Hitting in the Rain.
Lessons for the day?
1.It doesn’t have to always be technical, tactical, etc. per se. Not every day, in the pursuit of greatness (remember, my saying: rare greatness comes at a steep price, mediocrity is abundant and cheap) do we have to do the routine. Today one of my best students–my son Graham–and I went out to train but it started to rain. So we decided to hit in the rain and break our old record
of consecutive hits from when he was 10 (535). Though we ran out of time and had to head to the indoor courts for 2 more hours of practice, we got to hit 1350 consecutive shots in the downpour. That was fun. Felt like clay courts with a heavy ball and the water shooting off from topspin like a rooster tail. Good times.
Then it was off to working on attacking vollies from midcourt and closing in tight to sneak in behind balls that he hits and recognizes when opponents are off balance. Great workout started by a downpour record rally. By the way, while we were hitting, I was calling the club for indoor times, and then we kept the rally going while we debated on hitting until night fall to get to 5000 or so but decided to work on the above shots in the dry indoors.
So the lesson? Clearly it is good to work on attacking style game (see my next blog discussion and diagrams), be an all court player comfortable in putting pressure by position on your opponent, but more importantly was enjoying the fun in the rain making a memory.
2. Another hidden lesson is you really can get a workout in the rain. So don’t use that as an excuse not to hit. We actually worked on vollies for the first half hour in the rain. Since you don’t want to run and slip, it is a great opportunity to just get out a few balls (so you don’t ruin the entire basket) and minimize movement working on accuracy. So the coach or feeder can stand adjacent to the doubles alley and hit forehands to their backhand vollies to keep in the doubles alley for accuracy. Then move to the other side and have them work on forehands vollies in the doubles alley. Similar to golf, one can hit at the driving range with wide open spaces and no real consequences. But once you narrow the parameters, pick targets, or suggest consecutive shots or depth, tennis players, golfers or anything really (under “pressure”) people fall apart and say “wow, I can’t even hit a ball straight.” So generally, a player can be in the middle of the court hitting vollies and feel 100% fine. You move them over to the doubles all and say “hit them in here” and for many it is like you asked them to hit a dime. They miss all over the place. So, it is good to work on accuracy as what it reveals and works on is not only the mental, but then technical flaws do arise. This is why technically sound shots are less likely to break down in matches while technically shaky ones might break down more often.
Enjoy the game come rain or shine, in or out. You can do things in the rain that can be fun and part of the process of getting better, mastering the game, which after all, is the goal isn’t it?
For a detailed look at a solid skill development that we spent the next two hours on this rainy day but indoors, check out an upcoming blog on attacking, aggressive transition and what I call positioning your opponent to death: Increasing a players ability to proactively move forward to volley in transition area.
Until then,
Let ‘er Rip.
Coach