Bailey’s Blog

When you are born you will share your birthday with 15 million people

During your time at school, by the time you are 10 years old you will have an average of 17 friends, by the time you are 40 years old you will have an average of 2 friends

Throughout your life you will grow 950 kilometers of hair and laugh an average of 18 times a day and walk an equivalent of 3 times around the world

You will eat 30 tonnes of food

Drink 9000 cups of coffee and have a 1 in 10,000 chance of being accidentally electrocuted

Throughout your life you will spend 10 years at work

20 years asleep

3 years on the toilet 

7 months waiting in traffic and 2 and 1/2 months on hold

You will spend 12 years of your life watching television and 19 days looking for the remote control

This leaves only 1/5th of your life LEFT FOR LIVING so …….YOU BETTER GET STARTED!!! 

As a footwork teacher I realise that not all children are as coordinated or gifted as each other - the reasons are varied, it could be a physical thing, a social thing or a confidence thing. But, from an early age you can see who are really going to make something of themselves because there seems an innate sense of achievement within them.

In tennis I think of what Steffi Graf and Rafael Nadal must have been like as students….They don’t LACK - they’d rather try than lie! If you hit a ball anywhere on the court they would bust there guts to get to there….this is what I look for ….(you know, you can’t send a duck to eagle school!)

Great achievers are great students, they are always a pleasure to teach…..they make the lesson easy and are a joy to teach. If they fall over they don’t look around for sympathy they brush themselves off and get up…they don’t stay down.

If I could teach only one thing to every child in the world it would be this-

“Failure is not the worst thing in the world. The very worst is not to try”

There is such a strong habit by some children to quit when overcome by temporary defeat or when something pushes their boundaries. I want to see students who have stickability not quitability….. that is realy all I can ever ask! It is not about talent…it really is all about attitude!

Lack of effort = Failure

If I could teach the perfect  maths lesson I would teach that the only angle to approach life is the TRYangle approach, because teaching children to count is important but not as important as What what counts!

Quote: “To try and fail is at least to learn. To fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been”.

The greatest curse in life is to catch the disease of lazy-itiss!   

“The best defense is active offensive”

Tennis should be an equal  combination of

W - What you Want to do

S - What you Should do

C - What you Can do

What you want, should and can do will have a profound effect on you playing style and preferred footwork selection and contact moves.

Simply put:

What you want to do relates to - tennis playing personality

What you should do  relates to - smart shot selection  

What you can do relates to - what feels comfortable and works for you

If you get a chance to watch any movie that will inspire you about being passionate about your career,  making a difference and backing your beliefs please watch the movie called “Patch Adams” starring Robin Williams

It certainly inspired me….especially the speech below.

Just briefly, the movie is a TRUE story and about a self institutionalized depressed patient (Williams) who while hospitalised discovers he has a gift for helping people. He leaves the hospital, enrols into university and becomes a medical doctor, but really struggles with the way hospital patients are treated and spoken to. He treats patients (with happiness and kindness) in a way that is seen by the powers to be (medical fraternity) as being  radical and damaging, so he ends up having to face a panel of influential doctors to tell why he should be allowed to practice medicine. This is part of his inspirational speech below:

“I want to become a doctor so I can serve other, and because of that I have lost everything but I have  also gained everything. I’ve shared the lives of patients and staff members at the hospital, I’ve laughed with them, I’ve cried with them…..this is what I want to do with my life and as God is my witness, no matter what you decide today….I will become the best damn doctor the world has ever seen!

You have the ability to prevent me from graduating, you can  keep me from getting the title and the white coat, but you can’t control my spirit!!

 Gentleman, you can’t keep me from learning, you can’t keep me from studying, so, you have a choice….you can have me as a professional college, passionate, or you can have me as an outspoken outsider, still adamant…..either way, I will still be viewed as a thorn, but, I promise you one thing….. I am a thorn that is not going away!!!”

 Dear readers,

The movie “Patch Adams” is a about always being true to yourself and that is a great lesson right there!

Enjoy the movie

DB   

This small phrase is something my good friend and work mate Noel Callaghan (head coach of the Elite Tennis program, National Sports Academy, Narabeen, NSW Australia) uses a lot!

I think this is such a good tip for training footwork, fitness , tweaking swing technique or in fact any important task in tennis. In fact, it is an essential ingredient in any successful venture.

For in the end, it is the little things done well, that sorts a top 10 ranked tennis pro from a top 200 ranked tennis pro.

I read a book on how to stop procrastination called “Eat that Frog” by Brian Tracy. This book is perfect for those budding professional tennis players who “accidentally on purpose” avoid stretching, warming up, fitness training, shadow tennis and practicing serves and returns etc…i.e. “All they want to do is HIT balls!!!”

The book is essentially based on an old saying that if the first thing you do each morning is eat a live frog, you can look forward to the rest of the day knowing it’s probably the worst thing you have to do.

“Eat the frog” is a metaphor for tackling the most important and challenging task of the day before dealing with the rest.

Because there’s rarely time to do absolutely everything on our to do list, productivity depends on prioritising  the tasks that will make the biggest difference to your life and make sure they get done first. I believe that being fit and injury free for tennis is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT aspect of being successful in tennis i.e. it is key to keeping form and confidence when playing. Remeber hitting lots of tennis balls without looking after the body is a signature to potential  disaster. It has cost many pro players millions in lost earnings and created early retirement.

So stop mucking…. don’t avoid the non negotiables like warming, up, cooling down, strengthening and practicing your serve and return and ”Go eat that frog!”

Problem 1: Student is not timing their split step when making recovering steps after a fed ball hit 

Solution: Get the student to split step (nice and wide and with soft knees) when the ball passes the baseline at the other end of the court

Problem 2: The student is dumping the ball in the net when hitting from an open stance

Solution: Tell the student to “Let the ball the ball come to you” and “Feel the ball hit the strings before making the contact move” (this works well on 2 foot pivots, 1 foot pivots, moguls, lateral hops, low spins, power moves and reverse spins…see Q & A’s for more on each move) i.e. don’t perform the contact move too early from an open stance!

Problem 3: The student is lifting up with the legs when stepping down the court

Solution: Stay low through the the step down contact move.

1st: Finish the stroke before bringing the leg through for balance and power

2nd: Watch the ball bounce on the other side of the court while looking under the white tape at the top part of the net i.e. if you are looking over the net when the ball has bounced you have lifted the body up too high and straighten out the legs through contact, thus the result is a ball that is flying out beyond the baseline.

What are your feet? Turbo-charged pistons!

What are they going to do? Fire me around the court!

How fast can you move? As fast as a bullet!

How fast are they going to move? As fast as a bullet!

Then lets see them do it!

When you go through life you can be one of two things

You can be a LIFTER

or you can be a LEANER

A lifter is a person who puts in effort, who strives to overcome, to improve

A leaner puts in no effort, a leaner relies

If a leaner and lifter where partners and playing with a ball, and the ball stops in the middle and rolls down a hill, then the leaner says  “You can get it”!

The lifter, smiles, runs down the hill, picks up the ball and bounces it up the hill, happy to have the extra time to practice and better his skills.

The enemy of life is not failure, but lack of effort, lack of trying, lack of giving yourself the chance to be the very best at what you choose to do.