This week's plan

Hello everyone,

We have been training in specific phase for the past two weeks. Our main focus was getting players to really work on hitting quality cross court that can keep opponent back behind the baseline as well and pulling them out towards the singles sideline. Building on the cross court shot, players will make decisions on whether they can change direction by going down the line or continue to play solid cross court. I think everyone did a great job during the last two weeks, everyone understand the concept and overall implementing it well into their game, but I think we need to continue to work on the quality of shots and be even more precise on our decision making.

For this and next week, we will stay on the same topic but come up with different drills and scenarios to push players on their quality and execution, and getting them to make much more precise decisions. We still want players to understand when is "Setting up the point" stage and what should we do or look for in order to move to "Taking control of the point" stage or even to "Finishing the point".

Beside the groundstroke topic, we will also work on a lot of serve this and next week. Serving in general for young players is more of a liability because they usually don't have a strong serve, and it can be inconsistent due to pressure or lack of volume and practice. Players often get put on a lot of pressure by the returners in their service game and can be quite stressful during a tournament match situation. So our goal is to get players to feel comfortable with their serve, and not to be afraid of going for their serve, understand how to apply right amount of spin in order to gain consistency, and understand how to self correct or make adjustment to maximize their chance of winning points on their serve and holding service games.

Let's have a great week and see you soon!

Peter Liu

ORC Tennis Bubble and Weather

Hi everyone,

Our tennis bubble is been worked on right now, by end of this week we will have one set of courts done so we need to expect to play outdoor starting next week.

Please make sure to dress according to the weather. Be prepared to have hat, long sleeves, pants, jacket, sun screen, etc. with you.

In case of rain, please check ORC Twitter channel for update and class cancellation. Or you can call the front desk directly. https://twitter.com/ontarioracquet

This week's plan

Hello everyone,

Last two weeks we had been training in general preparation phase. This was our time to get back to important fundamentals, building and developing technical skills, and really go through a lot of volume in order to help these skills solidify. We pushed our players physically and mentally during their training and I'm happy to report that everyone did a great job! Let's make sure we can all keep the intensity moving into the next training phase.

For the next two to three weeks we will be moving into Specific Training phase. In this phase we will be looking at specific tactics or shots, and the decision making skills that goes along with each tactics, we will also put these training into point play situations in order to make it more realistic for players.

To start off, our specific tactic is when to change direction from a quality cross court rally situation. We will be discussing the idea of three rallying stages. Setting up the point (quality cross court), Controlling the point (changing direction to down-the-line), finishing the point (anticipate to move forward based on the result and looking to finish the point).

Detail:
1. Hitting quality cross court rally ball (a ball that pulls opponent away laterally to singles sideline)

2. Change direction to down-the-line (based on the quality of cross court shot) and the decisions to help realizing when is the correct time to do so, also understand that this is a Controlling the point stage so rather than going for winners, players should focus on stay in control.

3. Decision on whether the two previous shots were successful and what players should anticipate in order to finish the point.

We have lots to cover for this and next week, so I'll keep you posted on how everyone does!

Peter Liu

This week's plan

Hi everyone,

Most of you knew that I was away to Calgary for the U12 Indoor Nationals, although I had a wonderful time there and Team Ontario did well, but I have to say it is nice to be back!

After last night's training. I felt that everyone looked great and overall engaged in practice with positive energy, but I do think few of the players need to work on their intensity, focus and bring more to the table. I will address this to everyone as a group and talk to individual player as needed.

We have been in competitive phase for about two to three weeks now, there has been a lot of participation in tournaments, so good for those players went out and being competitive! Having said that, it is time for us to step back to general preparation and training phase. So for next couple of weeks, we will be focusing on all the important fundamentals players need to have and help players further develop or maintain them. Things like:

1. Having the right grip
2. Be at the ball early and in position to have a good setup
3. Having a proper impact point and good timing at all time
4. Focus on having a long hitting zone with good racquet acceleration and body mechanics
5. Proper recovering after each ball
6. Split steps, good racquet preparation, explosive first step to the ball
7. Develop good rally rhythm and hit the ball on the top of the bounce
8. Couple of specific shots I would like to train are: swing volley, defensive lob (continental grip)

These are some of the key things we will be working on and we will be relentless on them, it is also a good time that we help some individual player with their technical red flags. There will be a lot of volume this week and I want to make sure all players come into the program focused and ready to work hard!

Let's have a great week!

Peter Liu

Article on developing GRIT.

