Essential Tennis Podcast #87

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Welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. If you love tennis and want to improve your game, this podcast is for you.

Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment or the mental game– T ennis professional Ian Westerman is here to make you a better player. And now here’s Ian!

Ian : Hi, and welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast. You’re place for free, expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game.

Today’s episode of the essential tennis podcast is brought to you by Summersetsportsperformance.com.

Today on the show I’m going to be doing my classic Q and A type format. I’m going to be answering questions having to do with fitness and how to work out correctly for your tennis game. We’re also gonna be talking about picking a playing style and kind of choosing between being accurate and consistent and being more aggressive. And if we have time, we’re also gonna get to a question asking about what are the pros and cons to an open versus a closed stance. What are they best for? And which pros use which of those different stances? So, lets see which of those we can get to today.

Real quickly before we get to today’s show, I want to talk to you guys about essential tennis live. If you like the podcast and how it’s interactive– I answer questions, I have guests on the show, I even have listeners on the show from time to time. You’ll really love essential tennis live which is a live radio type call-in show. And It’s every Thursday evening at 8:30pm, eastern standard time. My co-host in that is Ron Miller. And he and I talked back and forth about different tennis topics and people call-in live and also participate in the chat-room and it’s really a lot of fun.

So, you can listen live or you can listen to it as a podcast. Check it out by going to essential tennis.com/live.

Alright, with that, lets get down to business. Sit back. Relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music]

Alright, let’s get started on today’s episode of the essential tennis podcast, and today’s show is going to be awesome. I’m really looking forward to talking about these different topics that I’ve received. And our first to come from Juna. He wrote to me and said, “I’m an eighteen year old young man from Finland, and I’m addicted to tennis. I have two major questions I’d like to ask you considering playing styles as well as tennis fitness.

And we’re going to go to his question about fitness first. Let me read to you what Juna asked me. He says ” currently I go to the gym and do some exercises at home regularly throughout the week. The only problem is that I don’t know if I am doing the right things. I’m mainly working on my legs and core muscles, but somehow feel like I might be doing wrong exercises. I don’t do much cardio because I do some foot work drills and play four to five hours of tennis each day. I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong here. If you think if i should be working on my cardio then I’ll make sure to work on it. And if you think that i have to work on my cardio, then what kind of cardio exercise should i do? What kind of fitness practice should I do to improve my performance on the tennis court? Links are highly appreciated. ”

Juna, good question and by the way, you are exactly the type of person I’m looking for. When I started this website, in this podcast, I wanted people who were absolutely crazy about tennis and you say you are and based on the amount of time that you are putting in and the amount of effort that you are dedicating to your tennis game, I can tell that you’re not joking. Playing 45 hours of tennis each week and working out on the side is an incredible amount of work. And I’m really happy to have you as a listener. Thank you very much for taking the time to ask me these questions.

Now, when we’re talking about tennis and training your body for it. It’s important to take a step back and understand the type of fitness that we need to be good tennis players. And first of all, understand and realize that tennis points on average and this varies a lot, depending on the level of play that we’re talking about and also varies depending on the style of play. If you have a maybe retriever, or maybe an aggressive baseline player, maybe a serve and volleyer.

These are all factors that could change this stat but most tennis points are only lasting somewhere between three and five hits back and forth.

[05:00]

Now obviously if you’ve got two pusher, type retriever type players on either side of the net, p oints are going to last a lot longer. But on average that’s probably about right.

It’s definitely not common to have an average of more than 5 hits per point when you watch a two set match.

So, three to five hits on average– let’s just use that as an average across the board. Might be a little bit different to you but it is gonna to be somewhere around that.

Now with those three to five hit we’re talking about quick, intense spurts of activity. We’re talking about a lot of intensity, real quickly for a short period of time and then you get a rest. You’re gonna take somewhere between twenty, maybe thirty seconds between points depending on your pace of play. And then you have to go out and do it again. I was looking through my copy of Mental Tennis by Vic Braiden, and he talked about a match between Agassi and somebody else. I can’t remember the other player. I was just trying to find the exact players and the exact numbers. But he was talking about a match that he timed between Agassi and another player. And it was one break in each set. Agassi won. I think the score was something like 6-4.. 6-4 etc.

And the match time, the total match time was I think around an hour and a half or an hour and forty five minutes-­something along those lines. And the amount of time that these two actually spent with ball being hit back and forth, in other words in live points. The amount of time that this two spent actually hitting the ball back and forth was only six or seven minutes of solid, you know, it’s live points.

Alright, the point is happening right now, we’re hitting the ball back and forth. I’m pretty sure that it’s in the single digits of minutes. I think it was six or seven minutes. And i need to try to find that actual stat so I can remember it exactly. But people are surprised to actually consider that. Even though all of us play a lot of tennis. Things happen very quickly.

So, my point is, when you think about this– only three to five hits per points and really over a two hour match, we’re only talking about ten or maybe fifteen minutes at the most of actual point play and the rest is resting. Cardio or Aerobic exercise doesn’t train your muscles well for this. In fact it’s kind of the opposite. Cardio or aerobic work-outs train your muscles for long periods of time. It’s endurance training for your muscles. And that’s not what we want to train our bodies for if you are a tennis player.

And aerobic or cardio work outs are as oppose to an anaerobic. An anaerobic workout is a workout that is short periods of time. Very intense work for your muscles and you’re training your muscles to be more explosive and more intense– you’re training those quick twitch muscles which respond very fast and get your body moving quickly. And so, if you are a tennis player, especially if you’re a serious tennis player, if you take your game seriously. And Juna, it certainly sounds that you do based on the amount of time and effort that you’re putting into your game. I would . I’m not gonna say to stay away from aerobic work outs or cardio work outs. It’s not that a cardio work out is gonna be bad for your body– that’s certainly not the case.

I’m not here to tell you guys to not go running or jogging. And e specially if you have some weight to lose and you want to be a better tennis player, then go do some cardio. That will be great for your body. If you’re already in decent shape, if you’re already in pretty good shape and you’re looking for an edge, you’re looking for that extra edge. Then you’re going to want to do anaerobic type work outs. And an example of an anaerobic exercise would be things like sprints, line drills, cone drills, agility ladder drills. Things that focus on quick explosive movement. Quick explosive foot work. And also lifting weights would be another example of an anaerobic work out.

Something where you’re doing less. You are maxing out your muscles with a dozen repetitions or less. And so you’re building strength and your building power and quickness in your muscles and you’re not building long term endurance. Which is not really what we;re looking for, for most of us when it comes to tennis.

Now Juna asked for links. And I’m gonna do that Juna. What I’m gonna do is post, for every podcast in the forums at essentialtennis. Com I post a new topic in the podcast section of the forums. I’m gonna post several links to different exercises that I’m talking about Juna. And I would highly recommend that you do weight lifting for your core, your legs, your shoulders, your back.

[10:00]

You want to get those areas of your body as strong as possible so that you can create power. So, that. They’re used to going for a quick really intense spurts over a short period of time and they are used to recovering quickly and then doing it again.

W hat I’m gonna do is post a bunch of links to exercises that I feel would be good for your tennis game, whether it be quickness and foot work or whether it be weight lifting and actually training your muscles in the weight room to be stronger.

So go to the forum at essential tennis.com. Click on podcast and then click on my post for podcast 87. And Juna, I ‘m gonna post a bunch of links there to different exercises that I think are going to be beneficial to you.

But the bottom line is that if you guys want to be as good as possible on the court, you’re gonna want to do anaerobic type of work outs a nd anaerobic type exercises and not so much aerobic/cardio.

And again it’s not that aerobic or cardio work outs are not good for you but it’s really not targeting the types of muscles, or the type of muscle conditioning that’s gonna be the most conducive for your tennis game. So Juna, hopefully this makes sense to you. Feel free to post on the forums if you have any follow up questions on this topic. [music] [music]

Next up from Juna in Finland. He writes and says, “I have trouble deciding what kind of mental set should I have when I play tennis. I want to play good tennis and make my opponent do the running. When I want to make my opponent run I tend to over hit on the ball and I sacrifice margin of error as replacement for power. My balls tend to travel lower but faster. When I play this sort of tennis I can’t seem to be able to play aggressively and patiently but I try to be aggressive with every ball.

This is not how I would want to play tennis however. I would like to play the sort of tennis where I hit the ball with good margin for error and deep to my opponents and making him or her run. I’d also like to mix my opponents game by adding a few slices here and there to get a short ball that I could attack on.

So my question is: ” what kind of mental set would I need to have to play this kind of tennis. Should I focus on keeping pressure on my opponents quirks. Should I just get the ball back and play or should I focus on moving my opponent all the time in a way that I have good margin for error. ”

Juna that’s an excellent question. And this is a topic that I have covered briefly on the podcast before. And basically, Juna is asking about playing style and trying to pick out the best strategy or type of play that he should be using in order to be successful. And in the long run, Juna, you kinda answered your own question there but I’ll get in to my outline here.

But basically, the problem that you are describing is exactly why I start off every student that I have with top spin technique on his or her ground strokes. It doesn’t matter if they’re just taking a lesson for the very first time or whether they’ve been playing for many many years.

I immediately have my students start to make an upward swing towards their ground strokes on both their forehand and backhand side. And if they come to me with a slice maybe they predominantly hit a slice on their back hand side. It’s not that we’re gonna work on a slice and make it better but, my long term goal for all of my students is to be able to hit eventually with consistent and confident top spin.

And the reason for this is as you were describing in your question is I want my students to be able to have margin for error even while they’re attacking. And if you know how to hit top spin correctly you’re able to do this. People who hit flat or slice will eventually hit a wall in their improvement. And the reason for that is, when you hit flat, when you hit kinda more directly towards your target and you’re hitting straighter and without any spin, you can only hit the ball so hard before it starts going out.

And as you were describing in your question Juna, as you start to try to attack, you hit the ball harder. However you have to aim lower over the net. That’s because if, let’s say that you hit a.. just as a random example. . Let’s say that you hit a fifty mile per hour ground stroke from the middle of the baseline and you hit it three feet over the top of the net. And the ball ends three feet inside the baseline.

[15:00]

If you take that same shot and try to hit it seventy miles an hour and three feet over the top of the net with the same amount of rotation on the ball. Let’s say it was flat on both cases. The would travel farther. And you can only hit the ball so fast before it starts going out. So, to compensate for this, most amateur level tennis players will simply aim lower.

That’s another part of the equation of distance when you hit a tennis shot– is how high over the net is the ball traveling. So, you hit the ball seventy miles an hour, maybe this person would aim one foot over the net instead of three and then again the ball might land three feet inside the baseline and so you’re safe again.

But the problem with that is, as you try to hit harder and harder and as you aim lower and lower over the top of the net, y our margin for error decreases. And so you’re gonna start making more errors because you’re aiming lower and lower as you try to hit the ball aggressively.

And so, people end up having a dilemma, the same dilemma that you’re having now. Should I hit the ball hard and give myself less margin for error, which means that you’re probably gonna miss more. You’re gonna give away more points. On the other side of the coin, you are pressuring your opponent more so there’s kind of pros and cons there. Or should you just stay consistent, give yourself high margin for error but you’re not really going to challenge your opponent much.

And this is the corner that people work themselves into. When they don’t learn how to hit top spin at all over their tennis career. And so they kinda have an either or.. . They can either be aggressive or they can be consistent. Well Juna, I don’t want you to have to choice between those two things. I don’t want you to have to choose between being aggressive and challenging your opponents and choosing between that and being consistent and keeping the ball in play.

I want you to be able to have both. And the only way you can do that is with a good top spin swing. And that’s going to give you the margin for error that you needs to be able to hit the ball aggressively and consistently because the top spin on the ball makes it curve down into the court. So in order to do that, you have to learn how to swing vertically, more upwards.

The lower your racket drops below the height of the point-of-contact. If you’re making contact at waist height, in order to make top spin the ball.. The racket at some point has to drop below your waist. The lower below your waist your racket drops, and the steeper of an angle that your racket moves upwards towards the point-of-contact, the more potential you have for top spin.

To make the ball rotate end over end towards the other side of the courts, you have to make an upward swing. So, you have to drop the racket lower and swing upwards steeper and faster. Now ultimately this is more work than just hitting a drive. Just hitting straight through the ball towards your target. But again you get this higher margin for error because the top spin on the ball makes the ball curve down into the court.

Now Juna, you don’t say in your questions how long you’ve been playing or what level player you are and feel free to write back and let me know. But if you’ve just been playing for a couple of years now, this is a very common wall for people to hit. Very very common.

This is why so often people complain about people pushers, people who play very defensively and just get the ball back in play because they don’t have the ability to attack and hit a pusher off of the court and do it consistently as soon as they take that weak shot from the pusher and try to attack and hit it hard, they start making all types of errors.

So, then they slow down and they try to outlast the pusher which is a mistake as well because that’s what the pusher does everyday. It’s just get the ball back in play safely. And so it drives people crazy.

And in order for you to move past this and be able to hit the ball aggressively and safely, you have to learn how to hit top spin on either side. So, write back to me Juna, and tell me how long you’ve been playing and around what level you’re playing at currently and hopefully we can get you to move more towards the top spin swing or at least have the ability to hit with more top spin on both sides, so that you can maintain a little bit higher margin for error as you start to attack more with your ground strokes.

Juna I would also want you to do some homework by going to podcast archives, on essential tennis. Com and download podcast number 39. In podcast 39 I discuss in a little bit more detail the actual technique of how to do this and very similar topic. But I want you to listen to that show as well and then write me back. Let me know what you think and we can get you started towards more of a top spin swing.

[20:00]

Juna, thank you very much for you questions both on fitness and on what style of tennis to play and no I don’t want you to pick either one or the other. I want you to be consistent and be able to attack at the same time. And hopefully my answer made it clear to you how you’re going to have to do that and what you need to do in order to achieve that. Thanks very much Juna. Take care. [music] [music] [music] Alright. Our next question comes to us from Ben in Salt Lake City, Utah and Ben wrote to me and asked just a request to discuss pros and cons of each type of stance during a future Podcast. If there are good examples of professionals that always helps me to identify the strokes. Thanks.

Sure. And we’re gonna talk about four different stances here Ben. And they can basically be grouped into two main categories. And we’re going to talk about each of the four though quickly. And the four main types of stances are open stance, a square or neutral stance, a closed stance and also semi-open stance.

Lets go ahead and describe each of those four stances so that you guys understand the difference between them and so that you know which one you have. An open stance is the stance where your feet are lined up parallel to the baseline. You can tell what stance you have based on a line that would be drawn from one foot to the other. So, if your feet are lined up on the court in such a way then if you drew a line from one to the other, an open stance would have that line be parallel to the baseline or parallel to the net. That’s an open stance.

Next up is the square stance and the square or neutral stance is one where you are 90 degrees to the baseline or 90 degrees to the net. So, if you’re a right handed player and setting up in a square stance for your forehand you would be turned to the right. You would be facing to the right side of the court. Your left foot would be out towards the net and your right foot would be back towards the backtrack and if you drew a line from your right foot to your left foot. It would be approximately 90 degrees or a right angle, a square angle to the baseline. That’s why it’s called the square stance. Also called the neutral stance.

So, it’s 90 degrees to the baseline or 90 degrees to the net. Now a closed stance would be past a neutral or square stance. Your left foot will actually break that line between your right and left foot in a square stance. Your left foot would actually go past that line more towards the right side of the court and now you’re actually closed over, meaning the front of your body is actually now facing towards the back of the court a little bit assuming we’re just relaxed with the upper body and having a turn along with your stance.

The back of your body would actually be facing a little bit towards the net if you stand in a closed stance on the baseline facing towards a right handed players forehand. Now, a semi-open stance is between a square stance and an open stance. An open stance is completely parallel to the baseline, a square stance or neutral stance is 90 degrees to the baseline and again we’re talking about the line being drawn between your two feet. A semi-open stance would be half-way between an open and the square stance. So, the line that we would be drawing from one foot to the next would be somewhere around 45 degrees or so to the baseline.

So, those are your four basic stances and just because I say 90 degrees or parallel or 45 degrees or whatever, doesn’t mean that it has to be exactly that. When you watch tennis on TV or you watch tennis at the park or whatever. You’ll see all kinds of different angels between the two feets as they relate to the baseline or as they relate to the net. It doesn’t mean they are right or wrong. There’s just all kinds of different set ups that you can use within these general basic guidelines. Now, as far as pros and cons are concerned, we’re gonna talk about the open stance and semi-open stance combined because they are very similar.

The pros for an open or semi-open stance are that, first of all, you have quicker recovery time and that’s because you’re loading up your weight on your outside foot. Your outside foot for a right handed player moving out for a forehand is the right foot. And as a player moves out to the right to hit an open stance forehand, they load their weight up on the right foot to hit in that open stance and they unload off the right foot back over towards the left and this creates a natural recovery .

[25:00]

It naturally transfers the players momentum back towards the middle of the court. So, you have a quicker recovery time. You also have more free core rotation. When you’re in a closed stance, it’s often times difficult to allow your body to rotate back towards the net and use your core for acceleration or power.

So, an open stance or semi-open stance leaves your stance open which means that after you turn your core back to the right to hit an open stance forehand. It’s very easy to unwind your upper body in your core back towards your target, because your stance is kind of naturally leading your body to rotate in that direction in the first place.

Now, the cons are that moving forwards while hitting is not really possible in an open stance. You could do it, but it’s a little bit more awkward than with a closed stance. Also amateur players often times have trouble driving the ball from an open or semi- open stance. Those are the cons.

Now, lets talk about closed or square stance. And the pros of a square stance or a closed stance is that you kind of have an automatic body turn built in. When a tennis pro asks you to turn to the side to hit a forehand and you go to a square stance or a closed stance, your core automatically rotates with your stance. Unless you’re really doing something goofy.

And this is why for years and years and years every teaching pro on the planet told you that immediately turn to the side, because they wanted you to get your core rotated to the side so that you can use it to hit the ball to rotate back and then forth.

