The Lefty Journal
Val’s Journal—First 6 weeks
Deb’s Journal —Day 1
Day 1 (8 November 2019) FH ONLY
(We are only focusing on FH while left arm adjusts to additional activity and strengthens. We will carefully add in a 1-handed BH if she can successfully keep her wrist up when doing so).
Drills:
Eye-Coach to get feel for swing with left arm
Foam balls straight, half court
Foam balls x-court, half court
Reflections: Deb took to lefty right away. Though she said it felt awkward, she had a more natural swing including using her body, not just her arm. Nice follow-through.
Deb’s Journal—Day 2
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Day 2 (11 November 2019) FH ONLY
Drills:
Eye-Coach
Foam balls
Orange balls
Reflections: Foam balls x-court hitting went well. Orange balls generated more issues with the setup like timing of take-back, dropping racquet low enough before hitting. I think orange balls was too much too soon. Will return to foam balls only for a while as she really carves out the correct swing path with left arm. Need lots of repetitions to make it habit before adding in another level of difficulty.
Deb’s Journal—Day 3
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Day 3 (13 November 2019) FH ONLY
Drills:
Foam balls x-court
Red felt balls x-court
Throwing tennis balls to get feeling of body doing the work, not just arm
FH volleys
Reflections: Deb hits the ball with best results when she allows it to drop low enough. Very nice shots.
Volleys: good job stepping into the shot.
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Day 4 (14 November 2019) FH ONLY
Drills:
Foam balls x-court with video
FH volleys (last 10 minutes)
Reflections: I gave Deb different court thoughts to focus on, one at a time during the lesson. Court thoughts: shift weight in legs from back to front during swing, hit ball when it was low, hit the ball out in front, have racquet strings facing target as racquet moves through the hitting zone, lay wrist back, drop racquet low on the take back so that it almost feels like it is going to scrape the court. Deb felt frustrated sometimes when she would go from one court thought to the next because she felt she would lose the thing she had just focused on when she was asked to focus on the next thing.
It was my job as coach to scale it back to one most important court thought that worked for her and had an overarching positive effect on several aspects of her shot. It seemed that when her focus was “hit ball low with low racquet” (that feels like it could scrape the court), she had most success as everything else seemed to fall into place, especially having wrist back and having racquet strings facing target through the hitting zone.
Deb’s Journal—Day 4, Day 5, Day 6
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Day 5 (15 November 2019) FH ONLY
Drills:
Foam balls x-court
Red felt balls
Reflections: Today we began our x-court rallies with Deb holding the 2 court thoughts (combined as one) she landed on yesterday: low and low meaning 1) drop the racquet low enough in the take-back before swinging for the ball, and 2) hit the ball as it descends low enough. She did well with this, but many of her shots appeared to be her arm only at work. To engage her body in the swing, I fed a hopper of balls to her and had her change her court thought to hitting the ball using the force of her body in the swing. I gave her targets behind me to help trigger this need to get the ball deep in the court. Her shots were more powerful as a result, but she said she wasn’t sure if it was due to her body engaging in the shot or putting more force in her arm. There were times when it was obvious she was hitting with her entire body in unison. We returned to hitting with the low and low court thought, this time with red felt balls. We had some nice long rallies.
Her comment at the end was that she still felt her arm was weak and not sending the shots she hoped for. We will work on engaging the body with shift of weight from back leg to front leg and good core rotation next week. I may hand feed balls to her if this helps.
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Day 6 (21 November 2019) FH ONLY
Drills:
Foam balls x-court
Orange balls
We began the session with foam balls. Though it had been 6 days since Deb had last hit, she was hitting well right from the start today. We worked on using the body for power, especially since she commented her left arm felt fatigued and a bit strained.
Moving on to orange balls, our rallies were long. I encouraged her to hit the ball as hard as she could to send it deep in the court. Though the orange balls are calibrated for the ¾ court, I thought it might get her to use her body in the shot if she had to send the ball further. We had some very good rallies and will start with orange balls next time.
Deb’s Journal—Day 6 Cont…, Day 7, Day 8
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Day 7 (24 November 2019) FH ONLY
Drills:
Orange balls warm-up in short court
Orange balls games
Reflections: Today, we simply played games. It was a nice break for Deb to be focused outwardly on placement and points rather than inwardly on technique. We had drilled enough times focusing on technique in our previous meetings that I felt she was ready to play.
To make things even, I covered the singles court on my end, and she covered the doubles Ad court on her end. If a ball went to her backhand, we played the point over (we are avoiding her using BH so she doesn’t injure left arm as she feels it is weaker, and for our left handed project, we decided that BH not necessary. Plus it would have to be one-handed BH because her right arm is immobilized with a brace.)
It was lots of fun, and she beat me several games as well. Best of all, I think she left the court happier than when she arrived.
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Day 8 (4 December 2019) FH ONLY
Drills: Orange balls
Self-feed
Rally
Games: Lefty game as above
Reflections: We began hitting from the service line per usual. Deb said her left arm felt a bit sore from the activity. Analyzing her, I felt she was powering the ball solely with her arm and not using her body, so it wasn’t a surprise that the left arm was fatiguing quickly. We also discovered that the racquet she is using is causing her pain. Though it is only 8.5 oz, it is completely unbalanced, head-heavy, and puts strain on wrist and forearm.
