Today I chat with Chris Lewitt, who recently updated his book, "Secrets of Spanish Tennis 2.0." Chris, a distinguished coach with extensive experience in the Spanish tennis system, elucidates ten pivotal lessons derived from his interactions with renowned Spanish coaches. These principles not only encapsulate the essence of Spanish tennis training but also offer actionable strategies for players and coaches alike. Throughout our discussion, Chris emphasizes the critical importance of footwork, mental resilience, and the tactical utilization of topspin in achieving success on the court. This episode serves as a comprehensive exploration of the methodologies that have propelled Spanish players to prominence in the world of tennis.

5 Key areas:

🔵 Chris Lewitt's book, 'Secrets of Spanish Tennis 2.0', encapsulates key lessons learned from Spanish coaches.

🔵 The importance of footwork, movement, and developing a strong defense on the court

🔵 The necessity of teaching players to control their emotions and maintain focus during matches.

🔵 Focus on building fitness and endurance. The Spanish training philosophy emphasizes off-court conditioning as a crucial part of player development.

🔵 Embracing suffering is integral to the Spanish tennis philosophy, building resilience and mental strength.

I hope you enjoy

Fabio

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Welcome to the Functional Tennis Podcast.

I'm your host, Fabio Molle and I bring you insights and lessons from players, coach coaches, parents and experts who are ingrained in the world of high level tennis. It's book season on the Functional Tennis podcast.

Today I speak to another order Chris Lewitt, who recently relaunched his book Secrets of Spanish tennis 2.0. Chris spent a lot of time around some great Spanish coaches and has documented his learnings.

In his book, he's a list of 10 things he learned from the Spanish. Most you'll know, but sometimes it's good to refresh and I hope it can bring something new to your practice sessions.

Before we get started to shout out to our podcast partners, Asics. It's their shoes they're most known for, but their par has been getting better year on year.

Their Latest designs include ActivMotion, which helps the clothes flow better on your body, leading to less distractions. There's also ActiveEze, which helps moisture management using their ultra breathable materials.

You check out their range on asics.com okay, here's Chris. Chris Lewitt, welcome to the Functional Tennis Podcast. How are you?

It's great to be here, Fabio. I love your show.

Tell me, so you're in the States, are you? Are you American? Are you not? You British? Where are you from?

I am American. I'm born and raised in New York City and now I have a high performance club in Manchester, Vermont, in the mountains not far from New York City.

Nice. And you're big into the Spanish tennis way. These, you know, it's quite the Spanish, quite a historic.

Not historic, but it's been around a long time how hard these Spanish players train. And we've never really discussed on the podcast. So great to have you on to talk about it today.

But where, where does your love for the Spanish tennis way come from?

It's a great story.

Great. And where did you work over there? Where did you spend a lot of time?

First I spent time with at Emilio Sanchez program with Pato Alvarez, who's a legendary Spanish coach. And I got to study with Pato personally. So it was an amazing experience for me as a young coach.

So I was very fortunate to study with those two heavyweights of Spanish tennis back in the day. And they shaped my philosophy as a coach. And then that, you know, after many study trips to Spain, that became the book.

And is Louis Buguera Sergi's dad?

Yes, Sergi's father, yes.

Okay. We had Sergi on the podcast before. I'm trying to remember him. Talk. He coached him, didn't he, his dad?

Well, not exactly. I mean, he did on the tour, but when he was younger, Luis sort of played a more backseat role.

He had a coach at his club in Valencia mainly work with Sergi. But yeah, Luis was always involved and guided. Sergey has a great story.

I'm trying to convince Luis for me to write his biography with him, but he's not sure.

This book, what's it called?

And funny, like, we had Adam Bilcher on the podcast last week, who Adam's just released a book himself, which, you know, I've had Adam on the podcast before and I've known him over the years, so he's one author. You know, here's you're another author. And then during the summer we had Conan island, former pro who released a book called the Racket, who's.

The book's gone quite viral all over the world. So we had a few more orders on in recent times, which is great. So do you have any writing background? I know Connor did studied actually in Berkeley.

He studied literature when he was in Berkeley. Do you have any writing background or is it just passion?

