Tennis Rockers

We've all heard it from someone else - what another colleague said to someone else about you or your work - and it never feels good.  In fact, it can often feel like ... sabotage.  

But is what another person said really sabotage or just an attempt to insert their own impression (find a seat at the social table) or even fill their roster and put food on their table?

The tennis court can be a place of heated contention and in this episode, we deconstruct misinterpreting other people’s actions.  

Join us on our journey!
www.tennisrockers.com

Could a nutrition class compliment a tennis club's offerings and boost the bottom line?  You know, a classroom style series of lectures and group discussions which discuss basic nutrition concepts and demonstrates the effect of food on energy levels, quality of life, and longevity?

A nutrition class, hosted by a registered dietician who does it for free in order to get exposure to potential paying clients, could be a draw for non-tennis playing people and current customers.  It says "I care about you and your health" and in caring for someone else, you engender emotional credibility.  

Take a few minutes to noodle on adding a nutrition class to your club whether you are an owner, pro, or player, it just might be the outstanding offering you were hoping would help.

Thanks for joining us on our journey!
www.tennisrockers.com

Tennis clubs have the perfect opportunity to talk about nutrition - it's the fuel that will either feed you or lead you to failure on the tennis court and in the afterworld of physical recovery - so why won't they make it a core mission?

Maybe it's because the clients don't play enough to feel the effects of poor nutrition on their performance and recovery.

So, if you play for only a couple hours a week, you probably won't feel the effects of eating a diet rich in flour, oils, preservatives, salt, and sugar.  In fact, you'll probably feel just fine.  But dietitians and nutritionists will tell you a different tale - a tale about the effects of good diet and nutrition over bad.  

In this episode, we listen and reflect on a couple of important clips from a food documentary about the long tail effects of nutrition on the body in the hopes of understanding how we can implement a nutrition class at a tennis club that has teeth!

Thanks for joining us on our journey!
www.tennisrockers.com

Mark Campanile has put his interest into his intention and dedicated a life to tennis both personally and professionally.  In the last 40 years, Mark has taken a teenage passing interest and turned it into a lifelong love.  Mark found the spark of tennis in Europe and carried it into college.   He kept playing and started stringing, so much so that he got his certification and started a small stringing business.  In the ensuing decades, Mark coached his own son from scratch to a D1 scholarship, built a pro shop business, and became a tennis teacher to many students of the game.  

In the interview with certified stringer, master racquet technician, professional racquet advisor, tennis pro, and parent coach of his own D1 college playing son, we learn a little bit about a lot and along the way see that tennis has both a lot to offer and a lot to teach.  

If you are the parent of a tennis student or a tennis player, you will learn something about:

• How to think about racquets
• How to think about string composition, selection, and tension
• Working with a certified racquet stringer
• What you should want your kids to focus on in a tennis lesson

Thanks for joining us on our journey!
www.tennisrockers.com

Self-talk is pervasive in our sport, yet it is not something we learn to deal with in a tennis lesson or is talked through with coaches or other players.  Self talk is part of the emotional journey of tennis yet it gets marginalized and trivialized in "blooper" style Youtube videos and talked about in hushed commentator tones.  We know this needs to change.  

It seems to us that there are at least five types of self-talks that people put themselves through at any one point in a game, lesson, or practice and these include:

The analyzer
The blamer
The criticizer
The outburstor 
The reflector 

Once we know them, what do we do about them?  Do we just ignore them and keep on going or could there be a more "coachable approach"?  We think this is an opportunity to organize around and start scheming up some solutions.  

For starters, any club could bring in a sports psychologist to train tennis coaches or even conduct co-pro/student classes to discuss the cycle of emotional and mental self-talk to help people identify and work through their own styles of self talk.  This could take place a couple of times a year and the costs could be defrayed by hosting a mandatory separate class that all students have to go through once a year in order to practice and play at the club.

But that's just the beginning.  Studying self talk can build interest and personal meaning for our sport - a bit of gratitude for a sport that helps us deal with our own "attitudes".

