 Hey guys, welcome back. If you're new to the channel my name is Ashley Neves and I am a professional tennis coach based in the UK and more recently have set up this YouTube channel to help tennis players, tennis coaches and tennis parents to get more out of the sport. Now this video in particular although it is based around tennis it's going to be suitable for any competitive sports person and hopefully valuable to sports coaches too because in this video I'm going to give you some tips as to how you can develop your sporting skills when you're at home. Now for lots of us all over the world we've been prevented from playing the sports that we love due to the global pandemic. Here in the UK right now we're currently in lockdown which means all of the tennis courts are closed. For me personally over the last two lockdowns I've spent lots of time reading, watching videos and bettering myself as a tennis coach and starting this YouTube channel up has allowed me to meet lots of people and to develop my craft even further. It's important to understand that you can develop your skills within your sport without physically playing that sport. Hopefully by the end of this video you'll see this time off court or off the pitch or off the field as an opportunity to develop your skills and to get a head start against your opponents. Once you've given these tips ago at home and seen the benefits of them hopefully you can dedicate some time to these longer term even when you are able to play your sport again. So let's get into the video. So I'm going to cover four areas or four tips that can help you to maximize your time off court. Now bear with me I am going to relate things to tennis but everything will be transferable into your given sport. So I'm going to give you four tips that cover four key performance factors technical, tactical, physical and mental. If you can spend your time equally working on these things you're going to maximize your potential and it will help you to get better results when you return to the court or the pitch. So the first area that I'm going to cover is your technique and in my opinion it is the toughest area to develop when you don't have access to the court or the pitch. Purely because to develop your technique or to make any adjustments to your technique you need to hit lots and lots of balls with purpose. Now don't worry because the other three areas are actually going to be far more valuable to you in your time off court but there are some ways that you can develop your technique or your technical understanding when you're off court and the best way to do it is to think of one shot within your game that you would like to develop. Now hopefully if you've been playing a lot of tennis or competing in your sport for some period of time you'll understand your strengths and your weaknesses and know which parts of your game you need to develop. Now pick one of those areas in tennis it could be your return of serve for example. Head on to YouTube type in return of serve lessons and have a look through a number of different lessons. Now as you know if you've been on YouTube before and you've looked for tennis lessons there are hundreds out there. There are some good lessons there are some bad lessons. The key is to pick a few watch a few and find some of the tips that resonate with you. Once you've found two or three good videos on your given area let's use the return of serve as an example. Make a few notes about some of the things that resonate within your return of serve and areas that you'd like to develop. Just by watching these videos and having a better technical understanding is going to help you to develop your return of serve when you next get back on court. By physically writing notes on the video it's going to help it to sink in slightly more and if you can take those notes onto the tennis courts when you return it's going to help you to have a real focus and purpose to your practice sessions. So like I said working on your technique is very very tough to do when you're not on the tennis court however you can improve your technical understanding or your technical knowledge so that when you do return you're going to have a bit of a head start and remember there are some good videos and some bad videos out there so don't just watch one video on your chosen shot because it could be the wrong one for you. Watch a few and make your mind up yourself from the videos that you really like coaches that you know and respect and tutorials that resonate more with you and your game. So the second area that you can develop when you're at home is your tactical knowledge. This is slightly easier to develop at home although being on court is going to help you to try the tactics and to develop them into your game just by understanding them will help you massively when you return to the court. The best way to do this when you're at home is by watching competitive matches. Now it doesn't matter what standard that you're watching as long as it's your standard or higher. You don't really want to be watching players compete in your sport at a lower level because your aim is to progress. So whether you're watching professionals play or whether you're watching players that you aspire to play like in the next few years it's going to help you to develop your tactical knowledge. Now in tennis terms there's a few youtube channels out there who do showcase amateur tennis players competing. Depending on your level these might be the best matches for you to watch. Sometimes watching professional tennis players play can be slightly unrealistic to the way that we play in our club levels but watching players that are slightly better than us could be more realistic and can help to resonate more with your games and therefore help you to take those stepping stones to improve your tennis. There's a few tennis channels out there that I've subscribed to that are really good for showcasing these tennis players that are in between club level and professional level. Ian Westerman at Essential Tennis has recently started showcasing some matches with live commentary. I'll put the link to his channel in the description below. You've also got Mark Sansey who's been working with Ian at Essential Tennis who plays lots of matches on his channel too. Another channel which is great is called Dill Plays. Check out these guys channels if you want to see some real tennis matches to help you to develop your tactical knowledge. It's one thing watching these matches but to get more out of it and to make it more purposeful for your own game I would suggest charting the matches and when we talk about charting I'm talking about making notes while the match is