Component-Based Development

Component Development is: Targeting the fundamental components of tennis skills and rapidly developing them, because, if you do not have the component, you cannot execute the skill.

Therefore, we breakdown all strokes into key components and develop those components. Once the components are in place, the player will begin to use them. In particular, when a player executes a stroke, their brain assemble the stroke from the elementary components. Because this approach follows the natural human learning process, it results in a significant decrease in development time.

Three physiological elements must be developed for each component/ movement:

• The muscle groups needed to execute the movement
• The nerves needed to carry signals to the muscle groups to actuate the muscles
• The neuronal assembles in the brain needed to direct the movement

Each of these areas develop at different speeds. For example, control assemblies can develop before muscle groups. This leads to the frustrating situation that one "knows" how to hit the stroke before they can execute it.

Development times vary with the individual. Six weeks is a good reference figure for development of a complete action component.

Once action components are developed, they must be assembled to execute a stroke. This is an additional training period that must be guided by purpose or intent, not rote repetition. Example: "Hit the ball cross court with top spin" rather than "take your racquet back, bend the knees, etc."

Component development can be aided by repetition. However, the term "repetition" is misleading. In actuality, it is a process of experimentation. By stimulating an action by experimentation, muscle groups, nerves and control assemblies are stimulated to develop. The more experiments, the more refined and precise the action becomes. However, perfection is not attainable since the brain has no concept of the perfect stroke. For this reason it continually experiments with new variations in the hopes of further improvement. During the early learning process these excursions can result in wild variations on a stroke that are mystifying to the student and instructor alike. These variations are part of the normal development process and will diminish with time. In later stages of stroke development, these variations will be quite small and will often go unnoticed by any one but the player (who is constantly annoyed by them).

If a component is not "natural", it will "fade" without maintenance. Hence specific exercises must be developed to maintain skill components. It is not sufficient to expect components to develop rapidly from the level of stimulation received in a lesson. For example, one will only get a few repetitions of core rotation actions during a one hour lesson. In particular, a student will get 120 unfocused repetitions in twenty minutes of continuous movement whereas through focused development, they get 120 repetitions in two minutes. This is a 10:1 increase in repetitions using a focused approach. Further, focused repetitions are at least 10 times more effective in stimulating development than unfocused (coincidental) repetitions. Hence focused development is at least 100 times more effective in developing skill components.