Yes, I studied the English and literature at Cornell University here in the States. And then I just had. I've always had a passion for writing. I never knew I would combine my passion for writing with tennis.

I always assumed I would be just maybe a traditional author, but actually that's been rewarding for me to combine my love of coaching and tennis with writing and sharing, sharing ideas with everybody.

Did you play tennis in Cornell?

Yes, I played number one for Cornell. I played Division one there and I played a little bit on the Futures. Unfortunately, I got injured.

So my story is like a lot of coaches, I was never planning to be a coach. I always wanted to be a player. And after getting injured, I found a real passion for working with children.

Okay, well, that's good. I'm excited to learn about these tips. So you've put 10 tips together. First from the Spanish, Spanish way of coaching.

And yeah, maybe you can just quickly guide us through all these things that are really important. I'm sure a lot of people would know some of these. We've all heard.

We've all heard like commentators talk about it or we've heard other coaches talking about it, but there's some here, you know, we haven't heard them all together. So I'm really interested to hear this. Chris.

Yeah, I think what we tried to do is make a list of simple principles that people can use to help them on the court. So I believe in making everything practical and actionable.

So that was the premise for this book, was just to write to share my travels and experience in Spain because a lot of people didn't have the opportunity to go to Spain and I did. So I shared all of it's like a practical work system.

The whole book is designed to be helpful and that coaches and parents can use actionably on the court with their kids or with their students. So yeah, do you want to go through like 10 through 1 or how do you want to do the list?

I have 10 here.

Start at 10 and we can finish with one. I think I put a bonus in there too for everybody, but I forget.

What the bonus is. I didn't bring it into my notes, but build racket speed. Tell me.

So I think this is really a secret of Spanish then this comes from Luis Brugera whom we talked about and he has a system for developing racket speed with a number of hand fed drills. I see a number of them posted on your Instagram. Actually they're derivations of Luis.

He created these drills back in the 80s and he did them with Sergi. And Sergi was known, if you may recall, as having one of the heaviest forehands at that time with the most rpm. And I don't think it's a coincidence.

Luis has a system for building this racket speed, this acceleration. And so I think that is something that people can take into their practical work on the court.

With any player, any style, you can always work on acceleration. And if you learn some of these simple drills that Luis believes in, I believe it can make a big difference in terms of racket speed.

And I believe he was way ahead of his time because now in the modern times, in the gym, strength and conditioning, I have a strength and conditioning background. We do a lot of velocity based training.

This type of exercise, these exercises Luis was doing in the 80s is a form of velocity based training VBT and I think it's very effective at increasing the neural connection, the motor units and also stimulating the muscular fibers for racket speed, for acceleration, for building power. Basically.

Is one those drill, is it the one where they throw the balls up and the player strikes the next one? They're all like dry volleys. Is that the drill you're talking about?

That is one of them. He has a number of exercises like that, but essentially they are overloading the neuromuscular system with rapid soft feeds.

And the player has to generate all of the power from their own kinetic chain. And so that is. I've never seen anything like that. Until I traveled in Spain and studied with Luis, I never saw drills like that.

Yeah, it's a popular drill. We tend to. Dino Prizmich, I'm not sure if you know him.

Those are all. I saw those featured on your account, I follow your Instagram, and those are pure Brugera style drills. In fact, the coach may.

I wondered if the coach may have studied with Brugera.

I don't know, but I know he sends us that particular drill a lot. And I was like, dino, stop sending us that. You know. But he used a lot in training. I think it's part of his. Nearly every session he does. It's crazy.

But okay, so that's number 10. So number nine is obsession with footwork and movement.

So this is something that Spanish players are really famous for, the way they move. They move very gracefully and with a lot of agility and balance. And.

And that is something that probably started with Pato Alvarez, the legendary coach. Pato Alvarez, he's a little older than Luis Brugera, about a decade older.

So in the 70s when he started building players in Spain, he developed this concept of cleaning the footwork every day. So he had a philosophy that daily you should clean footwork. And that just meant working on the positioning and the balance and the movement.

And I've taken that philosophy to heart.

