PRACTICE DESIGN AND SKILL TRANSFER IN TENNIS

One of the most significant contemporary debates in tennis coaching is the creation of the practice environment. The role of the coach is increasingly viewed as that of an environmental designer. The environment supports the development of adaptable and functional performance behaviours. Traditionally, tennis coaches have frequently emphasised repetitive drill-based practice designed to stabilise technical movement solutions (Anderson et al., 2021). Such influences are often shaped by assumptions in traditional coaching pedagogies regarding skill acquisition. Repetition and technical refinement are viewed as central mechanisms underpinning learning. Indeed, many coaches either remain unaware of their underlying beliefs about learning or continue to rely on unsupportive traditional explanations of skill development (Parry & O’Rourke, 2023). Consequently, contemporary tennis coaching practice continues to be shaped by assumptions associated with information-processing models of skill acquisition (Busuttil et al., 2024).

Isolated and decomposed practice environments may reduce skill transfer by removing the informational constraints that regulate behaviour during competitive tennis performance. Krause et al. (2019) demonstrated that players, when serving in different contexts (alone, with a returner and when playing the next shot), displayed different behaviours. These findings suggest that behaviour emerges relative to context. Removing the opponent altered the opportunities for action available to the server and, in turn, changed the regulation of action. Extending this work, Krause, Farrow, Buszard, et al. (2019) showed that many common tennis drills do not resemble competitive behaviours. Key findings in this study showed that players exhibited different movement patterns, longer rallies, fewer winners, different ball contacts, and altered tactical behaviours. Players adapt their actions based on available information, intentions, opportunities for action, and temporal constraints, rather than acquiring isolated technical movements. If these differ in practice, behaviour differs too. If practice tasks may fail to preserve the information and tactical demands of competition, it may unintentionally develop behaviours that lack functionality within match play. 

Pinder et al. (2011) Introduced the concept of Representative Learning Design (RLD), proposing that practice environments should preserve the informational and tactical demands of competition within practice. From this perspective, movement behaviours only became functional relative to the context in which they emerge. When designing a practice environment, coaches must ensure that the practice preserves information specific to the task’s intention and the demands of the game itself. Central to this approach is the concept of affordances. Affordances are opportunities for action that emerge relative to the performer, task, and environment (Gibson, 1979). In tennis, affordances continually evolve during performance. For example, a returner positioned closer to the inside tramline may invite a serve directed towards the centre service line. However, when coaches remove the returner during isolated service practice, this opportunity for action no longer exists. 

RLD also emphasises the importance of preserving perception-action coupling within practice design. In ecological psychology, perception and action are continuously linked with players regulating their movements relative to the information available within the environment in real time (Gibson, 1979). As tennis players perceive opponents’ positions and movements, the ball’s movement, and their own position. They are continuously adapting their actions in real time to these evolving constraints. Traditional coaching methods such as basket feeding and isolated technical drills may disrupt this coupling by removing many of the rich informational variables present during the competitive matchplay environment. As a result, although practice tasks may stabilise player behaviours within training environments, they may not adequately prepare players for the adaptive and perceptual demands encountered during match play. 

DESIGNING MORE REPRESENTATIVE TENNIS PRACTICE ENVIRONMENTS

If tennis practice environments are to support transfer to competitive performance, coaches may need to preserve more of the informational and tactical demands present in match play.

Preserving opponent interaction

Representative practice should preserve the presence of an active opponent. The opposing player provides critical information that shapes and guides a player’s intention, attention, and action. A live opponent continuously shapes the affordances available to the opposition player. For example, an opponent who favours a forehand return will move themselves into position to encourage the server to play towards their strongest stroke. The available information suggests that the returner is not very confident in playing backhands. In this situation, the server may win a few points by serving to the backhand; they have become attuned to the present information. However, so has the returner, who now proceeds to move more towards the backhand side to stop the consecutive loss of points. This now presents the server with more opportunities for action, including the perceived bigger space down the central service line. This illustrates the continuous relationship among opponents, task, and environment, as well as the perception-action coupling. Therefore, RLD should aim to preserve these evolving player-environmental interactions rather than reducing players to rote technical repetition. 