So, that rotation back with your body to get your body turned and loaded up to hit the ball. It’s kind of automatically built in to a square stance or to a closed stance. You can also easily move forwards through contact as you would do in an approach shot or maybe off a weak short ball you’re wanting to move forward and hit at the same time. A square stance/neutral stance or closed stance typically makes it a little bit easier to move forwards through the point of contact. More so the square stance than closed stance, but it depends on forehand or backhand.

We won’t get into the specifics of details right now though. Now, the cons for a close stance or square stance is that it’s kind of inhibited, meaning moving back towards the center of the court. When you step all the way across, let’s say on a forehand with your left foot all the way across your body and hit a forehand that keeps your momentum moving out to the right.

Unless you pivot your right foot around and catch yourself. It’s really difficult to stop your momentum and then move back over to the left again to get back to the middle of the court. It’s possible to do. Again as I said pivoting your right foot around catching yourself and then pushing off, but these are all extra movements when compared to an open stance. So, it’s a little bit inhibiting as far as moving back towards the center of the court.

Also hitting cross court is often times difficult with a closed stance, because when you close your left foot over passed your right foot and you close your body over, that tends to kind of trap your body from opening up enough to hit the ball across court. I’m talking about a right handed players forehand while you’re moving out to the right. And open stance gives you a little bit more freedom to rotate forwards again which means that it’s often times easier to direct the ball cross court. So, those are the, and this is very general Ben. I’m not gonna go into huge amounts of detail here. But those are, that’s the good place to start. And those are good general guidelines for what the different types of stances are good for.

Now, as far as specific examples with the pros, virtually every pro uses all of these stances at some point or other depending on the stroke that they’re hitting and depending on the situation.

It’s impossible to take one pro and say, Rafael Nadal always hits an open stance on his forehand. That’s not true. He’ll use an open stance very often, yes that’s definitely the truth. When he’s moving out to his left to hit a forehand, he’ll almost always using open stance in order to recover quickly. When you see him kind of line up and try to drill the ball and hit more aggressively, y ou’ll see him hit more of a semi-open stance and when he’s moving forwards into an approach shot, you’ll often see him use a square stance or a neutral stance. Over on his backhand side, you’ll see him use open stance or semi-open stance once in a while when he’s really stretched out wide. You’ll also see him step over and hit with more of a neutral or square stance and I can’t think of a specific example, where I specifically noticed that was a closed stance. But I can virtually guarantee you, that he also hits with a closed stance on his two handed backhand as well.

[30:00]

Going over to Roger Federer, when he hits a backhand slice, he’ll almost exclusively hit with a closed stance. However, in watching some slow motion video of him earlier today, he’ll often set-up with an open or semi-open stance for his top-spin backhand return , which is really cool.

It’s something that I don’t really have the ability to do or, I at least haven’t been trained for, or tried hitting a semi-open stance on my top spin one-handed backhand and that’s really a cool shot and that’s something I’d like to work on.

Anyway, when you go and watch different players, depending on the set-up that they’re using, meaning, what type of position are they in, whether it’s offensive or defensive, whether they’re trying to hit a slice or top spin or drive, whether they’re moving forwards or to the side or back, you will see them use all of these stances, depending on the specific situations, and that’s what’s cool about tennis.

You see these awesome athletes out there who are using a wide variety of skills, a wide variety of different types of strokes, and use them all effectively. Now, I’m going to post something for you as well on the forum. I’m going to post a video, that fuzzy little balls did.. . I think quite some time ago, it’s a relatively old video but it’s talking about different stances and it gives… They show an example of Roddick, hitting with an open stance, they show [inaudible] hitting with a neutral or square stance. They show Roddick, hitting in a semi-open stance, and they show Lee hitting with a closed stance.

So, four different stances. He demonstrates all four using the pros and so you can see pros hit with all four of them on that video. I’m gonna post that video along with the other ones for Juna in the Podcast 87 post in the podcast forum at essentialtennis.com.

So, Ben, hopefully, it gives you a good idea of the generalities of each of these stances, what they are exactly, what their pros and cons are. If you have any further questions, please feel free to post them in the forums under that topic, and thanks very much for taking the time to write. [music] [music] [music]

All right. That will do it for this episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast, and before we wrap things up, I want to do two shout outs here and both of them to people who are putting in some time on the site for me, helping try to set-up an ET clinic, an Essential Tennis clinic.

The first clinic I did was in Baltimore, a couple of months ago, 12 people came out to participate there. We had a great time and I’m trying to set-up some other one as well, and I’m doing that with the help of several listeners, which I really, really appreciate. So, I wanna give them a shout out.

The first one is to Angie, who attended the first ET clinic and she’s doing some work, trying to find me a place in Palm Springs, California to hopefully do a clinic this December. So, Angie thank you for putting in that time and hopefully that goes through and I’ll be announcing soon whether or not that clinic is actually going to be taking place. And secondly, Steven, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is working on setting-up some courts there, some indoor courts. Since it’s rather cold there at the moment, and will be for a couple of months, but he’s working on getting some courts for us to use up in Minnesota to do a clinic there as well.

So, Steven, thank you for your time and hopefully that materializes as well, and we do a clinic both in California and in Minnesota within the next couple of months. So, thank you both for the time that you put in in. I really appreciate it a lot. And hopefully we can get those clinics rocking.

All right. Thanks very much for joining me this week everybody. Take care and good luck with your tennis! [music] [silence]

Essential Tennis Podcast #86

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Welcome to the essential tennis podcast.

If you love tennis and want you improve your game, this podcast is for you. Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment or the mental game– tennis professional Ian Westman is here to make you a better player, and now here’s Ian!

Ian: Hi and welcome to the essential tennis podcast. Your place for free expert tennis instructions that can truly help you improve your game.

Today’s episode of the essential tennis podcast is brought to by summersetsportsperformance.com.

Thank you very much for joining me today on the show and today’s show is going to be all about tennis gear and equipment. We’re going to have master racket technician Jeremy Plumly on the show with myself, and we’re going to be answering questions from listeners of the podcast.

Before we get started, i just want to remind you guys about a very special feature of essentialtennis.com, and that is the podcast archives.

We’ve now done eighty six episodes of the essential tennis podcast and all of them are available for free in the podcast archive– that’s over forty hours of free tennis instruction. If you we’re to take forty hours of instructions from me privately at the club where I teach, it would cost you two thousand four hundred dollars. So two thousand four hundred dollar value, for free. Obviously, it’s not the same as private instruction but you got the idea, very valuable stuff at the archive all for free, so definitely go to essentialtennis .com.

Go to the podcast page and sign up and you can access all those shows for free. Alright, let’s get down to business. Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instructions. [noise] music [music]

My guest today on the essentialtennis podcast is master racket technician Jeremy Plumly. Jeremy welcome back to the show.

Jeremy : Hey, thank you for have me back. It’s been a long time.

Ian : Yeah, it has been awhile and Jeremy is back by popular demand, somebody I can’t remember who was, but somebody in the forums was asking where you were at and wanted you back on the show, and so I asked for some questions from our community on the forums, and got a lot of feedback. So people have definitely been waiting for you to come back on the program. Glad to have you.

Jeremy : Well, you know my mom’s really happy that you hear me on the podcast, so all the money that I paid her to blah was worth it I think.

Ian : Well, I’ve just one question for you before we get started. How does it feel to be a certified master at something?

Jeremy : [laughter] You know what? It does feel pretty good. It doesn’t give me any more you know, say at home or anything, but people in tennis sports seen to respect my authority.

Ian : Alright, well, better than nothing but it’s a good start.

Jeremy : [laughter] I’ll take what I can get.

Ian : Alright, so today Jeremy and I have taken several questions out from those that were submitted and I apologize to those people whose questions weren’t chosen, we didn’t, we definitely don’t have enough time to get everybody’s questions here in the show, so just picked out a couple that we thought would probably be most interesting, and our topics are going to range from grip size to string types.

Rackets stiftnesses, straining techniques– all kinds of stuff. And Jeremy is going to share his wisdom with us and all things gear related. So let’s go to our first question asker, and that is Jeremy and I have been discussing the pronunciation of your name and I apologize if I mispronounce your name, but but the best guess is Remullo in Brazil.

And he says I live in Brazil I’ve been playing tennis for three years now, I just bought a pair of new rackets, two Wilson K-Blade 98s . I’m something around a 3. 5 to 4. 0 player, I have really big hands and no matter the size of the grip I still have to increase it. So, the three things that I want to ask are, and he’s got three questions for you about grip sizes and these are going to relate definitely to many people listening who have question about what grip size they should be using.

His first question is because of this, I use the sigma grip build up, its a thermal plastic that shrinks with heat, you probably already know what I am talking about so that grip build up.. . put something like an extra six grams on the handle of weight. What is the effect of that weight on the equilibrium of the rocket? The balance of the rocket. Jeremy what kind of effect does that buildup h
ave on the overall balance?

Jeremy : It’s not going to have a lot , the swing weight increases more when you add weight up at the tip of the frame. When you add weight down at the bottom you have to add a significant amount for it to really make a difference . And the five or six grams that the build up leaves adds to it wont effect your swing rate very much .

About the only thing that will build up the size of the grip is you might notice a more damp ened feel because there will be that little layer of polyeurothane or whatever it is, between the handle and the grip and your hands. So it might be a good idea if you’re suffering from a little bit of tennis elbow, to throw one of those one their two just for the dampening effect. As far as balance goes, it’s not a lot.

Ian : OK. Moving on to his second question, he said that, the grip size on his K-Blades is an L4 and Jeremy is that, for those of us in the U.S. , is that a 4 and 5 8ths grip?.

Jeremy : No. An L4 is actually a 4 and a half.

Ian : Ahh OK. He says he bought an L4 which is 4 and a half inch grip.. He said that if he buys an L5, which I would assume then is a 4 and 5 8ths. He thinks that it’s almost impossible to sell it later , however, with the L4, with the 4 and a half inch grip, and the buildup, and a cushion over the grip, he says my ring finger is only 1 centimeter from his hand and he is talking about the kind of general rule of thumb with grip size where when you grip the racket, you should be able to put a finger between the heel of your hand and the tips of your fingers. For those of you who aren’t familiar with that and he says that he’s only got a centimeter between the tips of his fingers and the heel of his hand even with this build-up and the extra grip etc.

And his question is, should he increase the grip size even more or is that enough? What do you think Jeremy?

Jeremy : It’s really a personal preference at that point. A lot of pros nowadays are using smaller grips. So the trend is to kind of go with the smaller grip , people feel they can get a little bit whipier with their strokes, you know if they used a small er grip. Nadal I think uses a quarter or maybe even an eight on his grip, and he’s a pretty big dude so that’s one thing.

The other thing is if he wants to go bigger with those [inaudible], you can put two of them on the existing pedal on the racket without really rounding it out too much. With two of the buildup grips, you can still feel the levels pretty well . I wouldn’t go more than that, so I would say try it with one buildup sleeve, maybe put an over grip on top of that and see how it feels and if you kinda like how that feels, that go with that. But if it still feels too small, if you feel you are squeezing the racket too tight then we can put together buildups.

Ian : Sounds good. And yeah, I’ll echo just the first thing that you said there Jeremy. Ramulla, it definitely comes down to personal preference.

I mean there are old rules of thumb for a lot of different things in tennis but when it comes to equipment, and stuff like this, especially with grip size. . . Whatever you are most comfortable with is what Jeremy and I are going to tell you to go with most of the time for sure.

Alright let’s go to his third and final question here , and he says that, he used to be using a Wilson K-Factor 6195 and that’s what he was using before he switched to the K-Boyd 98 and he said the 6. 1, he was using a 55 pound string tension and he wants to know with the K-Blade , being at a 98 square inch head, a little bit bigger, what pressure should he be using? What tension should he be using on those strings to get about the same feel . What do you think?

Jeremy : Umm just having the head sizes be 3 square inches isn’t a huge difference as far as hitting area. I would say two, three pounds on the increase. A lot depends on obviously if you use the same strings that makes it easier. A lot of times, the stiffness of the frame , the frame geometry and what the composition is will give you a different effect.

Something else going for that is the K-Blade 98 is a 18 by 20 string pattern and since he doesn’t say what the string pattern was on his 6195. I’m assuming it’s the 16 by 18. They do make that 18 by 20 as well. If he was using the16x18 and the 61, he probably doesn’t need to jump up the tension, the extra strings will probably make it feel a little bit tighter as it is. Because if you’re going from the18x20, 61 to the 1820 K-Blade 98, then he should probably increase it [inaudible] .

Ian : OK, alright. Good stuff. Well, let’s move on from Brazil to tropical Northern Illinois w here we have Nick, and Nick’s question is.. ” my question is about racket shape. Yonex and D unlop have long oval shaps where as [inaudible] and Wilson have a more round shape. Are there advantages for both shapes or is it all marketing or theoretical speculation? I like that phrase, theoretical speculation. What are your thought about that Jeremy?.

Jeremy : You are throwing around terms like theoretical speculations. . you’re obviously not a tennis pro by nature. You know some of it is marketing hype.

A lot of people will tell you the [inaudible] will give you more spin and [inaudible] tend to market themselves as the spin racket. I haven’t noticed a huge increase in my spin when I’ve used the Yonex. Well I will say that, normally if the racket is wider, typically three o’clock to six ‘oclock, you’ve got a little bit more you know, hitting area there so in theory, [inaudible] could possibly get more spin because the ball has a little more space to work with there, but i don’t know of any studies that have proven that, I think it’s maybe it just personal preference among players.

I will say that if your main strings are longer, you get more power, that’s why those rocket ball racket a lot of times the main strings will go all the way down to the grip and all the way up, because the longer the string is, the more elasticity you would get, the more power you’ll get. But I don’t know bout that necessarily.

Ian : Okay, is this kind of a personal preference slash feel type thing with the different shape and and geometries that these racket manufacture?

Jeremy : Yeah. I would say it’s more of a personal preference, because even if you look at for example the Head extreme that has a very rounded hand. When you compare that to a more oval shape head, it’s not really that big at a difference. So I don’t really know how much extra you will get from that minor difference. You know some people feel more confident with it so it’s really just a personal preference.

Ian : Alright so Nick it sounds like we’re more on the side of theoretical speculations for this one. Nick has a second questions as well and that is as a 3. 0 player where should I have my string tension for good control without making my arm fall off?

Jeremy : [laughter] Making your arm fall off, I’ve never seen a racket strung that tight. Again I’m going to go with the personal preference argument again. What you should do is start out in a medium tension.

See how that goes. Normally, medium tension promotes a racket t hat’s going to be 60 pounds. I f you feel like you don’t have enough control with that one, start it up to 3 pounds, unless you’re using a really large over size racket, you’d probably wouldn’t go much about 65. At that point you’ll probably started feeling a little bit in your arm, especially if you have a big preexisting injury. Being the level player that you are doesn’t really effect your tension of your string, but it might effect a little bit of what type of string you might want to go with. But it’s more your playing style rather than your actual level .

Ian : Yeah I would venture to say here Jeremy that this is a very individualized thing based on like you were talking about pre-existing injuries, you know certain people they tend to be more prone to injury maybe that they’re little bit older, maybe they swing a little bit differently and it’s kinda lending their bodies more towards injury and the arm falling off department. So I like your suggestion there Jeremy. Kinda start there in the middle and maybe working his way up where its, what do you think… Maybe two or three pound increments from there and just kinda trying things out?

Jeremy : Yeah, I think two or three pounds. That way you’ll start feeling the difference. The other thing to remember, you know, a certain string say like a [inaudible] or a [inaudible] , so it’s gonna feel different at 60 pounds than a polyester string like [inaudible] which feels like 60 pounds. Use the string that you use most of the time. Start with that in the middle and then work your way there.

Ian : Alright. Good stuff. Now let’s go from Northern Illinois to even farther North to Howard in Canada and he’s got three different questions here having to do actually with arm-falling off injuries . And he wants to know about a couple different rackets specifications and tennis elbow slash arm problems. And his first question for Jeremy is “if you have elbows slash arm problems, should you be looking for looking for a stiff or a flexible racket. How would you define each category if you were using the Babolat RDC rating?

Jeremy : Wow.

Ian : Pretty detailed.

Jeremy : Yeah, very detailed.

First off, whenever you have an elbow or arm issue you want to go with a more flexible racket. The stiff rackets normally because of their stiffness will give your arm more feedback– more shock. And that will continue to build on that injury.

They feel great because they are really light and you can get a lot of power about swinging a lot with them . However, there just isn’t as much material there to absorb the shock when the ball hits. So you definitely want to go with a more flexible frame. As far as you know, stiffness really the RDC will give you a a rating between zero and one hundred … Wow.

Mid sixties to seventy is a pretty stiff racket, however there are some heavy rackets out there. The [inaudible] K-Factors tend to be a little bit stiffer. There in around that upper 60s limit and they are OK for tennis-elbow because they’ve got substantial mass to them .

I would really , I’d say in that mid 60s range . If you want it lower than that you’d have a really flexible racket which might be a little heavy. Which might be a little uncomfortable at first with an elbow injury until you build up a little more strength. But basically I would just try the more control oriented rackets to the tweeners. Try and stay away from the cross [inaudible] and the vocal power arms.. The real thick super light-weight rackets. Stay in a weight range between 9 and a half and probably 11 ounces.

Ian : OK. And his question number two here you kinda just answered a little bit but maybe you want to reiterate just for clarification in case you think you missed anything. The second question was assuming the same elbow slash arm problems , do you look for a head heavy or a head light racket.

Jeremy : Umm well just by the way the market is, the lighter rackets tend to be head heavy so I would stay with the head light racket. Maybe if you don’t want something really head-light stay in the evenly balanced category. If you go two or three points head-light or even up to 2 points set heavy, you’ll be fine.

Ian : OK. And lastly, the arm slash elbow issues, he asks, how do you pick the right multifilament string to protect yourself and how tight would you string it?

