 Hello and welcome. My name is Philipp Halfmann and I'm the Director of Exercise and Sports Science at the IAWAPH and I'm also the author of Advanced Concepts of Strengths and Conditioning for Tennis. In last week's episode I was talking about why the USTA President John W. Gosin is wrong about the reasons for the decline of US tennis. So in this week's episode I'll share my opinions on how to improve it. This is a very, very complex issue so I'll be focusing on three main points, players, coaches, and the National Association, the USTA. So one of the main questions is who is actually responsible for the current state of US tennis? As I said it's very, very complex but there are the three entities that are playing an important role, coaches, players, and the USTA. So the coaches play a very important role because they're responsible for the development of the athletes with regards to stroke production, physical fitness, mental toughness. Players are obviously important because they are the ones that actually have to do it so their desire for success is ultimately the important factor. The coaches can only help the athletes get there, meaning get to success. They can help them prepare them for it but the athletes have to do it themselves. This is very, very important and just to make a point you can compare it with a doctor and helping you with the delivery of a baby. So when you're praying and you're about to give birth the doctor is actually helping you to deliver the baby but he cannot deliver it for you. You have to be pushing it out so you have to do the work, same in tennis. Now the National Association, the USTA, it's their responsibility to provide a framework for example tournaments and financial resources for the players so that they can actually pursue a career in tennis. Now other players. Well players perspective it's also really important that they have desire to be successful and that is not really influenced by where they're from. So it doesn't mean you have to be poor nor do you have a necessity that you're from Eastern Europe in order to have success. So one prime example that proves the opposite is obviously Roger Federer who is from Switzerland which is a fairly wealthy country, has parents of pharmacists so not necessarily poor and is doing pretty well one would assume. So you don't have to be poor and from Eastern Europe or South America in order to have success. But it's a matter of character of the player. So they have to work hard, they have to deal with disappointments, they have to keep going and they have to have the willingness to work hard to improve their deficiencies. When you look at the top guys like Nadal and Jokovic, they work extremely hard. They also work extremely hard on the things they are not doing well. For example you look at Nadal and his surf. When he started out his surf was really a liability, it really was not a threat at all. But he kept working on it, he improved, he even changed the grip, he changed the motion. So they tweaked it here and there and now it's not so much of a liability no more. So that is really important. The willingness to improve the things you are not doing well and that has to do with character. And they practice until they got it, sometimes five hours. So that is this mental discipline that the players need to have in order to make it. Not everybody has it. Also players are different, like Nadal is different from Jokovic and Jokovic is different from Federa and so it is important to connect with the player and to really try to get them to perform at their best. And everybody is different, has their own strengths and weaknesses but ultimately it is the athlete's desire for success that really determines about success and failure. Because as I mentioned before coaches can only help them get there but the athlete has to make it happen and so a lot of character and discipline is required to actually achieve it. So next I want to talk about coaches. Coaches play a very important role because they are responsible for teaching the players the tools to be successful therefore it would make sense to have the best coaches available just like Harvard provides their students with the best professors available or some of the best professors available. So who is actually a good coach? Well my definition of a great coach is someone who can continuously develop the athletes without causing injury. That is very very important because the best athletes are the ones that are healthy. So health is important because it also plays a factor in longevity which obviously is important in order to have a successful career. Okay so what are the areas of expertise that are important in order to continuously develop players without injuring them? Well we have stroke production, we have anatomy, we have excess virology, we have kinesiology, we have sports nutrition and we have sports psychology. So stroke production is obviously important because the more options a player has meaning slicing, spin, first or second serve, the more options the player has or the more stroke server the player knows the more options he has. Anatomy is important because coaches need to know how the body is designed. Wouldn't you think that that is helpful? Exercise physiology is important because it teaches you what is going on inside the body during exercise, while you play, while you have a match, while you have training, what is going on inside. So I would think that is very very important because it also lets you know with regards to energy systems and so forth how to improve it and so just to name a few things. Then kinesiology is basically the interaction of the bones and the muscles so basically wouldn't it be of importance for coaches to know which muscle causes what movement. So if you know this type of stuff then you can prevent injuries from