Brain Candy 14 I Have This Problem

I had another new student on Saturday. She is a 4.0 woman who came for me to fix her backhand. "I will tell you - and probably demonstrate - everything I do wrong, then you can fix it." Except that, that is not what I did, nor did I allow her to do everything wrong, and by the end her backhand looked and worked great. When she came into the court, she did start many do. She tried to explain the problem, and of course I listen carefully to how she described it. Then we started playing.

People play tennis, they don't work it, analyze it, self instruct it, paint the game by numbers, at least not well. I start every lesson at the net by tossing a few balls back and forth off the bounce with every student, regardless of level. That's when I explain that if someone says, "I have a problem", I respond with, "I can't help you". The issue is that you own it, and you frame it a permanent. So, let's start with what you want to do instead. She said, "I want a better backhand", "Let's begin"

We rallied, and I identified that she sometimes crowds the ball, which caused her to tense up and constrict her stroke. We continued until she started to see the difference between ideal spacing and crowding. She experienced it. I brought her to the net and we experimented with ideal contact points, Once she knew her ideal contact, it flowed.