Tennis Layers

Tennis Session Layers

Session  No.		1	Date & Venue	Tennis Centre	Equipment:		Tennis Racket, Tennis Balls
Objective		Basic Tennis Serve
Photos	Task and planning					Coaching points
	Step 1- Stand sideways on to your serving destination. Throw the ball up with your thumb and tips of your fingers.					Layer: Place the racket out in front of you with your left foot forward. Hold the ball up in front of you and try and land the ball on the strings.
	Step 2- Now the racket is involved. Adding the ball throw and the window shape together. Do this against the blue curtain. Working on accuracy, then when you get more confidence builds up power.					Layer: Window- starts the racket behind you. Next to your ear (looks like a window)
	Step 3- Follow through/Finishing position. This will give the serve a faster ball and give more length and power.					Layer: Racket in pocket- After you have hit the ball, you lengthen your swing which finishes with the grip next to your pocket
	Step - Start the ball and racket together. The all action of the racket but still practicing this against the blue curtain building up all the layers.  Progression- now does this over the net to make it realistic.					Layer: Cutting your feet off- Bring the racket back sweeping then up into the window position.

Criteria	Score	Comments
Safety
Awareness of environment, participants & equipment issues (health and safety)	5 4 3 2 1	I made sure that the participant was aware of the tennis nets. Before the drill took place I went to see if there were any risks. There was none.
Concern for participants well being	5 4 3 2 1
First Impressions
Professional Appearance	5 4 3 2 1	I was confidence demonstrating the layers because I had a well detailed session plan therefore I knew the progress from each layers. When delivering the serve because I already have a good amount of knowledge in tennis this helped me to be confidence when explaining the drill.
Delivery	5 4 3 2 1
Self Confidence/ Positivism	5 4 3 2 1
Organisation
Quality/ Appearance of session plan	5 4 3 2 1	I provided a high quality session plan explaining all about the layers Using demonstrations and verbal directions throughout the drills, the participants then had a good understand on what to do.
Skill in organising space, equipment and groups	5 4 3 2 1
Explanation/ Directions	5 4 3 2 1
Coaching Process
Warm up progression fits topic and group	5 4 3 2 1	Didn’t do much in the warm-up just a steady jog (3 laps around the court). Using layers made the practice more creative by using fun terms to explain the drill.  The participants were all challenged because they hadn’t learnt the serving before so the level would be at the same. The entire participant’s would be included. I was doing individual coaching so all the participants were included. For the feedback the participant could tell if they had performed an incorrect serve because before I was consistently saying the coaching points/layers to them. When we went over the net in the last drill, when the participant made an error they referred by to the coaching points and without me inputting they knew already how to fix it.
Realism in practises / creativity	5 4 3 2 1
Ability to diagnose key faults	5 4 3 2 1
Ensure all players were challenged at an appropriate level for each individual	5 4 3 2 1
Inclusion of all participants	5 4 3 2 1
Encourage feedback and illustrated teaching moments with participants	5 4 3 2 1
Communication
Quality of voice and speech habits	5 4 3 2 1	Because, we were teaching individually I gave quality instructions but not my voice clear although my voice wasn’t loud and I was clear. Using demonstrates were really effective because they were new to the skill so they needed to see slow motion and full speed. This broke down and made it easier. I used more of a democratic style because I needed to demonstrate the layers so they would have a better understand by seeing it. The session was simple, but for the more experienced tennis players I still needed to enthuse so I made the drill harder with targets this made them more interested.
Effectiveness of instruction	5 4 3 2 1
Effectiveness of demonstrations	5 4 3 2 1
Appropriate use of coaching style	5 4 3 2 1
Interaction and response with group (eye contact, use of names ect)	5 4 3 2 1
Overall enthusiasm & personality in session	5 4 3 2 1

Evaluation/ Reflecting

Doing the tennis serve layers session was a great way they explaining the basic steps of the tennis serve. A style of coaching that this is really important for is the democratic style as when doing the layers, each part needs to be broken down within demonstrations. Not using demonstrations would be extremely hard to show things like the grip which is vital holding the racket.


Positives of the tennis serve layers drill are that each step of the session was simple for anyone to understand. Layers can affect positively on how performance can be improved, because especially if you are doing some part of the serve wrong, you can refer back to for example the window position. Negatives of the tennis serve layers drill is that when doing a serve we did this in blocked practice "refers to practice where one skill is worked on at a time" (Gary Crossley, 2012). As a result this is not realistic practices because in a tennis match you would not a serve and your next shot would be a ground stroke. 



References Page 
Crossley, G (2012) Blocked Practice Definition. Blocked, Distributed and Random Practice as it relates to Skills Acquisition in Curling. [Online] Available from: http://hawkscurlinghpc.ca/2012/02/blocked-distributed-and-random-practice-as-it-relates-to-skill-acquisition-in-curling  [Accessed on 14/01/2015]