The Skills Conditioning Coach

Age 7 I had no intention of taking up tennis, nobody in my family played or had played at any point in the past. Football, as with most families in the UK, was the dominant sport in our household.

However, a coach from the local tennis club came to my school one day to deliver a taster session and from that day on tennis would play a significant role in my life.

Something about hitting fluffy yellow balls around with a racket appealed to me and the coach seemed to think I had a knack for it, so my parents, being as supportive as they are, found me a session I could join on Saturday mornings.

For the next few years, I progressed very quickly and my passion for the sport grew and grew.

It wasn't long until the Saturday morning groups were behind me and I had started competing regularly with juniors at the club more than 3 years my senior. During this time I had also started competing outside the club environment and in my first tournament age 8, I won the 10&U category beating a county team player in the process and catching the eye of the organizers. 

A call came soon after asking me to attend county practice sessions on a regular basis and later that same year I competed in my first match for Sussex against Surrey.

Things continued to progress for another year or two with some good performances and results, both at tournaments and the regional and national talent ID events that I attended, but cracks were beginning to show. 

My attitude towards my tennis had started to change, things were not so much fun anymore and my behaviour on the court had started to deteriorate to the point that my emotional outbursts were akin to a toddler when they find out their sibling broke their favourite toy.

Things only became worse as my antics started to effect my results and the little funding I was receiving had now disappeared. 

I had firmly established somewhere along the way that my self-worth was directly linked to my tennis and so even a single mistake devalued me as a person. I am unfortunately not the first and will definitely not be the last to enter this crippling mindset. 

For me, something had to give and eventually it did.

I stopped playing tennis, no longer able to cope with the anxiety I had around played the game, my enjoyment and passion completely diminished. My negativity and low self-esteem were seeping into other of my everyday life, manifested by debilitating OCD. 

During this time the LTA had moved towards the HPC (high-performance center) model and as such my peers from the county, squads had begun to move their training to our most local HPC.

When I eventually decided I still had an interest in tennis and wanted to come back into the fold, joining them was not an option. My parents were unable to fund the training and travel costs to get to the HPC without any funding to help and were probably unwilling given my past experiences.

Instead, I now had to look around the local area at the best groups available for me to join and make the best of it. These sessions were few and far between and the amount I was going to be playing was unlikely to get me back on level terms with my old training partners who's level had by now started moving away from me. 

(Luckily football at this time was going rather well and this might of helped to compensate somewhat for the frustration I was feeling about my tennis)

I was still struggling with my mental state of mind especially when it came to tennis, although minor improvements had been made, but I then got very lucky and had the opportunity to work with a psychology student working on his masters who needed a case study. I seemed to fit the bill!

With his help, I started to make much better progress, but by now I had spent several years without much competition and lost a lot of quality time in my tennis development. 

I steadily made slow progress over the next couple of years and left school with the chance to join the AASE program at the aforementioned HPC. This meant I could now up my training time significantly to around 10 hours a week and once again play among some of the best players in the region.

This made a profound difference to my game and before long I was starting to rekindle some passion and love for the sport again. 

One major opportunity I had during my time on AASE was to complete my level 1 & 2 LTA coaching qualifications. So with nothing more than the ambition that it could earn me a few quid at the weekend helping as an assistant I did the courses and really enjoyed it. I started to think that this coaching thing was something I could see myself doing long term and positive feedback from tutors and assessors spurred me on to do more. 

By the time I had finished my AASE program my game had improved to the level where it was time to make a decision. Do I now focus on my playing career or my coaching career? 

I decided on the coaching, my playing had undoubtedly improved considerably but it was still going to be a few seasons before I could make a real impact in futures events and I was lacking funds to really make that a reality. Coaching, on the other hand, had breathed a new lease of life into my future projections in tennis and I had been offered a position at my local club (the same one I started at on Saturday mornings). 

I would still play when I could in events like the British tour and senior county cup, but my priority for the foreseeable future was now coaching. 

Fast forward through 5 years at the Chichester Tennis Academy where I began to the present day, I have now completed both my LTA level 3 and level 4 SCC qualifications and coaching full time at the Everyball Academy at Halton Tennis Centre. I do still compete and especially enjoy my outings for Sussex in both summer and winter county cup. But most importantly I have a love and appreciation for the game that at one point I never thought I could, one which I am now privileged to have the chance to pass on to my players. 

I am ambitious and optimistic about the future and can't wait to see what it has in store!