with them.
If that happens, great, but it’s a secondary bonus, not the primary impact of the lesson. The true goal of a one-on-one tennis lesson is to improve the quality of the student’s future practice.
Let me illustrate what I mean using a core concept from The Fault Tolerant Forehand:
Forehand contact happens with both the hips and the chest roughly square to the target.
The true goal of a one-on-one tennis lesson is to improve the quality of the student’s future practice.
Some kids possess this intuition immediately. If you simply toss a ball to their forehand side and tell them to hit it, they turn away from it, then spin back towards the net as they swing. For whatever reason, these kids’ built in athletic intuition is to use their core to accelerate the racket.
Good.
For other kids, that’s not the case at all. These kids pull the racket back with their hand, remain sideways, and then swat at the ball. Their athletic intuition, for whatever reason, doesn’t guide them to a stroke that engages their core.
Practice Quality
Even without a private lesson, our first kid will probably turn into a decent player. He can learn to play tennis the same way he learned to walk. As he attempts the movements, his brain will observe the results, and then he’ll subconsciously adjust in order to teach himself the proper swing.
Without these instructions, this student’s practice is almost worthless, because he’s practicing a fundamentally flawed swing.
The second kid, on the other hand, will probably never have a good forehand without a coach’s intervention. Unless divine inspiration strikes him one day, and he starts striking the ball in a completely new way, he’s always going to be performing a fundamentally different movement pattern – a swat – than the movement pattern necessary for an effective forehead – a twist.
He might be able to slowly improve his swat forehand, and eventually he might even get it to the point of a match usable stroke, but he’ll never be able to engage his full musculature in the swing, because again, for whatever reason, his body just doesn’t naturally try to move like that.
This student needs to be told to turn as he swings, and he needs to be taught that the legs and trunk accelerate the racket, not the arm.
Without these instructions, this student’s practice is almost worthless, because he’s practicing a fundamentally flawed swing. We don’t want the subconscious parts of his brain working to optimize this swing, because it’s a fundamentally different movement pattern than the proper one.
What To Focus On
Kids who are 5-years-old also don’t have much of an attention span. Long, biomechanical discussions are certainly off the table, but even less academic, but still technical advice, is probably not going to land. With that in mind, let’s distill instruction down to five primary goals.
1. Start Sideways
Many professional players don’t actually turn their feet sideways and play the forehand from a neutral stance, but for most kids the “turn, then turn back” action is a little too complicated. If you see a young kid naturally playing the forehand from a semi-open stance, winding his hips and chest like older players do, do not force them to start sideways.
But, for most kids, force them to start sideways, otherwise they won’t be able to generate any power by twisting.
2. Twist towards the net
Twist towards the “target” is too complex for a 5-year-old, so “twist towards the net” is better. This will prevent them from using the swat forehand, and force them to develop an understanding that the core, not the arm, accelerates the racket.
3. Watch the ball all the way into the strings
Especially if the kid also plays baseball, they might not realize that you don’t look at your target in tennis. You look at the ball. Over the net, off the bounce, and all the way into contact. Your head doesn’t leave its position until the ball is gone.
4. Hit the ball in front of you
This one’s pretty easy to help the kid with if they’re not getting it. Just toss the ball to them, and then yell “go” or “twist” when it’s time for them to initiate their swing. Make sure to time your verbal cue to account for their reaction time – you’ll have to cue them earlier than you’d actually want them to start their swing.
5. Fun
What’s the most important factor determining whether or not this 5-year-old becomes a great tennis player? Is it his forehand? His backhand? His athleticism?
Nope, none of those things. The answer is actually quite simple – Does the child continue playing tennis?
The most important part of your job with a student that’s this young is to make them enjoy the game of tennis. If this kid is gonna grow up to be a star, then that necessitates a large amount of positive emotion associated with the game.
Ultimately, if the kid is smiling, laughing, and asking his parents why tennis class has to end after only one hour, that’s how you know you’re really doing your job.