Jeremy : Any of the multifilaments are going to be pretty soft. The only thing that I would say to avoid would be , and I love the string, however I think for tennis elbow purposes, some of the gamma live wire technology strings. The live wire professional and the live wire revelation tend to give a little bit more feedback in the arms than similar multifilament strings . [inaudible] sells very good , Wilson and XT as well. Also the Wilson S ensation which is a little lower price point is a good one too.

I don’t think it’s a true multi but I think there is a solid core there. But another one if you are having a lot of elbow issues and you need something really soft, have protector strings is very good and the best thing for arm injuries, honestly, is natural gut. It’s the [inaudible] you can get out there. It’s expensive but it’s not something you have to use for the rest of your life. As your arm gets stronger, you can go back with synthetic string . But if you are really suffering with an elbow problem, I’d give natural gut a try.

Ian : Yeah Howard, if you’ve never tried a racket strung with all-natural gut, there is really no other feeling like it. I personally like really stiff string-bed so I steer away from even a multifilament synthetic that I really don’t like. Sorter strings at all. But hitting with a racket full of natural fut, really feels pretty cool. It’s a very different feeling from any kind of synthetic string .

I’d recommend trying that out if you have the financials to actually be able to use that in your racket. It lasts longer to so that kind of helps defray the costs. And then he also asks Jeremy what about tensions? Using that multifilament strainer may be a natural gut string. What type of string tension range should he be looking at for arm injuries?

Jeremy : Depending on how bad the injury is, it’s something that you are really suffering with, probably the mid to maybe up to about 57 pounds depending on how soft the string is. I wouldn’t go much above 58 if you do have an existing injury. But you don’t want to go too low with those because they are so soft that you’ll really almost feel like it’s a dead string bed just because you aren’t going to get a lot of spring off of it.

Ian : Alright good stuff. And Howard has one other question, and I’m curious to see what your answer is going to be to this one Jeremy. He says “how do you figure out if rackets that are based on the YouTech or similar technologies are either stiff or flexible.

Jeremy : Well it’s pretty easy, right now all of our YouTech rackets are pretty flexible as far as the market dynamics go. They haven’t put the YouTech technology into their power rackets yet .

And the other thing is, the D3A technology is in the throat. So you’re getting a little bit of flexibility there and well the technology will either stiffen or loosen up depending on how fast you are swinging. But a lot of the flexibility in the racket is going to be up in the hoop so they are pretty flexible rackets .

The radical, the YouTech radical feels a lot more flexible than its predecessor the Microgel and actually the flexpoint radicals as well. I was speaking with our local head rep about a week and a half ago at demo day and I asked him if he feels if the YouTech radical is more flexible than the Microgel and he said yes. Absolutely– it’s got a much more flexible feel and that’s definitely been the general consensus among people who have hit with them both.

Ian : OK . Alright good stuff and we’ll shift our geographical focus from north and move somewhere else completely different to Afinity in Saudi Arabia and his 1st question is… As a player improves, does he or she have to change his or her strings as well. Pretty general question, but what is your answer to that Jeremy?

Jeremy : Personal preference. That’s kind of my buzz word for today. You don’t have to change your strings. If you like one particular string and you feel that it fits your game well, then you can stay with it from the day you pick up the racket til the day they put you in the ground .

There are advantages to some strings that others don’t. For example, if you are swinging really fast, a polyester string might be good for you so you can help control it. But there is no reason why you can’t [inaudible] use natural gut.

Really it just kinda depends on your personal preference and ya, if you start swinging faster you might look at a different string or if you feel like you need a little bit more power you might go for a more powerful string. But there is no definitive answer of yes you need to change your strings once you get to be 4. 5 you can no longer use regular synthetic guts. It’s really up to you .

Ian : How bout if as you improve or as a player improves they starts to break strings much more regularly.

Jeremy : Well that’s again, if you know you don’t mind to having your racket restrung three times a week then you can stay with the strings, but yeah, as you do start breaking strings more you’re probably going to want to look to more durability and the more durable family of strings, thepolyesters, biting my tongue.. Kevlar .

Ian : Yes, Kevlar.

Jeremy : We do wanna make sure that they are right for your game and you know most of the time if you are breaking strings, because you are starting to swing f ast, you are starting to use a lot of spin, then y eah polyester string is good. Ke vlar or polyester would work well for you. So, durability would be a good reason to switch.

Ian : All right, good stuff and final question for today’s show. And this should be kind of a fun topic for you and I to discuss for a couple of minutes here Jeremy.

Affinity also asked: “I have a neighbor who has a dropway straining machine. Some members of our group don’ t like to have our rackets strung by him. According to them, it has a allegedly caused them tennis elbow and all sorts of other injuries. Is there some truth in to this?

Jeremy : [laughter] I hope they weren’t talking about knee injuries and something like that.. .

Ian : Yeah right..

Jeremy : You know that is one of the things, when you are a stringer, right after the racket, the strings and the stringer are the next things to get blamed if you’re having a bad day, all right?

Ian : And know this by personal experience, don’t you?

Jeremy : Oh, yes, yes. You know stringers, particularly master racket technicians, tend to have pretty fix skin when it comes to that. You can assess with them… Many of the times when I come back in the office yelling about somebody complaining about their strings.

Ian : Yeah?

Jeremy : I don’t think that the machine itself would be a reason for an arm injury. Now, maybe if the stringer, the person actually doing the job, strung it too tight or something like that I guess technically it could cause him an injury.

I really don’t think that the stringer itself can do that. Even if the racket was strung 10 pounds tighter than you were used to. It think you would notice that before you had an injury and you’d probably ask him to change it.

A drop-weight machine does tend to give you a different string bed than a lock out or a hang crank machine with because it does constantly pull the tension during the string job. But it wouldn’t be such a huge increase and it wouldn’t be any more than top of the line electronics stringer would. Y ou could possible argue and I’ve given an argument to people about a drop-weight machine that’s stringing at even tension throughout the whole racket. So, if you could question the consistency of the string job but not really causing an injury.

Ian : So, bottom line, would you avoid if you were a player and you had the knowledge that you do now as a master racket technician. Would you ever avoid a stringer and his services just because he had a drop-weight stringing machine. .

Jeremy : I would not refuse to use him because of his machine. If he takes care and does a good job, takes his time, don’t try to rush through, you can get a very good… You can get a very good job done with drop-weight machine if you know how to use it.

I would make sure that I only get one rack at the first time just to make sure how it turned out and make sure that you know it is a consistent string build. The same thing can be said for somebody who uses any type of machine.

Honestly I’d take a guy who’s done 500 rackets on a $150 machine rather than the guy who’s done 5 on a $5,000 electronic. So much stringing is really consistency as a stringer. Some machines make it easier to be consistent, but once you get good at something on a particular machine, you’re going to be able to duplicate those result time and time again and that’s what string is all about.

Ian : All right. So, Affinity wants to look for a strainer who has a lot of experience with their type of machine. Who has a lot of experience stringing rackets in general. That’s gonna be much more the qualification you want to look for rather than how good of a machine they have and I guess good as in quotation marks.

Jeremy : Yeah, I mean give the guy a chance. He strings it and if you like how it feels, then keep going with the guy and you know and if he gives you a racket that doesn’t feel as good as you know, maybe one that he had done for you earlier. Let him know. You know, if you don’t get any feedback from your customers, you don’t if you’re doing a good job or a bad job. And you know most people figure that if they don’t hear anything, that they are going to do a good job.

Ian : OK. So, just to be clear, we’re going to go ahead and call four on the drop-weight stringing machine causing injuries, correct?

Jeremy : Yes, yes. I’m going to call foul on that.

Ian : Alright.

Jeremy : and as a stringer I would take a little bit of offense that we would cause an injury with a drop-weight machine or any machine.

Ian : All right, well that brings our questions to a close for today and Jeremy would you mind at some point, y ou know it doesn’t have to be right away, but the members who took the time to write questions on the forums. Would you mind giving them quick answers and answering their questions on the forums?

Jeremy : Absolutely yes. I’ll get over there and try and do that as soon as I can and we’ll try to get as many of those questions answered as possible.

Ian : Awesome..

Jeremy : Some of them might be a little duplicated but I’m happy to do it .

Ian : Awesome. Well, Jeremy thank you very much for your time. Myself and the Essential Tennis Podcast Community definitely appreciates the input that you’re giving us and thank you very much for your expertise.

Jeremy : Thank you so much for having me. [noise]

Ian : All right, that’s brings the Essential Tennis Podcast number 86 too a close. Thank you very much for joining me today and hopefully what you heard was helpful to you.

Real quickly before we wrap up the show, I wanna do a couple shouts out and my shout outs today are going to be to our three most recent forum members and these guys are all joined within the last week since the last podcast and this is where you guys really want to be if you want to be the most involve as possible in improving your tennis game.

Everybody who posts on the Essential Tennis forums are very, very passionate about tennis– they are very enthusiastic. They love supporting each other and helping each other as they continue down the path towards trying to become better tennis players.

And today’s podcast was only possible because of the enthusiasm on the forums. All the questions that we answered today were posted by members of the Essential Tennis forum. So, you guys should definitely check it out if your a listener and have not checked it out yet.

So, our most recent three members and I think all of these guys actually posted in the thread where I was asking questions for Jeremy, but beatren, Ramodo and SAK are our three most recent members on the Essental Tennis Forums.

So, when I give those three guys a shout outs. All right? That brings today’s show to a close. I will talk to you all next week. Until then take care and good luck with your tennis. [noise] [noise] [noise]

Essential Tennis Podcast #85

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Welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. If you love tennis and want to improve your game, this podcast is for you. Whether it technique, strategy, equipment or the mental game. Tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player. And now here’s Ian!

Ian : Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. Your place for free expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game.

Today’s episode of the essential tennis podcast is brought to you by Summersetsportsperformance.com.

Thank you very much for joining me on today’s show and episode number 85 is going to be kind of a grab bag of listener questions. And we’re going to be covering such topics as how to serve and deal with the sun. When the sun is shinning into your face and into your eyes. We’ll also going be talking about the mentality of playing somebody who is better than you. Playing against an opponent who’s clearly a better player than you are.

Before we get to that, real quickly I want to let you guys know a way that you can help me and Essential Tennis, if this podcast has aided in the advancement of your game or if any part of essential tennis has helped you. I’d really appreciate you returning the favor a little bit by helping me spread the word about the show and about the website.

And you can do that by signing up for a free promotional packet from myself. And that pocket consist of fliers and informational cards and also essential tennis stickers as well. And this packet will be sent you completely free no matter where in the world you are and I’d really appreciate your help by handing this things out. If you have players that you typically play with, maybe even opponents, teammates, team, practice partners, that sort of thing … stickers, you know, the cards.

Maybe the facility that you typically play at if you wouldn’t mind putting up a flier about essentialtennis.com. There are all ways that you can help me spread the word out to other, you know, really really passionate tennis enthusiasts about the website.

So you can sign up for this materials by going to the front page of essential tennis. Com and click on the large banner there that is talking about the promotional packets. Just fill out your address and your name and I’ll get those out to you quickly.

Alright, lets get down to business. Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music]

Alright, the first question that I’m going to tackle today comes to us from James in England. James, thank you very much for writing. He wrote to me and said, “As a relative novice to the game, I only started playing last October. I am really struggling when I have top serve into the sun. I have found various tips on the internet, such as wearing sun glasses, wearing a cap, experimenting with different s erving positions on the baseline and altering the ball toss. Well some of things have helped, I still feel I’m doing something fundamentally wrong.”

“A lot of the time I will toss the ball up, but then as I go to serve, all I can see is the glare of the sun. It then is as much as I can do to make good contact usually and this results in a feeble serve and my eyes often remain dazed, while I play out the assuming point. It amazes me how well the pros seem to deal with the sun often without sun glasses, caps, and seemingly unaffected by the overhead sun. Can you help explain how i should tackle this problem correctly and maybe offers some tips, practice drills, etc?”

Well, James, I got to tell you, you already outlined pretty well a ll the typical ways of dealing with the sun during your tennis playing and specifically the serve.

Usually the overhead and the serve are the two shot that are most often affected by the sun and kind of having that glare or just making it difficult to see in general. But it sounds that you’ve already done a good amount of research yourself and you’ve come up with a lot of the most common ways that people try to deal with this problem.

Now, this is the problem that I personally have never really had. I’ve played a lot of tennis, a lot of tennis outside, and certainly there are times where it’s more of a problem than others. You know, if it’s a cloudy day out you don’t really have to worry about the sun at all. You can just be relax regardless of the side that you’re serving from but there are times when you’re playing mid-day when the sun really can be, kinda right in the way. Kinda right where you like to put your toss. And that can definitely serve as a problem.

[05:00]

Now this is something that I’ve always just kind of dealt with and I used some of the strategies that you’ve talked about to be able to make it a little bit more easy to deal with it. Now as you pointed out, the Pro’s almost never wear glasses. There are , there are couple exceptions to that.

One of them is Clemont. He will often times wear sunglasses when he’s outside. Also Tipsarevic, he likes to wear sunglasses outside and sometimes inside will wear glasses with clear lenses. He’s definitely unique in that way. But those are really the only two players that come to mind– modern players that wears sunglasses at all.

It’s just something that the Pros don’t do because it gets in the way. However, you know, however well designed your sunglasses are, they still give, you know, there is still a barrier there between your eyes and the ball, and the racket and your opponent. And so, while good sunglasses can certainly not be in the way as much, it still alters your perception a little bit.

Now when I go outside and teach, I wear sunglasses when I’m outside for long periods of time. Just because it’s easier on my eyes and it, you know, I want my eyes to last as long as possible. And a lot of times I’m spending, you know, six to eight hours outside teaching and it’s just easier for me to have sunglasses on and a hat.

But when i go out to compete; I don’t wear a hats. I don’t wear sunglasses because it just gets in the way. Now the sun specifically is something that really, James, you just kinda have to learn how to deal with. And I’ll go over the different suggestions that you gave or that you’ve tried to fix this problem real quickly for other listeners that maybe haven’t heard of these fixes.

The ball toss is something that you can change and you can really try a lot of different things depending on exactly where the sun is. You can try tossing a little more to the right or to the left. Or maybe even a little bit lower, and quicken your motion up a little bit so you don’t have to look up quite as long.

This are all things that I’ve done– adjustments that I’ve made when the sun is really just in the wrong spot and it’s just right dead when you’re trying to look.

Stance you can change. You can rotate your body a little more or a little bit less if the sun, you know, directly in front of you or directly behind you. That’s an adjustment you can make. And also you can stand on a little different place on the baseline. You can move out to the right or to the left along the baseline. Maybe there’s a shadow on half of the court. Or even just half of the deuce half of the courts. And you can make an adjustment-­stand a little bit on that side so that you have a a protected place on the courts. Then of course we’ve got the hat and the glasses as well. So there’s five different ways that you can try to deal with it.

And James says that he’s tried all of them but still has problems dealing with it. To be honest with you James, at that point, now that we’ve discussed all of those different ways and hopeful fixes. At that point I’m really out of suggestions for you. And that could be the first time I’ve ever said that on the podcast but it’s something that I personally have always just.. . it’s just a matter of fact type of thing. I mean it’s the sun, you have to deal with it. Your opponent has to deal with it. Everybody who’s out there on the court at that time of day is dealing with it. And it’s something that you just have to find the best way to remedy the problem for yourself.

There are people whose eyes are more sensitive than others so I’m not trying to say that, you know, you’re being a cry baby or anything like that. Or that you just need to kind of buck up and deal with it. But on the other hand, you kinda do a little bit. [laughter]

Like i said, some people, their eyes are just more sensitive. I would suggest, James, going to the forums at essentialtennis. Com. Go sign up for the forums and make a post. The best section of the forums to post this in would probably be under, probably technique, or maybe general discussion. And I would post and ask the other members that we have. We have over three hundred members at the forums now. Ask them for feedback, because to be honest with you this is something I haven’t dealt with a lot.

I called Royce and talked to him about it actually. Because I didn’t just want to come back empty handed and tell you to just deal with it. He said that he has dealt with the sun, and he’s a little bit more on the sensitive side. But for him it’s something that he’s just had to put up with.

And so, there you go. [laughter]

[10:00]

I don’t want say that was the least helpful segment I’ve ever done on the show but it sounds that you’ve probably got most of the fixes nailed down and it’s something you’re going to have to probably come up the combination of those different remedies and just do your best out there James. It’s not something that’s always easy, but there’s a lot of those types of things in tennis where, you know, it doesn’t come easy but you’re going to have to deal with it and learn how to best work around with it yourself.

So James, best of luck to you with that and I hope to see you on the forums. Ask around there and I’m sure you’ll get a lot of feedback from other players that are right around your level and hopefully who have dealt with the same issues and maybe have some unique fixes that I haven’t heard about it yet. But best of luck to you and I hope that you find a good fix. [music]

Alright, next up we have two questions that have come to us from Francois in Canada, and Francois has written to me a couple of times– he and I have exchanged emails. And Francois I really appreciate your passion for the game and your enthusiasm. I’m sorry if not always able to r espond fully to at all your emails. He sent me some really long emails about his, you know, his recent experiences with the game of tennis as he continues to try to improve himself.

And it’s always fun to hear stories about that from listeners so I appreciate those emails, Francois. And hopefully I can help you here with the couple of questions that you have.

And his first question to me is very simple, but has a lot of underlying elements to it. His first question to me was simply: “Hi Ian, do you have suggestions on how to play against a better ranked player. ” That’s it.

Well, great question. I’ve got four different tips for you here Francois to help you deal with playing against somebody better. And in his next question he gets more specific about playing against a higher level player and we’re going to get more practical in terms of the actual experience or choice between playing against somebody who’s maybe a little bit lower level or somebody who’s higher level.

