I recently worked with a student who had the most puzzling problem.
She told me she was winning matches at the 3.0 level but losing quite a bit at 3.5. And when I watched her warm up, I honestly couldn’t see how that was possible.
Her swings looked long, confident, and athletic. She had the technical foundation to play at a much higher level than 3.5.
But then we started playing points together, and everything suddenly made sense.
All of a sudden her swings started looking really short and tense and careful. Her swing speed just kind of fell off a cliff. Everything dropped a level lower, and I could tell she just wasn’t able to use the athleticism that she actually has during points.
Does this sound familiar?
Because this is a problem that tons of tennis players have. You can hit confident, aggressive shots during warmup or practice, but when it comes time to play actual points, your intensity drops and you start playing it safe.
Let me show you why this happens and exactly how to fix it.
In my experience, tennis players drop in intensity and level during real point play for three main reasons.
Reason number one is a fear of losing by beating themselves. So tennis players slow down and be careful to make sure they don’t make a mistake.
The second big reason is a lack of understanding of how to keep the ball in play. They don’t understand the technical dials to turn to adjust their shots and keep the ball inside the lines without reverting to slowing down and being more tentative.
The third big reason is poor awareness of their intensity and swing speed.
I know that sounds kind of crazy. How could a player not know how intense they’re actually moving their body? But in my experience, there’s very low awareness of this.
And that’s the first thing I wanted to focus on with this student.
Step One: Feel Full Intensity
To start her training, I asked her to hit a series of balls on her forehand side as hard as she possibly could. Full intensity. Max racket head speed.
And the transformation was dramatic.
All of a sudden her racket was moving super freely and long. She was following through all the way. She looked really confident. And of course she missed some of these because I was encouraging her to try to hit as hard as she could.
But here’s what was incredible. She made some too.
Even though she was swinging at full effort, a bunch of these went in the court. She has enough technical foundation to actually hit the ball quite hard and keep it in play. She just doesn’t have the ability to maintain it at a consistent and confident level during real match play.
This first step is critical because now she could feel and understand what a full intensity, full effort swing was like.
Step Two: Find Your Six or Seven
Next, I asked her to dial down just a little bit and target a six or a seven out of ten on the intensity scale.
These swings still looked confident, but she was making a lot more of them now. It was a dramatically better shot than what she was hitting against me in points, but without spraying the ball all over the place.
I gave her a lot of feedback during this. That’s a six. That’s a seven. I like that. And when she missed, I encouraged her not to slow down. Instead, I’d say things like that felt like seven or eight to me, bring it back to six again.
Notice what I was doing here. I was detaching the miss as being the primary focus. Instead of focusing all her effort and intensity on just not missing the shot, I was encouraging her to focus on tempo.
We were optimizing for tempo, not just making shots.
You’re going to reach a point in your tennis career where you have to do that. Where you’ve got to remove the making of the shot as your primary focus so you can improve and develop and create better tools and better habits in your game.
Step Three: Add A Target Zone
Once my student demonstrated the ability to hang out at a six or seven out of ten, we progressed and added a little bit more challenge by giving her a target zone.
We created a target area between the service line and the baseline crosscourt using cones and baskets. Her goal now was to have a target while also managing her tempo.
The tempo was still the primary focus, but we also wanted her to start demonstrating an ability to put the ball in a certain spot on the court.
We were shooting for five in a row. And as she started to make some misses but manage her tempo well, I realized she needed some additional information or tools to be able to adjust and keep the ball in play without slowing down.
There are two technical dials you can turn to keep any ball in play no matter how hard you hit it. She needed that information at this point to complete the task of making five in a row.
Armed with that knowledge of how to adjust her swing and keep the ball in play without slowing down, she was able to make five in a row to our target area while staying at a six or seven out of ten tempo.
Notice how we layered these progressions. This is what you can copy back home with any swing in your tennis game.
I had her start out at a ten out of ten just to feel what it was like. Get a baseline of full intensity.
Then I had her back off to a six or seven out of ten without any kind of target or target zone.
Then I had her maintain a six or seven out of ten while targeting a certain zone on the other side of the court, focusing on her output and actually achieving consistency while keeping the ball in the court.
Then we went and had lunch. Then we came back and played some points where I asked her to only focus on maintaining her intensity at a six or seven out of ten.
And these points were dramatically higher quality than what we played just an hour or two earlier in the morning.
In the morning when we played points, I honestly felt no pressure at all. All I had to do was just hit the ball back in play. She didn’t hit anything that put me on defense.
All I had to do was just hit a certain number of shots in a row in the court and eventually she would miss. Maybe occasionally she would try to juice it up and put it away, but because she’d hit so many shots at like a three or four out of ten, when she went up to a seven or an eight she would just spray the ball and miss it because it was such a big jump.
Now after doing this training, she could just hang out at a six, hang out at a seven, and actually build a point and build some structure. Put me in a little bit of defense and then start to put the ball away.
Which is super exciting and fun to watch.
The concept is simple, but being disciplined about training your tempo is not necessarily easy.
Especially when you don’t know the technical adjustments to make to keep confident swings in play.
Here’s what you need to understand. Most tennis players focus entirely on just making the ball. Getting it in the court. Not missing.
But if you want to improve and move up levels, you have to shift your focus to tempo and intensity. You have to learn what it feels like to swing at a ten out of ten, then dial it back to a six or seven and maintain that level consistently.
When you do this, you’ll stop playing at a three or four out of ten and then randomly trying to go up to an eight or nine to put balls away. That big jump is what causes all those unforced errors that make you feel like you can’t hit hard in matches.
Instead, you’ll be able to hang out at a six or seven consistently. Build points with structure and pressure. Put your opponents on defense. And finish points when you have the opportunity.
That’s the difference between beating players at your level and getting crushed by players who get everything back.
Start working on this progression the next time you’re on the court. Feel what a ten out of ten is like. Then dial back to a six or seven and practice maintaining that tempo without dropping down to a three or four when you get nervous.
Focus on the tempo, not just making shots. That’s the key to unlocking the athleticism you already have.
Your Coach,
-Ian