I like to work on the footwork with my players and I think it's something that everybody can, can focus on with their, their kids or with their students or for themselves.

You know, footwork obviously is a main part of the game. As Federer says, the best players are the best movers.

Yeah. And so it's, it's. Obviously everybody knows footwork's important, but in Spain, it's really an obsession. I use that word very, very precisely. It's.

They're obsessed with moving. Well, they're obsessed with the Work of the legs, the work of the feet, and it's a daily obsession.

So some people may say they focus too much on the footwork. Piari has said that. Piatti has said that sometimes he studied a lot in Spain, and he said sometimes they focus too much on the footwork.

So he's kind of moved away from that. But I think it's a good practice in general to make your players move, get your players moving as best as possible.

Yeah, it's really important. Number eight is develop your defense.

Yeah. So Spanish players historically have been very good defenders in the past, maybe too much so they were very passive sometimes.

They played a lot like Borg in the early Spanish champions. Played a lot like Borg. Luis Brugera modeled all his players after Borg. Borg was one of Luis's favorite players.

So in some ways, the early Spanish players were modeled after Borg in many respects. And that's something that even today you see great offensive players like Alcaraz, but they have a good defense.

And so I think that's important to have balance here in the States. Have a lot of players who are developed offensively and without much defense. And I think it's.

It's healthy to develop both, to have a good balance like Alcaraz.

What's the difference between defense and, let's say, consistency? I find that a lot of players go, well, this would have been the case. I'm not sure right now. Would have went to the States to play tennis.

They would have been. They would have been aggressive players. But after four years in the States with slow, hard court, they turned into grinders, you could say.

So maybe, maybe. What's your difference between a grinder and a defensive player?

Grinder can be a defensive player. They have a concept in Spain. It also comes from Pato Alvarez to play aggressive defense. So the idea is it's always tactical.

Sometimes you see players who are purely defensive, and it's very passive and they're not looking to flip the table at all. And in Spain, they have a very clear concept coming from Pato Alvarez of aggressive defense is a common phrase they use in Spain.

So the idea is to play a ball that can turn the tide and get you back on the offense, or maybe even turn defense into offense.

So the idea of hitting a heavy ball, a ball that puts your opponent back, using defense to build offense is critical in Spain, rather than just defending with no purpose, just getting balls back.

Yeah, you're right. That's not an important point. Okay, so number seven is focus on receiving the ball, not hitting it.

Yeah, I really love this one. And I think it's very practical. It's something that helps me, helped me a lot in my game as a. As a player and also I think helps my students a lot.

You want to get people, players out of the mindset of just hitting the ball and more on spacing and receiving the ball. Well, receiving the ball is a famous phrase from Pato Alvarez, William Pato Alvarez, the legend. And he's obsessed with how he was obsessed with all.

And Spanish coaches are very obsessed with the way you position your body to receive the ball. So this relates to the footwork that we talked about in Spain.

They're not very technical with the footwork, but they focus a lot on the positioning the body, to receive the ball with good spacing, with good distance, to receive the ball at the top of the bounce, with a comfortable, healthy distance from the body. And so that is a big part of Spanish tennis.

And if you focus on that in the court or you work on that with your players, it gets you out of the mindset of your own technique and worrying more about how you move your feet and position your body rather than how you're swinging. I think that can be very healthy for some people who are obsessed with their. Maybe the minutiae or the details of their swing.

You say the Spanish aren't like technically obsessed with their footwork, but you mentioned they're obsessed with their footwork and movement. So maybe explain, explain what's going on there.

Yes, because in some other countries they have an obsession with footwork, but it's highly technical and rigid. So, for example, my coach was Israeli. His name was Gilad Blum. He had an amazing footwork system, but it was very, very technical.

I don't know if you know the footwork system of David Bailey, the Australian coach, very, very well known footwork expert. And in Spain, they're not like that at all.

They don't have specific steps that you need to take, per se, but it's more about the entire body being in position and balance to receive the ball. They focus on loading the back leg. That's important. In Spain, there's a bit of evolution happening. They used to focus a lot on closed stance.

Now they're accepting more open stances and lifting off the ground.