But to answer this question here, I’m going to be talking more about kinda mental tennis issues having do to with going up against somebody who is better than you, you know, kinda being honest with ourselves here. And saying that we know that this opponents has more experienced. They typically play against a higher level of competition than us. And, you know, when you go out and play any sport this is going to happen. You’re going to play teams that are worse than you.. Or opponents that are worse than you, You’re going to play opponents that are better than you and it’s good to admit that. [laughter]

It’s good to be honest. Sometimes those of us who are more competitive have a hard time admitting that to ourselves. But it’s good Francois that you understand that there are players out there who are just plain better than you.

And it’s good to go in with the right mentality. So I’ve got four different things here. Four different suggestions or ways that I want you to think about this. And the first one is, please understand that there is no pressure on you at all. And in my outline I put AT ALL in caps. There should be no pressure on you. And this is important to understand. A lot of times lower to mid level tennis players go out to play this type of match against somebody who is obviously a level above where they typically play, and they put the pressure on themselves to go out there and play big. To go out there and play the best tennis of their lives, you know, the highest they’ve ever played in their entire tennis career and they feel like, if they don’t go out there and just play lights out, that it’s going be a complete failure and they will be embarrassed. And it’s going to be a waste of time for their opponents etc..

Well, [laughter] understand this Francois and everybody else listening. If you’re playing somebody who’s clearly a level above you, they know this as well and to be honest, you know, lets be upfront about it. They are probably expecting a relatively easy match here. So don’t put the pressure on yourself to go out there and be amazing and play the best tennis you’ve ever played in your life. Understand that he is supposed to win. Put that in quotation marks, you know, “he is supposed to win”.

That doesn’t mean that they are going to win every single time. Obviously upsets happens everyday of the week. But on paper, accepts the fact that he or she is suppose to beat you and accept the fact that you are supposed to lose. And I think it’s important to put that on to open and kind of air that out and accept that. Now, there’s a fine line between accepting that and being able to play freely and without pressure on yourself. Without putting the.. The pressure on yourself mentally to have to go out there and play the best tennis of your life. There’s a difference between having that freedom and understanding that he is on paper the better player– he’s supposed to win.

[15:00]

There’s a difference between that and having an defeatist mentality and walking out there and saying “wow this is a waste of time. He’s going to crush me. I shouldn’t even be out here on the court with him. You know, this is really embarrassing.” [laughter]

So this can be difficult mentally, but I don’t want you to walk out there negative about the situation and say to yourself, “wow this really is dumb. I shouldn’t be out here with this player.” But, on the other hand, don’t be nervous and put so much pressure on yourself to have to play amazing.

We want to be somewhere in the middle. Be realistic about it. Be honest with yourself and realize that this person is better than you. But don’t be negative about it either. And that can be difficult depending on your personality type. I personally, I’m very much a perfectionist in my own tennis game. So when I go out and I play somebody in the past anyway, when I go out and I played somebody who is obviously better than me, I really expect to win anyway.

And, you know, deep down inside I know I have, you know, these great skills. I know I have a great game etc.. And i know that if i play absolutely perfect, that it’s possible I could win and yet when I don’t win, even when i wasn’t suppose to, I get really frustrated with myself and really down on myself and negative even though I wasn’t expected to win anyway.

So, those are the two main mental traps that you can fall in to Francois . Don’t be overly optimistic and think, wow , you know, I’m going to try as hard as possible. I’m going to win anyway. Not that it’s impossible for you to win, but don’t be negative either. So, t hat’s my number one suggestion to you.

Number two. Given that first understanding, that there’s really no pressure on you to win. Given that understanding. Go out there and do play your A game and be relaxed and be confident. And that ties in with not putting so much pressure on yourself. And don’t go out there nervous and thinking, wow, this guy’s going to crush me. Be relaxed. Understand that, I ‘m not supposed to win this match so, be loose and kinda have fun and enjoy a nd try to enjoy it.

Enjoy the fact that you get to go out there, get to play tennis. Enjoy your surroundings. Enjoy having a good work out. Go out there and have a good time. Because don’t worry about it. You’re not suppose to beat this player. So don’t put all the pressure on yourself to have to play perfectly. And again don’t be negative about it either. Just go out there. Come out with the strong game plan. Come out onto the court knowing what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are. Try to play your strengths as much as possible. And just be relax and enjoy it as much as you can.

So, that’s the second suggestion.

Number three. Expect to be challenged and expect to be out-hit sometimes. Expect to be over-powered sometimes. And don’t be frustrated when that happens. Don’t be frustrated when you go out there and your opponent does take you to the wood shed a couple of times.

Maybe your opponent will play extremely well that day and beat you 6-0, 6-0. Even though you played well, try your best not to be frustrated by that a nd expect to be challenged. Expect that your opponent will play well. Don’t be negative about the situation. And as I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, that this is something that I often struggle with even when playing against somebody who I know is better than me. And I know should beat me. I still get frustrated when they do.

And actually, it sounds kinda crazy now that I say it out loud but I tend to be a little bit of a perfectionist. And I’m not sure which personality type you are Francois but I’m just laying that out there as plainly as I can.

When they do play well and they do play to their potential against you, don’t be frustrated about it. Just do your best and continue to fight. And my third.. I’m sorry my fourth and last suggestion to you– pay close attention to what’s going on and learn as much as possible. And you need to understand, be positive about this environment and treat it as a learning environment. Don’t think that it’s a waste of time and this goes back to that other personality type– maybe being negative about it and saying “Wow, this is a waste of my time. This is a waste of my opponents time. Nobody’s going to get anything out of this. ” That’s not true. You can take a lot from this experience by playing somebody who’s even much better than you. You get to learn, you got the privilege of being out there against somebody who’s worked maybe longer than you or harder than you. Who has maybe taken more lessons than you.

You get the privilege to be on the court with somebody like that who’s at the next level– the next level that you want to be at. And if you pay close attention and you watch what they do and you take some mental notes along the way, you can come off the court a smarter player and you can come off the court with information about what you need to do to bring yourself to that level. And this can be very valuable information.

[20:00]

If you just go back and forth from deuce side to ad side, ki nd of sulking and feeling sorry for yourself and negative– and in a a bad attitude. You’re not going to learn a thing. Your opponent is just going to crush you. You’re going to walk off the court and go home angry. And it will be a waste of time because you’ve convinced yourself that it would be.

So, go out there with a good positive attitude, pay close attention to what’s going on in the match and you can learn a lot on about what you need to do to bring yourself to the next level. And that’s very valuable. That’s very valuable information.

So, Francois, hopefully that outline is helpful to you and I’ll go over those again real quickly just to wrap up.

Number one. Understand that there’s no pressure on you to win AT ALL.

Just don’t worry about winning and losing. You should just be going out there with a neutral attitude about it. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself but don’t be too negative either.

Number two. After understanding that. Go out there and play your A game. Play your strengths, be relaxed and be confident. Just do the best that you can with the weapons that you have.

Number three. Expect to be challenged. Expect that you’re going to get out hit part at the time, and don’t be frustrated by this if you’re not successful. Remember suggestion number one. You’re probably going to get beat. You’re suppose to get beat.

And number four. Pay close attention and learn as much as you can. Don’t be negative and sulk around and waste your time. By the way that wastes your opponents time as well. That’s really the only way that you’re going to waste their time. And I get this attitude a lot from students when they know they’re going up against somebody who is better than them. They will want to go out with a negative attitude and say, Wow, this is really a waste of their time and then it will be because you don’t give yourself a chance to play well.

When you go out there and you fight as hard as you can, even when it’s not good enough and your opponent is still better than you, they’ll still respect you for that and it’s not a waste of their time– it was good practice for them to even play somebody who’s a level below them.

But if you go out there being negative and you hang your head, and you have a poor attitude. Well, they’re not going to enjoy being out there with you and at that point , yeah, you’re disrespecting them. You’re disrespecting yourself and you are wasting your time. So, just be careful with that.

So Francois, if I could help you with that any further let me know. But thanks very much for the great question and good luck with that. And good luck playing with those players that are better than you. That can be tough to do. [music]

And next up we’ve got another question from Francois.

And this is a similar type of topic but it’s different. You guys will see what I mean o nce we start getting in to my answer. Francois wrote to me in an email and told me about his recent experience where he’s playing in league play.

And he started off, he’s played for about four years now. And just recently he got bumped up from a 3. 0 league from a 4.01. And starting about a year ago, he was in a 3.0 league. He was comfortable there. He started spending a lot of time on his game and taking lessons. And he got two strong for that league and they bumped him up.

And here’s what he says about his current experiences. “I lost my first two matches and I’m desperate. All these new players have heavier strokes and have more consistency than I do. I started to play four years ago. I am thirty seven years old but still progress a lot as I am curious and enthusiastic. But most of them have played for the last twenty years. ”

“So their consistency is much better than mine. It’s not easy to change level. I will continue to listen to your podcast, watch videos and practice to get better so I can adjust my play to face these new players but I feel inconsistent at this new level and against these better opponents that’s not a good thing. Do you have any suggestions?”

Well, Francois, I can totally relate with the where you’re coming from. When I was in college, when I first started out, my freshmen year I didn’t make my college team. And I was crushed by that. I really had high hopes for making my college team my freshmen year. I tried to walk on to the team but I wasn’t quite good enough and that motivated me a lot.

[25:00]

I worked really hard that year and I made the team my sophomore year, my second year of college. I made the team but I was the bottom of the line up. And so, I got into the team practices. And every single person was better than me. [laughter] And so I know this feeling to go out there and see a whole new level of play and to have to do your best to try to deal with it and kinda catch up quickly.

Now let me give you some suggestions here on how to deal with this. First of all, there’s two main reactions that you can have to be thrown into this situation. You can either be frustrated and have your feelings hurt, and go back and play the weaker players again. That’s option number one.

If maybe your ego can’t take losing and getting beat by these stronger opponents so the easy way out is going to be for you to just go back and play against the 3.0 players again. Your second option is to use it to motivate yourself to improve your game again. You went through about a year where you worked hard at your game and it sounds like you probably made a jump up from a 3.0 player to 3.5 and that’s great.

And then they threw you into a 4.0 league and now you’re playing players that are even one step above that. Well, you’re going to have to use this as a positive. Use it to motivate you, when you go out there and play these better players. Watch what they do, learn from them and then go out, take lessons, listen to this podcast, improve yourself and you’re going to have to keep building yourself up one bit at a time.

Number two. I’ve got four things for you here, that’s number one.

You’re going to choose which way you’re going to go with this. Number two, this is your opportunity to jump up in level again. This is a big opportunity. Not everybody gets the chance to be the bottom player in a league or in a play group or whatever. Maybe that doesn’t sound like that beneficial of a thing. Why would I want to be the weakest player?

Well because this is a huge opportunity for you to improve because you get to see these better players week after week, m atch after match. You’ll have no choice but to improve your game. This is the big opportunity for you to hopefully get one step closer to your fullest potential as a tennis player.

So, don’t be negative about it. Take the opportunity and run with it. That’s number two.

Number three. Understand that the jump from 3.0 to 3. 5 is a much easier transition than 3.5 to 4.0. And 3. to 4.O is easier than 4.0 to 4. 5. So, you may have worked really hard for a year to get from 3.0 to 3.5. Understand that this would probably take some more work. And expect it to take work and expect it to take time and expect it to take time and expect that it’s going to take some focus and concentration.

Don’t think that it’s going to be easy. It’s not going to be. And it kind of goes back to my first point. So you’re going to have to decide here what you’re going to do. Are you going to be frustrated a nd go back and start playing the players you know you can beat again? Or are you going to use this to help motivate yourself; work hard and make that next jump in level.

Lastly, just some encouragement for you. Don’t give up. Don’t give up Francois. This is a great opportunity for you and you need to use this to help improve your game. Don’t get frustrated.

Sometimes you will, and that’s fine. I understand. I know what it is like to go out and be the weakest player and to have everybody kinda beat up on you. But just understand that this is your opportunity to move up in level. Take it, run with it and do the best you can and your game will keep on improving a s long as you’re focused and you keep on working at it and you keep your attitude relatively good as you keep on working hard.

So, that’s my advice for you Francois. Best of luck to you and I’m really proud of you. I’m happy that you’re making that jump. I’m happy that you’ve made that transition up to a higher level of play. Don’t be frustrated. Keep working hard and you’ll make another jump up in level again hopefully sometime in a near future.

Keep letting me know how you do. [music] [music]

And that does it for this episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast — Episode # 85. To wrap up the show today I’d like to do a couple of shout out to Essential Tennis listeners. And these will be just some kind of fun mentions of listeners. Some words of encouragement or thanks. And my first one is to a poster of the forums at essential tennis.com. Mark in San Diego a nd Mark was talking on the forums about how he’s been working hard at his fitness and since June he’s lost 38 pounds.

[30:00]

June, July, August, September so. Last 3 or 4 months, he lost 38 pounds, that is awesome Mark. And he says tennis-wise, “I’m definitely faster around the court. My back does not hurt as much after a few hours of tennis. My knees also do not ache nearly as much. I started the two-handed back hand about a year ago due to tennis elbow and I’m now able to rotate into my shot much better with my smaller stomach. I used to be considered fast for somebody who was heavy and nearly 50, it is fun to be considered fast for somebody who is nearly 50 and without the heavy caveat.”

Well, Mark, I’m really proud of you and one of my favorite TV shows is “The Biggest Loser”. I love watching that show, it’s truly inspirational. I love seeing people changed their lives and be inspired and lose lots of weight and get healthier. Get more healthy is probably the better way of saying it.

But anyway, Mark, great job– keep up the good work. He’s got a little bit of weight to go, he says, before he reaches his goal, but I’m really proud of what you’ve done so far. Keep it up.

Next up, we have Adrian in the Philippines, who’s a new listener, and wrote and said, “Hi, Ian. I just found out about your site last week. I have already downloaded 10+ podcast files. Thanks very much for your hard work and keep it up!”

Adrian, I’m always happy to hear from new listeners,, and especially from different parts of the world, and new parts of the world. I think you might be my… The first person I’ve heard from in the Philippines. So, I wanted to give you a shout out and thanks very much for being a new listener.

Hopefully the show continues to help you. Let me know if you have any questions about your own game. And lastly, last shout out for today’s show is Shelley, who came to the first Essential Tennis Clinic, and is a great poster and contributor at the forums, as well.

Shelly just last week began a monthly subscription donation to Essential Tennis. Ten bucks a month and Shelly I really appreciate that a lot. Thank you. That really helps me continue to work on the site. Doing the website is certainly not free and I still don’t have any actual products up on the website. I will eventually besides doing clinics on the future, I plan on doing more clinics as well.

But in the meantime people who donate to me and you know, give me a couple of dollars here and there, really helped me a great deal in paying for the hosting fees and paying for work that gets done on the site. Whenever there is a new section that goes up, that’s something that’s not free. So, Shelly thank you very much for supporting me a nd everybody else who sends in donations as well.

It’s always greatly appreciated. A lright, that does it for this weeks show.

Take care everybody and good luck with your tennis. [music] [empty]

Essential Tennis Podcast #84

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[music] Welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast. If you love tennis and want to improve your game, this podcast is for you! Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment–or the mental game– tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player.

And now, here’s Ian. [music]

Ian : Hi, and welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast: your place for free expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game.

Today on the show I’m going to have back Dr. Jack Kripsak , who is a sports medicine expert, and we’re going to be joined by several listeners of the Essential Tennis podcast who have questions for him having to do with a wide variety of topics having to do with innjury; also weight-lifting and training for tennis; and other specific things as well.

So let’s go ahead and get right to it. Sit back, relax, and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] [music]

On today’s podcast I’m going to have Dr. Jack Kripsak back on the show . It’s always great to have you on the show Dr. Jack, and you’ve given us a lot of good information over several podcasts here on the Essential Tennis podcast. Welcome back to the show again.

Dr. Jack : Thank you very much Ian. It’s always fun to be on the show.

Ian : And Dr. Jack and I, in doing our last episode, we were talking afterwords, and though t that it would be a lot of fun to have some listeners with us on the program that could actually interact with Dr. Jack and ask him follow-up questions–and also so Dr. Jack could ask them questions as well, because a lot of times it’s difficult for Dr. Jack to give–really the best advice he can–without knowing some specifics from the person who’s asking the question.

So we’re both really looking forward to having several listeners on the show with us. And we’re going to go through and give a brief introduction here . First of all we have Royce. And as we go down the list, I’d all of you guys to just briefly tell us your name; where you’re located; and a brief history of your playing background. How long you’ve been playing, etc. So that everybody gets an idea of who we’re talking to, and how we can kind of most closely relate to their own game.

So Royce–everybody knows a little bit of information about yourself–but why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us how long you’ve been playing, and what your playing background is. Go ahead buddy.

Royce : I’ve b_een playing for as long as I can remember. And my first experience on a tennis court, back when –actually as soon as I could walk, in diapers– that I would be on the tennis court . I didn’t have my first lesson until I was 8 though . Beyond that, just played some college tennis with you Ian, and frustrated you to no end. [laughter]

Ian : You did. Congratulations on that!

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Royce : [laughter] I’ve got to get any cheap shot I can get in there. I’ve been teaching now for a little over 7 years , and just currently working out in Tacoma, Washington. Ian : Alright, good stuff. Next up is Angie. Angie, tell us a little bit about yourself. Angie : OK. I’m in Edmund, Oklahoma. I’ve just been playing a couple of years , really, just trying to get better.

Before that, I played just, oh occasionally. Pick up a tennis racket–somebody would say: ‘Let’s go play tennis. ‘ But the last couple of years, I’ve been taking lessons, and then really just from probably around the first of the summer until now, I went from playing like, once a week then with a lesson, so twice a week to five times a week.

