All lectures delivered by USHSTA executive director, Steve Milano, except otherwise noted.

11:00-11:30 – Pre- and post-practice warmup, cooldown, conditioning and stretching

You will learn how to teach your players to properly warm up, stretch, perform conditioning drills and cool down.

11:30-11:45 – Mini-tennis wins conference titles

Believe it or not, learning how to correctly play mini-tennis—and practicing it on a regular basis—helps tennis players develop proprioceptive and footwork skills enough to determine whether or not your team will win your conference.

11:45-12:45 – The most common coaching mistakes

• Do you feed balls from a basket you place at the net or service line?
• Do you run drills with players hitting one ball and running to the end of the line?
• Do you do “muscle-memory” drilling?
• Do you let your players perform long, cooperative rallies (10 balls or more)?
• Are you unable to explain block, variable and random ball feeding?

If so, you need to attend this lecture.

12:45-1:30 – How to run Game-Based drills

Game-Based teaching (which helps players learn, retain and recall new stroke skills) replaced the Directed method of teaching (which only promotes short-term learning) in most countries decades ago.

Unfortunately, the Directed method is still the predominant teaching technique used by American tennis coaches today. You’ll learn how to convert your favorite lessons and drills to the Game-Based method (which, despite its name, is not based on using games), so your kids who look great in practice will also look great in matches.

1:30-1:45 – Break

1:45-2:15 – USTA resources for schools (proposed – not yet confirmed)

2:15-2:45 – Court Rotations: 12 Kids, 2 Courts, 1 Coach

2:45-3:15 – Correcting common stroke problems

This lecture will cover the macro components of strokes, helping you to make quick, substantial improvements to your players’ strokes during the season.

3:15-4:00 Teaching girls to serve

Research has shown that most females (up through the professional level) use the pull-through method of serving. Most males use the superior push-through method.

You’ll learn how to teach girls (and boys with a pull-through motion) how to develop a push-through motion during the season.

4:00-4:30 – Attacking return of serve

Teaching your players an attacking return focuses on helping them develop the proprioceptive and spatial awareness skills of dynamic balance so they can return serves proactively, rather than reactively.

This Graduated Length method of practicing returns will help your players break serve more often, win more games, more sets, more matches—and significantly improve your chances of winning your conference.

4:00-4:30 – Attacking Return of Serve

Teaching your players an attacking return focuses on helping them develop the spatial awareness skill of dynamic balance so they can return serves proactively, rather than reactively.

This Graduated Length method of practicing returns will help your players break serve more often, win more games, more sets, more matches—and significantly improve your chances of winning your conference.

4:30-5:00 – Those who wish can particpate in a discussion about launching a Florida High School Tennis Association.

Pre-workshop video modules:

To give you even more value, we’re providing four online, pre-workshop modules to watch before the workshop.

• High school tennis program administration
• Quick pedagogy and motor learning overview – A short review of how people learn sport skills.
• Model practice plan – A review of the seven components that should comprise each daily practice.
• Teaching private lessons

Thanks for coach Juan Herrera and IMG Academy staff for hosting this workshop.