Ran across this article in the ITF files about why you might want to consider using video. No, you don’t have to be a coach to follow this, but any coach or parent can use these ideas as a starting point as to why you should use video in your development of a tennis player.
Video Analysis for the Tennis Coach
Introduction
Video is an extremely useful tool (and underrated!) for tennis coaching. It can be applied to skill acquisition, technique refinement, visualization, injury prevention, and coach education. Although video has been around for many years, it is only now becoming a common tool for the tennis coach and player. This is somewhat surprising, given the numerous benefits of using video and the relatively low cost of this technology.
Some of the benefits of using video technology in your coaching include:
- Slow motion replay – Tennis is a dynamic sport and most skills in the game are performed at speed. Given this, the ability of a coach to analyse these skills in detail using the naked eye is limited. Video allows you to view various skills in slow motion, again and again, and from different angles, which means you have an opportunity to analyse motion in great detail.
- Developing models – After a time, you can begin to see certain patterns of motion that are common among elite performers. Tennis strokes, for example, have a fundamental pattern that forms the basis of good technique. Using video, you can categorise these patterns, and form the basis of a model, in which to compare other performances. Video-based models are a very powerful tool in which to coach different tennis strokes, particularly when you are dealing with novice performers. Children, for example, will often try to emulate their favourite players from what they can see on television.
- Tracking performance changes – As a coach, you are required to analyse a player’s performance, and make alterations to technique based upon your knowledge of what you think is appropriate. Video can be a very useful tool for tracking any changes that occur as a result of your coaching. Filming a player’s technique several times during a session or season can reinforce the changes you are trying to make and give you and your player quality information. Keeping video records of players can provide positive feedback to you as a coach, as well as to the player, who can see that their hard work is paying off. It should also be noted that sometimes this video feedback can show that what you have been trying to achieve with your intervention is not working as well as you had hoped. This is also valuable information and can form the basis of different interventions for your player. So much of coaching and video analysis involves experimenting with different ideas. Video is therefore a valuable tool to help quantify your experiments.
- Self reflection – Many athletes believe that they are in a certain position when performing a skill, yet when they see themselves on video, it becomes clear that perhaps they are not quite where they thought they were! There is a ‘mismatch’ between what the player feels and the position they are actually in. Video is an excellent tool for correcting this ‘kinaesthetic-mismatch’. It is important for an athlete to ‘feel’ what it is like to perform the correct technique and seeing themselves performing a skill on video can be the first step to achieving a new movement pattern. Historically speaking, video analysis has been a tool for sport scientists and biomechanists, which immediately brings forth bad memories in some coaches minds…numbers, tables, graphs, and equations that seem impossible to understand, and are somehow supposed to be related to coaching tennis! Although some aspects of biomechanics may involve complicated physics and mathematical concepts, this should not serve as a deterrent to the tennis coach who wants to apply biomechanics to their everyday coaching.
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