Ian : Awesome. [laughter]

Angie : Yeah. Getting into the leagues at the place where I play and doing some double strokes , so I’ve increased it quite a bit just in the past few months. So…and it’s fun! Ian : Alright, great. Great to hear that you’ve really kind of got the bug, and you’re starting to really get into it. Next up we have Joe. Joe, tell us about yourself. [silence] Ian : Joe, are you there? [silence] Ian : OK. [laughter] We’ll try to come back to Joe. Next up, we’ve got John. John, what’s up? John : Hi guys. I’m 47. I got dragged kicking and screaming into tennis about 5 years ago. And I wish I could

have Dr. Jack as my doubles partner–because I get all kinds of those little nagging injuries that we talk about on the forums. [laughter] I love playing doubles! Any time you want to hit, let’s go! [laughter] The problem is: we’re on opposite coasts.

Ian : I know. That’s a shame. [laughter]

Ian : John, I didn’t know you’d only been playing for 5 years. And what, you’re playing at around a a 4.0 level right now? John : Yeah, I’m right on the border. I don’t really know what my rating is.

Ian : OK. Great Good job. And Angie, what level would you put yourself at right now? Angie : Oh, right now , I just kind of… I just moved in to 3.0. Ian : OK.

[05:00] Angie : 3. 0, not real high , but you know, getting there. Ian : Awesome. And we’ll try to go back to Joe. Joe, are you there?

2/7

Joe : Yeah. Can you hear me now?

Ian : Yeah. Yeah, sorry about that. Go ahead tell us where you are; where you’ve been playing; just a little bit about your playing background.

Joe : I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I’ve actually only been seriously playing tennis since April, so about 5 or 6 months. But I have become totally obsessed with it, so… Trying really hard to get better. Before that, it was pretty much just some casual hitting around with my wife, and things like that.

Ian : OK. Awesome.

Well this really makes me happy. It’s really cool to hear from such a wide range of player types. We’ve got Royce , who’s actually a teaching professional. He’s been playing his entire life . We have players who’ve been playing just a couple of years, and somebody who’s just been playing a couple of months. The questions that these guys are going to ask are probably going to be very applicable to many people listening . And this is going to be a lot of fun.

So let’s go ahead and go in that order that I introduced everybody. And we’ll start off with Royce. Royce, go ahead and ask Dr. Jack your question and we’ll go from there.

Royce : Alright. I guess, from a teaching perspective, that people tend to mimic what they see the pros doing. And you know, one thing that’s becom ing more and more common are the pros using smaller grips to kind of allow the racket to whip through the strike zone. In essence, make the shots a little more ‘wristy. ‘ What impact do you really feel like this will have with the casual player developing a more serious wrist issues outside of just like the tendinitis, etc. ? Stuff dealing with the ligaments. You know: TFCC tears, etc.

Dr. Jack : Well that’s –that’s interesting. There have actually been two studies that can address that.

The first one would show –or has shown–that the actual size of the grip , whether you use a larger or smaller grip than the measured grip that would expect to use, really won’t make a difference in incidence of injuries to the wrist o r forearm. So the actual grip size will not really matter.

What will matter is the type of grip. And I’ve told Ian about an article that was published a few months ago . And it compared Eastern grip; Western grip; semi-Western grip ; and Continental grip; and a group of non-professional –relatively competitive– tennis players in Italy. And it showed that the Western and semi-Western grips had the highest incidence of injury, mostly along the , or the pinky side of the wrist , as compared to Eastern injuries, which had a lower incidence of injuries along the radial, or thumb side of the wrist. And the Continental grip ended up not having any injuries.

Ian : Hmm.

Dr. Jack : Based upon this , based upon those two studies, I would say that it’s your grip style more than your grip size that will dictate what type of injury that you have. And if you’re concerned about the TFCC’s injury, or the Triangular Fibrocarlogous Injuries, they weren’t really that common, but did show up in, umm… Let’s say 10% of the injuries that were there , and there was an overall 13% incidence of wrist injuries in a group of ..let’s see, what do we have here… In a group of over 300 players.

So while you wouldn’t think that wrist injuries are that common . They accounted for almost 1 out of every 10 players had a wrist injury. And the grip did have the biggest –the type of grip–had the biggest reflection of injury for that.

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Ian : So Royce –Royce, what type of grip do you use? How extreme is your forehand grip? Royce : Mine is about as close to a full Western as a semi-Western can get. Ian : Alright. So you’re pretty far over there. Royce : Yeah. Which could explain , you know, a little bit of the stress I… A little background that some people

know. . This is actually going to be a follow-up question as well. Where within that, did it say where the injury was located on the ulnar side? Was it with the UT–the ulnar tri-ligament? Or where was that; the injuries located? specifically?

Dr. Jack : OK. With Western grip s, there were extensor [inaudible] injuries, 11 out of 30. You had [empty] 11 out of 50 injuries to the wrist were the intercorpialnaris, and then the triangular fibrocartilege . There was 3, and then there was 1 extensor –a common extensor injury. And with the semi-Western, the extensor corpial narist had 16 injuries , and it was 2 triangle fibrocatiloginous injuries, and 2 common extensor injuries. So there really were far more on that ulnar side of the wrist . Those were basically the 3 most common types.

Ian : I’m glad that I don’t have to go down that list! [laughter] Dr. Jack : [laughter] Ian : Anything else, Royce? Royce : No–all I can tell you Ian is they are not fun. So be thankful! Ian : Yeah. Royce has had a real rough run of it. Physically in his playing career. How many wrist surgeries

specifically have you had , Royce? Royce : I’ve had –just wrist surgeries, I’ve had 3. Dr. Jack : Wow. Well you know Royce, this article if you want to Google it, it’s called: Wrist Injuries in

Non-profession Tennis Players . It’s from the American Journal of Sports medicine. This is Volume 37, number 4. I forget what month it was. It was less than a year ago. Royce : OK. Dr. Jack : Yeah. You should be able to find it through the American Journal of Sports Medicine. It should pop up. Royce : OK. Dr Jack : Alright.

Royce : Thank you. Dr. Jack : I think you’ll find it very interesting. It’s nice–they have a very nice pictorial about … They take the butt handle of a tennis racket, and they assign numbers like that of an hour glass–not an hourgass, but on a clock face . And then they show you where on your base knuckle and heel pad of your hand , where to place it on different numbers to determine where your grips are. It’s a very nice picture, and it has a nice breakdown of the different injuries and the different locations with some commentary on why they think this all happens. Not really much about treatment–it was more or less just a showing of what happens with these different kind of grips. It was supposedly the only study of its kind so far.

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Ian : Alright. Well good stuff, Royce. Thanks a lot for your question. And let’s go ahead and move on to Angie, who I know has been having some problems with tennis elbow. Angie, go ahead and ask Dr. Jack your question.

Angie : OK. I actually just recently started having that problem

I had kind of changed my forehand, which I changed back to the one that doesn’t hurt it. And when I was playing kind of really tight, I had a lot of pain. And so it kind of kept on , so I was wondering about going and practicing, and just having my smoother stroke, which doesn’t hurt it. So I went ahead with it, but I was actually kind of worried about it, thinking: ‘Well, when do you decide when to sit out? Because obviously there’s going to be sometimes when you play with pain , and occasionally with foot pain or with arm pain –but is there any way to tell when it’s dangerous?

Dr. Jack : Sure. If you have a tennis elbow injury, when you go to make a fist or a grip or grab something, or pinch something between your fingers and your thumb–your four fingers and your thumb– and that elicits a lot of pain on a regular basis just doing your activities in daily living, then this is something that’s becoming something that’s more of a progressive problem.

The two more common mechanisms of action for a tennis elbow are going to be on your backhand, where your wrist becomes weak and it flips backwards, so you don’t have a god firm wrist on your backhand. Or, if you roll your wrist over on your forehand. Ian, anything else to throw into that as far as technique goes? Closing tennis elbow?

Ian : Well, in my experience, most people who experience tennis elbow are not properly making use of the kinetic chain; meaning : they’re not radiating their strength or their power from their core outwards . They’re not using the biggest parts of their body very well. Because of that, to create spin and power on their shots, they end up using the smaller parts of their body instead: their wrist or forearm are being predominantly used. And when you do that, over and over and over again, it’s only a matter of time to get some kind of overuse injury.

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Dr. Jack : Great. So Angie, what I would say to you, is you’ve got a pot of boiling water on the stove and you can’t pick it up with one hand, it’s time to start to go see –to think about seeing somebody. And that’s reason enough to curtail your playing for awhile. If you’re out playing on a tennis court and initially it’s not bothering you, and it begins to both you more and more as the match goes on, then I think you’re looking really at a technique problem, because you’re obviously doing something that’s going to aggravate. If you can’t get out there and make one or two shots right off the bat–it’s just going to get worse , and you’ll really need some attention for that.

Angie : Yeah. Actually I played today, and I didn’t hurt while I was playing. But I think maybe I’m fixing my technique. There is a little , still a little, kind of residual soreness.

Dr. Jack : When you shake someone’s hand, does it hurt?

Angie : Umm… I don’t shake that many people’s hands! [laughter] No, not really.

Dr. Jack : Afraid of the Swine Flu, huh?

Angie : [laughter] If I grasp something, you know, kind of squeeze it, there’s just a tiny little dull pain. Right now.

Dr. Jack : OK. And how long have you had this for?

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Angie : It’s just been about a month or so.

Dr. Jack : OK. So it’s probably getting at that point, where it may not be a tendinitis anymore. It may becoming a tendonosis. You know, that flex bar that someone wrote in about recently is a great exercise . If you go read that New York Time’s article that was posted, it involves the technique called E-centric Strengthening. So you’re stretching the muscles -tendon junction as you’re strengthening it.

By doing so, you break up some of the scar tissue that forms with the tendinitis. That is, it becomes arthritic and no longer inflamed. So that actually would be something that I, at this point, have you do, because that might be a really, really good exercise for you to prevent it from getting worse.

Angie : OK. And it’s called the flex-bar?

Dr. Jack : Yes. You can find it online. Because I knew that people were asking about it; I did a little Google search. It came up, and there’s one or two online stores, physical therapy stores, that you can get it at. I don’t think it was very expensive. And that New York Times article does have a nice video on the proper technique on how to do the exercise.

It’s very easy. It makes a lot of sense. We utilize that same principle . And I’ve talked about this on some of the other podcasts for Achiles tendinitis. Where you stand on your… You stand up on your toes, and then lift up one leg and slowly lower yourself down o n the other leg so that your heel drops over the edge of a step.

That is stretching the tendon and muscle as you’re strengthening it. And you do that like 15 times. In this instance, you’re doing the same thing. You’re loading up that tendon on the wrist, and then you’re just relaxing it; stretching it; slowly and you strengthening it. So it’s the same concept, and it works really, really nice.

Angie : OK. OK, thanks. I’ll try that.

Dr. Jack : Sure. Good luck with that!

Ian : Alright. Angie, thank you very much. And let’s move on to Joe now. Joe, what’s your question for Dr. Jack?

Joe : Yeah, my question is regarding weight-training specifically for tennis. There’s a lot of ways to weight-train depending on what your goals are : size, power, definition, etc. For instance, you can use more weight with less reps. Less weight with more reps. More time or less time between sets, etc. So I’m wondering which weight-training strategy would best complement training for tennis.

Dr. Jack : For tennis I want to make you the best athlete you can be. That’s the most important thing. So as opposed to a football interior lineman , defensive or offensive lineman, where you’re going to want to do those 3 sets of 6-8 , maybe 10 reps, really pushing it hard to gain size and strength. Which even now is not as often utilized as it used to be.

Or as opposed to an endurance runner, where I might have you do 15-20 reps , one set each muscle group twice a week, because I just want to tone up your muscles. I would say I wanted to see you on a good, well-rounded exercise program where you’re doing some weight-training; some biometric training; some speed training. There’s a lot that’s important in becoming a good tennis player. There’s a lot of different movements that you have to perform on a tennis court.

You have to be light on your feet. You’ve got to have quick feet ; a lot of movements; have quick acceleration with your … If you have a drop-shot that you have to attack or serve and volley. You need to explode off that volley and get to the net . You have to maintain good balance when you do that split-step so that you have to cut

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10/21/2009 07:09:18 PM

one way or the other to address a ball coming at you. So there’s really a lot of things that you need to address in terms of your conditioning and training. That T90X thing that a lot of your guys have written in about is very nice. Another thing you can do is go to Nike and they have that spark program, [empty] speed, power, agility, your reaction to quickness.

Those are two good places you can go , and of course our website that we sponsor through Ian’s tennis website summersetsportsperformance.com. You can get a lot of information there also as far as programming if you sign up for an online personal trainer.

But what you really want to do is you want to have a well-rounded program. You want to do some weight work ; you want to do some biometric work; you want some speed and agility work and just keep things well-rounded. I would say if you did…

footwork; you want to do speed and agility work–j ust keep things well rounded. I would say if you did on your weights, 1 set, 12 reps, each muscle group. Always remembering to do antagonistic, or opposite muscle groups whenever you do your weights. That would be great.

Also always remember, you don’t want to do the same thing every time you go to the gym or work out. Because you want to do different exercises to strengthen the same muscle groups just for variety so that your muscles don’t get stale.

How many times have I seen people–and even myself–you go to the heath club 3 days a week for 2 months and you are showing an increase in strength then you go out and play a game of flag football or soccer with your kids . All of a sudden you are cutting and turning in different ways that you don’t do a the health club , and you are sorer then the last month that you’ve been working out , even though you’ve been lifting more weights. It’s a totally different movement patterns and recruitment of different muscles.

So you really have to try to do a lot of different things to get a very well rounded exercise. When you play good tennis, that’s a pretty aggressive sport. I mean you see those guys going all out, and some of the balls that those guys track down at the US Open were just phenomenal. It’s just amazing the shape that these athletes are in. And to be able to cut and twist and turn and your reaction speed–it’s very important to be well-rounded with that. I hope that answers your question.

Joe : That sounds like a lot of work. I mean what if I just want to be an average tennis player? D o you have something for that?

Dr. Jack : Do you belong to a health club? Are you working out regularly?

Joe : No I was just kidding, but I used to work out but I had different goals in mind , so it’s great trying to get back into it now so I’m wondering how I should be going about it. But I think that answered my question.

Dr. Jack : OK, basically if just want to stay in shape, and have fun with your tennis, go to go to the health club or work out at home? What are you going to do?

Joe : At home on weekdays.

Dr. Jack : Do you have any kind of aerobic activity like stationary bike, rowing machine, treadmill, something like that?

Joe : I have a jump rope.

Dr. Jack : A jump rope? OK well then here is what you do. You want to warm your muscles up a little bit. So start with maybe 25 or 30 jumping jacks. Spend a good 10 minutes stretching after that. There is a great book called Stretching by Bob Anderson that will teach you the correct way to stretch so you don’t injure yourself in stretching in ways you shouldn’t. And they have a nice routine for you based upon whatever sport you are going to play.

Then go ahead and hit your weights–do all your muscle groups. You always start with your largest muscle groups

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first, then your smaller groups second , so you might want to start with a leg extension followed by a leg curl. Maybe do a bench press , followed by a row type of exercise, a military press then a lat pull down then maybe some biceps and triceps and then after that, do some aerobic work.

You can then go a little faster on your rope or maybe you want to go out and do some running if the weather is nice or even if it’s not if you don’t mind going outside. Go out for a run and don’t just jog at a steady pace, mix it up. Sometimes with a little– throw some sprints in, do some backward running, do some side-to-side shuffles. Just kind of mix up your movements , so you don’t become stagnant with what you do. How’s that?

Joe : That’s pretty good. So you’re thinking instead of doing, for instance, weight training one day , then aerobic exercises the next day, you should mix it all up in one workout?

Dr. Jack : You can. You’d want to get at least 20 minutes of aerobic exercise in every day, if you can– which is great. I mean that’s just good for your health . The Surgeon General says you should do it twice per week but if you are going to be out there playing and being competitive , you probably should try to get something more often than that.

You can get everything in in one day. You can alternate also . A lot of it depends on your time –if you have two or three hours, yeah, do it all except for the weight training.

Although , I went to a course in Miami about 10 years ago and all the lecturers were NBA team doctors . And the guy from the Chicago Bulls said the reason Michael Jordan was in as good of shape as he was, was because he worked out every single day of his professional basketball career. Even on game days, he was in the weight room working out. Which is just amazing, but if you get into that type of mentality, and you can get into that great physical condition, then you can do it. Although all of us with jobs and family that might be next to impossible. So, I guess you just have to budget your time with whatever is best for your schedule and lifestyle.

Joe : Alright.

Ian : Any other questions Joe?

Joe : No, I think that covers it.

Ian : Alright, well thank you very much and let’s go on last panelist who is John–and John had a couple different topics on his mind and was going to pick one . We’ll see where he goes with this . John what do you think? What is your question for Dr. Jack?

John : Well I had about 16 questions, 15 of which Dr. Jack probably already answered for us. So, I’ll go to the 16th and that is– and bare with me here, like I said, I’m 47 years old . I’ve had lots of experience with lots of different injuries. I had 18 months of golfers elbow; I’ve had hip muscle problems that have kept me out for weeks at a time . Little bit of reoccurring knee tendinitis or tendinosis. I don’t really know. So here is my question:

There are all kinds of sports injury information we get from all kinds of sources, and it starts on the courts. All of your friends seem to know exactly what is wrong with you when you tell them about your injury– especially with tennis elbow. We have all kinds of information on the Internet, and as you said we can Google these articles , we can go on to websites like Ian’s and talk to you Dr. Jack. We can go to our primary physician who usually only has about 15 minutes to spend–and their answer always seems to be stop playing tennis. Or you can go to a sports injury specialist or a physical therapist where they tend to take more time and really figure out your problem. And, as I get older, I have different degrees of injuries–a little nag here, or something that will keep me off the court for weeks at a time.

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With all this information Dr. Jack , how do we become informed, cautious, sensible consumers of this information? Because I know a lot of it is bad information.

Dr. Jack : OK, first of all, when you are talking to your arm-chair quarterback doctors on the tennis court–remember a little knowledge is dangerous. So that’s my first piece of advice.

