One of the more difficult and stressful aspects of being a Director of Tennis is staff management. You are not only responsible for your own performances but also for those of your coaching staff.

After many management positions in both the tennis coaching and fitness industry I have compiled a list of key points to make your life as a manager more productive, successful and less stressful.

Agility is such an important component when it comes to an athlete being fast. Tennis requires the athlete to be fast over short distances, in multiple directions and have the ability to develop explosive starts from various positions.

Agility training is sports specific and it has to simulate the exact movements required by your sport. For athletes that require linear speed then agility training will have little benefit.

When you watch young tennis players in tournaments in the U/10, U/12 and U/14 age groups you will find that it is often the more consistent players who do well. At this age the athletes are still physically developing and the male players are just entering a growth stage where they will start to increase on their strength and power quite significantly.

I recently received an email from a 4.5 tennis player in the USA who proposed the following question: I could use some help with a plan to get better. I am a 4.5 rated player in the USA and would like to be a 5.5. For some reason, I can't find a tennis coach that will help with an overall plan; they just want to work on strokes. Any ideas?

After coaching tennis at a big country club in Texas for over five years I often faced the same question from our tournament players who felt as if they had plateaued and that by just getting out on the court and working on their strokes was just not taking them to the next level.

Do you know what coaches are looking for when recruiting for their team? Recruiting is the key to any successful program. I have known some coaches who lacked the coaching experience needed to create a champion team yet were masters when it came to recruiting. The key is developing a successful plan and checklist so that you can choose players with the characteristics that you want in your team.

Coaching a college sports team can be a rewarding experience for a coach, it can also be quite stressful and challenging if you do not understand what you might be getting your self into.

When you make that career decision to coach at the college level you are about to take on a wide array of responsibilities.

You Will Be Responsible For:
Representing your school in an appropriate way while trying to succeed as a team, all of the players on your team, handling all of the extra requirements for your international players such as visa concerns, organising holiday accommodation, transport, language barriers and much more.

Are you setting yourself up for disaster by not taking the following safety precautions when training athletes in the gym?

The weight room in a gym can be a very dangerous place for those more novice athletes entering the weight room for the first time. Often the ego will prevent the young athlete from asking for help and this is not the place you want to learn from experience.

The key to success for any sports program is to carefully plan and implement a well designed and structured training plan.

To do this, several steps need to be followed in order for this to happen successfully:

Design a general plan following the various phases of the season. By doing this, you will be able to carefully plan specific areas to work on depending on which season you are in (pre-season, competitive, post- season).

Many athletes go through their sporting career without ever reaching their full potential. Many realize that being a successful athlete requires more than just practicing the necessary skills for their sport.

How is Success Defined? Success is the ability of the athlete to achieve a high level of performance every time they are in a competitive situation.

Every athlete strives to attain their "Ultimate Performance Zone." But what really is this Ultimate Performance Zone (UPZ) and how can an athlete achieve this state on a more consistent basis? I have called it the UPZ because this state varies for each individual and it is up to each athlete to identify their own UPZ through self - education.

As a professional athlete, I was aware of when I was in my Ultimate Performace Zone but being so young I didn't realise how I could control it and what the cues were that triggered these feelings.