Never Stop Learning

Dr. Jim Taylor: Prime Mind - Developing the Mental Side of Sport

In competitive sport, physical preparation is essential, but mental skills can make a significant difference in an athlete’s performance and development.

Prime Mind is a mental performance platform designed to help athletes, coaches, parents, and sports teams develop the psychological skills needed to navigate the challenges of training and competition. Through educational resources and practical tools, the platform supports areas such as confidence, focus, motivation, emotional regulation, resilience, and performance under pressure.

By integrating mental development into everyday training, Prime Mind helps sports programs create a more complete approach to athlete development, complementing physical and technical preparation with the mental skills required to perform at their best.

Whether working with individual athletes, sports academies, or university athletic programs, Prime Mind offers an accessible way to make mental performance a more consistent part of the sporting experience.

Because developing the athlete also means developing the mind.

Website: https://drjimtaylor.com/about-primemind/

Julian Lopez: Tennis Is Not Complicated. Stop Treating It Like It Is.

Tennis has a problem. Too many players and coaches have made it so complicated it's become hard to learn, hard to teach, and hard to enjoy. Endless technical cues, overcorrected mechanics, and instruction so layered that players freeze before they even swing.

This week I want to push back on all of it.

THIS WEEK'S FEATURE

Stop Overcomplicating It. Hit More Balls.

Here's the truth nobody wants to say out loud: tennis is not complicated. The stroke production required to play well, learn properly, and develop your game is far simpler than the coaching industry has made it seem.

Proper stroke production is the foundation of everything. Get it right, then get out of your own way and let the repetitions do the work. Every ball you hit reinforces your mechanics. Every repetition builds your ability to put the ball where you want it. That's the process.

It doesn't require a dozen technical checkpoints before you swing. It requires you to learn the right strokes, trust them, and hit.

Every hour on the court is an investment in your stroke production. Thousands of balls hit. Thousands of small adjustments made. That's what turns a beginner into a player.

The Problem with Overcomplicated Coaching

When instruction gets too technical too fast, players stop trusting their instincts and start thinking their way through every shot. The result is players who know a lot about tennis but struggle to actually play it.

What Proper Stroke Production Actually Looks Like

Proper stroke production is a foundation, not a formula. Learn the fundamentals correctly, build them through repetition, and trust them under pressure. The goal is mechanics sound enough to consistently put the ball where you want it, point after point, match after match.

If your game isn't where you want it to be, start with your stroke production. Learn the right technique, trust it, and get on the court. Your mechanics will sharpen through repetition faster than through any checklist or coaching cue. If you want a solid starting point, I've built a complete stroke production course inside JPL Tennis Coaching, step by step from every angle, for every level.

Stop overthinking. Get on the court. Hit more balls.

What Do You Want to Work On Next?

Every week I pick topics based on what my players and readers are actually struggling with. If there's something in your game you want me to break down, I want to hear about it. Hit the button below and tell me what's on your mind.

"Coach, I really want to get better at ________"

Send Me Your Topic Request

STAY TOUGH and I'll see you on the court!

Coach Julian

Racquet Sports Built the Courts. Now It Is Building the Business.

By Mike Knowles

Pickleball and padel are not short on growth stories. Participation is up, courts are going in everywhere, and every week another club announces a conversion or a new build. What the industry has been short on is the business infrastructure underneath all of it: the financing, the valuations, the operating playbooks, and the rooms where the people making those calls compare notes.

That is the gap SMASH 2026 is built to fill.

SMASH 2026, the International Association of Pickleball and Padel Facilities (IAPPF) Conference and Expo, runs November 17 to 19 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, co-located with AB Show. It is a standalone event built entirely around the business of running pickleball and padel facilities.

The setting matters. AB Show is the leading event for athletics, fitness, and recreation professionals, and it is a big room: more than 2,000 decision-makers, over 200 exhibiting companies, more than 160,000 square feet of expo floor, and over 100 educational sessions in its own program. SMASH puts the racquet sports business conversation inside that room, in front of the facility owners, managers, and program directors who run the wider industry.

The conference runs three tracks and more than 40 sessions across Tuesday and Wednesday. IAPPF founder and CEO David Johnson opens it with the Tuesday keynote. The session list reads like a punch list for anyone running a facility: how to finance a first or next build, how facilities get valued when they buy or sell, real estate and site selection, sponsorship sales, events that pay, and a frank one: Clubs That Closed - and Why.

Tuesday afternoon belongs to padel. The Padel Business Summit takes over Track 1 from 1:00 to 5:00 PM. Patricio Misitrano of Misitrano Consulting anchors it with the State of Padel in the US Report 2026. Then Growing the Game. Then Real Estate, Design & Court Construction. Then Coaching - Key to Growing the Sport. A networking event closes the afternoon. The partner list reads like a who's who of the U.S. padel buildout: the International Padel Cluster, Playbypoint, Misitrano Consulting, Padel Pista, and El Remate.

Thursday is expo day: the full AB Show floor, 200-plus exhibitors across racquet sports and facility services. The IAPPF section is not a token row of tabletops. Selkirk Sport and Court Reserve anchor it, with Conquer Padel Club, Playbypoint, PodPlay, and Fromuth Racquet Sports on the floor, and the International Padel Cluster in its own pavilion.

The names in the room go beyond the stage. Patricio Misitrano of Misitrano Consulting, author of the US Padel Report. Marcos Del Pilar, former president of the US Padel Association and the RSPA's lead padel curriculum developer. Tito Machado, CEO of DUPR, the rating system behind 1.7 million players and 12,000 clubs. Rene Prats, head of development at Diadem Sports. Will Richards, founder and CEO of Dill Dinkers, which he built from one Maryland club into 32 locations. Tim Bainton, founder of Blue Chip Sports Management. Luke Wade, founder of Facility Ally. These are the people actually building the industry, not just selling to it.

Full disclosure: I've spent the past several months working with IAPPF and the International Padel Cluster on the padel side of this event. That includes programming. It also includes bringing padel companies into the room for the first time.

Growth was the easy headline for five years. The harder story, the one this industry runs on now, is whether the businesses underneath the growth are built to last. For three days in November, that conversation has one address.

More information and registration: https://iappf.org/conference-2026/