The Truth About Tennis Teaching

People feel like a tennis teacher is a tennis teacher.  But we are just like regular teachers in a school.  Every problem that you have heard with a school teacher can happen with a tennis teacher.  So it is important to be extra careful with who you choose for you or your child.  It can be a long term decision.

The idea behind teaching tennis is that your coach is supposed to teach life lessons through the medium of tennis.  That way, you learn about yourself enough to be a balanced individual.  If you practice diligently and balance yourself mentally, you will be a good tennis player.  That is the idea.  The same principles are alive in martial arts.

With that said, there are different types of lessons that you can take depending on where you are:

Group.  These lessons are supposed to spark interest in tennis.  They are the cheapest.  You show up in a group (obviously) and the coach just tells you basic things to do and feeds you tennis balls until your time is up.  Your coach is supposed to be looking for students to pull out of this group.  They should get inspired by the improvement and look to work with this student either in a more advanced group OR privately.  If your group coach never actively suggests better lessons upon improvement...they aren't a coach PAST the group level.  At that point they are doing you a disservice.


Team Lessons.  These lessons are group lessons with people that compete on a team.  Most people on a team don't want to get better privately since the dynamic of a team allows them to be involved without actually being totally responsible.  Most coaches don't suggest you do privates off a team.  HOWEVER a coach will want the team to move up in levels.  Teams are different because some teams want to learn things but most just want to do drills.

Private Lessons.  These lessons are for people that want to get better privately.  They get their own coach and work on specific problems they have or just get better.  You can have one lesson OR you can have a coach and do many of them.  Personally, I feel like the coach should be working hard to wean their students off hitting a ball that is fed to them.  That is not tennis.

Hitting Lessons.  These lessons are for people that need to hit at a specific time with someone that is better than them.  This is best if you are a person with a limited amount of time.  The only problem is that if you just hit with someone really good, you might lose the concept of a person trying to beat you or the cause and effect of your rally ball.

In part 2 we talk about how to pick your coach.