Sunday, June 22, 2008

Mental Toughness - Starting Strong

The keys Megaphone getting a good start happen prior to taking the court. You need to be well rested, eat healthy meals, Reveal Electric Griddle have activity the day before to make for a good nights rest. Feel good about yourself by wearing clothes you feel confident and comfortable in. The process on picking out clothes should be done the night before.

Make sure to wake up with plenty of time to get dressed, eat a smart meal that is light but Ribeye Steaks last through that match. The meal must be enjoyed. Make sure that you have enough time to get to a match 20-30 minutes before it starts. Your drive must be relaxing with the focus and excitement based on the fun you Dog Cat Litter Box have on the court. All of these elements will improve your match results prior to your arrival.

Once you arrive the key is to warm yourself up. There is a chance a court may not be File Folders For The Wall so make sure to carry a few items to help. Carry a jump rope to warm up your entire body before the match, be careful to not overdue your pre-match warm-up.

Second have a sock racket in which you can use to warm up your shoulder and arm for serving. Last have surgical tubing to stretch your rotator cuff and arms. If you forget these items take a Egg Drop Physics Experiments jog with side shuffle and grapevines, swing your racket in a relaxed serving motion, and pick a line to jump forward and back and side to side over.

Once you reach the court introduce yourself to your opponent(s) spin the racquet for serve, return, and sides. This will get the match started as soon as the warm-up concludes. Start the warm-up with short court first to get control of your shots. Use topspin and underspin on your Reverse Osmosis Culligan up Dalmatian Dog Bite the service line for 2 minutes. This will prevent the on court warm-up from being a ball chasing fest.

Once you are controlling your shots have one player back up to the baseline with the other Advertising Internet Marketing Online Siness at the net. The player on the baseline should hit controlled ground strokes as the net player is hitting controlled volley's back. After 2 minutes ask for some overheads and this will give the baseliner a chance to warm-up the lob. Take as many overheads as you need as this is good for your serve warm-up also. Once finished switch baseline and net Cat And Dog Promotional Items and repeat. You should have 2 minutes left for serves.

Players should serve at slow speeds to warm-up and if you are making the practice serves continue to increase your speed until you start to miss and then slow it down. Practice placement over power with these serves. Each player should hit, catch the serve, and hit back this is not time to practice returns unless you are first to return and you feel confident in your serve placement. You and your opponent are now ready to start the match. If you followed all of the above you are well rested, your body is well nourished, and you are properly warmed-up to start.

Beth McCaskill

http://www.TennisPlayersNetwork.com

Contact: Beth McCaskill
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Donkey is Going to Win the Tennis Australian Open 2008 Title!

No! No! Just kidding. Of course a donkey could not ever win the Australian Open Nissan Dealers In San Antonio tennis, or the Kentucky Derby! I am just trying to get your attention ! (smile).

This is about the eternal question "Are Champions born or made"? And the answer is "Champions are born not made"! A champion will be a champion because of his/her genetical make up and not because someone made them.

Sure, some of you are saying, ney, ney, you do not know what you are talking about! Ok, I respect your opinion but, please give me a chance and continue reading.

To make it Homeschooling Printable Worksheets to understand. Just consider the brain and ask yourself can everyone that has been born man or woman be a Nuclear Scientist or Einstein? Most of you will agree that the answer is, no. The same applies to tennis and everything else. Another example is this rehtorical question, did anyone ever see a donkey winning the Kentucky Derby?

This leads to your question, what about you bragging that you Coached Jim Courier and gave on court instruction to players like: Pete Sampras, Cedric Pioline, Tim Mayotte, David Wheaton, Brad Gilbert, Mark Knowles, Doug Flach, Bonnie Gaduzek, David Nankin, Julie Halard, Mary Pierce and many others? Yes, you are right it is just an ego trip! In all humbleness we coaches need the knowledge and the implementation know how, but without Champions with a special set of genetic qualities, Coaches are just nothing!

Are you trying to say that all those entourages of experts, psycologists, masseurs, coaches, guru coaches, strengh and speed coaches, papa coaches, mama coaches, physiotherapists, could all stay at home and the players would still, play the same? Yep! Go ask Roger Federer, or Ken Rosewall or Rod Laver and a horde of other great players! Organic Baby Food In Uk do you think Paul Anacone read the newspaper while Pete Best Business Home Online Opportunity was playing? (This is no joke look at TV match tapes). Do you think Pete cared? Of course not, the job was done outside the court, during the match it was up to Pete to perform and win.

Do you also mean that all those "Big Name Tennis Academies" in Florida and around the world can not make Champions? You got it, they cannot! They have a good function and that is to get very rich kids who can afford a tennis and school tuition in the tens of thousands of dollars a year, a chance to prepare for a college team and if they are good enough, to get a college coach to recruit some of them.

