How to take a tennis lesson
There is an art to being a student.
First of all, you have to want to get out of bed on a rainy morning to drive to Connecticut in hopes of fixing your forehand. It would have been easier to order pancakes to our apartment, but we ventured out to New Canaan for the day, fighting the traffic to escape the city and head into what my fiancé likes to call the country. The country, for her, is anything without skyscrapers or direct access to a Channel.
We started our day at a place called CFCF, which I now rank as the best coffee in America, and potentially beyond, because I ordered a Kyoto cold brew, and I am pretty sure that if you transported me to Japan, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. On these road trips, I used to drink Starbucks because I was convinced I knew everything. However, one day, I realized that if I didn’t want continuous heartburn and underwhelming coffee experiences, I would have to admit I didn’t.
And that is step one, admit you are taking a tennis lesson because you want to learn something.
I have always considered my forehand a positive in my tennis game until recently. I started watching myself on film more and noticed something looked weird. I also began to have a pain in my arm, which I knew was creeping up on me little by little. Finally, although the forehand was a weapon at times, it was also the most likely stroke to break down in a match. More often than not, in a match, I would shank a routine forehand, and there would be no understanding why.
That was the objective. Step two is to have a clear purpose and reason for going to the lesson. But really, that’s step two A, step two B is communicating that objective to the coach. You want to give the coach just enough to work with without crushing their creativity with too much information. Remember, you are there for their analysis, not your own.
When we stepped onto the court, I told Marcus, “I am confident with my forehand. In fact, I favor it, but it occasionally breaks down and becomes erratic. I am looking for more consistency and a way to troubleshoot it when things are going wrong.”
Within just ten minutes of hitting, Marcus brought me back to the net and gave me an analysis. Like a doctor or a mechanic, it is now your job to listen and connect the dots. Marcus told me my spacing was off, and my elbow was too close to my body, which resulted in a swing that relied too heavily on my arm. He then pointed to the exact part of my arm that was beginning to hurt, which I had never mentioned to him.
A dot was connected. An epiphany was born. A click occurred in my brain, and for the remainder of the lesson, I extended my elbow away from my body and executed my forehands pain-free.
My advice for being a good tennis student is to be motivated to attend because you genuinely want to learn something specific. Have a purpose, communicate that purpose, and then listen.