Preserving the player–racket relationship

Coaches, when using RLD, emphasise preserving the player-racket relationship in training activities. The racket is not simply an external tool but forms part of the player-environment system, shaping affordances available to the performer. Removing the racket through throwing and catching activities fundamentally alters the perception-action coupling underpinning performance. In racket sports, players continuously regulate their actions in response to their opponents’ racket, body position, and behaviour (Loffing & Hagemann, 2014). Consequently, while throwing and catching tasks may simplify certain aspects of coordination, they fail to preserve many of the informational and action demands specific to playing tennis. Müller & Abernethy (2012) found that expert skill in striking sports depends on anticipation and perception-action couplings. These are more likely to emerge within RLD and task-specific, striking environments. The challenge coaches face is with less experienced players who may struggle to contact the ball. One suggestion is to simplify the game by adding constraints, such as requiring 3 touches before the ball can be returned. Coaches can also scale the court or the ball by reducing the space or speed of the game. Such modifications may allow coaches to simplify task difficulty while still preserving many of the informational and perceptual demands players face when competing. 

Preserving score as an informational constraint

RLD should also preserve scoring systems and competitive consequences within practice environments. In tennis, the score is not simply a method for recording outcomes but a critical informational constraint that shapes players’ intentions, tactical decisions, emotional regulation, and perceived affordances. Den Hartigh et al. (2018) demonstrated that psychological momentum altered athletes’ judgements of affordance, with performers perceiving greater or fewer action possibilities depending on the competitive context. Such findings suggest that score and consequence may shape how players perceive opportunities for action during match play. For example, a player who is 40-0 up may hit an attacking serve. 30-40 down, they may hit a more conservative serve. This illustrates how the same technical action may be regulated differently relative to changing information constraints. As a result, practice tasks performed without score or consequences may fail to recreate many of the emotional, tactical and perceptual demands central to playing tennis. Tennis practices should not just reproduce movements but also recreate the evolving informational demands that shape action in competitive play. 

PRACTICAL EXAMPLE 

The following practice task provides an applied example of how representative learning design principles may be integrated within tennis practice. The task aims to preserve opponent interaction, tactical intention, score, and perception–action coupling while manipulating constraints to encourage adaptive movement solutions.

Practice: Protect the Weak Side

PRINCIPLE OF PLAY

Primary Intention:

Jam Your Opponent: target the opponent’s backhand and expose positional weakness.

Secondary Intention:

Survive Your Opponent’s Shot: protect your own backhand side and learn to defend with one hand available.

Purpose:

• Encourages players to recognise vulnerable areas on the court
• Builds awareness of body positioning and racket availability
• Invites exploration of one-handed defensive solutions on the backhand side
• Promotes intentional targeting rather than neutral hitting

Task Rules:

• Every point starts with a serve
• Players must hold a tennis ball in their non-dominant hand throughout the point
• Players cannot drop the ball during the rally
• If the ball is dropped → point to the opponent
• Points are played out normally with standard scoring

Affordances Amplified:

• Encourages targeting of the opponent’s backhand side
• Highlights the tactical value of protecting weaker zones
• Invites creative defensive responses using one hand

Coach Cues:

• “What does holding the ball change about your movement?”
• “Where does this make your opponent vulnerable?”
• “How can you defend your backhand side with one hand?”

What Changes Every Point:

• Serve placement
• Opponent targeting patterns
• Defensive responses on the backhand side
• Balance and movement solutions

Perception–Action Link:

• Players must read opponent positioning and decide when to attack the backhand side
• Movement patterns adjust due to the constraint on the non-dominant hand

Easier Version:

• Use an orange or green ball
• Allow players to briefly switch hands if needed to recover balance
• Play within service boxes only

Harder Version:

• Require all backhand contacts to be one-handed
• Add a bonus point if a player wins the point targeting the opponent’s backhand side
• Restrict players to inside the tramlines only

Unlike many traditional basket-based drills, this practice task preserves several key informational and tactical constraints present within competitive tennis performance, including opponent interaction, score, perception-action coupling, and evolving opportunities for action. The constraint of holding a tennis ball in the non-dominant hand does not eliminate the game itself but instead reshapes the affordances available to performers, encouraging players to explore adaptive movement solutions and tactical behaviours in response to the emerging context.