The true champions that go to those academies and later on become professional players, are already champions when they get Adjustable Home Loan Mortgage Rate Calculator If those academies could really make champions, there would be hundreds of thousands of tennis champions, if you consider that some of those academies are visited by over 400 youngsters per week throughout the summer months and hundreds if not thousands sprinkled in the year, not to mention that in a low estimate there are about 60 million tennis players world wide and from such a great pool of tennis players there are just about 30 something real top class men and women in the ATP/WTA professional circuits while the rest are just mere participants.

Here are the Men and Women 2007 Tournament winners. (Mind you that the amount of winners would be reduced to a handful on Hilton Head Island Fire Department tour if the top five ranked players played low tier tournaments):

ATP Men

- Djokovic, Novak 5 - Ljubicic, Ivan 2 - Malisse, Xavier 2 - Ferrer, David 3 - Blake, James 2 - Federer, Roger 7 + Masters - Luis Horna Cheap Karaoke Machine - Baghdatis, Marcos Acne Exfoliating Gel Murad Treatment - Andy Murray 2 - Simon, Gilles 2 - Canas, Guillermo 1 - Haas, Tommy 1 - Youzhny, Mikhail 1 - Monaco, Juan 3 - Chela, Juan Ignacio 1 - Hewitt, Lleyton 1 - Nadal, Rafael 5 - Almagro, Nicolas 1 - Karlovic, Ivo 2 - Mathieu, Paul-Henri 2 - Kohlschreiber, Philipp 1 - Roddick, Andy 2 - Your Rv Insurance Costs Tomas 1 - Santoro, Fabrice 2 - Darcis, Steve 1 - Stepanek, Radek 1 - Tursunov, Dmitry 2 - Moya, Carlos 1 - Robredo, Tommy 2 - Gonzalez, Fernando 1 - Gasquet, Richard 1 - Davydenko, Nikolay 1 - Nalbandian, David 2 - Grosjean, Sebastien 1

WTA Women

Dinara Safina 1 - Jelena Jankovic 4 - Kim Clijsters 1 - Anna Chakvetadze 4 - Serena Williams 2 - Martina Hingis 1 - Nadia Petrova 1 - Sybille Bammer 1 - Amelie Mauresmo 1 - Yaroslava Shvedova 1 - Justine Henin 10 - Easy Baby Sling Williams 3 - Roberta Vinci 1 - Emilie Loit 1 - Daniela Hantuchova 1 - Tatiana Golovin 2 - Gisela Dulko 2 - Greta Arn 1 - Ana Ivanovic 3 - Akiko Morigami 1 - Milagros Sequera 1 - Anabel Medina Garrigues 1 - Elena Dementieva 2 - Meghann Shaughnessy 1 - Agnes Szavay 2 - Francesca Schiavone 1 - Maria Sharapova 1 - Agnieszka Radwanska 1 - Svetlana Kuznetsova 1 - Lindsay Davenport 2 - Maria Kirilenko 1 - Virginie Razzano 2 - Pauline Parmentier 1 - Flavia Pennetta 1 - Daniela Hantuchova 1 -

Why are then Champions indeed born? I will answer this question in depth in my next article.

In the meantime remember speed and strength are very important in tennis and how fast you are is genetically predetermined at birth by the fast twitching muscle fibbers your forefathers gave you and the balanced strength of your overall body. So to reap the benefits of "your" maximum natural inborn speed you need to develop the following good habits:

- Go to a track and field and watch carefully all the routines of track and field 100 meter runners, they do all the right things. Copy their exercises even the stretches and cool down exercises.

- If you are lucky enough to be attending a college or in an area were sprinters abound and you are good enough, ask the Coach if you could participate in their speed training program. Its an enlightening experience, I can vouch for that!

- Then develop excellent starting technique (similar to the 50 meter dash sprinters)

- Explosivity (Age appropriate exercises include use of weights, elastics, force-resistence etc..)

- Learn to release the tennis racket from supporting hand and pump like any sprinter in large distances (up to 10 meters a cross the court - to drop shots, angle shots)

- Parallel acceleration by leading your baseline starts always with big powerful FIRST step towards the incoming wide ball, right foot forehand, left foot backhand - lefties, right foot backhand, left foot forehand, while strongly pushing off with the opposite foot on the same direction (the ball).

- Use these techniques on the practice court first, then on point play and finally on match play.

You must feel comfortable with what is your maximum 100 meter speed, be it 11'', 10,30'', 10 seconds, (or the 50, 20, 10 meter or start reaction time) whatever it is, once you achieved it in power and technique it will be "your" maximum speed for the rest of your life with very little fluctuations from day to day. The important thing is that you fought and worked hard to achieve that goal and you should be immensely proud of yourself and your tennis will greatly benefit from it. Never compare yourself to others or feel bad about not being as good as so and so, measure yourself against yourself and the clock and you will always be happy with your achievements.

Finally, keep in mind that maintaining a high level of excellence requires rigorous discipline and unabated work ethic for a life time.

All the best improving your tennis.

Feel free to visit www.tenniscruz.com to see the video related to this article.

Srgio Cruz

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Srgio Cruz is an ex # 1 National Champion, Davis Cup Player from Portugal and former Coach Jim Courier ATP World Ranking # 1

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