 and what hurdles have you had to overcome with your actual coaching? As a new coach, a young age, 17, 18, coaching adults was quite scary. I always remember that. Going on to coaching the young children, I was loving it. I was a big boy compared to them and it was I was showing off what I knew and I felt really confident in that arena. But coaching adults was just scary and it wasn't because I was a good tennis player and the adults that I was coaching were beginners and didn't know half as much as I did about tennis but it was scary just speaking to adults. It was something I wasn't used to and everything in life that I do with my coaching and everything else, I try and take myself out of my comfort zone as much as possible and it's the only way that you can progress basically. So yeah, it was scary coaching adults. I did it more and more and eventually it took me six months to get used to it and actually enjoy it and now I love it. I absolutely love coaching adults because the thing about coaching adults is they're coming to your sessions and they are choosing to come to your sessions and they are paying to come to your sessions because they like the session and you know that. So sometimes with children, the parents are choosing for the children to come along and so you kind of don't always know if it's really their choice. You know you see smiles on their faces and you know that they're enjoying it but for adults they're making that conscious decision to play. So it's nice to be able to give enjoyment to adults as well as juniors. Was it really just a case of okay I'll suck it up. I've got to coach a load of adults right now or was there something you think you consciously said well I need to do a little bit differently to engage with them a bit better all. Yeah I think so I had the coach that I used I was an assistant coach on the adult program to start off with and the coach that ran the session was very good at having a laugh with the adults and so as I grew in confidence I you know I started to have a bit of a joke around with the adults as well and that straight away kind of eased my worries and gave me a lot more confidence you know as soon as you can be on that level with the adults and have a bit of a laugh you feel like right you've got you've got that connection now and so I you know to sit still to this day I really try and have a good laugh with the with the players to make sure that you know everybody's comfortable. Communication wise I think as well hitting and doing the demonstrations was a good way for me to gain the adults respect because they could see that I was a good player so so the coach that I was working with quite often got me to demonstrate which was a good thing for me because because I could hit the ball well they would see that and be quite impressed and actually listen to me a bit more when I gave them feedback so yeah I think for a good player and a young coach if you want to coach adults hit balls with them as much as possible and that instantly kind of gains their respect. And what are you trying to improve with your coaching now? Becoming even more simple I think you know you touched on it earlier but kind of really becoming efficient with the way that I coach so making demonstrations efficient you know cutting out all of the unnecessary content and just refining it to what the player needs because the less information that you give across the easier it is for them to bring into their game so I'm always working on trying to simplify my approach and you know with the kids there are lots of ways that you can develop let's say the forehand technique but without even saying a word a very simple way is holding a football and getting the child to throw the football from their hip over the net and what that does it encourages a unit turn it encourages getting your left arm across your body and it does all the right things biomechanically without mentioning a single word just get them to throw the ball to get a player to improve their serve technique just get them to throw over arm because it's exactly the same motion so you know there's some basic ways of simplifying things but it's across the board in general I think for me I just want to be even more simple and even more precise and efficient with the way that I coach. And have you learned or where have you learned about this simplicity of explanation helping biomechanics where have you learned that from? So the LTA have got a good long-term association they've got a good system for coaches where coaches that want to be accredited need to collect 15 credits or license points throughout a year to be able to get your accreditation and each of the credits equates to about an hour of CPD and so the LTA provide various courses which you can choose and go on they might be online course they might be face-to-face so going on those every year keeping myself fresh with new content really really helps but also working with lots of different coaches I think it's important for any young coach to spend lots of time with different coaches with different styles so that you can develop your own style you know there are lots of coaches out there that have coached at one club for the whole of their life and you know it's nice for them to have that feeling of being you know loyal to that club but at the same time you're not going to be learning as much from seeing one coach as opposed to seeing lots of different coaches so for me it's yeah spending time with lots of other coaches seeing things being done well and seeing things being done not so well has helped me to shape the way that I coach but yeah lots of training course spending lots of time with other coaches and developing my own through that. So is that one of the key pieces of advice you would give somebody coming into tennis or any other coach any to coach any other sports that is go and watch other coaches doing what they do and finding out whether it's good or bad or indifferent. Definitely spending time with other coaches but I would also say if you can video one of your coaching sessions and watch it back because you will be able to coach yourself you know I've seen myself coach and I hated it because I would always I'd be earning a lot like I am now so I'd be going um I'd hear myself during demonstrations using the same phrase over and over again so I'd try and cut that out I'd be you'd hear yourself trying to talk too much so if you if you can see yourself in action that's the best way to give yourself feedback and to try to improve it or have a friend or you know a peer or one of your colleagues watching you too um feeding back is is a good way to develop. And as you recording your YouTube videos helped with that do you think or? I think it has yeah because um I see myself messing up a lot I see myself and I'm repeating myself a lot um so yeah I think it has. What other piece of advice would you give to a new coach coming into coaching sport? I would say look after your body as I think I mentioned in one of your other um podcasts that it's um being a coach of any sport is is physical and and people when they get into it as youngsters don't realize um that us oldies start to feel the pain and when you get into it um when you get into when you get into coaching and you're 17, 18, 19 years old your body can be put through you know hours on court you you can work seven days a week and not really feel it physically but I'm you know I'm starting to feel aches and pains and getting little injuries and and that sort of thing so making sure that you you know inevitably as a young coach you're probably going to want to do as many hours as you can you're probably going to work six seven days a week and and that's fine as long as you look after your body so you know being flexible and mobile is key I've spent some time recently improving my flexibility and mobility just through um doing kind of mini yoga sessions not from from a youtube video at home um doing going to the gym and working on strength so that longer term I can stay in in coaching because I you know there is a fear that if you get injured as a as a coach that's your livelihood gone um unless you do loads of online stuff um you know like developing courses online and that sort of thing so for me I'm just trying to make my career span last longer through being mobile being able to get around the court and and having longevity yeah so that's another tip I would say yeah I thought that answer you gave for episode four of this podcast which I will put a link to in the show notes I thought your answer was fantastic and it was completely left a field for me I really thought that that could be an answer for the question that I asked lots of other coaches in that episode which was what's the one thing you wish you knew before becoming a coach and I think it's super super important in fact one of my athletes um after lockdown has started doing a bit of coaching on these learned road courses that my running club runs um and with some of the improvements she was complaining to me the other day that her back aches after coaching because sitting in the coaching launch the coaching motorboat that we use the obviously this the steering wheel for it is is fixed and the seat is fixed and it just happened to be like a little bit too far away from one another so you're always trying to find the right position to sit and steer the boat and make sure that you know generally you're coaching a boat which is alongside so obviously steering wheel and the seat are pointing forwards but the boat your coaching is off to the right hand side in this instance usually and how do you twist and steer and do all these different things at the same time so although you know lots of different sports you know so you coach tennis and in order to coach tennis you have to be on court and you're probably doing quite a lot of it to demonstrate etc i do very very little demonstration as a as a rowing coach thank goodness um for for rowing on the water um because i wouldn't i wouldn't be able to do that nowadays um but uh i think it's really it's really uh interesting that coaches have to look after themselves in in lots of different ways so i think that's a really great um really great answer and thanks for sharing that again