Latest episodes
MY TENNIS COACHING PODCAST
Elevate Your Coaching with Expert Insights and Conversations
Tune into My Podcast for weekly episodes featuring expert interviews, coaching tips, and the latest trends in tennis coaching. Get practical advice and inspiration to enhance your coaching techniques and stay updated on industry advancements. Listen, learn, and elevate your coaching game.
The My Tennis Coaching Podcast is a practical, evidence-informed podcast for tennis coaches who want their players to perform in matches not just look good in training.
Hosted by Steve Whelan, coach educator, researcher, and founder of My Tennis Coaching, the podcast explores how modern skill acquisition, ecological dynamics, and intelligent practice design can transform the way you coach.
Episodes bridge research and real-world coaching, unpacking why traditional drills often fail to transfer and what to design instead. Expect clear explanations, applied examples, coach reflections, and honest conversations about what actually helps players adapt, decide, and compete.
This podcast is for coaches who want to:
• Design practices that show up on match day
• Move beyond technique-first, drill-heavy coaching
• Understand learning, not just copy methods
• Coach with clarity, confidence, and intent
If you’re ready to challenge convention and coach in a way that matches how players really learn, you’re in the right place.
In this episode, I unpack a brilliant question from a top coach:
“What are the non-negotiables for representativeness in tennis—and can you trade some for others?”
We explore:
Why throw tennis isn’t representative (and what it teaches us)
The 6 core elements of representative learning design in tennis
The difference between looking like the game vs. functioning like the game
What coaches might be getting wrong when designing “game-based” sessions
How to balance exploration and transfer in your practices
If you’re serious about designing sessions that actually transfer to matches—this episode is a must.
About the Host
Presented by Steve Whelan
Steve Whelan is a tennis coach, coach educator, and researcher with 24+ years of on-court experience working across grassroots, performance, and coach development environments. His work focuses on how players actually learn, specialising in practice design, skill transfer, and ecological dynamics in tennis.
Steve has presented at national and international coaching conferences, contributed to coach education programmes, and published work exploring intention, attention, affordances, and representative learning design in tennis. His writing bridges academic research and real-world coaching, helping coaches move beyond drills toward practices that hold up under match pressure.
He is the founder of My Tennis Coaching and My Tennis Coach Academy, a global learning community for coaches seeking modern, evidence-informed approaches to player development.
👉 Learn more about Steve’s coaching journey and philosophy here:
About / My Journey