Why are tennis coaches so poorly educated?

As a tennis player, you trust that when you pay a professional coach, they know what they’re doing. After all, they have impressive certifications, qualifications, and years of experience under their belts. They speak with confidence, and as a player, it’s natural to believe what they say.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: a lot of what coaches preach might not actually be helping your game. Coaches are often repeating what they’ve been taught or what they’ve seen in their own playing career, without questioning whether it’s based on sound evidence. I’ve yet to meet a coach who intentionally gives bad advice, but I’ve certainly seen many unintentionally give ineffective guidance.

So, let’s debunk three common myths that coaches often preach—advice that, frankly, won’t do much to improve your tennis.

1. Repetition: The Myth of Consistency Through Endless Reps

One of the most common pieces of advice you’ll hear is that you need repetition to develop technique. Just today, I saw a coach preaching the importance of high-repetition drills, using the “Spanish method” of endlessly practising the same shot.

Here’s the problem: the human body doesn’t work like a machine, and it hates repetition. According to the Russian neurophysiologist Nikolai Bernstein, repetition without repetition is key. That means the outcome of a task (like hitting a forehand) can be consistent, but the movement patterns to achieve that outcome are always slightly different. This variability prevents injury and allows the body to function efficiently.

In tennis, you never hit the same shot twice. The game is dynamic and unpredictable. Court surfaces, ball types, opponents, and even your own body change from day to day. Mass practising a single shot in isolation doesn’t prepare you for these variables.

Research in motor learning shows that players need to practice in environments that reflect the variability of the game itself. A study by Davids et al. (2008) highlights the importance of designing practices that include variability to promote adaptive skill development. Rather than mindlessly repeating the same shot, players need repetition with variability—finding different movement solutions to achieve the same goal.

2. Muscle Memory: The Brain Doesn’t Work Like That

Ah, muscle memory—another favourite concept that many coaches love to use. The idea is that if you repeat a movement enough, it becomes ingrained in your muscles, and you’ll be able to execute it automatically. Here’s the thing: muscles don’t store memories, and the brain doesn’t function like a hard drive with unlimited storage space for every possible movement.

What actually happens is a process called perception-action coupling. The body and brain work together to respond to the information they receive from the environment. Your brain doesn’t tell your body exactly how to move—it perceives the conditions (ball speed, opponent’s position, etc.) and your body organizes itself to respond accordingly.

As Gibson (1979) emphasized in his theory of ecological psychology, humans perceive the world in terms of the opportunities it provides for action, also known as affordances. Your body isn’t memorizing movements; it’s constantly adapting based on what it sees, hears, and feels. The idea of “muscle memory” oversimplifies this complex process.

A coach who understands perception-action coupling can help players train in environments that mimic real-game scenarios, allowing the body to adapt in meaningful ways. Unfortunately, most coaches still think the brain is a central command center controlling every action. In reality, the body is far more autonomous, adjusting based on the information it’s receiving from the environment.

3. Technique: The Danger of Over-Coaching

Perhaps the most persistent myth in tennis coaching is the idea that there is a perfect technique that must be taught to every player. I’ve spent thousands of hours basket-feeding, demonstrating, and drilling the “correct” techniques, only to see those techniques fall apart when my players played matches.

Here’s why: technique doesn’t exist in isolation. Tennis is a game of perception first, action second. Before you can hit the ball, you must perceive the situation: where is the ball? What’s the opponent doing? What’s the score? All of these factors will affect how you move. As a result, players constantly adapt their technique based on the environment.

Bernstein’s concept of degrees of freedom explains how, when players first start, they have very limited movement solutions. Their lack of experience means they’ll adopt simple, often awkward movement patterns. But as they gain more experience, they learn to free up their movements and develop more effective solutions to match the demands of the game.

When coaches force rigid techniques onto players, they’re essentially asking them to override their natural adaptability. This not only limits development but can also lead to frustration and inconsistency. Players need room to explore and discover their own movement solutions rather than being molded into a one-size-fits-all technique.

Isolating Skills: Training Like Robots

Now that we’ve debunked the myths of repetition, muscle memory, and rigid technique, you can probably see a pattern. We coach tennis backwards, treating humans like robots, and it’s holding players back.

But Steve, you might say, some of the best players in the world trained with these methods. They spent years in technical drills and basket-feeding, so clearly, it works, right?

Not exactly. Most professional players play tennis—as in, they play matches. Matches are unpredictable, high in variability, and require players to adapt on the fly. What made those players great wasn’t the endless technical drills, but their ability to adjust, adapt, and learn from real-game situations. If anything, they succeeded despite their rigid technical training, not because of it.

Imagine how good those players might have been if they had trained using methods like ecological dynamics or constraint-led coaching. These methods focus on creating practice environments that reflect the demands of the game, allowing players to develop adaptability, problem-solving, and decision-making skills. The research is clear: variability and context-rich practice promote better skill transfer into competition.

Conclusion: Why Coaches Need to Be Better Educated

So why are tennis coaches still so poorly educated when it comes to human movement and skill development? The science of how humans learn to move—through interacting with their environment, perceiving information, and self-organizing their bodies—is well-established. Yet, many coaching methods are still rooted in outdated, traditional models that fail to take this into account.

If repetition, muscle memory, and teaching perfect technique were effective, we’d have millions of great players worldwide. But we don’t. Instead, we have a few outliers who rise to the top, likely because they play more matches and spend more time adapting to real-game conditions.

It’s time for tennis coaches to move beyond the old methods and start embracing what we know about human movement and learning. Only then can we truly help players reach their full potential?