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# Adult Coaching
I have had a lot of experience with coaching for adult learners. My coach used to run a regular session which I attended, and I also ran a session with a different coach twice a week, aimed specifically at novice and intermediate adult learners.
Two of the areas where adult players can make significant progress within a group context are tactics and consistency.
Without significant 1:1 attention it's ambitious to expect an adult learner, especially an adult learner who has been playing for a long time, to make radical changes to their technique, in a group setting. It's slightly less ambitious to expect them to improve their footwork and movement, as their ability to do so may be limited by their age, mobility, weight and general fitness.
However, with persistence and targeted practice, it's not at all unreasonable to expect players to improve their accuracy, consistency, game-reading, and strategy and tactics.
For this reason, setting up the session with these aims up front can make a big difference.
Many novice players are unable to sustain a fh-fh or bh-bh rally of even 10-20 shots, and most novice players have no conception of tactics and are not great at reading the game or adapting. These can be greatly improved, with directly transferable skills to matchplay.
Start the session with a physical "warm up". This can be very low intensity, but a slow jog or fast walk around the hall, followed by a few targeted stretches is well-worth doing, and sets the tone that the players are doing something different from "just a knock".
Then have the players pair up, and run through fh-fh cross court, bh-bh cross court, and fh-bh and bh-fh down the line. Set a realistic milestone - eg 30 consecutive shots for each shot. Time-box this - 2-3 mins per shot, and shout out "change". Have the players call out their records - this is an easy metric for them to track to see if their consistency is improving. You could even award a little prize at levels, say 10, 25, 50, 100.
Next sort the players into ability. A fun way to do that is with 10 mins of "top table" - this isn't necessarily a perfect measure, as it can favour those with good serves, and some players can tend to rush because they fear "change" being called, but make it light-hearted, and you should get a decent clustering.
For the session itself plan 3 - 4 exercises. Partners will take it in turns to "control" the exercise - 5 mins is a little short allowing for mistakes and ball fetching - I find 7 is ideal. Begin each exercise with a demonstration of the exercise with the coach and assistant or coach and one of the best players. Have everyone watch, and be clear they understand the exercise.
In all the exercises we're aiming for two things. Improved consistency (as measured by how long the players can sustain the exerise) and improved tactics (because what we're doing in the exercises has direct relevance to the game).
How do the exercises have direct relevance? Well, in a game, we can (and should) vary one of three variables - speed, spin, placement. Being able to vary these on demand allows the player to do that in a match. And the skill of deciding in a practice rally to aim the ball to a deliberate place, change the speed or spin becomes something which starts to become available in a match situation, which allows the skill to be used in a match without the player realising it.
Exercises should therefore aim to work towards varying each of these variables. So try to make sure in one or two the players have to hit one hard and one soft, or one with heavy spin and one with light spin, as well as varying placement. The exercises can be regular - ie both players always do the same thing, and the exercise has no randomness. They can be semi-regular - ie there is an element of randomness, and irregular (no pattern). The latter is hardest to do and control. I have a library of exercises - if you want some ideas feel free to DM me. Ttedge used to have a good section on exercises too - some are quite advanced, but some are pretty easy.
Try to increase the difficulty over the session, by introducing more variable and making the exercises less regular.
Incorporate serve and return in the later exercises - again this encourages control and consistency - being able to serve short deliberately, or to push long off a serve, deliberately, is a hugely transferrable skill.
Finally end with some matches or more top table. I quite like to use "conditional" matches - eg one player always serves, and all serves are short; or one player can never push twice in a row. There are lots of options here.
If you set out your sessions with this sort of structure - a bit of warm up, some ordering/top table, a few exercises of increasing but realistic difficulty, starting with a demo, in which the controller swaps after 5-7 mins, and end with some matches, you'll fill a couple of hours with engaging and applicable content.
Depending on how many people you have training and how many coaches you have, you may or may not be able to offer advice during the session. However, if you set up front the expectation that the objective is to play the most shots, and aim to control the ball, rather than "win the point", and encourage players to play at whatever speed/strength allows them to be consistent, you will find improvements take care of themselves.
One thing to add, which I think Carels mentioned too, is the element of multi ball. If you have the facilities to do this (ie lots of balls, a net, and something to pick the balls up), rotating players through a multi ball station is a great thing to do. If you have a volunteer who is prepared to feed multi ball, that can be good, but there is *huge* merit in having learners feed for each other - it really helps develop feeling and spin and placement.
Good luck - coaching for adult learners is very challenging, but a lot of fun and can be extremely rewarding.
_________________ Woodnut Dead Slow | DHS 651 | Spinlord Dornenglanz Check out my blog - LordCope's Latest Learning Log - soon entering its 10th year!
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