To remedy this, we borrowed a racquet from the front desk (a Head bright yellow racquet, 10.6 oz, well-balanced). She was amazed how the discomfort caused by the other racquet subsided when she used this new racquet.
I had her self-feed more than ½ a basket of orange balls so that she could feel her body engage in the shot. I told her to engage body in the take-back as well as the swing forward. She likened it to a golf swing. Her shots were of good quality, though she did have frequent side spin on the ball rather than topspin. But I wasn’t concerned about that (one court thought at a time!).
After she completed self-feed, we progressed to rallying. She did well, getting more power from her core into her shots.
Our game at the end was the same as previous meeting. It was a good chance to engage in competition, allowing her to focus externally on her opponent rather than internally on the technique. She won several games.
Deb’s Journal—Day 9, Day 10, Day 11
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Day 9 (5 December 2019) FH ONLY
Drills: Orange balls
Self-feed
Rally
Game
Reflections: We worked more on core power, relaxing arm. Deb had Eureka moment when she discovered that laying back the wrist didn’t mean keeping racquet head above wrist at all times. She had been trying to keep racquet head up on take-back and it was hurting her wrist. When she allowed racquet to drop naturally with gravity on take-back, pain subsided and she had nice swing, leading with wrist, using core for power. She generated more consistent topspin and less side spin once she made this adjustment.
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Day 10 (10 December 2019) FH ONLY
Drills: Orange balls
Self-feed
Rally
Game
Reflections: Today, Deb felt that after the self-feed warm-up, the rally part of our practice wasn’t necessary because it made her think too much and get in her head instead of in her body. So tomorrow we will skip rally practice and go straight from self-feed warm-up to the games.
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Day 11 (11 December 2019) FH ONLY
Drills: Orange balls
Self-feed warm-up
Games
Reflections: Today we played games right after the warm-up. Our first set of games followed the rules we created where I play into the Ad court of Deb’s end of the court and she plays into the singles court on my end. Games to 7 points. We talked about anticipating where a shot will go in response to the previous shot such as short and wide will usually elicit a short and wide return shot. Or if she sends a shot to my backhand, then my shot will usually be directed to the outside of the ad court. Sometimes I forget she is playing with her left hand too! She does an amazing job.
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Day 12 (12 December 2019) FH ONLY
Drills: Orange balls
Self-feed warm-up
Games-2 different ones
Reflections: After playing our usual game, we modified our game to create a new type of scoring, based on one of Mario’s games. The game encourages players to get to every ball, so opponent only scores points if you don’t get your racquet on the ball. As long as you touch the ball with your racquet, even if you hit the ball into the net or send it out of court, your opponent doesn’t score a point.
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Day 13 (17 December 2019) BH at last!
Drills: Orange balls
Self-feed warm-up
Games
Reflections: Deb noticed her arm hurt after the first few minutes self-feeding, so we focused on engaging her core for power and leaving her arm relaxed. That seemed to do the trick.
Today Deb began accidentally using her right hand to assist her left hand in a modified 2-handed backhand. And she hit them quite well. Best of all was that she was pain free in her injured arm. This was a great turning point as it has given her a better chance to respond to more balls and cover the court differently.
When we played our games, she did a great job drawing me in and then successfully lobbing over me. Was fun practice for me as well to try to defend against the lob.
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Deb’s Journal—Day 13 and 14
Day 14 (18 December 2019) FH and BH
Drills: Orange balls and Green balls
Self-feed warm-up with orange balls, then green balls
Games with green balls
Reflections: Deb requested we try green balls today, so after a brief orange ball warm-up, we changed over to green balls and did self-feeding. She was amazed that they were not too different from orange balls. During warm-up, I noticed her right arm dangles at her side, so I tried to get her to engage it in the swing by keeping it parallel to the racquet arm through the swing to promote good shoulder turn. She said it felt awkward, and it took adjusting to, but it appeared as much more “normal” swing when it wasn’t dangling unengaged.
She did super well with green balls and beat me handily a few games. She also continued to use her modified backhand.
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Day 15 (19 December 2019) FH and BH
Drills: Green balls
Deb’s Journal—Day 15
Self-feed green balls for warm-up
Games with green balls
Reflections: During warm-up, we talked about the 2-handed backhand, so I encouraged her to self-feed that which was awkward at first, simply because the ball toss is different. You need to toss ball up and let it drop which buys time to get tossing hand on racquet grip for the 2-handed stroke. She did really well with this once she got the hang of self-feed.
Feeling quite good, she asked if we could play our limited court game first (as we have been doing) and then change to full singles court. We had some great games and she was a formidable opponent to play, winning lots of points. It was lots of fun and I’m glad we did this before her 2-week break when she goes on holiday.
We’ve made so much progress over the past 6 weeks going from foam balls, through red felt balls, orange balls and now green balls, and going from no backhand to now a 2-handed backhand, still with left hand as dominant hand.
Will be interesting to see where her tennis elbow recovery is upon her return. Perhaps we’ll work a bit more on volleys when she returns.
