029 - Motivating Your Students To Learn

Today’s Quick Tip Is:  Tell Your Students What They Are Going To Learn – Teach Them – Tell Them What They Learned

And using my online marketing method, may just get those stubborn players eager to learn.

A Quick story:

I had a group of students recently come to the campus for a week and it was an amazing experience for me s well as for them (I hope anyway) 

And by the way, if you are interested in bringing a group here, talk to me and I will set you up with an experience that you will not forget.

Each day this group worked with an expert on campus:

Monday: On-Court With Player Development and working with High Level Players

Tuesday: TDM With Our TDM and Tournament Expert 

Wednesday: On Court With our 10 and Under Expert and working with Red Ball Kids

Thursday: Progression/Regression With our Director of Coaching Education

Friday: Group Lesson Evaluations (Live steamed on PlaySight) with me,   

Like I said, You can set this up with me anytime as well if you want to bring a group down here.

Now during the group lesson with me, I made it similar to how it worked when I was a tester for the USPTA.

I gave them an area to work on, gave the coaches time to come up with a plan and then they executed that plan.

We did about 6 round of lessons.

Overall they did a great job (and yes Nate, you did this initially, just to get that out), but after each round, my first comment was, “You did not tell them what they were going to do BEFORE you started teaching the lesson.

Then it continued to happen until the very last group lesson.

My point was that students do not want to go out there and not have a clue what they are going to learn or do.

They have nothing to look forward to (or dread)

Imagine in school walking into every class having NO CLUE what you were going to learn that day.

You just sit down and the teacher says, “ the quadratic equation is used when you can’t factor out an equation easily”  

The the next day, SAME CLASS the Boston Tea Party was protest by the Sons of liberty……….

You would kind of like to have a heads up, right instead of being hit with some arbitrary topic.

Well the same goes for a tennis lesson and I am going to show you how you might do it, based on my experience in the online marketing world.

The more in advance you can let someone know what they are going to do, the more time they have to prepare, or ask a question that they want answered during their time with you.

Even on court if you say something like (and this is NOT the best way)

“ Welcome to class everyone. Today we are going to warm-up, work on some forehands and backhands, do some cool drills and finish with some fun points.”

At least you gave me an idea what we are going to do.

Now when writing out a sales page there is a formula that I am accustomed to with the acronym, P.A.S.T.O.R.

This stands for:

P- Identify a problem

A – Amplify

S – Story/Solution

T – Testimony

O - Offer

R – Response (Decision Time)

Now I now you might be saying, whatever Coach Mick, this is a tennis lesson.

Well try telling my 3.5/4.0 group that they are going to work on something NEW (Without telling them why) and they will probably fail initially most of the time.

Trust me, it takes a very experienced SALES PERSON to get them to make any major change, ha!

So here is how I would approach it.

P- The Problem

A – Agitate the problem

S – The Solution

Let’s define the problem as ……. The Lobber

Now let’s get to the lesson:

Problem – Pain: You might start off by saying – “ Good Morning Ladies, today we are going to work on how to handle the dreaded lobber”

Agitate The Problem – The person who drives us crazy. You think you hit the most amazing serve or approach shot, follow-it in to the net, only to get lobbed and then you and your partner are sitting there starring at each other, not knowing who should have taken it

and to finish it off you see the other team high-fiving like they did something spectacular when you know that they can’t it a decent pass to save their lives……

And of course it is YOUR fault, even though your partner gave then the dream ball to lob in the first place.

(oh yeah……Phyllis does that to me every time………..)

Solution – So today, we are going get them where they can’t lob you from, the net.

This is VERY effective.  But it can be tricky, because the ball we get them up there with needs to be short and kept fairly low, but if you can execute this, even with some success, you will have the upper hand.

We will start with working on the shot to bring them up, put it into some controlled points and then let you go for it on your own.

Done.

Now this is one of many ways to counter a lobber, but now you have their attention because you told them what they are going to learn AND you hopefully inspired them to want to learn it by AGITATING the problem.

It is like when you are online reading some sales page, or watching an infomercial and in your head you are saying, yeah…….that’s me!

You got them to relate, then you got them to feel those stressful feelings  again, in this case, on the court with the lobber and now you will most likely have their attention. 

Step 2 is to teach them how to execute the shot, in this scenario, the short low ball.

You will have to progress through it by most likely working on under-spin and working on ways to adjust if it is not staying low or short enough.

Then you will put them in a situation to where they start each point by executing the shot.

So, what I would do here is to do it champs and challenger style, and let me stop here and give you a tip, because I have seen this many times, even in a testing situation.

DO NOT have the champs hitting the shot that you have just worked on.  If they stay champs for a while the other 4 players (or 2 teams) on your court will never get a chance to work on it.

I like to almost always have the challengers hit the shot that we just worked on so EVERYONE gets many opportunities

Here is an example: 1 champ/4 challengers and you have just worked on app. Shots all day, and you are feeding the champ the approach shot (the other 4 are NOT working on it, so get at least the 80% hitting the shot you just worked on all day (If he/she stays champ the WHOLE TIME)

OK, so now that the champs know that the challengers will be hitting a short ball to them (not fair), move them back to a cone, or the back curtain or whatever, but don’t let them move forward until contact is made by the other team. (or they lose the point )

This will probably be pretty close to the proper timing when the opposing team is NOT expecting it, plus it gives the players a bit more success and will be more willing to keep trying, once they see the benefits.

Then finish with some regular points and have each team try to throw that shot in at least once a game or something to that effect.

And Finally bring them in and TELL THEM what they just learned and why they want to continue to work on it.

What I would do is keep track and especially if it worked in my favor would say, after the points. Every time you brought the team up to the net, you won the point XX% of the time, and you are just starting out.

You might even explain ow this shot is good for other situations, like giving your opponent’s overheads (usually weaker than you think(, to keep them fired up to learn the shot.

Give them some incentive, or homework, to try it out away from the class and don’t just drop it.

Continue to ask how it is going, during the week and during class.

Bottom Line: Let your students know what to expect BEFORE the lesson starts.  It may be something simple or you may have to go the sales page route with those stubborn players.

Good Luck, 

Coach Mick, USPTA