Tennis Coaches improve your business with improved communication skills

The busiest tennis coaches are not always the coaches with the best qualifications or experience.

Quite often the busiest coaches are the coaches that find it easy to get on with people - they can talk easily to parents, children, businessmen etc.

Being able to teach outside in all weather condtions needs special skills and these skills can easily be learnt.

You may have the best ideas and the best techniques but if you can't communicate these ideas and techniques clearly to your pupils - no-one will ever know how good you are!

There are two easy ways to improve communication. Open your mouth wider so that the sound can come out and direct the sound where you want it to go.

Open your mouth

Too many people try to talk with their mouths almost shut. Look at yourself in a mirror as you say,

'I'm too frightened to try and jump that high.'

On the 'i' sounds which sound like 'eye', you should be able to put at least two fingers vertically in your mouth.

This will probably feel very strange and if you are speaking to a player who is standing next to you, you won't need to open your mouth quite as wide as this. However, if the player is standing at the other end of the court you'll need to open your mouth this wide to let the sound come out. You wouldn't expect to be able to hit a ball if you didn't move your arm - but people do try to speak without moving their jaw!

Direct the sound

Once this sound has managed to get out of your mouth it has to be directed. If you're talking to children make sure that you don't speak over the top of their heads but at the same time don't look down at such at angle that you end up directing you voice straight at the ground.

If you were playing tennis and wanted to hit a ball crosscourt you wouldn't aim it down the line. Think of your words as your tennis ball and direct them where you want them to go.

Entertainers

A tennis coach is very much like an actor - you might wake up one morning and feel terrible but you have adults and children to coach all day and they are expecting you to be full of enthusiasm about tennis. You can't expect your players to get excited about what they are doing if you sound dull and fed up! The show must go on!

Trainee Tennis Coaches

Nearly all coaching courses require the trainee coach to demonstrate their communication skills without showing them how to improve these skills. It can be hard enough having to demonstrate your tennis skills without having to shout the instructions in front of a group of strangers!

You need to slow your speech down, open your mouth and remember you do know what you are talking about so just enjoy it. If your enthusiasm shines through your speech your players will be only too pleased to perform those (some may call tedious) tennis drills all day long!