The second is, WebMD is a very reputable website and you can always go there to get reliable information. So to just look something up , you should be able to find some good information from WebMD. And that’s a free website, there is plenty of advertising on it, which is why it’s free. So that’s a good source of information.

Then if you go to your primary care doctor and he is not all that well versed in sports injuries, ask for a consultation or a referral to a sports medicine specialist, and they will usually be more willing to spend the time and really tease out exactly what is wrong with you and I think you’d get a lot of information from there. I’d say that would be the approach to go with.

John : Well that was too easy..

Dr. Jack : Well it was real easy . And you know what? You can always just get a hold of me through the website which is fine. But everyone’s had a little situation and what’s good for Peter is not necessarily good for Paul-­especially when it comes to injuries. You know, someone may have tendanitis , which is not a tendanosis, which is not a tendon tear. So a correct diagnosis is always paramount to the proper treatment..

John : Excellent, excellent. And I know what you mean about the court Doctors because anyone who has had tennis elbow will quickly learn that there 15 different silver bullet cures from fellow players.

Dr. Jack : And sure there is a lot of stuff out there and there is a lot of things that I have to use in my medical [inaudible] to treat someone based upon their severity; their duration of their injury; what I may see on a ultrasound. So there is a lot of different factors that come into play when it comes to treating someone . Are you going to give them an anti-inflammatory or is that not good because they have some sort of medical condition which would make that contra-indicative? Now there is topical anti-inflammatory jellies and patches, but if someone has a tendonosis where it’s been a problem for months, then that’s a waste of time–that’s not going to work. You see people walking around with the tennis elbow bracelet, and that’s relieving the pain but it’s not really treating the problem , so there is a lot of things you have to consider before you make the cure-all statement.

John : And do you recommend that people really take the time to inform themselves, rather than just looking for a quick, easy fix? Because it can be frustrating when you are hurt and you are off the court and can’t seem to find the solution to your problems. .

Dr. Jack : Sure. I think if you go to a good sports medicine specialist, that you should be able to get right down to the proper diagnosis and get the treatment. I’m fortunate enough to have a [inaudible] ultrasound machine in my office, which is really- -I told Ian about this about a year ago as it’s my new favorite toy because I can get the answer on a [inaudible] injury that you’d pretty much get from an MRI scanner, and I can do it right in my office without having to have aggravation of doing the referral, and getting insurance authorization, and having the patience to waste the time to go get the MRI and then come back for immediate review… And there’s a lot of time lost with that. As opposed to being able to just come in to a good history; a good physical exam; and that will pretty much tell you –give you a 99% certainty of what’s going on . Then you can do an ultrasound , and you can see whether or not its tendonosis or a tear, and then go ahead with your treatment. So it really helps expedite the whole process.

So if you can find someone who’s well versed in these kind of things , that’s really going to help your cause , and

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you’re not going to be tied down with all these ‘Ah, well somebody said to try this, or try that’. Or, you know: ‘Put this certain rudiment on my elbow and it’s going to heal it up in no time. ‘ Or ‘sleep with six clover leaves under my ear’ and [inaudible]

Ian : [laughter]

Dr. Jack : You know, because you hear all kinds of things! But if you just get to a good specialist , then they can figure out what’s wrong with you, and they can get you treated and on the way, and it will really help.

And sometimes there’s–you just have a problem that’s going to take awhile. Sometimes it’s just [inaudible] of time, and you do have to shut down for awhile.

I’ll never tell anyone to stop playing; in fact I had a patient that I saw just this past week who came into the office to see me for his yearly physically, and I walked into the room and he had a big grin. He said: ‘You accomplished your goal!’ I said: ‘What was that?’ He said: ‘You got me back on the tennis court!’

And that he had had some arthritis in his hip, and was just really debilitating him, and he stopped playing tennis , and I said: ‘Why aren’t you… Why aren’t you playing anymore?’ Why did you stop?’ He said: ‘My hip’s killing me!’ I said: ‘Well, we got to get after that. That’s not an acceptable response.’

He went through a series of about five [inaudible] injections in his hip, And now he’s 90% better , and he played most of this summer, and he’s happy as a clam!

So you just have to somebody who’s going to be on the same philosophical page with you, and really be a , you know, be a sports nut, kind of like myself, who is willing to get you back into the game –provided that it’s safe for you to go back. There’s people that will blow out there ACL and want to go skiing next week , and I say: ‘Well you know, that’s just not going to happen.’ So you always have to be reasonable about things also.

Ian : Good stuff. Anything else John to follow up with that?

John : No, that’s about as thorough an answer as I could expect, so thank you Dr. Jack.

Dr. Jack : Sure! it’s my pleasure.

Ian : Alright. Great stuff. We’re going to wrap up the show with that, and I first off want to thank very much our question asking panelists: John, Joe, Angie , and Royce. Thank you guys so much for spending time with myself and Dr. Jack. We really appreciate it, and I’m sure our listeners appreciate it very much as well. Especially those who may have had some of the same questions or same problems. This information will be very helpful to them.

And of course thank you Dr. Jack as well for coming on the show. Great to have you here as always, and I look forward to having you back on the show again soon.

Dr. Jack : Yeah. It was a great time . I really enjoyed it! Thanks everyone for joining in asking the questions. It was really a lot of fun, and I would just ask when you guys write questions to me on the form, you know, when you have your injuries, try to give me as much information as possible. Things that are really important are: how long have you had the problem . Be as specific as you can as to where the pain is. What causes it; what makes it better ; and that really helps me out. Some of you have asked me really questions, and I think we’ve been able to narrow down some problems , and it’s been a lot of fun for me.

Ian : Yeah, everybody listening, if you have any specific injury questions–or anything having to do with sports medicine–Dr. Jack has his own section of the forums. Just go to essentialtennis.com . Click on Forum. You’ll see

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his own section listed there. People ask him questions all the time, and Dr. Jack is kind enough to spend time there as well answering questions from listeners. [music] So Dr. Jack, thanks again, and take care. I’ll talk to you soon.

Dr. Jack : Alright, thanks for having me.

[music] [music]

Ian : Alright, that brings Episode #84 of the Essential Tennis Podcast to a close. Thank you very much for joining me today, and again, thank you to my guests on the show this week : Dr. Jack as well as our panelists. In wrapping up today’s episode, I want to do a couple of shout-outs and kind of recognitions here of members of the Essential Tennis forums as well as one other person.

As people continue to listen to this show, and participate in the forums, and other t hings that Essential Tennis does, they continue to improve. That’s really the whole point of the show and the website. It’s for people to get better at tennis . So I want to share a couple of success stories here.

First of all, Brian in Nebraska, he first joined the forums when.. . He was having some mental tennis issues, and had really never won a singles match before. This was several months ago.

Well, for the first time in his life, he not only just won a tennis match, but he double-bageled his opponent. He won 6-0, 6-0 , which absolutely takes a great deal of concentration a nd mental toughness. So I wanted to say good job to Brian.

Also, I want to give a shout out to Rob, who lives in the U. K. He wrote on the forums and said: ‘You may have read my previous posts about the set I won off a friend, who I couldn’t win against come hell or high water . Well today I didn’t just win one set– I won in straight sets! I feel as though my consistency is improving greatly thanks to all of you guys who have been giving me help. Especially Ian with the podcast and mental toughness in avoiding choking. Thanks guys. ‘

Great job, Rob! Excellent work. And very encouraging to hear that this is somebody that he’s played many, many times , and hadn’t even taken a set from, and just beat in straight sets. That’s awesome.

One more person, and that’s Bibi , who just won her first tournament. It was a mixed 3.0/3. 5 tournament put on by the city where she lives . It wasn’t a USTA tournament, so she doesn’t feel like it’syou know, it’s quite official quote unquote. But still awesome that she was able to get out there and play other competitive players around her level and come away with first place. So that’s great!

One more person. And this person is not on the forums, but I want to give him a ‘thank you.’ His name is Andrew Yoder in North Carolina. I did a racket giveaway about a week or two ago, and it turns out there were two Andrew Yoders who entered into that Babalot racket giveaway. And the Andrew Yoder in North Carolina was kind enough to withdraw. And could have really been in trouble since there were two Andrew Yoders with the exact same name who had actually entered, and there was some confusion there.

But he was kind enough to withdraw his name , and I’m going to be sending him some strings for his kindness. And congrats to Andrew Yoder in Ohio, who actually won the racket.

Alright. That does it for this weeks. Thanks very much for tuning in everybody. Take care, and good luck with your tennis! [music]

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Essential Tennis Podcast #83

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[music] Welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. If you love tennis and want to improve your game, this Podcast is for you. Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment or the mental game , tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player. And now, here’s Ian!

Ian : Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. Your place for free, expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Today’s episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast is brought to you by summersetsportsperformance.com. Thank you very much for joining me on today’s episode of the Podcast.

I’m going to be answering several listener questions that are going to range in topic quite a bit. We’re going to talking about topics such as, making adjustments and strategy during match play. Using power or placement to beat your opponents. Serving into the sun and also if we have time playing against a higher ranked player.

Well if you’ve appreciated the free instruction and input that you’ve received from the Essential Tennis Podcast, I would really appreciate you helping me spread the word. I would really appreciate it if you would talk to any friends , teammates or hitting partners that you may have who are also passionate about tennis, just like you are. Just like I am.

And if you know people who are trying to improve their game and who are working hard to increase their skill level, please let them know about this show. It would mean a lot to me if you could just tell them about it and have them check it out. Alright, let’s get down to business. Sit back, relax, and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] [music]

Alright, let’s get started with the show. And our first question comes to us from Chris F. in Beaverton, Oregon. And Chris is a 4.5 level player. Let me kick off this question of his which is excellent. I’m really looking forward to talking about this . I had originally different plans on how to tackle this topic and I was planning on having a guest but that didn’t really pan out.

I’m still really looking forward to talking about it and I’m really going to go in-depth no this because I think it’s extremely important. And just kicking this off and starting to think about it and talk about it here, I can tell I’m probably not going to get to some of our other questions today.

But this is a very very important topic for all of you listening regardless of your level– whether you are just starting off or weather you are an advanced player, like Chris is, and I want to begin by congratulating you Chris-­being a 4. 5 level player very often, players at your level kind of get complacent . They become satisfied and they are fine .

Obviously you’ve worked hard to get where you are , it’s really not possible to be a 4 or 5 level player without really putting in some good efforts. For those of you who are listening internationally, our rating system in the US spans from 1 to 7 and basically if you’re a 6 or a 7 level player, you’re professional and you’re making all of your income by playing tennis competitively.

A 5. 0 level player is below that obviously. 5. 0 and 5. 5 is basically like a high level college competitive player , division I or maybe upper division II. Or very upper division III for college here in the US. And, I remember seeing the percentage breakdown but something like 3% or 4% of tennis players in the US fall within 5. 0 or above.

So it’s a very small percentage. I think 4. 5 and above is something like 7% or 8% are 4. 5 level and above. So just to give you guys some perspective who aren’t familiar with the MTRP rating system if you’re not in the US or you just aren’t familiar with it in general. So Chris is definitely a higher level player and Chris I want to congratulate you on still looking for ways to improve your game and I hope that someday you are able to make it to 5.0 and compete at that level as well.

But great job listening to this show, and seeking out good information to hopefully continue to improve. And here is Chris’s question which he contributed to me. He wrote to me and said: ‘personally I find that a match can turn on making adjustments ; just recently my partner and I were blown off the court 6-1 in the first set. And after making deliberate adjustments, came back to win the second set 6-1.

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So they lost the first set 6-1; won the second set 6-1–which is obviously a huge swing in momentum back and forth. Then he says: ‘Recognizing what’s going on and making adjustments accordingly was the key. It wasn’t a matter of skills. It was a matter of how those skills were applied strategically. Can you please talk about this?’

Ian : Well Chris, that’s an excellent question and an excellent topic. This is something that a lot of players really need to work on– and really need to be more aware of in their tennis play. I think that a lot of times tennis enthusiasts–and those of you who are listening to this show right now are definitely probably some of the most passionate tennis players anywhere. [laughter]

I mean, you guys have really shown some initiative by finding this show, and by listening to it on a regular basis, you’re obviously really into tennis. And a lot of times players like that get so wrapped up in technique, and stroke s, and being to advance their… How they swing at the ball. And so often I think strategy is kind of left to the wayside .

And we”ve talked a lot about mental tennis here on the Essential Tennis podcast. That’s another extremely important topic besides just knowing how to swing at the ball. Strategy probably isn’t discussed enough here, so I’m glad we get to talk about this.

Well Chris, thank you for the question, and I’ve got my top 3 things that get in the way of players making adjustments, and also I have for myself Top 3 things that you need to do if you want to be able to adjust well. If you want to be able to make changes to your strategy to able to win more matches. As Chris correctly said: It’s not so much bout skills; it’s how you implement your skills. It’s how you put them into your match, and how you use them strategically .

So my Top 3 Things here on ‘What gets in the way of players making adjustments?’

Number 1: Focusing too much on their own technique. And I mentioned this just a second ago–I think it’s probably the #1 thing that gets in the way of recreational players playing smart tennis. When you get out on the competition court–on a competitive court–and you’re going to play against somebody in a competitive match , you need to put technique aside. You need to stop thinking about how to swing , and start thinking about how to use your technique to actually defeat your opponent.

If all of your focus is just on yourself and how you are swinging the racket, you can only concentrate on one thing at a time. It’s just a mental biological fact. Yes, you know, as humans we can multitask and do multiple things at once, but we can only really give mental focus, or concentration, to one thing at a time.

So if you’re over on your side of the court s and you’re trying to remember all the different swing thoughts –which is a phrase commonly used in golf –meaning, thinking about specific technique things that you need to do to accomplish certain swings . Maybe you’re trying to add more top spin to your forehand, so you’re thinking about dropping your racket farther; swinging upwards faster; maybe being more relaxed .

And then over on our backhand side, you’re trying to work on your slice , and your racket hand is too open. You’ve got all these things going on in your head for every swing . You’re not going to be paying attention to what ‘s going on on the other side of the courts. And you’re going to lose– you’re going to miss out on a lot of information, because you’re so preoccupied with what’s going on on your own half of the court. So once you step out there, great. It’s good that you’re working on your technique. It’s great that you’re trying to improve your strokes .

But once you step out to actually compete, you need to put that away. You’re no longer working on your strokes. You’re now using your strokes that hopefully you’ve learned and you’ve grooved in enough . You’re now using them to try and defeat your opponent. So stop focusing on your technique. When you go out there to play. That’s #1.

Second of my top 3 things that get in the way of players making adjustments, Number 2 is just not paying attention in general. [laughter] And this is different from focusing on your own technique. Let’s say you’ve put away all those swing thoughts that you had. You’re no longer thinking about your technique specifically–but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are paying attention to your opponent. I can’t tell you guys how many times I’ve had a lesson with a students and at some point in some lesson we have, w e go out and we play some points.

[10:00]

Maybe some volley points. I work with a lot of people who play doubles. Maybe we play a bass line game up to 7 or 10. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked with a student and gone through several lessons before they realize that I ‘m left-handed. And I’m not joking! [laughter]

I could play multiple games with them and–I get a sense for this , and we’ll come up and ask them: ‘Listen, which side is my forehand on anyway?’ They haven’t even realized yet which hand I’m using to hit a forehand!

Now that’s kind of an extreme example , and that’s not everybody, but that happens. I see this ! I see this very often in competitive doubles, where–after a doubles match –myself or another pro will ask: ‘So, did you notice that this player was left-handed?’ After they were complaining that their serve was all goofy.

Anyway, you guys need to pay attention to what’s going on around you. We’re going to talk more about this later . But you have to be aware; you need to be focused ; and you need to look at what’s going on on the other side of the courts. You can’t just be in your own little world , and–focusing on the ball is all well and good. And clearly, we need to pay attention to what’s going on on our own half of the court. We got to get to the ball ! But you need to pay attention to what’s going on on the other side of the court. That’s Number 2.

Number 3: Having only one style of play, g ets in the way of players making good adjustments. You have to practice more than one way of playing a point. If all you can do is just hit the ball hard– and this is something I see pretty commonly. If you’re good at hitting the ball aggressively, but that’s all you have, you’re going to be very one-dimensional.

And when it comes time –even if you are paying attention, and you’re looking at what’s going on on the side of the courts–even if you’re not focusing on your technique, and you’re really putting your mental muscle in the right place, and you’re paying attention to what you should be paying attention to . If you only have one style of play, and you don’t have secondary or third or fourth game plans that you can go too, then it doesn’t even really matter how well you’re paying attention, because you’re going to be stuck ! I’m going to get to that more in the next section as well.

So those are the top 3 things that are going to get in your way of making adjustments in a competitive match. Focusing too much on your own technique; not paying attention to what ‘s going on on the other side of the court; and thirdly, having only one style of play, and not having a B, C, D or E game-plan that you can fall back on. So those are the top things that get in the way of players making adjustments.

Let’s now talk about what you should be doing in order to adjust like a pro. Or be able to adjust like a good player. And these are things that you guys should be doing. First of all, you need to be closely aware of your opponent’s strategies and tendencies, and their technique as well. There’s a lot of things going on on the other side of the courts . This was one of things that players don’t look at. Now I’m going to talk to you guys about what you should be looking for.

Look to see what their strategy is. It could be that they’re not terribly smart either. Maybe they’re just kind of swinging at the ball and not really any rhyme or reason to what they’re doing. Other players are going to have very clear patterns. And if you pay attention, you’ll be able to see what they’re trying to do with the ball. Maybe they’re trying to hit to your backhand side most of the time.

Maybe they like to come to the net, and they prefer typically to approach down the line. These are strategical things that you should be noticing a nd looking for so that you can base your own strategy on that. If you’re not paying attention and you’re not noticing this, then , you know, you’re kind of lost. You don’t really have a starting point as far as how to play this opponent.