occurring or you know if somebody compensates for something if you actually know which muscle causes what movement. Sports nutrition is important because it helps the athlete to regenerate, to get enough energy for play and practice and so that obviously plays an important role as well in the development of athletes. Sports psychology is also very important because the athletes are in pressure situations, they have to deal with disappointments, things like that and you as a coach need to find a way how to connect with your athlete and help them out to get better. So that's why these things are important. So how many coaches, especially how many tennis coaches do you think actually know this kind of stuff? And how many have actually proof of competency? Again if we take the Harvard example, if you want to become a professor at Harvard you need to show proof of competency usually in the form of a college degree, a master's or a PhD. So does that mean that everybody who has a master's degree or PhD is a genius and people who don't have it are idiots? Well certainly not. But proof of competency is desirable for the best coaches. Now in order to have success it is important for the respective coaches, let's say the tennis coaches, the strength conditioning coaches, the athletic trainers, the sports psychologist, the sports nutritionist to all work well together. Oftentimes though this is not the case and oftentimes egos are getting in the way. So even though you have all these coaches available in reality everybody is doing their own thing instead of working together synergistically in order to get the best results. Okay the final point I want to talk about is the National Association, the USTA and what they can do or maybe do a little bit better in order to help the players in the US. One thing that really comes to mind is the amount of tournaments that are available in America. America is a very large country and you have to travel huge distances to go to tournaments from A to B. For example in January in America you have four futures in Florida and then what? Then there isn't much happening, then you have to wait and then there are actually four more futures in Texas. But when you actually compare who is actually playing the tournaments in Florida and then from those guys who played in Florida who is going to Texas to play you'll find out the number of players is very very small and that has to do with the expenses involved, traveling, airfare, so forth. So there are countries in Europe for example in Turkey they have 12 futures in a row. So for three months you can play tournaments. Every weekend you can play a tournament and they're all close together so you actually save money traveling. So my suggestion would be why not have 20 tournaments in Florida? 20 tournaments in California or got nowhere. So per state though so the traveling is not so much of an issue and athletes must be able to compete on a regular basis in order to get better in order to earn points in order to develop. So the USTA must provide much more tournaments so that the athletes can actually do this without having to spend so much money. That's for example one reason why the athletes in Europe have such an advantage. If you're in Europe buy a car within eight hours you're anywhere. You know you can drive from Spain to Croatia and so you know it's much easier for people or for players in Europe to play all the time. Now it's not so expensive again you can do most of the tournaments by car or as I said with the example in Turkey you take a flight over there and you can stay there for three months and you stay in a five star hotel it's really cheap it's nice so you know people go and play and that's really one big advantage and I think the USTA has the chance to do the same thing in America. I mean there are great places in America to play tennis California and Florida you can play year-round so there are these options available for improvement for sure. The other thing is the financial resources the USTA has to provide for players so it is very expensive to travel so as I just mentioned with offering more tournaments the cost can actually be brought down but also it's important to give the players you know contracts so that they have some security but also the funds available and so they also need to have some form of self-input you know what tournaments they want to play what they want to do certain things because it's also helpful with regards to to confidence the self-confidence when they can set certain goals go out and achieve them it's helpful to them so everybody really wins so providing the financial backing for a certain amount of players so that they actually can pursue the career in tennis is very very important and we're talking about probably like hundred thousand dollars a year per player you know for four or five years that they can actually you know do it and have a good chance of getting there and so that those are just a couple of things from the USTA's perspective that I think could be could be done better and it would benefit a whole a whole range of people and also if it's objective criteria then there is no no favoritism and people will feel that it's it's fair and so I think those were valuable aspects that the USTA should maybe put into consideration and maybe they will well that's it again for today's episode as usual opinions differ what's your point of view let us know below in the comment section a brand new episode will be available next Sunday so make sure you don't miss it and subscribe in the meantime I recommend you watch some of the previous episodes you should really watch them all if you like what you saw tell your friends I'm sure they will appreciate it I'm Philip Hoffmann thank you for watching and auf Wiedersehen. 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