My name is Aaron Pea. I am a big fan of all of your teaching methods. In a couple of weeks, my girl’s tennis teams season will begin. I have about 9 players who are all beginners to tennis, which really excites me because I get to apply your teaching methods to the players. I was wondering what your protocol would be in teaching these beginners. Here are some constraints to take into account:
1. You have a two and a half weeks to prepare the kids
2. You have 3 courts and 11 players, 2 are more advanced
3. Practices could be between 1 to 2 hours
I would love to hear your take on what to do. I’d love to set up a Skype call with you, or if you would rather leave your thoughts in the comments that work too. If you would like to do a skype call I would gladly compensate you $$.
Here were my goals going into the first week:
1. Instill a love of tennis & Understanding of Learning
– Talk about how you need one strength to win
– Talk about Bio-Mechanical Learning vs. Techincal Learning
– Talk about why tennis is unique
– What is High Performance?
2. Develop Groundstroke Fundamentals
– A lot of Mini-Tennis going through your “Beginner Tennis” progressions
– Contact, Follow Through, Split Step, Footwork, Preparation
– progress with different colored balls throughout the week
– Use beginner games to keep things from getting too boring
3. Instill Good Bio Mechanical Habits at the Beginning of Practice
– Have players go through the progressions that you did with Milos above.
4. Teach Basic Serve
– Basic serve to get the ball in
I’d love to pick your brain, Tomas! I’m very appreciative to your dedication to craft!
I suggest you contact me at tomaz@feeltennis.net and we’ll discuss this further.
Yes, beginners need a lot of exercises and games to get going as they need to develop many skills to be able to play tennis.
If they don’t develop them then tennis is too difficult of a sport and they simply won’t be able to rally at all so that will frustrate them and they’ll quit.
I would also recommend a lot of throwing and catching drills to stimulate hand eye coordination and paying attention to the ball.
Dear Tomaz,
I have watched the Miha drill video, and want to buy a medicine ball. How much is the weight of a medicine ball suitable for female? 1kg or 2kg?
When You try to learn somebody from the beginning (new to tennis) do You first teach him universal swing and relaxing his arms and later teach him to add hip rotation to complete this movement? Or You have another way? Just curious… Maybe at first You do drills for hip rotation and then after You add the universal swing number 8 drill…?
Just everything at the same time, drills for each body segment or for each feel. Just like building a body builder – work on biceps, triceps, legs, abs, back, etc.
So in tennis: balance, body rotation, swings and so on. Just each of the drills for a while if a technical lesson and then you see how it goes.
Each player is different so what they don’t feel well you do more.
It’s like being a sculptor creating a statue. You keep carving it out and polishing it until it’s roughly (not exactly!) how it should be and that the actual result (ball flight) is consistent, controlled and efficient.
Hi Tomaz, at 1:34–1:36 in the video, Miha demonstrates a perfect distance between the ball and the racket, achieving that nice slapping effect.
I was wondering — is this the ideal distance and racket orientation we should always aim for at the point of contact? Sometimes when I hit, the distance ends up much shorter because I misjudge it, and my forehand looks a bit different at contact. It doesn’t feel stiff or tight, but at contact, the racket face is still facing the ball, just rotated 90 degrees compared to Miha’s racket orientation in that clip. It’s almost like I’m holding the racket like a stick, with the face pointing forward.
Does that sound like a possible variation, or am I doing something fundamentally wrong?
Every player needs time to really learn to position at the right distance to the ball, we have all positioned too close and too far many times. So yes, you can misjudge the ball and get too close, what matters after that moment is that you recognize that and ON THE NEXT ball remind yourself NOT TO GET TOO close.
If you don’t consciously remind yourself several hundred times in the next few weeks and months to keep more distance to the ball, you will likely keep getting too close to it. So realize also that if you play mostly points, there is no way for you to be that conscious as you will be immersed in the game and not be able “to wake up” and remind yourself to keep more distance.
So the only way to achieve that is through practice and awareness.
