Episode #38 Season 24: Shaun Boyce & Justin Yeo

In this episode of 10 Minutes of Tennis, Shaun and Justin talk about functional tennis and mind mapping. ​ They discuss how mind mapping in tennis refers to the brain's ability to map different nerve systems, exercises, functionality, and kinetic chains based on previous experiences in various sports and activities. ​ They emphasize the importance of understanding a player's existing functional skills and building upon them rather than trying to teach everything from scratch. They also highlight the significance of perception in tennis and how it affects a player's ability to react and move effectively on the court. The conversation concludes with advice for coaches to focus on fundamentals and perception, and for players to understand their strengths and build upon them.

The concept of functional tennis refers to a holistic approach to tennis training that focuses on developing and utilizing a player's existing functional skills and abilities.​ It involves understanding and leveraging the functional movements, coordination, and neural pathways that a player has already developed through previous sports or activities. Rather than starting from scratch, functional tennis aims to build upon these existing skills to enhance a player's performance on the tennis court.​ This approach recognizes that each player has unique strengths and capabilities, and seeks to optimize their potential by incorporating and refining these functional elements into their tennis game. By doing so, players can improve their technique, movement, and overall performance in a more efficient and effective manner.

YouTube LIVE Replay: https://www.youtube.com/live/plsM6WCjOoo

Shaun Boyce USPTA: shaun@tennisforchildren.com

https://tennisforchildren.com/ 🎾

Justin Yeo: https://www.instagram.com/yeocoach/

Bobby Schindler USPTA: schindlerb@comcast.net

https://windermerecommunity.net/ 🎾

Geovanna Boyce: geovy@regeovinate.com

https://regeovinate.com/ 💪🏼🏋️

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[Music]

Welcome to the Atlanta Tennis Podcast.

Every episode is titled "It Starts with Tennis" and goes from there.

We talk with coaches, club managers, industry business professionals,

technology experts, and anyone else we find interesting.

We want to have a conversation as long as it starts with tennis.

[Music]

Hey, hey, this is Sean with the Atlanta Tennis Podcast,

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Also, let us know if you have questions or topics you would like us to discuss,

and we will add them to our schedule.

With that said, let's get started with 10 minutes of tennis.

[Music]

This is 10 minutes of tennis with Justin Yo, world-renowned tennis pro in Puerto Rico,

who is just off the pickleball court.

Oh, wait, I'm not supposed to say that.

[Music]

Hey, sometimes we're going to test out the other things.

You know, next week you might say you're checking out the platform.

I don't even know a platform.

Is it platform tennis? I don't know.

Then you'll be playing paddle.

You got to check these things out, Justin.

Got to check them out.

Yes, ruined my reputation, right?

[Laughter]

I said you came off the pickleball court.

I didn't say what you were doing there.

You might have just stopped into the court to have a lunch.

Maybe just having lunch on the pickleball court.

Anyone listening, I can't believe he brought up the pickle.

[Laughter]

It's 10 minutes of tennis.

It is 10 minutes of tennis.

Very true.

He followed us right now.

He did not just say this.

I didn't mean what.

I said the P word.

I did.

Well, I didn't even say paddle or platform.

I did say--

You just did a pickle.

Now you put us in a pickle.

Yeah, okay.

Now we got to go there.

Now we got three minutes.

We're losing time.

We've only got 10 minutes.

Exactly.

So we will talk about functional tennis today on our 10 minutes of tennis.

And Justin, catch me up on functional tennis is kind of an umbrella concept that has other things

inside it underneath it.

One of the more interesting concepts inside of functional tennis,

you mentioned is mind mapping.

Do you want to start there?

Or do you want to give me a functional tennis overview and then dive down?

Yeah, well, so mind mapping.

I'll just correct that.

You know, people think of mind mapping as a spreadsheet and all this drawn up clouds

that everybody knows is a mind mapping in the tech world these days.

When we talk about mind mapping in tennis, your brain--

and actually, let me take that away--

it's not just tennis.

It's all sports.

When a child at a young age does a lot of different sports,

the brain itself is already starting to map what nerve systems,

what exercise, what functionality, what kinetic chains,

like all those different things are happening within the brain.

And if they've done a lot of different sports and different activities,

and when I say activities,

it could be just climbing the tennis fence.

You know, like when I was a kid that knew that,

you know, we had little bad news on our shoes as a member.

And if you weren't a member, you're supposed to get out.

But they've locked the gate.

So we would climb the fence to try a different court surface,

but climbing the fence was strengthening your hair,

strengthening your toes.

And I'd ask people here to try to climb the fence,

and they can't climb the fence.

You can't stick their toe in.

They can't pull themselves up and over a fence.

So anyway, activities is what I'm talking about.

And the earlier the activities,

the more they have those function things in their brain.

And I call that mind mapping, meaning they have things they have already.

And then when you can find those teaching tennis,

it makes tennis so much easier because you don't have your client

or whoever you're working with doesn't have to think.

They already know that function.

You know, so like a baseballer,

they already understand weight transfer.

They already understand linear motion of the lower body

and angular motion of the upper body.

Right? So if you correlate that,

they actually understand it.

If you talk about a home run,

they have to go low to high.

So they start to learn all these functions already.

Baseball is another great one for the serve because

it's released a ball toss and then throw like it's on a center field.

You know, so baseball a lot.

If people haven't done baseball,

it could be a ballerina dancer.

She's got great footwork.

You just got to teach her how to use it

if you're correctly independently,

not at the same time.

You know, so there's sort of the things.

I mean, I could talk about this all day long

because as far as I can stand,

I base it on my coaching.