Whereas in the past they're a little more traditional, but they have a very broad parameters for the actual technique, the way the players move, but they want balance and positioning.

So I don't know if your listeners can get a feel for that just by me describing it, but I could on the court or with video, it's a little easier to understand.

Okay, thank you for explaining. Be solid, consistency wins.

So Spain, historically, they've been very consistent players. And I think that's a good way, healthy way to develop young kids. Obviously, some coaches disagree.

A good way to develop all levels of players, really, to focus on being solid and not giving away too many unforced errors. Used to be big obsession in Spain in the 70s and 80s to be like Borg, you know, to play like Borg.

Now you see an evolution with Alcaraz, who's way more aggressive. He's like Spanish tennis 2.0. New generation of Spanish player. See a lot of young players coming up who are aggressive like Alcaraz, like Landalucci.

You have Hodar, and there's a number of young Spanish players. Three recent U.S. open junior champions. Rincon is another one.

So they've been coming up and a lot of these guys are playing more aggressive like Alcarazz. So Alcaraz is kind of the new model. But to be steady, to be solid, is a good way to win matches.

Have they had three? I know they had Jodar Rincon and who's the third US Open champion, boys?

Landalucci.

He won. Okay.

And Alcaraz. And so it's remarkable. In five years, they had four junior US Open champs. I think that is a good.

I just wrote an article about this for a tennis magazine.

I think it's a good example of how the modern Spanish method is more aggressive and they're doing better on hard courts, for example, where they used to be mostly clay court oriented.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Martin Landelouche. I think he's a big lad and hits a big ball. It's going to be exciting in the future.

Still has a lot to learn, but I think he's going to be a great player.

Yeah, he's like 130 right now. ATP. He qualified for the Australian. He's doing great. He should. He should be breaking the top 100 soon. And that'll be good for Spain. They need it.

Yeah, they need it. Okay, so number five is develop superior fitness, endurance.

And this one that sticks out to me the most because it's like when you saw Spanish players like in, you know, years ago, they were just like. They spent all day on court just drilling, working on that fitness.

You saw their quads were massive, their forearms were massive because they just hit so many balls and they were so strong. So this is the one that stands out a lot. As well as the consistency one. But this one stands out a lot.

Yeah, I think it's true. But they actually do less on court work and a lot of off court.

So Spain was one of the first systems, for lack of a better word, that almost did half the training off the court. So they did a lot of gym, a lot of conditioning, a lot of injury prevention, a lot of, a lot of off court work.

And other countries were still learning, you know, they hadn't instituted that in the 80s, for example. So this is another example where I talked about velocity based training. I think this is where Spain was really a pioneer.

They were doing a lot, they were prioritizing fitness, they were prioritizing strength and conditioning, they were doing a lot of off court work. And other countries have adapted now pretty much everybody does that now. The Italians are doing that now.

But that was relatively unique in the 80s for Spain to do that and it gave them an advantage. Nowadays as a junior coach, I see many young kids and I work with many players who are not doing much on the fitness side. They focus a lot on tennis.

Maybe they play five, six hours of tennis a day and they don't do much physical and I don't really believe in that. I like the Spanish way that's a little more balanced.

They do three hours, three and a half tennis, two hours, two and a half fitness and it's, I think it's a little healthier that way.

No, I think that's really important. You need to be, you need to be doing it even from a prehab point of view. That prehab starts so young now, like warm up.

Intense is probably not the right word, but they're so important at the moment. And yeah, if you just spend all day on court every day, you're going to get injured sooner rather than later.

Absolutely.

Okay, so number four is use topspin in your tactics.

Yeah, this is really cool. In Spain, you know, they didn't always play with topspin in Spain in the 60s and 70s they used to be mostly flat ball hitters. They used to slice.

Everybody sliced their backhand. The top players of that time and over, over the decades they became topspin like Borg again. They, they modeled after Borg.

So they played more and more topspin. Sergio Brugueira, who we talked about, had tremendous topsp and that became a model for Spanish players in the late 80s and early 90s.

And so that is one of their primary tactics. One of the primary tactics in Spain is to play over the opponent's backhand.

They tried to play heavy to the opponent's backhand, which is a very good strategy. And I think that can be very actionable for players, for coaches and parents working with their kids.