Hi everyone,

This is an article shared by our director Yves Boulais. Talks about how to make sure and help kids develop GRIT. It's is a great article and I hope everyone find time to read it.

http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2016/03/growth-mindset/

Peter Liu

Easter weekend. No class on Monday.

Almost forgot to mention this...

Easter weekend is coming up. There is no class next Monday. Class will resume on March 29th.

Good luck to anyone that's play a tournament this weekend.

GO ORC!!

Peter Liu

This week's plan

Hello everyone,

I'm sure everyone had a wonderful March break and we are all well rested!

We have quite a few players playing tournament this weekend, so we are extending the points play and prep-competition training phase. We are going to focus on proper pre-match warm up and things players should be focusing on that's going to help them play better going into their match, as well as things players should pay attention to their opponent during their warm up in order to better identify their opponent's level of play or perhaps weakness.

Our match objectives for everyone are:

1. Start the point with an idea in mind. Take time for serve, and be ready for return.
2. Have higher level of consistency by aiming for big targets and always fight to have early setup and good impact point in order to achieve great control of the ball
3. Pay attention to short balls or any rally that's less quality, play aggressively without going for broke and giving away points.
4. Try to use your strength as often as possible.

We will watch our players and encourage them to really focus on these objectives. On top of singles match, we will also play some doubles to keep things interesting!

Let's have a great week!

Peter Liu

This week's plan and welcome to March!

Hi everyone,

March is here and I'm sure a lot of players are going away for a short vacation. We will make sure all players work hard this week so they can use their March break to get a good rest.

This week our focus will be working on pattern training, specifically on starting the point and the 2nd shot after. We will be looking at starting the point (serve or return) towards opponent's backhand and what to do with the next shot coming back. There will be decision making component in this training in order to help players understand how to position themselves, whether they should/could continue to take control and play aggressively, or they need to take a neutral (perhaps defensive)position to keep the ball in play. This training will go well with the serve and return training we have been working on for last couple weeks. I think it will also help players in their matches.

We will continue to work on groundstroke skills as far as handling pace, have better timing and impact, create better rhythm during rally... etc. I think everyone has improved tremendously in these areas, but we need to maintain them and continue to get better at them.

Let's make this a great week! See you on court!

Peter Liu

This week's plan

Hi everyone,

It has been a great week of training. I felt all players were engaged and really put in efforts during practice. I also felt players taking more ownership in their tennis and was more focused on the things they wanted to improve, so great job to everyone.

This week we will continue to develop our serve and return game. For the most part everyone is doing better, but I would still encourage all players to get out there and practice serve as much as possible. Two main issues I saw were double faulting and not utilizing spin to help with 1st or 2nd serve, in some cases players are still "pushing" their 2nd serves in which really isn't going to make the serve better in the long run. These aspects of serve can only be improved by spending enough time practicing it and eventually gain confident and control.

On groundstrokes, we will be working on creating and handling pace from the baseline position. We want players to be able to create pace or an aggressive rally ball when the incoming ball is slower. And control or redirect if incoming ball is faster. This should overall help players develop better feel and understanding on how to control the ball based on what they're receiving.

Of course we will be working on volley skills and transition from groundstrokes to net play whenever we can. A lot of smashes will be hit in order to help develop overhead skills which is also important for serving.

Let's make this a great week! See you on court!

Peter Liu

This week's plan and tournament results!

Hi everyone,

I hope you all had a wonderful Family Day long weekend.

This week's plan is not too different from last week. We are in our pre-competition phase as we have few more players going to tournament this coming weekend, so the plan is to have players select few things they really want to work on and help them focus on improving those areas. We have been practicing with this approach since last week and I think everyone got to learn about taking more ownership during our training, so let's hope all players continue to push themselves and train effectively.

Playing lots of points is still our focus this week, but we will really explore the importance of starting the point both from serve and return perspective. Having a routine before the serve and be ready for the 2nd shot in order to take control of the point right away or neutralize our opponent if the server's serve isn't strong enough yet. We will also work on return of serve, not only we want to return with good consistency, we also want to put server on defense as soon as possible, especially on those weak 2nd serves.

Let's hope we can get players ready for the tournament this coming weekend!

See you on court!

---------------

We also have some tournament results from this weekend's U10 Future Stars Championship at Aviva Centre! I'm so proud of our players and I'm sure it was a wonderful and everyone got to learn a lot from this experience.

Matthew Yang made it to main draw Flight A. In round of 16 Matthew was down 0-3 and 30-40 in 3rd set, he managed to save 3 match points and came back to win the match in tiebreaker 5:3. It must've been a amazing match to watch! Matthew lost in the quarter final stage, but has demonstrated great effort and maturity in his tennis!

