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