Also, there are tendencies. And this may or not be different from strategies, but it is different from strategy. Strategy is how how they’re trying to implement their techniques, and usually there will be some kind of pattern to that. A tendency is different. Let’s say that you’re attacking and coming forwards to the net. A tendency would be for them to maybe try to pass you on the very first shot, but then very quickly after that, they’re quick to throw up a lob. So that’s a tendency that they might have. As opposed to a strategy that’s something they’re trying to do to you; and that’s a pattern.

But really both strategies and tendencies are patterns that you need to look for. Things that they tend to prefer . Things that–like I said, there’s a pattern. [laughter] I probably don’t need to explain that any further– you guys get the idea. [empty]

[15:00]

Look for their techniques and you guys, after playing for a certain number of years or even months, you start to get a good sense of what good technique is and what bad technique is. And you should be able to start to pick out what a good stroke, looks like or what a poor stroke looks like.

Watch your opponent. If they have a poor backhand or a poor forehand or a poor volleys or a poor overhead– this is good information. These are things you guys need to be looking for and you can base whole strategies just based on what the worst technique is that they have.

And just really pummel their weakness as myself and David Grumby like to say, the mental expert that I like to have here on the show. So pay attention to their techniques as well.

So that’s all under the heading of just paying attention and being aware. Be aware of their strategies , be aware of their tendencies, be aware of their technique. These are all things that you guys need to know about and need to pay attention too so you can put together a good solid strategy that will win you points. That’s all under #1 on how to adjust.

#2 practice hitting many shots in many different directions and practice doing it consistently . And this is what you guys need to do off the competition courts. When you guys are on the practice courts, and you are practicing your stroke, practice a wide range of shots.

And listen, if there needs to be a good solid foundation of just hitting forehands cross-court and being able to do that consistently. Practice hitting down the line as well. Practice hitting short balls. Practice hitting deep balls. Practice hitting deep volleys and drop volleys– short volleys. Practice hitting half-volleys. You need to be able to practice all of these different types of shots and practice hitting them to different locations.

Do this on purpose and do it with a certain goal in mind. This is all so you can make adjustments with your strategy and you have the technique to back it up. If you guys pay close attention to your opponents tendencies, their strategy, their technique , but you don’t have the technique or the strokes, to be able to actually put together a strategy on your side of the courts, then you’re kind of stuck. And it kind of goes back to having only one style of play.

If you don’t have other ways of hitting the ball or if you don’t have the ability to hit the ball in different directions so that you can direct the ball to your opponents weaker spot , then you’re going to be a little bit out of luck. And you might have to go with maybe a stroke or a direction that you’re not really comfortable with and a lot of times that will result in unforced errors. So make sure that you practice on purpose a lot of different types of shots and directions — don’t be one dimensional.

And last thing here on this topic– how to adjust– or what you need to be good at in order to adjust . When you are competing, make sure that you keep changing your strategy until you find a winning plan and you need to be able to have many different ways to play a point , whether it be coming to the net or staying back or attacking the deuce side or attacking the ad side , or serving and volleying or whatever. You need to have those different skills that we just talked about.

Once you have those skills and you get into a competitive situation, keep changing it up until you find something that works. Don’t stick with a losing game-plan. Secondly and probably equally as important– don’t get off a winning game plan . So first of all, make sure that you keep changing a losing game plan. If you’re getting beat, you need to keep making adjustments and keep trying different things until you find something that makes your opponent uncomfortable.

Once you do find that, stick with it and I don’t care how boring it is. I don’t care if you’re opponent knows your strategy. I don’t care if they tell you on a change-over, ‘wow you’re just hitting everything to my backhand aren’t you?’ Don’t change it up as long as it’s working. A lot of times I see players or teams come up with … They play a great point and they put together a good sequence of shots … It worked and they uncovered something that was effective. Then on the very next point, they tried something completely different because they feel like if they don’t keep changing it up, their opponent’s will get comfortable and start to win.

And that might be possible, but make them do that. Make them adjust. Don’t keep adjusting yourself if you find something that works. You need to make sure that you stick with a winning game-plan and just abuse it.

[20:00]

Once you find something that works, just completely abuse your opponent with it and continue to do it over and over and over until the point that maybe they make an adjustment themselves. If they never make an adjustment, you continue to pound whatever you are doing and do it again and again and again until the match is over. If they do make an adjustment, and they make a good enough adjustment that they actually kind of turn the tables on you, and now they are maybe using that strategy against you and they are being effective at it. Well then that’s the time to change again and adjust your strategy.

So there should be a constant switching back and forth between both players to try to find the upperhand. If neither player is paying attention and neither one has secondary game plans or different ways of hitting strokes, then it can become very boring to watch and maybe even boring to play because both players know what the outcome is going to be.

So, Chris, hopefully that gives you some good ideas and everybody else listening , all my other listeners, hopefully that gives you a good idea of what you should be looking for and what you should be avoiding to be a better strategical player and I’ll recap these again real quickly.

Top three things that get in the way of players making adjustments, these are your top three things to avoid.

Don’t focus on your own technique. Make sure you are paying attention to what’s going on on the other side of the court, and make sure that you don’t only have one style of play. And the top three things to make sure you do, be aware of your opponents strategy, their technique and also their tendencies.

Make sure that when you do practice your strokes, practice a wide variety of things and directions– wide variety of strokes and wide variety of targets. And make sure that you do it consistently, not just one to each spot. Make sure you can hit a bunch in a row and lastly things that you need to do to adjust like a good player .

Make sure that you keep adjusting until you find something that works and then stick with the winning game plan. Don’t get off the winning game plan. So, Chris, thank you very much for the great question. That was really an excellent topic and something that I can definitely talk more about but that’s a good basic overview on basically strategy in general.

This is how you should be playing guys. If you go out there and just hit the ball and you’re not being aware of what’s going on and there is no purpose behind how you are hitting the ball, you are not going to be very effective. You’re going to be effective to some degree or the other depending on who you are playing against. So if you want to be able to win more often, these are the things you should be thinking about. [music] [music] [music]

Alright, let’s go ahead and more on to our next question and I’ve got two questions I’ve got here that I’m going to answer from Richard, who is located in Northern Ireland. Richard, I’m pretty sure that you are my first listener that I’ve heard from in Ireland . Really great to hear from you and thanks very much for your questions. I’m always excited to hear from people in new places– it’s cool to hear that the Podcast is reaching a lot of different parts of the world.

So, Richard, has two questions here and I like both of them a lot. The first one is short and sweet. ‘Which in your opinion is better, power or placement?’

That’s an excellent question Richard and just to be short and quick about it. If I had to pick only one, if I had to choose between either hitting the ball hard but with very little control or hitting the ball with less power, maybe even slowly, but having very good placement, I would have to pick placement. In my opinion, that’s more important.

However, that being said, why would you want to choose only one? Why wouldn’t you rather have both — clearly nobody is going to say ‘I’d rather only have one or the other. Obviously having both is better but basically what I want to get at here Richard, is you need to start developing your game so you are able to do both. And Richard rates himself at a 3. 5 level player which is just about average and to be able to make your way up to higher levels, Richard, you’re going to have to start developing some weapons.

When beginners first start out– when you first begin playing tennis, your first priority needs to be to place the ball. It needs to be control– to be able to control what is going on with your body, with your swing, and with the ball. You have to be able to develop some consistency first.

[25:00]

Every tennis player, every good tennis player needs to have a good solid base of consistency before you start trying to hit the ball hard. However, once you’ve achieved that , you have to be able to start developing some weapons or else you are going to get stuck. And this is why most tennis players are between a level 3.0 and 4. 0, is because they don’t put in the time or the effort or the focus needed to start developing weapons that they can hit consistently .

There is a lot of players out there that can hit the ball very hard , they are good athletes but they don’t necessarily have the technique or the swing mechanics to be able to keep it in play consistently. So if I had to only pick one of those Richard, I would say I’d rather have placement because that’s really more important , keeping the ball in play, being consistent , however I definitely would not have gotten where I did competitively with tennis if I didn’t also have the ability to hit the ball hard and to hit the ball with power.

So for you to develop to a 4. 0 level of play, or a 4.5, certainly a 5. 0, you have to start developing some power as well. There is really just no way around it. Players at a 4. 5 or a 5. 0 level, move extremely well, they are extremely efficient and they have weapons . They have the ability to put the ball away and they have the ability to do it consistently.

If all you can do is just be consistent, that can be challenging to a player like that to a certain degree. But you are only going to get so far with your tennis game if you don’t have both.

So let’s go to Richard’s second question, and that is ‘Hi Ian, I’m in a bit of a dilemma . I’m the kind of person who loves to hit the ball hard with lots of pace, however, while hitting the ball like this, it’s hard for me to control the length of my shot. Most of the time they will just barely go to the net and not get very much length , either that or they land close to the line or go just long. Should I slow my shots down and sacrifice power for more consistency and length instead of constantly trying to go for winners with power?’

So now we really see why Richard was asking his first question, which is better power or placement. And again, if you only could choose one Richard, I’d like you to have placement. So if your swing technique is not going to improve at all, I’d rather you slow down and control the ball.

However, let me talk to you about technique a little bit here. What you are describing — Richard is describing basically the choice between barely making it over the top of the net and usually having the ball go kinda short, or hitting a little bit higher over the net and having it be barely inside the court or be out .

So he’s kind of stuck between having a shorter, weaker shot, or if he hits it a little bit higher, risking that it’s going to go out pretty often. What you are describing there Richard, is a classic description of a ground stroke hit with no top spin. A ground stroke that’s hit flat.

And there is a reason why the pros are able to hit so hard but still maintain consistency and that’s because they hit with a lot of top spin . Hitting with top spin gives you a higher margin for error and it does that because the ball , you can start to curve or arch the ball . Curve it down into the court. Top spin makes the ball spin and curve downwards so you are able to swing aggressively. You are able to aim high over the net and make it a safe shot and the top spin brings the ball back downwards into the court .

If on the other hand, you don’t have any top spin, and you hit the ball aggressively, if the ball is just a little bit too high, it just continues to go forwards and forwards and forwards and you’ll miss ; it’ll go out once you get to a certain speed.

So, the only way to keep the ball in play at that point is to aim low over the net and this is a very risky thing to do. It’s difficult to do consistently and this is the reason why woman’s professional tennis is less consistent. In woman’s tennis, there are more mistakes, there are more errors ratio-wise between errors and winners. The points are shorter typically because they hit flatter and harder, and harder meaning not necessarily the speed of their shots, but they are trying to drive the ball directly at their target very often.

The male players on the professional tour hit with a lot more top spin, on average, it’s not to say that they don’t flatten it out and drive the ball to be able to put it away. But they all hit with much more top spin on your typical average rally ball hit back and forth.

And so, very commonly the points in male players are longer and even though they are hitting faster, they are hitting with more consistency because the ball is curving a little bit more. As with anything, there is exceptions to this but on average, when I’m talking about is correct.

[30:00]

So what you need to do Richard, if you want to be able to hit with power and consistency, is you have to start to develop more top spin. Top spin is created by swinging upwards as opposed to forwards. Right now, it sounds like you are hitting the ball very flat and very straight. To really make it to the next level and be able to hit aggressively but maintain a high level of consistency, your racket path has to start being more upwards and not sure much forwards . The key to hitting with power and consistency at the same time is going to be that top spin-­assuming we’re talking about ground strokes.

So Richard, that was a quick explanation and a quick overview. I could certainly talk more about the technique of hitting with top spin but that’s my answer to your question. If you’d like any more explanation or if any other listeners would like more explanation of what I’m talking about, please feel free to let me know.

Thanks very much for your questions Richard and again great to hear from you in Northern Ireland.

Take care. [music] [music] [music]

Alright, that brings this episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast– episode #83 to a close.

Thanks very much again to both Chris and Richard for their excellent questions. And I’ve got a couple others here lined up that I’m going to get to in the near future. So please be patient if you’ve asked me a question recently.

Before we wrap up, I want to let you guys know that I’m going to be starting up again Essential Tennis Live. I’m going to be doing the show on a new night. It’s going to be this Thursday and this Thursday is the 17th and the show time is going to be 8:30pm. So 8:30 in the evening eastern standard time.

I’m going to be having a new co-host and our first show here is going to be going over the US Open. So make sure to join us this Thursday at 8:30pm for a lot of fun talking about professional tennis .

In the future, we’ll be talking about technique and mental game, strategy, equipment– everything. So check us out this Thursday.

If you need a link to the show page, just go to essentialtennis. Com and click on ET Live in the menu bar. Alright, that does it for this week. Everybody enjoy the men’s final which is going to be this afternoon I guess at 4pm. It’s been a great US Open and come talk with me about it this Thursday.

Have a great week everybody, take care and good luck with your tennis. [music] [music]

Essential Tennis Podcast #82

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Welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast.

If you love tennis and wants to improve your game, this Podcast is for you. Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment or the mental game. Tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player and now here’s Ian!

Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast– your place for free, expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game.

Today’s episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast is brought to you by Summersetsportsperformance.com.

I wanna talk briefly about that intro that I just did. Do you really believe that you can improve your tennis game just based on a Podcast? I really believe that it’s possible. I believe that the information that you guys get on the show can help you improve your tennis game.

Now obviously you’re not gonna be able to do that just by listening. You have to fulfill your end of the bargain as well by going out and working hard at your game and implementing the things that I talk about here with my guests and by myself as I answer questions.

But I really do believe that you can improve your tennis game just by getting good information like you can find here on the Essential Tennis Podcast– going out working hard and putting in the effort. You really can get better and that’s why I do this show. I want to help people enjoy the game of tennis more and improve. The better you play the more fun it can become.

So thank you very much for joining me and I truly do hope that the show can help you improve. Today, myself and my good friend Royce are going to finish talking about tennis professionals and more specifically the ones that you want to work with in our opinions.

So let’s go down to business. Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instructions. [music] [music] [music]

My guest today on the Podcast is my good friend from college Royce Sternquist. Royce welcome back to the Podcast.

Royce : Thanks buddy, thanks for having me again.

Ian : Absolutely. Good to have you back on the show and the last time Royce was here we talked about the top 3 things to look for in a tennis professional that you don’t want to work with. In starting that show Royce and I were on planning on doing the top 10 things to look for in a pro you do want to work with and don’t want to work with.

But as things typically go here on the Essential Tennis Podcast, we kind of took double the time that we were expecting. So today is going to be kind of part two in that topic and we’re gonna talk about the top things that you guys should be looking for when trying to choose a tennis professional to invest your time and money in. Tennis lessons can definitely be expensive and I know that’s a reason, a big reason why people listen to this show is because they’re looking for good information and solid instruction but don’t necessarily have the funds to go find a tennis professional and pay them for private lessons.

For those of you who do have the luxury of being able to do that, you want to make sure that you pick somebody who is really gonna give you the best use of your time and the best use of your money.

So Royce and I both have our top 3 things to look for and we’ll see– some of our things may overlap a little bit we’ll just kind a have to wait and see as we talk it out. A nd Royce, let’s go ahead and start with your list. What’s your number one thing that in your opinion we should be looking for when choosing a tennis professional?

Royce : Well, I think that any teacher in general– one thing that will separate one from another is one who really recognizes the individual learning tendencies of their student or their client and they’re able to tailor the instruction to that learning style… To maximize their learning potential and the reaching of their client’s goals.

Ian : OK. So what kind of different learning styles or different types of students in your teaching do you typically see. Give us some examples.

Royce : I have some that are, I wouldn’t call them high-maintenance, they’re more verbal and.. .

Ian : OK.

Royce : Can understand kind of a, they just do a much better job of understanding things you know by asking a lot of questions or just I’m able to tell them to do something

[05:00]

Royce : and they can pick up on it. You know whereas, there are some that are a little bit more hands on literally speaking, you know where I have to show them– both in terms of you know certain movements within myself or to show them and kind of show where they need to be with their correct body position on certain strokes etc. Just kind of being able to go, OK, this is how they learn because able to not just have that cookie cutter mold of teaching and being able to adapt.

Ian : Right and for those listening who may want to go take lessons, it’s important to find out or think about ahead of time, maybe what ways that you think that you learn the best and some people learn more by doing, some people more by talking and listening, others by watching demonstration and being able to copy and so yeah, there’s definitely a lot of different learning styles and teachers have teaching styles as well.

We talked about this a little bit in the last show that Royce and I did together. Different tennis pros tend to approach things kind of naturally from a certain perspective or through using one of those tools by demonstrating or by you know, physically helping somebody feel what to do by helping them out with a swing path etc. Or by talking and I agree with you Royce, a good instructor can jump back and forth from teaching method to teaching method based on how a student learns. And that’s not easy for a lot of pros to do and some pros are kind of stubborn, so yeah this is a good one for sure. Anything else to add about that?

Royce : Oh, no I just think that you know, as you said, that it’s important for us as the teaching pro to be able to have that fluidity within our teaching abilities to really make that distinguishable for each specific client as oppose to forcing the client to adapt to our teaching style.

Royce : Sure, but you definitely want to find someone who has that fluidity and that flexibility to teach.

Ian : So how can we tell that a tennis pro has that ability or not? Is there an easy way you know, to test that or what are we looking for to see if that’s the case?

Royce : I honestly just think it’s the matter at that point of trying to get out on the court and seeing if as a client, they’re able to adapt with your learning style. You know I wish there were an easier way to do it but I don’t see one that that immediately comes off.

Ian : OK. All right let’s go to your second topic then. What’s your second thing to look for in a good tennis pro?

Royce : This goes back a little bit, a little bit to what I just said. You want a teacher then I don’t care if we’re talking elementary school or you know, tennis instructor or what have. You want to have the ability to show and don’t tell.

Ian : What do you mean?

Royce : Well you know, there are times where yeah some people are you know auditory learners or what have you but you want to be able to show them some things rather than you’re saying swing from low to high or do something.

Ian : Yeah.

Royce : You want to be able to show them and tell them in a different context that will help them see the whole pictures and see kind of what you’re describing.

