11 Things for 2011

Over the next eleven weekdays, I'll be counting down the things that I'm excited for (as a coach) entering the 2011 season. We started today! Check out previous posts below.

#11 - New Regional Alignment

New Practice Ideas

One of my greatest joys in life is being creative. Whether it be a lesson for school, a sermon for church, or a practice for tennis, I love the process of arranging things, themes, topics, drills, rituals, games and designing them for reaching the maximum potential. I also love when I have new ways of presenting old (but good) ideas.

This year for tennis, I wanted to be creative. I know we all know the good old drills like "5 Errors" (dominated by Nate today, with a score of 95!) or "Two Ball." And those drills serve a really good purpose, but how can we approach the same old topics, like groundstrokes, volleys, and serves, from new angles?

Well, I've got an idea and we're starting tomorrow. From now until school starts, each practice will be Pro themed. Each practice will pit two stars from the modern or recent professional ranks, and allow us to practice their strengths and work them into our own.

Here's the schedule for the rest of the week, see if you can guess what we'll be working on...
- Tuesday - Sampras v. Agassi
- Wednesday - Nadal v. Djokovic
- Thursday - Federer v. Roddick
- Friday - Chang v. Murray

I'm really excited about this, so that means you'll probably all find it, well, uninspiring. But that's okay, it's still fun for me!

The other new thing I really love about practice this year is "Huddle Time." The idea of course is to deal with our down time effectively, letting it be positive and prepare us for the next point. I'm really enjoying our Huddle Prayers, where we walk out and visualize before practice.

This whole idea of visualization is not new, in fact, I'd invite you to look at some of the things being said on the web about the power of visualizing. I've been really influenced by a sermon I heard online called "Integrated Faith," by Greg Boyd. Look it up if you've got the time!

Anyways, can't wait to get to practice tomorrow and see some Sampras and Agassi, now if only I could get them to come out and hit with us!