CONCLUSION 

Traditional tennis coaching has historically relied heavily on isolated, repetitive, and decomposed practice methods underpinned by assumptions that skill develops through repetition and the stabilisation of movement patterns. However, contemporary research grounded in ecological dynamics and representative learning design suggests that skilled tennis performance emerges from continuous interactions among the performer, the task, and the environment. Players do not simply reproduce stored techniques during competition but instead adapt their actions in response to evolving informational constraints, affordances, tactical intentions, emotional states, and opponents’ behaviours.

Consequently, practice environments that remove key informational variables such as opponents, score, tactical consequences, or the player-racket relationship may unintentionally alter the perception-action couplings that underpin competitive performance. While such approaches may simplify coordination demands or improve short-term consistency in practice, they may fail to adequately prepare players for the adaptive and perceptual challenges encountered during match play.

Representative learning design offers tennis coaches an alternative framework for practice design by encouraging the preservation of the informational and tactical demands present within the game itself. Rather than viewing variability, uncertainty, and decision-making as sources of noise, coaches may instead recognise them as essential components of functional skill adaptation. This does not mean every practice task must perfectly replicate competition, but it does suggest that coaches should carefully consider which informational constraints are being preserved, amplified, or removed during practice design.

Ultimately, tennis players adapt not only to the game they compete in but also to the practice environments coaches create. Therefore, if the goal of coaching is to develop adaptable performers capable of transferring skill to competitive performance, practice design should move beyond the reproduction of isolated movements and towards the creation of representative learning environments that faithfully shape perception, intention, and action within the game of tennis.

This article is a pre-publication version of a manuscript currently submitted for consideration to the PTR Coach Development Centre Library.

REFERENCES 

Anderson, E., Stone, J. A., Dunn, M., & Heller, B. (2021). Coach approaches to practice design in performance tennis. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 16(6), 1281–1292. https://doi.org/10.1177/17479541211027294

Busuttil, N. A., Roberts, A. H., Dunn, M., Hyunh, M., & Middleton, K. J. (2024). Perceptions and Practices of Accredited Tennis Coaches When Teaching Foundational Grip Development. Applied Sciences, 14(16), 7127. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14167127

Den Hartigh, R. J. R., Van Der Sluis, J. K., & Zaal, F. T. J. M. (2018). Perceiving affordances in sports through a momentum lens. Human Movement Science, 62, 124–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.humov.2018.10.009

Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton Mifflin.

Krause, L., Farrow, D., Buszard, T., Pinder, R., & Reid, M. (2019). Application of representative learning design for assessment of common practice tasks in tennis. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 41, 36–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2018.11.008

Krause, L., Farrow, D., Pinder, R., Buszard, T., Kovalchik, S., & Reid, M. (2019). Enhancing skill transfer in tennis using representative learning design. Journal of Sports Sciences, 37(22), 2560–2568. (138693279). https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2019.1647739

Loffing, F., & Hagemann, N. (2014). On-Court Position Influences Skilled Tennis Players’ Anticipation of Shot Outcome. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 36(1), 14–26. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.2013-0082

Müller, S., & Abernethy, B. (2012). Expert Anticipatory Skill in Striking Sports: A Review and a Model. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 83(2), 175–187. https://doi.org/10.5641/027013612800745059

Parry, T., & O’Rourke, L. (2023). Theories of Skill Acquisition: Implications for Tennis Coaching. ITF Coaching & Sport Science Review, 31(89), 51–56. https://doi.org/10.52383/itfcoaching.v31i89.391

Pinder, R. A., Davids, K., Renshaw, I., & Araújo, D. (2011). Representative learning design and functionality of research and practice in sport. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 33(1), 146–155.