When someone comes to a lesson,

I haven't seen them before.

They're like, I really want you to help me.

I really want you to fix me.

And I have to get their past like,

find out what they've done before in their sports.

And then you correlate it.

So that's it.

We had someone mentioned that the other night,

who was a high performance coach.

And he talked about kids switching coaches

and how it could potentially even take

four to six months just to get to know somebody as a coach.

And I think that might have been what he is referring to

is really understanding how their brain works,

how it relates to my brain as a coach,

to be able to understand each other.

What I'm saying.

How does that functionally get into what you already know?

Is that kind of where you're going with this?

Yeah, well, so even profiling a player, right?

I have right now a two, five, three, I lay.

And she's like, so, you know,

can you show me the grip?

Can you show me all this stuff?

Well, I just want you to hit the ball.

And she's like, what?

I'm like, yeah, I'm going to feed you.

And in the first five to ten minutes,

I'm going to pick up all the things

that you have straights already

and we're going to build off those versus trying to,

you know, step by step, step by step, you know.

And then look for just, you know,

a lot of things is looking for a fundamental.

Do they have an athletic base?

Do they know what a ready stance is?

Do they actually, it's amazing.

Some people actually see the ball well

and some people don't.

You know, and when they don't,

you have to get that perception right first

because if you don't work on that,

it's, you know, you're late back swing,

late contact late.

Everything's stiff.

They want to put everything in the court.

And it's all late.

So, uh, yeah, I don't know.

I've got a lot of people here in Puerto Rico

that come to me from clinics and come for lessons.

And when they come to lessons,

they're like, I've heard you're the best

and then I'm like, well, no,

because all I focus on

is the functionality of what you can do.

And we build that to look at you,

how to play versus just hitting a tennis ball.

Um, and, and the last few people I've seen

that come to me and they hit the ball and I go,

I said, let's cause.

Hit.

You tell me what you watch TV.

Does the tennis player look slim, stiff,

slow and late?

Just tell me, do they look like that?

They're like, no, I'm like,

so let's just focus on the opposites.

Lose, early and fast.

Please, let's just try that.

And all of a sudden,

ball, they start to change.

So again, that's function function stuff.

Well, like what you said about getting to know the player

or just have them hit the ball in the beginning,

we do the same thing when we first meet a kid.

And I tell him, I said, all right,

hit the ball over the net and they look at me.

And what do you mean?

I'm like, anyway, you want what's the first thing that comes to mind?

Because sometimes I'm also going to learn the last thing they learned

from their previous coach if they had one.

But also they're going to, they're going to relate it from

whatever sport they came from or whatever thing they did at home play

and catch with dad or mom or whatever they were doing.

And they're going to relate and say, okay,

how am I going to use the stick to get the ball over the net?

And I'm going to see just a little bit of a glimpse

of how their brain works.

And then I can say, okay, great.

Let's add a follow through.

Let's add a backswing.

We can do those things piece by piece.

And I guess in that case, we're just building the function.

Yeah, we're building the function.

And as far as mind mapping goes,

you can see whether a child has good swing, but they don't weigh transfer.

Right? So you would work on their base and you'd work on their legs

and try to build that with the function that

there already happens with good swing.

Right? And so that all of a sudden changes their racquet path

and the length of their racquet path because they're now transferring their body weight.

You know?

So yeah, there's functional tennis and mind mapping.

Again, there's two different things to end kids and adults.

But really at the end of the day, you want to see what they already have

that they understand that they already know and then you build off that

instead of trying to build everything.

And so in that case, it is a piece by piece concept.

So if you're going to give some advice at the end of our 10 minutes of tennis,

you're just saying, okay, here's minute 10.

And we're going to say, all right, coaches,

here's what we want you to look for, pay attention to, and players when you show up.

You got one thing for the coaches and one thing for the players to say,

coaches look for this, players expect that.

I mean, coaches, you know, you know, you know, all your elements of tennis,

but just know your fundamentals like, you know, I already stands,

do they have good base, you know, or just get them to hit some balls

and make sure you don't hit the ball right to them, make them move and see if they've got the functions

of moving to the ball.

I don't think a lot of people pick up on perception enough.

A perception is everything, you know, if your eyes don't pick up things, you don't get the message to your feet

and if feet don't get a chance to move.

So I'm constantly telling them to watch the racket and I use the example of drop the vigil

or time, because what does he do on the baseline?

He's like this, you know, forcing his eyes to see the messages so everything else works.

So that's what I would say is focus more on perception and the coaches.

What's the second question?

Players.

Players.

Players, um, I understand you again, understand what you do that.

I understand your strengths and build off you.

You know, we'll try and have everything.

I see a lot of people saying I'm weak here, I'm weak here, I'm weak here,

but where are your strengths as well?

Because your strengths can get better and better and better, and your weakness can get, you know,

so again, my strength here is like, yeah, my weakness will come up a little bit, you know,

and then you just keep going this way.

You can't be best at everything.

It's impossible.

So understand all the pieces of my own game and be able to walk into my coach and say,

all right, functionally, I'm going to use that word a lot, because now we're going to,

we're putting pieces together a little bit.

We're going to say, all right, here's how my brain works.

Here's what it wants to do.

Here's what I can do.

Here's what I can't do.

Let's put it all together.

Yep.

And for the next 30 seconds, it could us to my kiss at Roseville Couch Club.

Great to hear from you, mate.

And let's hear from all people, please, we'd love to just talk tennis.

Here we go.

Justin Yeung, 10 minutes of tennis.

We'll see you next week.

Thanks so much.

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