Tennis is a very attractive sport since every year many individuals, all over the globe, try to play the sport. It is in fact a very interesting sport and is very easy to get hooked on to it for life, once you reach a certain level of play. But there is a small problem, anyone who tries playing tennis without taking some lessons will find it too difficult to control the ball and will end up picking up the ball most of the time instead of playing. Hence due to the lack of finding success, they lose interest to continue playing after the first few tries.
Now, the onus rests on the tennis coach to ensure that each player who tries to play the sport ends up playing it all their life, by ensuring early success and making learning fun. Here is a list of things that we can do to ensure that each lesson is fun and enjoyable and also accelerate the learning.
Games and competition: Whether you are working with 5 to 9 year old or with Adults, just turn all activities or drills into games and competition. Even tapping activities can be done with competition, either with oneself or with others or in teams. Team activities are always fun for children.
Throw in a lot of compliments while the activity is going on. When you give them a compliment for achieving a certain goal in an activity, you are making the player believe that they are doing well at whatever they are doing. Remember that ‘success’ is one of most important aspects for motivation.
Keep the instructions very simple and show them what to do through demonstrations, rather than telling them what to do. Even if you spot 2, 3 or more flaws in the execution, try to limit the instructions to just one at a time and once they achieve it you can go into further instructions. Giving multiple instructions at one time might paralyze the child and reduce the chance of success.
Optimal challenge: One of the key roles of a coach is to set goals with ‘Optimal Challenges’ in each activity, that are not easy to achieve but at the same time achievable. Pay attention to the ability of the kid and their success rate in the given activity and set the goals accordingly. Goals and challenges should not be uniform for kids with different abilities.
Learn to connect with children: Communication with children should be very friendly and should be devoid of commanding and bossing over them. Ask them what they would like to do among certain choices, instead of telling them what to do all the time.
Fun Games: Starting and ending the lesson with fun games has an effect of making the children feel that the entire lesson was fun. While working with very young children, we should also understand the fact that they can sustain focus in a certain activity only for a very short time. Therefore it is important to change the activity every few minutes and fun games can also be used during the lesson to spike up the energy levels.
Modified equipment: Making small children play with full size courts and balls which are meant for adults is not very smart. Balls, court, rackets and rules should be adapted to the ability of the child to ensure sustained interest. This will also ensure proper development of strokes and avoid bad technical habits.