TennisSpeed visits Europe-Part 1

March has been an interesting time for me as I traveled across the Atlantic for the first time without my “boss” and children for companionship and translation.

I was invited to make a presentation about our work with the SpeedChain in tennis at a special, one day seminar (on March 1st) exploring the frontiers of high-performance tennis development that was organized by the Tennis Education Group based in Palma de Mallorca, Spain (yes, that Mallorca that’s home to Carlos Moya and Rafael Nadal).

Tennis Education Group is the brainchild of Spanish Federation Coach, Jofre Porta, whose mission is to help bring to light the best and most advanced methods, concepts and techniques involved in training and developing world-class tennis players. Jofre also founded his own tennis academy based in Palma de Mallorca together with Moya called Global Tennis Team.

For those of you who don’t know who Jofre Porta is, he has already had a remarkably successful coaching career, as he is the man who coached Carlos Moya from the juniors to becoming the French Open Champion in 1998, all the way to helping Moya become the #1 player in the world in 1999. Jofre also played a critical role in coaching Rafael Nadal in his formative years (between the ages 8 to 17). Jofre was in charge of helping Nadal getting established on the right foot as a professional (he appears in the "No Strings" episode featuring Nadal), and even today, although he no longer travels very much on the tour, he continues to coach Moya from behind the scenes from their academy in Mallorca.

IMHO, Jofre is one of the best, if not the best tennis coach on the planet without question. His knowledge, wisdom and experience are virtually unmatched…
The combination of his intelligence, intensity, creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, honesty and passion for the game, and his genuine interest and concern for the well-being of his players separates him from the other, perhaps more “famous” coaches at the pro level.

Let’s put it to you this way, how many other coaches do you know have taken not just one, but two players all the way from the juniors to Grand Slam Champion? I cannot think of anyone but Jofre who has accomplished this incredible feat in recent memory…

Being Jofre’s guest at his academy gave me the opportunity to see his coaching philosophies and methodology in action on a daily basis. And what I saw I can only really describe in these terms: it was as if I was looking into a crystal ball and seeing what the sport would look like, say, 5 to 7 years in the future. Jofre is training his players to play the sport of the future, not the past like it’s done in most tennis nations, including ours.

It’s not that you wouldn’t recognize existing or established drills and training exercises in their training system—it’s how they are integrated and executed in the context of Jofre’s vision of the tennis of the future that was nothing short of well, genius. Add to that mix Jofre’s own unending curiosity, creativity and openness to new ideas—he is constantly searching for any and all ideas that will help his players develop the skills necessary to compete at the sport’s highest levels—and he and his team have developed novel drills and exercises, on and off-court that exist nowhere but at Global Tennis.

And now, the SpeedChain is in the process of being integrated into the “Global System”, as the SpeedChain training device and training methodology fits seamlessly into one of the most fundamental training principles and goals of Porta’s vision of high-performance tennis: to maximize a player’s capacity to generate speed, acceleration and power in all facets of their physical game.

Jofre told me that the SpeedChain will enable him to break through many of the existing barriers and limitations of current training and conditioning methods and he sees the benefits of training of the SpeedChain extending well beyond increasing a player’s speed and power to helping train and develop, among other things, an athlete’s kinesthetic sense, proprioceptive capacity, balance, coordination, anaerobic fitness and other fundamental athletic skills and attributes.

Anyway, it was a fantastic stay for me at Global Tennis…

There were many hours of stimulating discussion with the coaching team at Global as well as with the other speakers invited to the seminar (including a leading Spanish exercise physiologist, and one of Spain’s leading sports psychologists, as well as Jofre and his head physical trainer, Pedro Zierof), and it was truly a privilege to be a part of what's happening at the “cutting edge” of tennis coaching and training.

What I learned in those 6 short days in Palma has fundamentally changed many of my own ideas about coaching tennis, and how to train and develop a high-performance player. (We’ll get into the details of those changes in future posts). The open exchange of ideas and knowledge between everyone was something that I will remember for a very long time, especially considering the “culture of secrecy” that generally prevails at the highest levels of the sport.