happening. Quite often when you'll watch the pros play on television and to change events you'll see the stats come up you'll see the first serve percentage you'll see the average rally length all of these sorts of things that are really valuable to you watching the game. However what's going to help you in your tennis is to actually chart something that you want to develop. It could be that you're a doubles player and you're looking to improve your poaching skills at the net. Now if this is the case I would suggest watching some doubles matches and making notes on that one thing. Now there's a really good way of charting that I like to use when I watch my players out at tournaments and it's called C-D-I-E-W. All you need to do is write those letters at the top of a piece of paper and write the area that you're going to be charting. So in this case we're looking at poaching when at the net. Underneath each of the letters you're going to make a tally for each point where the given focus happens. So if we're looking at poaching at the net the C stands for could the player have poached. If the player could have poached you'll make a tally next to the C. If the player could have poached the next letter D is did the player poach. If they did you'll make another tally. I stands for was it in, E stands for was it effective and W stands for did it win the point. Now by the end of the match you'll start to get a big picture as to how often they had the opportunity to poach. Out of those opportunities how often did they poach and you'll see how many of those were in, how many of those were effective and how many won the point. Now when you look at the pros play actually the tally numbers will be quite similar. When they have an opportunity they capitalise on it, they make it in play, it's effective and it wins the point. However at our level it may be that when you have the opportunity to poach you only actually execute the shot 20% of the time and out of that 20% you only get 50% of those in and it goes further and further down the line. But just by the act of charting these matches it can help you to look out for these opportunities more and in my opinion it's a fantastic way of getting more out of watching tennis. If you want to learn a little bit more about match charting pop a comment below because I'm thinking about making a couple of videos on effective ways of charting and if you're a tennis parent it's a really good way to spend your time when you're watching your kids at tournaments. And alongside watching tennis matches if you're a football player then you can do the same thing. Watch a football match, chart it. It may be slightly different in the way that you choose to chart it but the key is to look at an area that you want to develop tactically and this can relate to any sports. So the third element that I'm going to cover is the physical element of your sport. In my opinion this is one of the most valuable areas to develop during your time off court. It's very easy when you can't play your sport to become a bit lazy and for your fitness levels to drop. However this is a great opportunity for you to get a head start against your opponents. Now any form of physical exercise is going to help you to maintain your current fitness but if you push yourself a little bit further you can actually progress your fitness. Now there's two elements of this. There's general fitness and sport specific fitness. Now if you want to get yourself generally fit depending on your sport going out for a run or going out for a bike ride is going to help you with your cardiovascular fitness. For us as tennis players or if you're a football player or a golfer or a rower whatever your sport might be there are specific ways that you can train for your sport when you're not able to physically play your sport. Now for tennis players a great way to train is instead of just going for a general jog change your jog into interval training. Try doing sprints followed by periods of rest. This way training in intervals you're able to train as you would play tennis. Tennis is full of short and sharp bursts followed by rests in between points so if you can train your body to deal with that high intensity followed by rest then it's going to help you when you get back to the tennis court. But to nail down into even more specifics you can build your own bespoke workouts by yourself. Now again this is something that I'm thinking about making a video of so if you'd like more information about building your own bespoke hit workouts then leave a comment below. But generally what you need to do as a tennis player and you can cross this over into any sport is you need to think about movements that you will use on the tennis court and put them into your workout. So for me as a tennis player I know that I need to have a strong lunge I need to have a strong squat because generally as tennis players we want to be in a low athletic position we want to have explosive leg strength. We also need to have a strong core because we have lots of rotational work when we play tennis. You could think about incorporating lunges, squats, Russian twists, footwork drills all of these things can be built into your workout. Plan the length of your workout if you're looking to work out for 15 minutes then you can think of 15 exercises. Now that could be five rounds of three exercises or three rounds of five exercises and each exercise you've got a minute. Now during that minute it could be that you do the exercise for 30 seconds with a 30 second rest. If you want to push yourself a bit further you could be doing the exercise for 40 seconds followed by a 20 second rest but it's important that you get that high intensity followed by rest to train you for tennis. It will be similar for football players as well. Any sports where there's high intensity followed by a period of rest high intensity interval training is great for. Try to tailor your workouts around what your sport requires. I have made a tennis specific hit workout and I'll put the link above here so you can check that out. And finally for the physical elements of your game outside of developing your strength, agility, speed, endurance all of these things for tennis players and all sports that involve a ball is developing your coordination and your motor skills. Now you can simply do this at home by doing things like learning to juggle. Anything that you do within your hit workout where you can incorporate some form of coordination is going to help massively. So for example when you're doing your lunges it could be that you're holding a football and in the lower part of your lung you're throwing that ball against the wall to receive it as a