I had these two ladies once a week for 9 months. It became a routine that they would bring the paddles to every lesson and take them home after, so that they could practice outside of the lessons.

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Did we use tennis racquets at all? Yes absolutely, but for every new skill that I introduced we always started with the paddles first, and then when they got it,  I had them switch to the tennis racquet.

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Let’s talk about how powerful this was.

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I’m sure you can visualize what two brand new tennis players look like, and you’d probably agree that if you asked them to execute a specific pattern they wouldn’t be able to do it (just having a simple crosscourt rally can be a struggle for new players)

 

I had them executing pretty advanced patterns successfully, for example, a pattern where Player 1 could only hit crosscourt until Player 2 hit down the line, and once Player 2 hit down the line she had to come to the net and volley.

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This would not have been possible had we done it from the baseline with tennis racquets, but it was possible to do it with Spec Tennis.

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Beginning players built up the confidence in knowing when to attack and were comfortable with volleying to the open court.

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And yes after they got really good at this pattern in Spec Tennis, I had them do it with tennis racquets on the full court.

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I was so impressed by how well this progression-based model worked that I now use this approach in all of my tennis lessons. I’m 100% convinced these two ladies reached a higher level in tennis using the hybrid approach (spec tennis + tennis) than they would have had we done tennis 100% of the time.

 

 

This first story highlighted players who were complete beginners, but what if you have an intermediate or advanced tennis player? The good news, I tested that out for you as well.

 

I taught tennis lessons to Adam Bain, who is the former Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Twitter. He was a 3.5 level player when I first met him. He wasn’t that comfortable hitting a two-handed backhand though and one day he asked if I could teach him a one-hander.

 

So I grabbed two Spec Tennis paddles from my bag (I always have paddles on hand) and gave him some guidance on how to hit a topspin one-handed backhand.

When he reached a point where he was able to rally with me from a very easy ball that he didn’t have to move to, then I challenged him by making him move and hit to various targets.

 

Only after he was proficient in each of these scenarios did we pick up the tennis racquet again.

 

Here’s what Adam had to say about the experience: “I think Spec Tennis is absolutely fantastic. I honed my technique on the Spec court and then brought that over to the tennis court and it immediately translated for me. It allowed me to advance faster, I think, because of the work that I did on the Spec court. To me, it doesn’t matter how advanced of a tennis player you are, starting with Spec Tennis should dramatically improve your tennis game.”