Teaching Tennis to Your Young Kids

Hi guys, Coach Bill here with Tennis Anyone, and I'm here today actually with someone very special. This is my son, Jeremiah. Jeremiah, how old are you? Six. Six years old. He's been playing tennis now for about a half a year, three months to about half a year. We're just really working with Jeremiah on building up some basics, and the reason why I'm here training with Jeremiah, well, mainly we're trying to build his game up, but I really wanted to do a video for parents out there that are looking to work with their kids and maybe, as a parent, you have no experience. This is going to be completely unedited, so it's something I'm just kind of doing on the fly. But again, I really want to have parents, best case scenario, involved with their kids on the court. Even if you've never played any tennis as a parent, it's crucial that you work with your child on court. So here's a real basic thing that we're going to be doing with Jeremiah. At his level, it's very important that he's got the correct form. So on the forehand side, Jeremiah, go ahead and show the correct form on your forehand. Good. Let's go ahead and do it again. Very nice form, son. Let's see it again. Good, good, good. Terrific. Let's see it again. Okay, good. So what you're looking at, first of all, is that Jeremiah is doing what is called starting off looking through the 2 o'clock window. So on his forehand side, if this is 12 o'clock and this is 6 o'clock, and we're standing in the middle of a big clock, we go 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, that's where his racket starts. Let's go ahead and show him that, son. So here he is at 2 o'clock. He's looking through the racket as if it were a window, and his hands are together like this. This is the starting point. If they can get the starting point, then from there, they pretty much can get the stroke. So from here, he's taking a loop, one-handed, swinging forward, coming over the shoulder and catching with his left hand. Go ahead and show him that stroke again, son. Go for it. Okay, terrific. One more time. Okay, fantastic. So we're going to keep filming, and I'm going to have Jeremiah hit a few forehands here so you can see him hitting, and this is real basic stuff. So eyes on Jeremiah right now, and Jeremiah, on your toes, all right? So he's in his starting point right now, and I'm just going to soft-toss it and let him hit. Good. Do it again. The biggest thing right now is that he's trying to get excellent grunts. He's trying to make good contact with the ball at the same time. He's got to stick with his form, which is crucial. So we're developing the form on this forehand stroke, and at the same time, he's working on his contact point, which is helping him with his eye-hand coordination. Bring the camera over to me really quickly. Just notice what I'm doing. All I'm doing is doing what I call soft-tossing, so I'm just tossing the ball like this to him, tossing the ball like this. Again, you don't need to have any experience as a tennis player to actually do this. You just have to desire to have that time with your child and want them to get better. So here I go. A nice little soft-toss and hit, and one more time. Terrific. Fantastic. Let's hear it for Jeremiah. Great job, Jeremiah. Take a quick bow. A quick bow like this. All right. So the idea, again, is you've got to get on the court with your kids if you want them to be good, and we are going to be doing another video in just a little while with my three-year-old son, Jaxton, to kind of show you how you work with a two-year-old going on three, how you work with someone who's maybe a little bit younger who doesn't quite have the focus level. So we'll be back in a little bit with that. Hopefully this helps you. Again, I really want to encourage you to get out with your kids and do some soft-toss with them on the tennis court. Thank you.