If I had £10 for every time a coach has challenged me with, “Yes, but what about the basics, the fundamentals?” I’d be wealthy enough to retire from My Tennis Coach Academy! The prevailing belief that players need a basic framework or technique to play tennis is, in my view, one of the greatest myths in the sport. One must wonder, how did anyone ever learn to play before the era of tennis coaches? Clearly, tennis players existed long before coaching became a profession.
What exactly are “the basics” that coaches so often cite? Grips, stances, proper form, good technique—all concepts that, as my followers know, I believe are not only individual but must be adaptable. The idea of needing to learn the basics before playing seems like a marketing strategy concocted by coaches: “You can’t play without learning the basics first. Let’s have a lesson.”
I’m convinced that every newcomer to tennis possesses some ‘basic’ movement skills. They can wield a racket, move their feet, and control their body to some extent. Their skill level and movement experience will vary, with novices exhibiting a broader range of variability and making more errors due to their inexperience.
This variability is natural; throughout life, our bodies develop movement solutions for a variety of scenarios. As we age, we become less adaptable, settling into our unique movement patterns. This makes altering ‘techniques’ in adults challenging—they’ve already established their own movement repertoire.
So, if the body inherently understands basic movement, the coach’s role is to refine this, reducing variability to enhance tennis efficiency. How a player refines their movement will be influenced by body composition, experience, and other factors. Players often grasp concepts like speed, direction, and spin intuitively; they may just need guidance on applying these principles within tennis.
If players already have a fundamental understanding of movement and physics, what “basics” of technique do we need to teach? Our goal should be teaching them to play tennis, considering its dynamic and open nature. Instead of simplifying the game into isolated shots, we should aim to reduce some variability and chaos, allowing players to develop tennis-specific movements within the game context.
Ecological dynamics, constraint-led coaching, and nonlinear pedagogy, in my opinion, far surpass traditional methods in effectiveness. These approaches enable players to discover their unique way of playing, unbound by the restrictions of a model-based lesson. They develop their own “tennis fundamentals” through game context.
As coaches, when we mention “basics” or “fundamentals,” we must challenge ourselves: What do we really mean if players already possess an understanding of basic movement?
