To clarify: a good coach makes you play worse if you want to improve your technique and/or tactics. Instead a coach who is sparring you to make you more comfortable in high tempo or just returns your shots will most likely increase your level of playing – but very slowly. In the latter scenario the player's ability to play in more and more difficult games increases. That being said there is nothing wrong with the latter either.
To get back on the topic: when you are teaching techniques you have to be very persistent. The first stage is to sell the idea of new technique to a player. Mostly it succeeds by giving the player multiple reasons what he/she will gain after you have updated the technique. The change usually starts from one simple advice or a tip. Let's use an example player X whose basic forehand we were practicing. X's challenge in forehand based on a rally was a great number of uncontrolled and inconsistent strokes. With his two years of padel history he was able to hit some of them surprisingly well but we both came to conclusion that his forehand could be more controlled. He also had no variations for his forehand.
The first stage towards practicing his forehand was just a simple advice: “keep your wrist steady”. I started to feed him balls and let him try. I did this because I came to conclusion that his errors were because of a loose wrist. So what affect did my advice have? I asked the player X if he felt his wrist is steadier during impact and he just replied “Yes.”. - What a great answer.. if it was true. There was absolutely no change to his forehand. It is very common for players that they don't really see or feel their ways of they are swinging / moving unless you teach them how to observe themselves.
The next step of course was that I said that unfortunately your wrist is still moving. I asked him to try even harder and to exaggerate the sturdiness of his wrist. He was able to make some nice shots.. beautiful, even.. but the wrist was still way too loose so we were not yet satisfied. Therefore we decided to continue the with the same problem.
I realized his problem was his back swing. When player's wrist is overly loose during back swing it's almost inevitable to have it loose during the swing. Was this the moment our problem was solved once and for all? “Try to keep your wrist stable during back swing as well. Take the bat back with the tip of your bat first. Several strokes. EXACTLY like the previous strokes.
When it's been a bit over 25 minutes to practice one simple thing, one might think to just accept the failure. Cheat the player saying “good job”, change the subject and leave it behind. I chose to do this instead: “Now we have a situation that it's my responsibility that you learn to do this as we planned (note: the player was really enthusiastic about learning it properly – i didn't force him to) so we WILL find a way”.
On a side note I would say that usually perseverance comes to an end when you fail despite all the advice. Either players' or coaches' (perseverance). You must take one step further and “force” the player to do the right thing.
So I had to find a way to force his wrist to remain steady. So we designed an exercise: player X had to hit his forehand with two hands. Voila! For the first time during the whole lesson he was able to hit so that his wrist wasn't too loose. I threw another ball, third and twenty more. Wrist was controlled in every stroke. Being very enthusiastic about this success we decided to develop our exercise more: two strokes with two hands, one stroke with one and X has to try to keep the same feeling of control with one hand. It worked! Two strokes with two hands, two strokes with one hand... Was too difficult. We went back to 2 – 1 – 2 – 1 rhythm.
After repeating these exercises and gradually increasing the amount of one handed strokes we finally got to a point where player X was able to hit 10 forehands in a row without a single one with a sloppy wrist.
It had taken 45 minutes... with forehand only.
Many times when you REALLY work on changing and developing TECHNIQUE it doesn't succeed on first try. The fact that learning technique requires patience is clear to most of the people (I guess) but we as coaches need to remind ourselves that it requires a ton of patience from us as well.
The session ended and X had an idea of how to hit his forehand in the next playing session. After a few days I asked how his games had been and the answer was that his level of playing and especially forehand was TERRIBLE. My answer to him was that it doesn't matter. He can blame me for the next month or two. The problem with developing technique is that the player tries to fight against his (previously) normal patterns of movement and to focus on changing them. It causes mixing of old and new. Bad hits, bad OTHER strokes than the one he/she's practicing because player's focus is 100% on one specific thing. And it is okay.
During my 12 year long coaching career I haven't met many cases whose actual change in technique would directly cause increase in level of playing in MATCH situation. You might contrast it with term from body building world: supercompensation:
In case padel the red dot means our session when we start developing the technique. We make an exercise that makes us hit differently than what we are used to. Therefore we don’t work in our comfort zone nor can our body adjust the new technique instantly.. so our level of play (or level of that stroke) decreases. When you give time, practice and CORRECT repetitions after repetitions (to recover) it starts to climb and eventually it will climb higher than the level of play where the it started. After this we make a new exercise to develop our stroke even more… and fall again… and rise higher - again. To be able to follow this formula of supercompensation you have to :
Have perseverance
Accept the drop in your level of playing
Take as few points of development as possible
Trust your coach.. and especially yourself
If there are too many points of development we would have another big red dot before our red line has reached it's potential heights and the level would decrease more and more. The more things you try to change at the same time the less you will gain overall in the process.
I've told many of my players that they have my permission to blame me for the failures for a month or two. Many have mastered new techniques faster but I would say 1-2 months is an average. Common factor with these players has been that EVENTUALLY consistent training and the focus they have had during independent sessions has been rewarded and they have been able to enjoy new more effective strokes.
So what have we learned? A good coach causes a drop of level of play every now and then because without a drop there might not be new heights. Also remember as I said in the beginning that I mean specifically development of technique and tactics… Sparring is a whole different thing.
Br,
Ville