catch. Stand back up do the second lunge on the other side and throw the ball back against the wall. Any time you can relate the strength training into something specific to tennis is just going to maximize your progress. So try to consider adding some coordination and motor skills work into your physical workouts. So the final element that I'm going to cover is improving your mental skills. Now the mental side of tennis is quite often neglected but when you look at professional level it's what separates the top players in the world from the rest of the pack. They are able to perform their best tennis in the most pressurized situations. Now we can relate to that all the way down into club level or any competitive level. We all feel nerves and pressure in some situations. It could be that you're playing in your social mixing at the club and you're playing doubles and you're worried about missing your serve because you don't want to let your partner down. It could be that you're in the finals of the national championships and you've got a crowd of people watching. There are tons of different forms of pressure. If we can learn to understand the mental side of tennis slightly more it will help us to deal with these pressure situations a lot easier. And the best way to do this when you're off court is by reading books and listening to podcasts. There's tons of good content out there so explore. The nice thing about the mental side of tennis is there are tons of sports psychology books so you don't have to be specific to tennis when you're looking for books or looking for podcasts. But I'm going to give you three books that I would recommend for tennis players. The first one is The Inner Game of Tennis written by Timothy Galway. There's a really good simple equation within this book that goes like this. Your performance is equal to your potential minus any mental interference. What this equation simply means is the way that you play today is dictated by your potential and how much mental interference there is. If this is your potential and there is this much mental interference then this is how you're going to perform today. If this is your potential and there's no mental interference then you're able to play at your highest potential. When you play tennis or any other sport it's really important to minimize that mental interference. If there's other things going on in your head if you're stressed, if you're worried about what your partner thinks then that is going to lower your performance level. So the best thing that you can do to increase your performance is by trying to wipe that slate clean and focus purely on the moment. Forget what happened in the past. Forget that dodgy line call that your opponent did three points ago. Forget that shank that you hit on your back and in the last game. Focus on the here and now take each point as it comes and that way you'll be able to perform near to your potential. The second book that I would recommend is Winning Ugly and it's written by Brad Gilbert and Steve Jamison and this book basically explains that you don't have to play your best tennis to win matches and sometimes you've got to think outside of the box to get the win. It's just another great book to help you to understand a little bit more about the psychology of sports and tennis in particular. And the third book that I'd recommend is actually written by one of my mentors and a UK coach called Alistair Hyam and it's called Momentum, the Hidden Force in tennis. Now this book talks about how momentum swings can impact your results. It's very very rare that you'll go out onto court and everything goes right. Even when you're winning the first set six love quite often there will be a momentum swing allowing your opponent to regain a bit of momentum and get a couple of games back which can change the whole dynamic of the match. When thinking about momentum swings it kind of links back to minimizing mental interference. If the momentum is with you and you're doing really well in the match you want to keep that momentum by trying to minimize the amount of time in between points so that you can keep your tempo and to avoid your opponent from gaining any rhythm. On the flip side of this if the momentum is against you and your opponent's playing really really well and you're struggling to get your timing then actually taking a little bit more time in between points can help you to regain rhythm and almost take your opponent's rhythm away. Anyway those three books I would definitely recommend and if there's any books that you've read that you found interesting in sports psychology it doesn't need to be tennis pop a comment below and I'll check it out. To summarize the four points it's really about gaining knowledge in each of the areas, gaining more understanding of technique, understanding different patterns of play and how different players use their tactics by watching them compete. Learning a little bit more about the mental side of sport can also help all of this knowledge that you can accrue during your time off of the court will translate into your game when you're able to get back on it. For me I actually think that my tennis has improved more since being a coach than it ever did as a player. Learning in detail about the technique and learning more about tactics and the mental side of the game has given me a much stronger foundation so when I step onto the court even though I'm not as quick as I used to be and probably not as strong as I used to be when competing I understand the game a lot better so I'm able to outwit my opponents when I'm on court playing smarter tennis using better technique and being mentally stronger so definitely consider this in your sport. So I hope you found this video useful there is so much learning that you can do in your time when you're not able to play your sport and hopefully even when you are able to play your sport you'll dedicate some time to this side of your game. Of course we know that there's nothing like physical practice of your sport and actually competing however sometimes when we're limited with resources we can't get on court or we don't have enough time to get to our venue then hopefully these tips can help you to develop your game. If you found any other ways that have helped you to develop your game during lockdown or during your time off of the court let me know in the comments below especially if there's any books that you recommend or any good videos on YouTube. If you did enjoy this video and get something from it I'd really appreciate if you hit the like button and pop a comment below to let me know what you thought. Thanks again for watching and I hope to see you again soon take care.