Category: Training
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The Slice: The Shot Juniors Neglect (Until They Need It)
The slice is the most under-taught shot in junior tennis. Coaches spend 90% of lesson time on topspin groundstrokes, so most kids reach 14 with a slice that’s either nonexistent or a panicked chop. Then they play their first opponent who hits heavy, deep balls, and they discover — usually mid-match, usually painfully — that…
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The Serve: The Shot Your Kid Fully Controls
The serve is the only shot in tennis where nobody interferes with you. No opponent rushing you, no bad bounce, no surprises — just your kid, the ball, and the toss. That’s what makes it both the biggest opportunity and the biggest frustration in junior tennis. A reliable serve wins free points and holds games.…
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The Forehand: Your Kid’s Money Shot
If your kid only ever learns one shot properly, make it the forehand. It’s the stroke juniors hit more than any other — most kids will run around their backhand just to hit one. A reliable forehand keeps them in rallies, wins them points, and builds the confidence everything else grows from. A broken one…
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Footwork: The Invisible Stroke That Decides Everything
Here’s something most tennis parents learn too late: at every level of junior tennis, the kid with better strokes often loses to the kid with better feet. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your kid’s forehand is in a basket-fed drill. In a real rally, if they’re not in the right place at the right time,…
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The Backhand: The Shot That Decides Matches
Here’s a pattern you’ll see if you watch enough junior tennis: at 10, every kid runs around their backhand to hit forehands. At 14, the kids who are still doing it are losing — because their opponents figured out that the backhand side is where matches are won. The backhand doesn’t need to be a…
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The Tennis Parent’s Sleep Playbook: How Much Sleep by Age, Plus Tournament Travel Rules
You’ve read how sleep cycles work and what the research says. Now the practical part: the actual rules. How many hours does your kid need? What about the night before a big match? Naps — yes or no? And how do you survive tournament travel, where the hotel is noisy, the bed is weird, and…
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Sleep Is Your Junior’s Secret Weapon: What the Research Says About Rest and Performance
Every tennis parent has watched it happen: the kid who looks flat in a Saturday morning match after a late Friday night. Slow feet. Late on every ball. Missing shots they’d normally make in their sleep (ironic, since that’s the problem). We tend to treat that as a character issue — they need to “tough…
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Your Kid’s Sleep Cycle, Explained: What Happens in Those 90 Minutes
Here’s something nobody told us when our kids started playing serious tennis: the most important training session of the day might be the one that happens after they fall asleep. Every night, your kid’s brain and body run a recovery program. It runs in repeating cycles of about 90 minutes each — light sleep, deep…
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Sleep to Win: The Tournament Sleep Rules Nobody Tells Tennis Parents
Here’s the most underrated performance enhancer in junior tennis, and it’s completely free and completely legal: sleep. Not a new racquet. Not a private lesson. Sleep. Most tennis parents obsess over training hours and think about sleep never. Meanwhile the research keeps saying the same thing: well-rested kids react faster, decide better, get injured less,…
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The Flat-Hitter’s Cliff: Why Kids Who Win at 12 Disappear at 15
Every junior tournament has one. The kid who wins everything at twelve. Perfect timing, flat lasers off both wings, doesn’t miss. The parents of the kids he beats whisper about academies and sponsorships. Then at fifteen, he’s gone. Not injured — just… losing. Losing to kids he used to double-bagel. By sixteen he’s playing high…
