Rising talent: The journey of a 12-year-old tennis prodigy

I used to be a righty, and we used to train the lefty just kind of for like coordination and then it worked. He will never give up. In the non-weightlifting world, the ability to squat double body weight, much less do it when you're 12 years old or 13 years old, is insane. I started playing regularly on a daily basis when I was around four. I knew he was going to be some sort of athlete. I'm Teodor Davidov, I'm 12 years old, I'm a tennis player, and this is No Days Off. I first started playing tennis when I was three, to the courts. I have a final of the tournament today. It's a UTR tournament, so it's basically anyone can play it, and I'm in the final right now. He's like older than me, he's like 18 or 19, so I play against kids who are a lot older. My name is Kalin Davidov, and I'm Teodor's father and coach. doing a full pull-up on the kitchen countertop actually being I don't know he was in diapers since birth like he almost has endless energy he's indefatigable sometimes. When you go on the court and you're all stiff and you're not ready so you can't really perform it's just good to warm up like that just to get the body ready. Big boy Q3 ATP right here boys. Both hands yeah Yeah, that's incredible, incredible because you see in tennis, like normally forehand is natural, backhand is a little bit more work. You can see him, he has very natural strokes both sides. I have probably seen like three guys and that's it, like him, one guy in college and another guy in a pro tournament, that's it. During the summer when I have free time, I come over here to practice with the kids and help them out to have good rhythm, good ball. Are you ready for his final match today? It'll be a good match. He's kind of ambidextrous on the tennis court. Slowly, slowly, it started taking shape. It can only help long-term. Fortunately, I won the match. I earned my first big paycheck. And then you grab the other end of the check and you've got it. He found his own way of changing the racket in the hands. So the way I change my grips, if I want to hit a lefty forehand, only let go if I want to hit a righty I just let go of my left hand I believe it's faster than changing from the normal backhand because the backhand you actually have to change it and turn the grip while with two forehands all you gotta do is just you just got a brain he obviously does a lot of training and so with me specifically we focused more on the Olympic lifts and more explosive lifting the snatches clean and jerks whether he's come from practice or whether he's going to practice. So we let that kind of be the determining factor of how hard we go that day. For the most part, he moves really well with the bar. I tell him all the time, it's unfortunate for me, because I do coach weightlifting, that he's so good at tennis, because he would be a really good weightlifter as well. That's 35 kilos. On the movement that he's doing right now, on the clean and jerk, he can jerk with either leg forward, and that would be something most people can't do. To not only be one brain sided, So when you're righty, the left hemisphere of the brain is more dominant. A lot of times we'll do two reps and he'll do, if we do two reps, he'll do jerk one way and then jerk the other way. Most people do it one way and you try to get them to do it the other way. They can't even make their, like you said, writing with, like telling yourself to write with the wrong hand. This area here, the thoracic spine area, if we can keep this whole area open, anybody that's going overhead, whether you're throwing or whether you're going overhead, any of those movements are going to be safer for your shoulder and your elbow. the more open up this thoracic spine area is. Speed and agility. The cone is just a reference point where he needs to run to every time and touching it and maintain his body balance in the center of the court. So we'll go from more general to more tennis specific. Ready, set, go. Yeah, we're basically gonna do the same thing we did with the block step with the racket and the tennis ball. The foil's definitely my righty because I played with it my whole life. But now it's even. These are kind of basic, fundamental drills working more on physicality. This is just the work that needs to be done. It's just a mindset, it's only in your head. Days off means, it means just to grind every day, work hard, and to keep on training. Thanks for watching my story and make sure to like and subscribe.