You don't have to always teach your kid that or your player to hit power through the opponent. You can play above the opponent. And a lot of people don't like high balls. And you can use. You can incorporate high balls with topspin into your.

Your strategy with great effect. And I think that is one of the lessons of Spain, that it's. It. You don't always have to have to hit flat and with power, you can win with other tools.

Primarily, it's not just above the shoulder, but also angles. The two primary strategies in Spain is to use topspin on the angle and topspin over the backhand. You know, heavy over the backhand.

You can really open up the court with those wide ones with a lot of spin on them. They really.

Yeah, I mean, you can think of many Spanish champions who have made a lot of money with that tactic, including Nadal, to use a heavy forehand against someone's backhand. But I work with many high performance juniors and I have many kids who, they don't even think of that.

They spend all their time trying to hit the ball as hard as possible through their opponent. They never once think to go upstairs, you know.

Yeah, that's risky business as well. The odds of you missing are much higher when you're hitting flat and low over the net, going for power. So there's a lot more.

Right. So you get the consistency and also that tactical benefit.

Okay, so number three, the three Cs, control your body, control your mind, and control the ball.

Yeah, I love this one. I talked about it in the book. It's basically the idea of. It relates to the footwork and the balance and the positioning that we were talking about.

Getting in great position to receive the ball with good balance. That's controlling the body. When you're learning to accelerate, this also relates to acceleration.

In Spain, they focus on accelerating to the maximum, but not moving the head, not becoming wild with your body. So you have to learn in the journey of a tennis player to accelerate to your maximum, but control your body, that is like the journey.

That's the technical journey of a tennis player learning how to swing at incredibly fast speeds, but to control your body. So that's the first circle. Control your body and you need to control your mind. It's something that Tony Nadal talks about a lot.

Many Spanish coaches believe in emotional control, in controlling your concentration, and many of the Spanish drills, the ones you talked about, with the grinding and the repetition, the players have to learn to focus even when their heart rate is very high or when they're under duress. And so in Spain, they spend a lot of time, a lot of focus on being able to concentrate and control your emotions, to fight without losing your calm.

And so that's another. That's very important for the consistency, because if you lose control of your emotions, you're going to make mistakes.

Not just technical, it's not just your body, it's also your mind and your emotions. And then if you can do that, you can control the ball. So Tony Nadal talks about that a lot.

He says, if you cannot control your emotions, how can you ever control the ball? Good.

El Tony Nadal, I was waiting for his appearance here.

He's in the new book.

He's in the book number two, use your forehand to dominate.

Yeah, this relates to the topspin strategy. So nowadays it seems obvious.

Most of the pros, especially the men, they try to move around their backhand to dominate with their forehand, to play inside out or inside. In. In Spain, they call it the drive invertido, the inverted drive. It roughly translates to, like upside down forehand.

Tony Nadal is obsessed with the upside down forehand. He teaches that to all of the players at his academy.

And he teaches it not only for the strategy, but for the movement as well, to work on moving around the ball.

But strategically, obviously, even some of the best players in the world, like Djokovic, amazing backhands, they play forehand from the backhand corner. They can play it heavy with topspin. They can maybe get more racket speed on it and make the ball jump.

And so in Spain, they were doing that back in the 80s. They were doing that way before it became a common trend on the tour. So they were pioneers in that respect.

The upside down forehand is just hitting inside out forehands. Is that what it is or am I missing? Is it the boogie whip or am I missing? I just want to.

No, it's from the backhand corner.

It's anything that the idea, if you're working with a player, if you're a player and you get a ball that's not coming too fast down the middle, is you try to run around it the way Rotha used to run around so frequently his backhand. And you tried to dominate with your forehand, you tried to use your forehand to knock your opponent out. It doesn't have to be inside out.

It could be Inside, in. But basically the goal is to knock your opponent out with the forehand and to always, constantly look to move to the left.

If you're a right handed player, you're always looking to move around the incoming ball and dominate with your forehand. And that's not always the theme in other countries. In Spain, that was a big theme in the 80s, way, way back when.

Okay. And number one is learn to love, to suffer.