And, you can’t imagine how honored I felt to have Jofre tell me that I would always be welcome in the world of Global Tennis.

More stories, photos, and info from Europe to come…

TTFN!

2007 ITA Convention Impressions

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of making a presentation about what we’ve being doing with the SpeedChain to about 100 college tennis coaches at their annual convention (“2007 ITA Coaches Convention”) in Naples, Florida (12/14 to 12/17/07).

First, I want to thank all of the coaches who attended the presentation, and I hope that we were able to provide them with some new and useful information regarding how to increase the overall performance level of their players.

Second, I want to express how grateful I am to the person who has been the greatest supporter of the SpeedChain and TennisSpeed, and who is a true legend among modern American tennis coaches, the one and only Greg “The General” Patton (former USTA National Coach, Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame member and currently Head Men’s Tennis Coach at Boise State University). Our presentation would not have ever happened if not for all of Greg’s help in getting TennisSpeed get off of the ground.

Third, I want to say thank you for all the support given to TennisSpeed over the past two seasons by our 4 collegiate early adopters of the SpeedChain:

Boise State Men’s Tennis (Head Coach Greg Patton)

UCLA Men’s Tennis (Head Coach Billy Martin)

Colorado Women’s Tennis (Head Coach Nicole Kenneally)

Syracuse Women’s Tennis (Head Coach Luke Jensen)

Overall, I thought that the presentation at the convention went quite well (I am thankful that I have had some experience speaking in public in front of larger audiences—that turned out to be one upside of my whole academic science experience), and the I think our message was well-received by the coaches who attended. And, we also received a wide range of very interesting and challenging questions from the coaches regarding the SpeedChain training concept, and our findings from our various pro, collegiate and junior early adopters.

From the TennisSpeed side, what was especially interesting was that we learned who among today’s college coaches are the great “seekers” of advanced (coaching) knowledge and who want to learn the most cutting-edge ideas and methods to help their players find their highest level. Not surprisingly, most of these coaches lead programs that have been very consistently successful season after season.

Alongside our presentation, there were also a number of other interesting talks and on-court clinics given by various experts in the American tennis community at the Convention, including one by celebrated American coach Nick Bolletieri, but the one presentation that stood out in my mind was the featured on-court clinic led by former Top-5 player, Todd Martin on Saturday afternoon (December 15th).

“Coach” Martin’s clinic was essentially a one-hour primer on how to be successful in singles at the pro level. The ideas that Martin presented were indeed fascinating and enlightening, and for many coaches there, counter-intuitive. When you compare Martin’s “4 skills” to the kinds of tactical ideas that are commonplace in today’s collegiate and junior game in the US, the way to be a successful tour pro is almost 180 degrees opposite from the prevailing “Big Strike/First Strike” philosophy so widely held in American tennis at the high-performance level.

Martin’s clinic was titled “Taking it to the next level: 4 skills necessary to transition from college to pro tennis.” Effectively, Martin summarized the four core tactical adjustments (taught to him by former top-10 player, Jose Higueras) he had to make in order to improve his chances to succeed on the tour after two years as an All-American at Northwestern University.

I created a written summary of the ideas that Martin presented over the course of his scheduled hour and you can email me at speedmaster [at] tennisspeed [dot] com if you’re interested in getting a copy (it’s a PDF file, FYI).

Oh, I thought I would close out this post by mentioning this recent development for us here at TennisSpeed…

TennisSpeed has been invited to give a technical presentation about our work with the SpeedChain to the newly-formed Tennis Education Group (TEG) based in Spain (yes, that Spain with the 12 pros ranked in the ATP Top 100) sometime in February 2008.

What’s really exciting about this opportunity is that many of the top federation coaches in Spain are already involved in this new venture (spearheaded by Jofre Porta (who coached Carlos Moya to ATP #1) and Pedro Zierof (one of the top physical trainers in Spanish tennis)), and TennisSpeed is honored to have the opportunity to speak alongside these luminaries of Spanish tennis.

Until next time, TTFN!