17 Coaching Tips Every Junior Tennis Coach Needs

But the first one I've got is, you know, make sure that you're there early.

Now that doesn't need to be 20 minutes early.

I've got here 10 minutes early and I will say to coaches, I'll take five minutes, right? So if you're five minutes early, at least you're there on the court for when people are arriving.

There's nothing worse than when coaches are arriving on the court and the kids are already there.

The clock has already gone over the, you know, it's already, the lesson time has started.

So, you know, be five to 10 minutes early.

That gives you a chance to, you know, set up your equipment and, you know, just simply be ready.

Have your drink ready, have everything ready for your shift.

But for that first lesson, be on court, you know, 10 minutes before ideally.

When you're on court, you're going to need your, You're gonna need your cones, you're gonna need any coaching aids you might use, whether you're using ladders or specific targets, or maybe it's a different coaching aid like the ACE Trainer or soccer ball, or look, the list goes on.

Depending on what lesson you're doing, your coaching aids will vary.

But what you definitely need is what we call cheese sticks, which are basically those little small plastic or little rubber strips.

They're really important because that's important for safety.

So you need to have your four cheese sticks.

Most of our classes are four kids.

You need four cheese sticks to spread the kids out.

Because as I say to the coaches, what's gonna happen is the kids get excited, they get too close to each other, and then there's a risk of someone getting smacked by a racket.

So, cheese sticks are important to just make sure they've got that distance from each other.

Don't be saying, oh, look, just make sure you're a metre apart.

That's not gonna work in kid land.

you need to have the cheese stick there that is a meter apart or two meters apart.