Thanks for joining us on our journey!
www.tennisrockers.com

What happens if we misinterpret our players emotional reactions and project our own impression on students?  What happens if our players project their emotional impressions of what the coach "could" or "might" be thinking or feeling about a drill or tennis activity?

We junk up their cognitive runway or a person's emotional and mental space they need to "takeoff" or "land" their "plane" (body) while playing tennis.

In this episode, we discover the cognitive runway.  What it is, how and why this analogy helps, and when to recognize that you could be junking it up.

Thanks for joining us on our journey!

Everyday, all across the world, tennis pros are teaching tennis to thousands of children, teenagers, and adults.  Every time they walk onto that court, like a rock star walking on stage, they make a decision about how they want to "show up" and "represent" the face of tennis.

Fans expect rock stars to show up and represent the face of their music and in the image they have established to the world - their brand.   When the rock star shows up and represents their brand, their fans know it, love it, and live for it.  They are a model for what a rock star should be. 

Tennis students expect the same thing but what are they getting?  Are they getting the girl or guy who shows up as a rock star or someone who shows up indifferent?  Ideally, like the actual music rock star, the tennis should pro walk on the court, model movement and introspection like someone playing a slam.  But most of them don't and that's a problem for students because it sends mixed messages - YOU (the student) are supposed to be and play a certain way - when the coach isn't flying the flag of the tennis brand as best as they can.

Dr. Albert Mehabrian, who focused on the communication of human emotions, found that people (your students or a rock stars audience) will interpret most of the emotional content of your message by interpreting your nonverbal communication rather than by what you actually say. 

So, if your coach is yelling at you to move a certain way but can't or won't do it themselves, how are they showing up?  What about a coach whose feet never leap off the floor and always feeds out of the cart?  Are either of these people flying the tennis flag?  Are they showing up as a rock star or as an idol of indifference?

In this episode, we take a look at the effects of idols of indifference and what it would take to start making a change in who shows up on court.  

Thanks for joining us on our journey!
www.tennisrockers.com

If you learn somethings quickly, you tend to create an "emotional cloak of invincibility" or an emotional belief that you are the best (i.e. better than your friends or peers) at things in a certain activity in life.  If you learn something in science or sports quickly, you tend to develop that belief or an emotional cloak of invincibility which is great for confidence and forging ahead in life but what happens when that new activity is agonizing?

The emotional cloak of invincibility quickly turns into emotional self-consciousness and potential embarrassment.  This in turn  produces a kind of personal resistance and maybe even actively trying to slow your colleagues down - if I can't get it, nobody is going to get it.  

In this episode, we examine how to spot and work with our own and others cloaks of invincibility through recognition, inquiry, acknowledgment, and validation through group support.

Thanks for joining us on our journey!
www.tennisrockers.com

We need to do a better job of recognizing our own emotional arousal states and the emotional arousal states of others to get the best out of ourselves, each other, and what we're trying to do.  

What happens when a player or person is over-aroused?  You're too jacked and you overhit causing it to go into the net or out of the park.  What happens when a person or player is under-aroused?  You can't bring your best of anything and you set a low standard for yourself.  

To play at your best but not overplay takes a considerable amount of observation and modulation of personal emotional arousal states.  

In this episode we examine human arousal states; what they are and how they effect us for the purpose of helping clubs, coaches, parents, and players appreciate how harnessing them can help and ignoring them can hurt a players performance and their long term love of the game.  

Thanks for joining us on our journey!
www.tennisrockers.com

It's no secret the dropout rate for youth tennis players over the age of 15 is over 60%.  And while a lot of people are trying to figure out how to keep people from leaving, we're not.  It's ok for people to leave tennis.  They've spent their time, taken lessons, and maybe even played a few tournaments.  Let them move and in turn let's trust that some of them will want to come back!

If we make peace with this perspective and prune the ranks of the tennis tree, we allow for new growth in the form of bringing back old friends and enlarging the tennis family!

Join us on our journey to figure out how to bring players back - one door closes and another one opens up:)
www.tennisrockers.com