How to Help Players Boost Intensity in Practice

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Hi. This is Dr. Patrick Cohn with another episode of the Tennis Psychology Podcast. Today I have a special guest on the show. His name is Ian Westerman. He's a USPTA certified teaching professional, and he's also the host of the Essential Tennis Podcast, where He enjoys number one on iTunes right now, which is really great. So it's one of the most popular podcasts out there. I encourage you to go and subscribe and check out. He's got all sorts of experts on the mental game, the physical game, equipment, strategy, everything you can imagine. And you can also check it out at his website@every essentialtennis.com Ian, thanks for joining me today.

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Hey, Dr. Cohn, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be back on your show again and really looking forward to answering some more questions from your audience.

Well, great. You know, I get my questions often from a survey. Some people will write in, but I have a survey that people fill out. They go from my website and go right to a survey. So I don't have the names. We can't personalize it like we do in your podcast.

We'll make up some names. How about Jim and Sally?

Okay, great. So here's a coach that wants to know a little bit more about how to help players, I guess, invest themselves during practice. So the question is, how can I get my players to invest themselves during practice and not just go through the motion to do the drills, you know, and that's a really, really great question because how many players out there just, I'm talking about, you know, good players that are out there maybe practicing three, four times a week where it gets a little stale, it gets a little bit boring for them. And often that can cause them to just kind of be there and go through the motions. And instead of, you know, one of the things I'm trying to do with my daughter is to get her to go out there and have a couple of goals, you know, get fired up, improve yourself in practice. And because that's where you need to improve, rather than just go out, oh, let's just go out and have fun and go through the motions today. So how can you get help players invest themselves more during a practice session?

Well, that's. Yeah, that's a really tough question, I feel, because everybody's different. Everybody who's on the court is going to be a little bit different in their personality and their motivations. And I feel like that's really what we're talking about here, is motivations, getting somebody motivated. And some players, whether it be juniors or adults, it doesn't matter. Some players are going to be very, very internally motivated and fired up. And they just, you know, they have a passion for the game, they have a passion for the sport. They love being there. And every ball you hit to them or their partner or opponent hits to them, they just run 110% and it's great. Right? And if every student was like that, and for you as well, I'm sure, you know, your clients and students, Dr. Con, if every student was like that, our jobs would just be way too easy, right?

Yeah. What do you think? Rewards, if it's a motivational thing, do you think, depending on the age of the. Of the players, do you think rewards are appropriate to get them into? Okay, you know, whoever wins this, this, you know, running drill or something along that line is going to get, you know, doesn't have to pick up balls today or something. I mean, are those things going to help people be more invested in the practice?

I think that that can definitely work. Again, as I said before, I think it depends on each individual person's personality. Like, for me, I respond to that type of challenge really, really positively. Other players, whether it be juniors or adults, will really shy away from that, and they don't really have that competitive fire and they won't really want to rise to the challenge. It might even have the opposite result. Again, it totally depends on the individual player, but that can work. I think what's much more powerful than that, in my opinion, is just showing them how they can really enjoy it and love it. Basically. Be a positive role model, you know, out there, Be an encourager. Always be there for them. When you yourself are on the court in that kind of coaching role, you know, be enthusiastic if you're maybe demoing something and, you know, showing maybe how to hit a stroke or maybe you're playing in. During a competitive drill, just model. I think modeling for them what you expect is really powerful. And it's something that, in my experience, I've rarely seen coaches do that. They're. And, you know, I, I understand, I used to be that, you know, eight or ten hours on court per Day kind of teaching pro. And it can be really hard to keep your own energy and enthusiasm level up. But personally, I think that's the best way to really kind of infuse enthusiasm and motivation into your students is by being a positive kind of role model for them and show them how to do it.

Yeah, great idea. As opposed to telling them, hey, yes, you're loafing, you're. And yelling at them, you know, and. And try and trying to cajole them, you know, that way, I don't think is going to work.

Yeah, and that's. That's just a classic. We. We've all had those coaches and those teachers before that, you know, they talk the talk, and they're, you know, great at barking out orders and telling you when you screw up, but there's none of the positive reinforcement side of things. And I think it's really hard for students, especially kids, probably, to respect, you know, an authority figure who's like that. And if you can just model what you're looking for just a little bit, I think it goes a really, really long way in motivating your students.

Yeah. What do you think about this idea? I think a player has to come to practice already with a notion that why they're going to practice, why they're doing what they're doing. My good friend and mentor Ken Revizza said athletes have to know why they're doing what they're doing. They have to understand what's motivating and what's driving them. So. So I feel like players have to go with a goal to improve, to get better, to be ready to give 100%, to be ready to focus on a couple of goals in practice so that it can kind of modify and direct their attention to what is it that I'm doing today, how am I going to improve, what is it I need to work on? What do you think about that? The attitude that the player takes into practice but being very important.

Well, I totally agree. And I think the coach or the teaching pro or whoever we're talking about here bears a lot of responsibility on that as well. When I open up one of my clinics, I teach clinics to fans of my website, the very first thing we do is we walk out on the court and I set expectations high immediately. Before we do any warming up or hitting any balls, I get everybody together and I say, listen, you know, over the next two or three days or whatever, we're gonna work really hard. You know, I expect you guys to give a hundred percent out here. And when you do that. You're gonna get the most out of your time here. You're gonna improve the fastest and learn the most. If you listen carefully, you know, when I talk, nobody else is talking. When I. When I give you an assignment, you know, you hustle and you run for every ball, you know, etc. Etc. So I think that there's obviously some responsibility on the part of the student to come with hopefully a good, solid, positive attitude like that. But I also feel like a lot of teaching pros don't do their part to set the expectations, to set them high enough, and just to set them in general at the beginning of a lesson or a clinic or a drill.

And then reward them for that effort and being invested, you know, mentally and physically invested in the practice.

Yeah. And I'm curious on youryour feedback on this, Dr. Cohen. I've heard quoted a couple different times that in general, psychologists have found that positive reinforcement works much better than negative. Like somebody screws up, no, that's terrible. Or they didn't run for a ball. Oh, you're so lazy. As opposed to, you know, the flip side, when they do run for a ball, oh, great job. There's a good hustle who didn't quite get there, but that's what I want to see. Is that true? What I've heard, Absolutely.

You know, the Positive Coaching alliance who we work with at the the Ultimate Sports parent radio show, we've had them on several times and they say, I think their ratio is 5 to 1. I don't know if that's exact. Maybe even higher than that. Maybe six to one. They say five to one. Positive reinforcement to one. Correction, I think, is their ratio at least five to one. So that's what they suggest. If you want to modify behavior, the best way to do it is to encourage people and give them positive reinforcement for the behaviors that you're seeing them do. Well, absolutely. That's the most powerful, interesting.

And I would venture to say that the majority of teaching pros and like high school coaches out there, you know, I'd say the. Based on my experience, if they're even, they're probably doing pretty well. And, you know, not to, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm talking bad about, you know, coaches and pros in general, but I think that's kind of a. Just a general misconception or maybe a style, you know, issue that teachers tend to especially probably athletic or like sports type teachers or coaches. I think we probably as a group kind of have that a little bit backwards.

So it's Ian Westerman. You can find him at essential tennis.com and be certain to subscribe to his podcast on itunes. It's the Essential Tennis Podcast. Great branding there, Ian. Thanks a lot.

Hey, thanks very much, Dr. Cone. Great to be on your show.

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