Cindy,
Thank you for your response, I was hoping your would. I have a few follow up questions if you have the time.
Sure.
During a beginner lesson how would you have felt about doing agility, balance and footwork exercises, such as working with a ladder or medicine ball?
Oh, absolutely not!
As a beginner, I would have had no appreciation for such things. I mean, what on earth does agility, balance and footwork have to do with tennis? Yeah, it sounds dumb to ask that question now, but I wouldn't have had any idea why I was asked to run through a ladder. I would have been very annoyed by this.
If your classes will be anything like mine, what the students really needed was basic ball recognition practice. In my classes, hardly anyone could gauge the bounce of a ball. No kidding. Like, the instructor would feed a high ball to the middle of the court as the student waited at the baseline. Student was to run up and hit the ball. Student would overrun the ball every time and then stand shocked that it bounced way over her head.
No joke. I was the only one out of 8 students who could judge the flight of the ball a little bit. So if you are dealing with women who cannot tell where the ball is headed, all the footwork drills in the world won't help them.
Looking back, would you have preferred to have been able spend time after the clinic playing with the other students without constant input of an instructor? Or perhaps working for 1 hour with the instructor, and being left more to yourselves for the last 1/2 hour?
By far, the most fun part of the class was playing drills or games while the instructor watched. I just loved this. If you missed, you had someone to tell you what to do differently. If you hit a great shot, you had someone to applaud you. In our one-hour class, we only did drills/points for the last 15 minutes. It never felt like enough. So if you can do one hour of drills and 30 minutes of supervised play, that would be awesome. If that is not possible, then having the students play/practice what they have learned outside your presence is better than nothing.
Allow me to emphasize that during the whole time I took clinics with various clubs/programs, not once did any of us students leave and go practice (or get together and practice on our own). If you can facilitate or encourage that, it would probably be very welcome.
One problem you have as a beginner is that you don't have anyone to play with you, or if you do, their level is too high. If you can forge a bond among the women in your clinics, they will consider you to be Their Pro, and they will stick with you for years.
Ka-ching!
As well, do you have any feeling about a time frame of 2 hours for a lesson? Or what the opinion of other women would be? Is that too much even for daytime? I find that 1-1/2 hours is the most that people care to spend during the evening hours.
-SF
After I left that first clinic (1 hour, 1 pro, 8 women), I went to a different program. That one was 2 hours, 1 pro per court, max 4 women on a court. More money, of course.
That clinic started out with 20-30 minutes of warm-up and hitting, then instruction, then doubles games for the last 20 minutes or so. I liked this way of structuring things. If someone came late, they didn't affect the drills because we were just warming up and practicing and it was their loss. If you came on time, you got a lot of practice, sometimes with one of the pros.
That said, I think most people think 90 minutes is sufficient. For a couple of years, I did 3 and a pro for 90 minutes and found that sufficient. Now that we have taken our private clinic to 4 and a pro, we feel we need the full 2 hours. It's a loooong clinic, though . . . .
))