Ian : Yeah.

Royce : You don’t want to get all technical and say ” hey you’re gonna put the racket down at 45 degrees or what have you and come up, you know, just say you know be able to say you know what, aren’t you gonna imagine you’re tossing the tennis ball underhand or something you know in terms of, so they start to get a better visual pictures in their mind and there’s something that they’re much more apt to remember you know as well as something that they have you know, a previous experience with so they can start planting that seed and let it grow from there.

Ian : Yeah that’s a good one and that kind of coincides very closely with your first one about being able to teach different types of learners and yeah, sometimes as a teacher myself and you too I’m sure, we kind of have to search for each individual person the best way to explain it so that they get it because not everybody you know computes information or input the same ways, and so yeah a good tennis pros is going to have a lot of different analogies or things for you to think like Royce just said, you know it’s like throwing a ball underhand for some specific technique or other relating to a tennis stroke and a good tennis.. .

[10:00]

Ian : professional is going to have multiple ways to explain to you the same thing in case you don’t get it the first time because there’s gonna be some pros that you might take a lesson from that will try to get you to get something and if you don’t get it the first time, if that’s all they have and there’s like well “you just kind a have to get better at it”, you might wanna look for somebody else. That sound accurate?

Royce : Yeah that’s right. That’s completely right. It’s one other reason why one of the first question that I ask someone when they start taking lessons with me is, ” what other sports do they play.”

Ian : Yeah I asked them a lot.

Royce : That is one thing that I always tried to be aware of, so I have an idea of their background, so I can make those analogies and you know those are things that they’re able to understand and make the correlation too.

Ian : Yeah, I’m lucky to teach at a club where golf is very popular, it’s more popular than the tennis side of the club really. And being a golfer myself, I’m able to use a lot of analogies that way because there’s a lot of similarities between golf technique and tennis technique as far as use of the kinetic chain pronation or supernation stuff like that.

So yeah, a good tennis pro should be able to make analogies and explain things in a way that make sense to you, specifically you! Not everybody else besides you, but you the student ‘ cause that’s why you’re there, you should be able to learn stuff that’s applicable and that makes sense.

Royce : Completely agree.

Ian : Alright. Moving on to your third one there, and did you say that you have 4 actually?

Royce : Yeah, one is just the general passion for tennis and the job as an instructor you know. That should be not withstanding.

Ian : Let’s save that for last and if we have time we can clunk that in with a bunch of other general “no, no’s”, I think for tennis pros. Let’s go on to your third topic then.

Royce : This one for me is really important you know, both coming, you know from my background as a tennis instructor but also as kind of growing up, playing a lot of tournament and everything that I as a tennis instructor try to celebrate the small successes to achieve the larger goals.

Ian : OK.

Royce : You want to be able to look at the big picture but also have those smaller pictures, those smaller goals that you’re able to achieve. You want to keep coming back out so you’re always feel like that you’re seeing some improvement, you know and ultimately the end will just justify the mean. I don’t remember the name of it, but you know those pictures, you know that might look like a dolphin jumping out of the water, but when you look closely at the picture it’s you know, a bunch of small pictures of whatever.

Ian : Yeah.

Royce : You know what I’m talking about?

Ian : Yeah, there’s a name for that but I don’t remember what it’s called but there’s kind of a famous one of Yoda, you know what I’m talking. There’s a photo like that of Yoda and it’s made up of like several hundred, you know, Star Wars scene photos (not that I’m a Star Wars nut). I know what you’re talking about.

Royce : That I think you know is something that is real important. T ennis can be quite frustrating at times, you know and you want as a client to have an instructor that will celebrate those small successes with you– to say yes you’re going to get frustrated but you are you know making progress. To they’re giving their reassurance and everything and they keep moving forward and not get stuck in a bad move and want to be turned away from tennis.

Ian : Yeah, that’s definitely important. As teachers we definitely want to make sure that our students can see that they are making strides and they are improving because that’s, I mean that’s why they’re there. That’s why people come out to spend time with us is to get better. So yeah if you take lessons from somebody for I don’t know for 4 or 6 weeks, you know one time per week and just not feeling like you’re improving or that your understanding is any better or that techniques have improved, you might want to look elsewhere. I guess that’s probably the flip side of that one.

Royce : Yup.

Ian : Alright anything else on any of those three Royce?

Royce : I can’t think so. I’ll be curious to hear what you’ve got.

Ian : yeah and this is really interesting actually because all three of mine are completely different. So I’m glad that I had you on the show because we kind of get two perspectives here. So yeah, it’s interesting to compare our lists for sure.

[15:00]

So, I’ll start from the top of mine and I’m borrowing this phrase from a financial expert that I’d like to listen to. His name is Dave Ramsey– I listen to his Podcast. But he likes to use a phrase where he says that “the people that you really want to work with in the financial industry, you know like CPA or whatever, are people that have the heart of a teacher and not of a salesman. A nd I feel like this is very applicable to tennis pros as well.

You’re going run across a lot of tennis pros who have been in the club industry for quite some time and they are a great personality, they’re fun to be around, they’re very easy to talk to but they’re kind of there just to entertain. And that’s not the kind of person that you guys want to look for.

You want somebody who really largely kind of goes back to what Royce was talking about– his fourth point, kind of having a passion for it. But it’s kind a different. You guys should be looking for somebody who is there because they love to teach. They enjoy the instructional process. They’re there because they enjoy seeing their clients get better. They enjoy seeing their students improve and they should be there because they are a teacher-­not because they were good at tennis and you know, it was kind of an obvious career choice and they’re just kind of floating along and collecting a checks. You guys should be looking for somebody who loves to teach and really is taking an interest and is investing in your game very closely. What do you think Royce?

Royce : Oh I think that’s completely right. T he one thing I would add within that though, is you don’t want to find someone…. At least the way I look at it. You don’t want to find someone that neglects the relationship aspect though. . .

Ian : Yeah that’s true.

Royce : As much as someone might love the educational process in teaching tennis etc. that if there’s no relationship that’s ultimately developed, I think in some ways that can be actually detrimental to the facilitation of the learning process.

Ian : Let me ask you this though. How many pros have you actually seen that are on that side of the spectrum where they’re you know, really serious and intense and they’re good at the tennis part but just have no personality. How often do you actually see that?

Royce : I’ve seen that a few times .

Ian : OK.

Royce : T hey’re good instructors, people that know what they’re talking about but they don’t relate well or people don’t just care for them.

Ian : Alright .

Royce : It’s one of the things that you know, you want to be able to kind of have that passion but also be able to relate and be able to really connect with each and every person that you teach with.

Ian : I guess for me personally and this is a personality thing. Listeners you may feel completely different or you may gravitate more towards Royce or myself and don’t get me wrong, yeah it’s great to find somebody with good personality and somebody that you just enjoy being around in general and being a good teacher to boot, but personally, I mean if I to choose one or the other I’d much rather have a drill Sargent, hardcore type of guy who has a no personality at all but is a very good teacher and is going to work you hard as opposed to the other side spectrum which is you know you’re kind a shmoozer or stereotypical country club pro type of person.

Royce :That I completely agree. It’s just one of things where I would just say that go for a quality… You want to add value, you know I mean from a teacher’s perspective, because we are salesman you know, in and of itself that is part of the job that we want to add value to ourselves and to the client you know? And you wanna be able to have the relationship and that adds… I’m not saying to shmooze, but you want to be able to say how are the kids or you know, knowing your client’s name, your name [inaudible]… Where you have that relationship not just like, “Oh hey you’re lesson at 4 O’clock [laughter] .

[20:00]

Ian : but that’s what I do though, what’s wrong with that?

Royce : Alright. You know everyone by their social right? [laughter]

Ian : 3 O’clock get over here! [laughter]

Ian : Yeah, I definitely preferred more towards the regimented side of the spectrum which is strange because I work at a country club and so it can be kind of frustrating for me to balance that sometimes.

Not that I’m a mean person but I guess I just like to get business done when I’m on the court. But yeah this is personal preference but I do agree that there definitely should be some kind of balance but that probably depends on what you’re looking forward to.

Anyway we can probably talk about that for a while. Let’s move on to my second point here and this relates a little bit to one of yours Royce. You were talking about the Yoda posted and my second one here is that your teaching pro should have a long- minded approach to your game.

Meaning that when you’re going for a lesson they should be able to tell you whatever you’re working on specifically in terms of tactics or technique or maybe even footwork or conditioning. They should be outlining like literally with you, they should be outlining where this technique fits in with your overall game and how it’s gonna help you improve long term.

Tennis is like Royce was saying earlier, tennis is difficult and it takes most people a lot of time and effort to really become competent at and so don’t expect to go in there and take you know, one or two or three lessons and have big parts of your game completely changed especially as it pertains to technique.

It could happen but you should be more expecting that you’re working on things that are pretty tough fixes and your pro should be able to tell you here is how this is gonna benefit you, you know 6 months or a year from now is my plan that you’re able to use this technique and implement it in this way and they should have a general long term approach to how they’re trying to help you and develop you as a player. Am I making sense Royce?

Royce : Yeah my question that would have to input is do you run into any problems given kind of the immediacy the people want to be able balance that aspect with your teaching?

Ian : Yes. [laughter]

Royce : Fair enough.

Ian : Yeah definitely and I’m getting better as a teacher at communicating when I start working with somebody on a specific stroke– especially if it’s a relatively new client and we haven’t been together all that long. I’m getting better at communicating to them, listen you know on your serve you’re using you know an Eastern grip, I’ll explain to them you know technically this is why it’s not as good as a Continental grip. This is why a Continental grip is better, it helps your body work more efficiently and these ways you know XYZ and then I’ll tell them “listen you know, it’s going to benefit your game a great deal if you can become good at this.

However you know just for your information it’s very possible, this could take you really some effort and investment in time and practice and energy and I’m getting better at letting people know listen this is not going to be an overnight thing because most of time it’s not. They need to be prepared for that . But yeah sometimes that can be a challenge, people can get frustrated that they went and paid $60 for a lesson and they didn’t immediate become better. I think sometime people kind of expect that I should just give them some kind of magical instructions and they just get better.

Royce : We wave a magic wand on them.

Ian : Yeah .

Ian : Yeah, anything else to add to that?

Royce : I think we all have, as teaching pros, we all have different stories of clients that you know, we try to express what will benefit them in the long run and they get frustrated because they don’t have that immediacy. The immediate results to see for it. T hey don’t like the idea of taking care of three steps back to take 10 forward. . .

Ian : Yeah definitely.

Royce : You know that is in and of itself difficult– going back to what I was saying, to celebrate those small successes to kind of achieve those larger goals.

It becomes difficult but that’s something you definitely would want to, you know, a pro to be able to do to k eep your attitude positive, to say, “you know what, it’s OK to take those steps backward because in the end you are going to greatly benefit from them.

Ian : Now you’re right. Yeah and there is responsibility on both the student and the instructors side of the equation here. It takes, it takes a patient and good instructor to be able to move a students through those phases and be able to help them learn a new technique like that. And it takes patience and investment and effort and time on the students part as well. So, yeah it’s not easy.

Tennis lessons should come with some kind of disclaimer… [laughter] to make it, to make it easier on us. [laughter] Royce: There you go. That’s your new website… Just creating a teaching contract. [laughter]

Ian : Yeah i can come up with the legal tennis pro documents [laughter] They can be the tennis elbow waiver [laughter] .

Royce : [inaudible] Ian : Yup.

Royce : There you go, that’s your new endeavor .

Ian : It’s not bad actually. I should think about that. [laughter]

Alright, and on to my last one.

And this is kind of a broad statement and it’s something that can be difficult to judge but I really feel I need to say this [laughter].

My third one is that in looking for a good tennis professional, they need to actually know what they’re talking about [laughter] when it comes to tennis.

Their instructions should make sense to you– it should be logically sound. Whatever steps they’re asking you to go through and the way that they explain it should make sense with how your body works. It should make sense in relations on how you see players that are better than you swinging the racket or how you see good players playing. I t should make sense.

I’ve seen throughout my somewhat short career, as I go from club to club and watch tennis pros at other facilities that I don’t teach at. There are some pros that are like, kinda have pet instruction or ways of teaching that don’t make any sense to me and even worse than that, I sometimes hear a student question a certain instruction or a certain technique and hear the pro not really have an explanation for it and they’ll just kinda say something like “you gotta trust me on this one.”

You know that’s just kinda how the way it is. If something doesn’t make sense to you please ask your instructor. Ask your teaching pro why? Ask them the question why and they should be able to immediately explain it in a logical and rational way. A nd if they can’t to me that’s really a red flag. You need to find somebody who really understands the game in terms of technique and strategy and whatever else your trying to get better at.

D on’t just take their word for it because they have a piece of paper on the wall at the club and I might be a little controversial with this one but are your thoughts on what I’m saying?

Royce : I generally agree. Obviously there are going to be caveats to that. [inaudible] to his own accord [inaudible] but he knows how to teach.

Ian : Yeah .

Royce : So there are going to be people within that. But also you know, I do agree completely that a tennis player, should be able to ask why and i do highly encourage people to be quite confident and try to understand what it is that is being taught to him.

In large benefit though for you as the client… in the grand scheme of things I would say probably ninety plus percent of the time your gonna be out on court you’re not gonna be with your teacher. You know so it’s important to understand what they’re teaching and why they’re teaching you, so you can start to put a better grasp on it so you understand it the times when they’re not around, which is more often than not.

After all that being said I would also caution you know that if you’re going to be inquisitive, let them give you their response and don’t try to argue with them per se. You know to be able to understand it and to have a discussion about. If you want to go down that path, but don’t kind of ask and then say “Oh they are wrong”. That’s detrimental to the relationship and the learning process.

Ian : Yeah. We could definitely do a whole separate show just on being good student . [laughter] This is. Seriously. [laughter] Cause there’s poor students out there unfortunately and it can really hamper your development you know, I’m trying to be serious about it and really trying to get the most out of the game as you can.

Well we’ll leave that topic there, and I just want to go through.. We’re basically out of time.

But I want to go through just a couple of other, I guess basic or general things. The last time you and I talked Royce… I just want to make another point here. The last time you and I talked was about poor tennis professionals and I got a message on the forums from a tennis dad, whose son is a good high-level player. And you and I had talked about basic things like not being late for a lesson. Not talking on your cellphone during a lesson.. you know things like this.

And he wrote on the forums and said there is this local pro who is pretty much late for every lesson. He kind of screws around on the courts. He’ll text or check his voicemail on the court. But he says he trains virtually every top level junior in that geographical area and all the kids seem to get better. So, his point was kinda like wow… You know maybe it’s not really that big of a deal.

A lot of the things that Royce and I are talking about.. it kinda comes down to personal preference. Some of these due and some don’t. But when it comes down to kind of the passion part of it, and really taking it seriously and being a professional. It’s kind of a subjective. Me personally, I can’t stand stuff like that. But you know, if you’re getting what you want out of it then that’s fine. Royce, what’s your input on that.. The teacher being passionate about it in general .

Royce : I think that it is the personal preference. There are obviously going to be exceptions to the things you and I say and describe..

Ian : Sure.

Royce : But for me, you know it’s important to have that passion, to be able to express it and be professional about it. It’s not just a job. It is a career choice we’ve made, you know, so it’s important for us to have that professionalism that is evident. It helps to add value in every aspect of a word.

Ian : Yeah.

Royce : If those people are getting out of it what they are looking for, then by all maens. Would it be something I try to avoid? Yeah. But it is what it is. In the grand scheme of things, I would really just say, you want to see someone who has the passion there, you know about tennis and about teaching and really tries to show that and let it become evident in both in themselves and I guess in the relationship they try to build– both personal relationships but also the relationship with the game, you know .

Ian : Yeah. Alright good stuff Royce. We’re gonna wrap this show up. Thank you very much for coming back and finishing up this topic with me. It’s been great talking with you about it and I hope our listeners enjoyed the topics.

I think it’s really interesting conversation to have and one that I can’t really remember seeing any blog post about it or on any other Podcast or anything. So, hopefully people find this information and our different prospective really useful.

Royce : Again thank you. I also like to just say to please feel free on the forums, over at essentialtennis.com, that if you have any comments, please do share them.

Ian : Yeah.

Royce : It could be interesting to get other peoples prospectives from a client. As well as those that we have that are teachers on the forums as well to kind of give their input. ..

Ian : Yeah, that’s a good point. Royce and I are speaking from side of the fence– I agree, it would definitely be interesting to hear input and feedback whether you agree with us or disagree or whatever. It would be great to hear from you listeners about this topic. So go to the forums and let us know what you think in the Podcast section. Royce, thanks so much for your time. Great to have you back on the show and I look forward talking to you again soon.

Royce : Alright, thanks for having me. [music] .

Ian : Alright, that brings episode #82 of the Essential Tennis Podcast to a close.

Two quick things before we wrap up the show.

First of all I want to remind you guys about the second week of my Facebook fan contest and you can win a free Babalock strung with [inaudible] natural gut string.

Just go to the front page of Essentialtennis .com and click on the contest image for details. That contest ends this Sunday which is going to be the twelveth. I ‘m sorry the thirteenth of September– I’m going to be announcing the winner on the fourteenth, a week from today.

And lastly, myself and Dr. Jack have been talking. We want to do a show with some listeners. We want to do a live recording with some listeners who have questions about sports medicine, about injuries, maybe hydration, or nutrition, maybe strengthening your body or stretching.

Topics like that having to do with sports medicine and if you’d like to talk with myself and Dr. Jack. Lots of people ask Dr. Jack questions on the forums has having to do with injuries, etc.

And this is gonna be a better format because Dr. Jack is going to be able to ask you guys questions and really get to the kinda of a heart of the issue for a lot of things much more quickly.

So, if you would like to participate, please send me an email at ian@essentialtennis.com and we can have you be part of the show.

Alright. That does it for today’s episode.

Thanks very much for tunning in. Take care everybody and good luck with your tennis. [music] [music]