Evan and Kristofer both went into Flight B and had really good results. Evan got to semi final stage and Kristofer got to the final. Congratulation to both of them on their effort!

Robert from our U10 program is the youngest player we have in this tournament. He got into Flight C and made it to semi final stage. Great job Robert!

On the girl side we have Bailey made it in to Flight B and fought her way to the finals. It was wonderful to see Bailey out there competing and I hope she will get out there more!

Ola and Claire are both in Flight C and had good results. Claire got to quarter finals and was the recipient of the sportsmanship award! Ola went on to the finals and won the Flight C draw. Great job and congratulation to them both!

Peter Liu

This week's plan. And Happy Family Day, Valentine's Day

Hello everyone,

It was great to see all the hard work we put into rally consistency and quality coming together this week! I think all players are getting used to produce more consistent rally, hitting better shots and able to recognize opportunities in order to take advantages on opponents shorter, weaker, and less quality balls. I'm proud of everyone!

We also spend some time in each class on developing serve, specifically on adding spin (slice). The idea here is to help players developing more control on their serve and hopefully get them to a stage where they can decrease their chance of double faulting. I would suggest all players practicing serve away from academy hours and really spend some time with their private coach to further develop this skill.

For this week. Our first plan is to help players warm up with their own technical goals and focus on something each of them want or need to improve. The idea is to teach players on taking ownership and responsibility when they're on court training. Every ball and every strike counts, focusing on personal improvement rather than having coaches telling them what to do. This is a big learning for our young players, let's see how they handle this.

We also bring back some skill development combining slice and volley, just getting everyone to work on their racquet work and feel of the ball around the net. Of course there are lots of transition footwork to go with this as well.

Finally, we want players to play more points or matches this week as we have some tournaments coming up and quite a few players are getting ready for their competition this and next weekend. We will be looking for players to utilize the spin serve as much as possible, also encourage them to play aggressively when they find opportunities to do so. I think this is going to be a great week to watch everyone play.

 

Starting tomorrow is also the U10 OTA Champions Future Stars Series. This tournament will run four days and showing off our best U10 boy and girl players in the province. Go check out some junior tennis action at Aviva centre this weekend!

We have five of our own players in this tournament. 

Matthew Yang

Even VanDerStarren

Kristofer Todorov

Bailey Muller

Claire Podolsky 

Good luck and have fun everyone!

Peter Liu

Djokovic. The art of hitting deep

Hi everyone,

This article was shared to me by coach Andrea Rabzak (Thanks Andrea!). I think it is a very interesting read and goes really well with what we had been working on for the past couple of weeks. I hope you enjoy it!

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sweet-science-of-novak-djokovic-1454109939

Peter Liu

This week's plan. February already!?

Hi everyone,

Happy February! I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and was able to enjoy some Australian Open tennis action.

For the past couple of weeks we worked hard on rally consistency and also focused on the quality of player's rally. Keeping the balls in the court is one thing, but able to hit the ball with good tempo, good depth, and accuracy consistently is not an easy task. Everyone player should have idea what quality rally ball is by now and we will continue to remind players during their training.

With quality rally balls, we are forcing opponents to either make mistake out right or send a rally ball back to us that is weak or less quality. This is when good players take over control of the rally and continue to move or force opponent in order to create wining opportunities.

So our focus this week is exactly this. Take control of those mid court weak balls or anything that comes with less quality. We will train to develop a weapon, most likely their forehand, and help them with decision making in order to understand when, how, and where to use their strength. We will also work on transition to the net position as this is something players do often after an attacking or forcing shot. It is going to be a fun and exciting week!

See you soon!

Peter Liu

This week's plan

Hello everyone,

It is good to be back and I had a great time during last week's training, watching players begin this year with awesome intensity and focus. What a start!

During my absence in last couple of weeks. Coach Brad has been focusing on lots of fundamentals, volume, movement in order to get everyone back on track after the holidays. He also pushed the players to strike the balls cleanly with effortless strokes, and worked on serve/return with more emphasis on return positions. Great job coach Brad, Sam and Kyle! Thanks for your awesome work!

For this week, we will be focusing on hitting "quality" rally from the baseline in order to break down our opponents or forcing them to come up with weak shots or out right mistakes. We will help players recognize the effects of their good quality rally, so they can decide when to move closer inside the court and taking a stronger offensive position as well as looking to use their weapon to attack their opponent.

We will continue to develop serve and return game, making sure there are lots of volume and putting more focus on return of 2nd serve this week.

Let's have a great week. See you on court!

Peter Liu