Coaching strokes
Training and Drills
Filippo Rotunno Asked 4 years ago
Dear Alois and Jeff
For the past few weeks I have started coaching three children from 9 to 12. Two of them are absolute beginners whereas the third one has been playing with his dad using mainly his backhand from any position. In my coaching programme your training section has been a real life saving. With all three of them I have started with bouncing the ball, holding the bat, stance and have finally started to teach them the forehand counter hit. With this I have started by bouncing the ball with my hand over the net and have now moved to gentle multi ball. I am so pleased because I have finally seen some progress. I have a net at the other end to catch the balls and placed some targets for them to aim at. Sorry for the preamble and I come now to my question. At what point should I introduce them to the backhand counter hit? Should I wait until they have a perfect forehand first or should I move on to the next stage?
I thank you immensely for what you do and the inspiration that your work generates.
Kind regards.
Filippo
Alois Rosario Answered 4 years ago
Hi Filippo,
Thank you again for your kind words about the site.
Nice to hear that you are coaching some students.
I think moving on to the backhand really soon is the best way. I have changed a lot in my thinking with this over these few years. I believe that you should introduce both strokes very early and also get them to do some practice where they need to make a decision between a forehand and backhand before playing either. You can do this at a very slow pace with the multi ball you are doing or bouncing.
Keep up the good work and please let me know if we can help in any way.
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