Walk past most junior tennis lessons and you will hear the same soundtrack: a coach calling out a correction after almost every ball. “Bend your knees.” “Follow through.” “Get your racket back earlier.” It feels like coaching. It looks like coaching. But after thirty years on court in Sarasota, I can tell you that a steady stream of feedback often produces players who look sharp in the lesson and fall apart in the match.
I’m Michael Boothman, a USPTA Elite Professional and the founder of SRQ Tennis. One of the harder lessons I’ve learned — and one I keep relearning — is that my talking is not the same thing as their learning. The research on this is decades deep, and it points to an uncomfortable truth for coaches who like the sound of their own voice: when feedback is too frequent, players stop building the one skill that actually wins matches, which is the ability to feel and fix their own mistakes.
The guidance hypothesis, in plain English
Motor learning researchers have a name for why constant feedback backfires: the guidance hypothesis. The idea is that feedback from a coach “guides” a player toward the right movement in the moment, which is useful. But if it comes after every single rep, the player leans on it like a crutch. They stop processing their own errors because the coach is doing that work for them. The movement looks good while the guidance is there — and then collapses the second it disappears, which on match day is exactly when it disappears.
The classic review of this work, by Salmoni, Schmidt, and Walter, pulled together study after study showing the same pattern: groups that got feedback after every trial performed better during practice, but groups that got reduced or delayed feedback performed better on a later retention test, when they were on their own. If you want the deeper background, the research summarized through the U.S. Tennis Association’s coaching resources lines up with what sport scientists have found across dozens of skills, from free throws to golf putts to groundstrokes. Practice performance and real learning are not the same measurement, and chasing one can cost you the other.
Confidence Is Built, Not Given
This connects directly to one of our Six Pillars at SRQ Tennis: Confidence Is Built, Not Given. Confidence isn’t a pep talk. It’s the quiet evidence a player collects that says, “I can figure this out.” Every time I jump in and fix a ball for a ten-year-old, I rob them of a small chance to gather that evidence themselves. They never get to feel the difference between a clean strike and a mishit, name it, and adjust.
So instead of correcting every rep, I’ve trained myself to wait. A player hits four or five balls, and then I ask a question. Not “you dropped your racket head” — that’s me handing them the answer. Instead: “Where did those last three land, and what felt different about the one that went long?” Now they’re scanning their own feel and their own results. That’s the rep that sticks.
What reduced feedback looks like on a Sarasota court
This is not an excuse to coach less or care less. It’s a more demanding way to coach, because you have to watch carefully and choose your moment instead of reacting on reflex. Here is roughly how I structure it with juniors at Potter Park and Pineview:
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Let a cluster of balls play out before saying anything. I’ll often let a player hit five or six in a live rally, watching for a pattern, before I offer one thought. One clear cue beats six scattered ones.
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Ask before you tell. “What did you notice on that one?” forces the player to self-evaluate. Most of the time they already know what went wrong — they just aren’t in the habit of looking. Build the habit and you’ve built a player who can coach themselves between lessons.
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Use the result as the feedback. A target on the court gives instant, honest information without me saying a word. If a junior is hitting 8 out of 10 forehands into a cone-marked zone, the cones are telling them more than I could. This is also why we lean on live-ball drills — real rallies create real, readable consequences, while a basket of fed balls lets a player tune out.
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Fade your voice as they improve. Early on, a brand-new movement needs more guidance. As it stabilizes, I deliberately go quieter. The goal is a player who needs me less over time, not more.
There’s a version of coaching that’s really about the coach — staying busy, sounding expert, filling every silence. And there’s a version that’s about the player slowly becoming independent. The research and three decades of watching kids grow up on Sarasota courts both push me toward the second one.
The match-day test
Here’s the test that matters. In a match, there is no coach. No one is calling out “bend your knees” between first and second serve. The player who practiced under a constant feedback drip suddenly has to do something they never practiced — manage themselves. The player who learned to read their own misses, adjust, and reset has been rehearsing the real skill all along.
That’s why I’d rather a lesson look a little quieter and a little messier than a tidy, correction-by-correction performance. The messiness is the learning. A player struggling to solve a problem, getting it wrong, and then getting it right on their own is building something a fed answer can never give them.
If you’re a parent watching a lesson and the coach is talking after every ball, it’s worth asking what’s actually being trained — the stroke, or the dependence. The best sign in a junior lesson isn’t a perfect-looking forehand. It’s a kid who, after a bad miss, fixes it themselves before anyone says a word.
You can read more about how we structure development around evidence rather than noise on our coaching page, or reach out to me directly at michael@srq.tennis or 941-239-4703. I’m always happy to talk through how a young player learns — and why sometimes the most useful thing a coach can do is stay quiet for one more ball.
— Michael Boothman, SRQ Tennis, Sarasota FL