8 Comments
Aaron Pea
February 25, 2019Hi Tomaz,
My name is Aaron Pea. I am a big fan of all of your teaching methods. In a couple of weeks, my girl’s tennis teams season will begin. I have about 9 players who are all beginners to tennis, which really excites me because I get to apply your teaching methods to the players. I was wondering what your protocol would be in teaching these beginners. Here are some constraints to take into account:
1. You have a two and a half weeks to prepare the kids
2. You have 3 courts and 11 players, 2 are more advanced
3. Practices could be between 1 to 2 hours
I would love to hear your take on what to do. I’d love to set up a Skype call with you, or if you would rather leave your thoughts in the comments that work too. If you would like to do a skype call I would gladly compensate you $$.
Here were my goals going into the first week:
1. Instill a love of tennis & Understanding of Learning
– Talk about how you need one strength to win
– Talk about Bio-Mechanical Learning vs. Techincal Learning
– Talk about why tennis is unique
– What is High Performance?
2. Develop Groundstroke Fundamentals
– A lot of Mini-Tennis going through your “Beginner Tennis” progressions
– Contact, Follow Through, Split Step, Footwork, Preparation
– progress with different colored balls throughout the week
– Use beginner games to keep things from getting too boring
3. Instill Good Bio Mechanical Habits at the Beginning of Practice
– Have players go through the progressions that you did with Milos above.
4. Teach Basic Serve
– Basic serve to get the ball in
I’d love to pick your brain, Tomas! I’m very appreciative to your dedication to craft!
Tomaz
February 26, 2019Hi Aaron,
Thanks for the kind feedback.
I suggest you contact me at tomaz@feeltennis.net and we’ll discuss this further.
Yes, beginners need a lot of exercises and games to get going as they need to develop many skills to be able to play tennis.
If they don’t develop them then tennis is too difficult of a sport and they simply won’t be able to rally at all so that will frustrate them and they’ll quit.
I would also recommend a lot of throwing and catching drills to stimulate hand eye coordination and paying attention to the ball.
He Jing
January 25, 2021Dear Tomaz,
I have watched the Miha drill video, and want to buy a medicine ball. How much is the weight of a medicine ball suitable for female? 1kg or 2kg?
Tomaz
January 25, 2021Hi He,
2kg is just about the right weight, Miha is using 2kg and is doing just fine with it.
Patrik Aleksandrow
February 18, 2024Miha is talented, nice video.
When You try to learn somebody from the beginning (new to tennis) do You first teach him universal swing and relaxing his arms and later teach him to add hip rotation to complete this movement? Or You have another way? Just curious… Maybe at first You do drills for hip rotation and then after You add the universal swing number 8 drill…?
Tomaz
February 18, 2024Just everything at the same time, drills for each body segment or for each feel. Just like building a body builder – work on biceps, triceps, legs, abs, back, etc.
So in tennis: balance, body rotation, swings and so on. Just each of the drills for a while if a technical lesson and then you see how it goes.
Each player is different so what they don’t feel well you do more.
It’s like being a sculptor creating a statue. You keep carving it out and polishing it until it’s roughly (not exactly!) how it should be and that the actual result (ball flight) is consistent, controlled and efficient.
Kowshik Islam
June 8, 2025Hi Tomaz, at 1:34–1:36 in the video, Miha demonstrates a perfect distance between the ball and the racket, achieving that nice slapping effect.
I was wondering — is this the ideal distance and racket orientation we should always aim for at the point of contact? Sometimes when I hit, the distance ends up much shorter because I misjudge it, and my forehand looks a bit different at contact. It doesn’t feel stiff or tight, but at contact, the racket face is still facing the ball, just rotated 90 degrees compared to Miha’s racket orientation in that clip. It’s almost like I’m holding the racket like a stick, with the face pointing forward.
Does that sound like a possible variation, or am I doing something fundamentally wrong?
Tomaz
June 15, 2025Every player needs time to really learn to position at the right distance to the ball, we have all positioned too close and too far many times. So yes, you can misjudge the ball and get too close, what matters after that moment is that you recognize that and ON THE NEXT ball remind yourself NOT TO GET TOO close.
If you don’t consciously remind yourself several hundred times in the next few weeks and months to keep more distance to the ball, you will likely keep getting too close to it. So realize also that if you play mostly points, there is no way for you to be that conscious as you will be immersed in the game and not be able “to wake up” and remind yourself to keep more distance.
So the only way to achieve that is through practice and awareness.