After a summer of tournaments and with a new school year starting, I always take the time to reassess the year that was and plan the coming year.
These are the steps I follow:
- Review last year’s goals and set new ones.
- Plan a tournament schedule for up to six months.
- Set a weekly schedule to support the goals and tournament schedule.
- Review plan with coach.
Review last year’s goals and set new ones.
Goal setting can seem like a drag and most kids don’t see the value in it – until they look back and see what they have achieved (or haven’t achieved) and why.
I set two types of goals for my kids.
- Outcomes based goals – these are things like a UTR or WTN goal, a ranking goal, a match play goal etc. We set tennis and school goals here too and write down at least four things they want to achieve for the year. These don’t have to be limited to tennis - one of my kids wants to read fifty books this year.
I tend to revisit these goals quarterly. This is the template I use:
- Smart goals – these are specific, measurable, tennis focused goals. They take longer to set up and need to be revisited and assessed more regularly, but they can really help to target effort. I also often do a general performance evaluation as part of this. It’s a good way to check that everyone in the team is on the same page. Here are a couple of excerpts from the template I use:
Plan a tournament schedule for up to six months.
Once you have set some goals for the year, you can plan your tournament schedule around them. For example, if you want to improve your ITF junior ranking, you will prioritise junior ITFs.
If you have the goal of changing something major technically, you might start off with a solid training block, then a local tournament before heading into tougher ones.
Make sure you include rest periods and training blocks and take into consideration key events, especially ones where you need to travel, and school holidays.
This is an excerpt of what my calendar looks like:
Set a weekly schedule to support the goals and tournament schedule.
Now you have your goals and tournament schedule set, time to focus on how you are going to make it all happen on a day-to-day basis. This schedule will include all the activities your kid does during the week including school.
Don’t forget to consider what they do at school too. For example, my kids do S&C at school and sport on Friday afternoons. No sense in planning an S&C session if they’ve already done one or a huge training session after they’ve spent all afternoon playing sport.
Here’s what one of my kid’s schedules looks like:
Review plan with coach.
There’s no point doing all this work if your coach isn’t on board. I make an appointment with my kids’ coach at the start of the year and bring all this along. It’s worth the cost of a lesson to sit down and hear the coach’s view and their plans for your kid. (It also ensures they have a plan!)
After this session I usually end up adjusting my schedules and plans accordingly.
But don’t expect the coach to do the plan for you. They don’t have time to do it for each of their students, but if you do have any specific questions, they should answer those and make sure you are on the right track with your planning.
This session is also a good time to air any issues you might have or differences in direction/opinion. I don’t agree with my kids coach on everything, but he does listen. He does take the time to explain his perspective and he seems genuinely interested in mine. Then we compromise.
This is the process I go through every year to help set up the best chance for tennis success. It works for me, but if you have a different process, I’d love to hear about it. Feel free to share in the comments.
Also, if you would like to download any of the templates I have shown in this blog, you can do so by clicking here, then by clicking "File" ---> "Download".
By Anonymous Tennis Parent.