Beginner training plan
Your first lessonMy first lesson with a beginner is entirely about building trust, assessing natural athleticism, and instilling correct habits from day one, because bad habits formed early are the hardest to fix. I start with a brief conversation to understand the student's athletic background, goals, and any prior exposure to racket sports. From there, we move into footwork and body awareness before we even start hitting any balls. I use the "shadow swing" drill, mimicking a forehand and backhand without a ball so the student can feel the kinetic chain from the ground up. We then progress to hand-eye coordination work using self-feeding bounce-and-hit, where the student drops the ball and contacts it off the bounce. I focus heavily on the continental grip for volleys and eastern grip for groundstrokes from the very first session, because grip is the foundation of everything. By the end of lesson one, every student leaves knowing how to hold the racket correctly, how to split-step, and how to track the ball with their eyes, and not the racket.
Lesson 11+From lesson 11 onward, we enter what I call the "system phase" where the student begins developing their own game identity. Inspired by Karue Sell's coaching philosophy around building confidence through repetition of strength shots, I work with each student to identify their "go-to" ball, the shot they trust most under pressure, and we build patterns around it. We introduce live point play with constraints: for example, points where the student can only win by getting to the net, or where they must start every point with a crosscourt rally. This develops tactical IQ without overwhelming a beginner with too many decisions. Physically, we introduce on-court agility and split-step timing drills that mirror match movement. Mental toughness becomes a deliberate focus, I use a "reset routine" between points (a technique reinforced by my own junior competitive experience in Japan), where students practice walking to the baseline with intention and breathing before each serve. The goal by this stage is a student who can not only play tennis, but who thinks like a tennis player.
