The Coaching Process - Pathway Day 1 and 2

Welcome to another edition of whatever i wish to write about, and yes i know i have still to answer some of you, but many i have and have just not written anything publicly .

Recent times have seen me travelling to the far depths of Sutton, junction 8 of M25. For me anything in London can be accessed by a junction rather than pile-driving straight through the middle. Here i was tutoring on the PTR/LTA Pathway course which leads to the british tennis licence or LTA licence or now known as a coaching licence. I think for those interested in this course i will give you a day to day run down of what goes on ish....give or take a few jokes and pieces of information that may be of no real relevance to you right now.

The course is based around a coaching process formula and this forms the basic theme for the entire 3 modules along with the ability to understand the 6 tactical intentions, 5 game situations and not forgetting a main teaching point to run throughout your sessions. Then you need to understand the PAS theory in relation to the 5 ball characterstics, 

To give you an idea of what is really involved you can download the manual from my main site of which i am sure you are all used to by now. 

You can see that the first stage is Observation, a skill underused with many coaches!

Let me explain when was the last time you actually see your students play? Everyone knows that your best hitting and strokes at the lower level are left on the practice court! In order to get a true idea of what your student can/can't do you have to watch them play points in a matchplay situation and better in a tournament of some kind rather than a friendly match with Bob Bryan down the street.

You need to seem them in all the game situations available:-

• Serve
• Return of Serve
• When both players are at the back of the court
• When you manage to approach or get to the net
• When your opponent approaches or gets to the net

From here you can make an analysis of what is required in their game and set to the goal setting to move along the road to a better game.

Once as a student you have your head around these terms then you can will need to grasp the art of understanding the following terms...

Trading
Building
Finishing
Neutralising
Staying
Turning Around

Day two utilised the ability to coach using the above information and of course practice, practice, practice if only to use the seemingly impossible terms that really mean when looked into mean simply rallying, winning etc... maybe someone decided that to make themselves feel important and look like they were earning some their worth, by changing a few names it would all make sense. Eureka!