Yeah, this is the main chapter in the book, and people love that chapter. I get a lot of, you know, positive feedback about that, but I never seen anything like it.

I went to Spain and 20 years ago and all the coaches used to use this word, suffer, you know, but they used it very seriously. Like, you know, we teach the kids to suffer. You know, like, we believe in suffering.

You know, we think it's important to go on the court today and suffer. And if we don't suffer in the match, we don't enjoy the match, you know, like.

And so after traveling, you know, I've made over 30 trips to Spain, so going around different parts of the country in different accounts, and you hear the same refrain over and over again.

You know, I figured I'd make it a chapter in the book because it's remarkable how in a small country, all the coaches are talking, like, similarly, philosophically about suffering. And so that's something you may or may not want to adopt for your players or if you're a player.

I know some, I've spoken with some coaches who say, well, we don't believe that, you know, we should make the kids suffer. We don't, we don't believe that that's necessary.

But, but in Spain, they, they really believe that very sincerely that, that that's part of becoming a great tennis player. That's part of learning how to be a warrior, a soldier, to be able to fight and suffer.

And Joffrey Porta, a famous Spanish coach, says, it's a privilege to suffer. It's a privilege to go through a tough battle, and at the end you feel amazing.

Whether you win or lose, you know, it's something very special and it's a privilege. So that's sort of the idea behind suffering.

And if you can teach your players or if you're a player, if you can learn to suffer, well, if you can learn to handle pain, if you can increase your tolerance for pain and, and to overcome adversity, that, that's a really positive thing. I, I believe in, in, you know.

Psychologically, Rafa was definitely the, the kingpin of learning to suffer. You know, he really, you could say he enjoyed suffering.

He, he. He's quoted as saying that. He's quoted. And he's quoted as saying that he, over the course of his career, he learned to love suffering.

It starts when the. You start to make them run. Like a lot of kids don't like to run for balls.

It starts with running for balls and taking a pleasure or joy in running and suffering and fighting for balls, because a lot of young kids don't like to do that. So you teach that as a basis. And then from there, over time, the player adapts to suffering and pain and it just becomes something that's normal.

It's not something. That's why Spanish players have been known historically as being very tough guys to put out in a tournament.

The longer the match goes, the tougher the conditions. They like it, you know, but that comes from a. They inculcate that belief at a young age in Spain. It's not an accident that they're all like that.

It's in their DNA. It's in their tennis DNA. And tell me so, okay, there's a 10.

You said you had a bonus one, which I can't remember what it is, so it's going to be a big surprise for me.

Basically, they infuse tactics in everything in Spain. It's not really a technical place, and I think that's a great lesson for a lot of.

A lot of people who want to just take some practical benefit from the Spanish success. They don't hyper obsess with technical minutiae. They spend a lot. They have very broad technical parameters.

They work very hard, they work on footwork, they work on many of the things we talked about in the list. And they don't obsess about too many details. I think that can be really, really healthy.

Obviously, that can be a problem if a player has a really funky grip or if a player has a huge backswing or something that could cause an injury in their technique. But in general, that's how Spain succeeded. They infuse everything. Everything that we talked about is usually linked to a tactical component.

And so everything is built around playing well and not just performing a movement that's biomechanically correct. So I think you can learn from that. And I love biomechanics. I'm studying biomechanics in school and kinesiology.

But it's a good reminder that sometimes you don't need to obsess about details in the technique. You can become a very, very good player just focusing on some of the simple things that we talked about.

No, you're right. There's definitely a lot there. A lot of all that makes sense. So there's a lot to work on for players out there.

Chris, thank you very much for jumping on. Appreciate it. I'm actually gonna next time I'm back on court, I'll be thinking of some of them.

I won't be thinking of all of them, but there'll be one or two I'll definitely be thinking of. And yeah, I appreciate you jumping on. And if people do want to know more about your book, where did I find it? Amazon. The usual places.

Yeah, it's everywhere. It's the Secrets of Spanish tennis 2.0, not the original. This is the new edition, and we put a lot of work into it. I hope people enjoy it.

Chris, thank you very much.

Thanks, Fabio.