Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast, your place for free, expert, tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Welcome to episode number 391 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Today I'm featuring a conversation that I had with the co-author of my book called Essential Tennis. His name is Joel. He's a four-row-level player. He's a super passionate tennis player. And he recently had an experience where he took a series of lessons that he felt was a waste of money.
And he just wanted to have an open, candid conversation about his experience and about the state of tennis lessons in general. So there's a pretty long conversation. Joel and I really get into a lot of details about why people take lessons, the areas of expertise that tennis coaches have. And if you take lessons, if you ever plan on taking lessons,
I think this is an incredibly important conversation. I'll listen to it'll give you a lot of perspective and understanding about what services are available out there and what you should be looking for to actually get value out of lessons. Really quickly before we jump into this conversation, do me a favor and shoot me an email. Let me know if you enjoyed it or not, if you just prefer the solo stuff or if you enjoyed the conversation.
And also, do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast? That's how I started this show was doing listener questions. And I haven't done it in years, frankly. So I'm kind of curious to jump back in again. Do you have a particular problem, like a very personal thing that you're struggling with, that you'd like me to give you feedback on? Let me know, shoot me an email to Ian, that's ian at essentialtennis.com. And just put it in the subject line,
either podcast, feedback or podcast topic or something like that. All right, let's get right into today's discussion. Hey everybody, welcome to this special talk between myself and Joel, Chaznaf, he's the co-author of Essential Tennis, our book on Amazon. Joel, welcome. Great to have you here. Yeah, thrilled to be here again. So Joel and I have worked together a lot over the last several years. He loves tennis. That's why he and I embarked on the journey of creating the book together.
And recently he had an experience that kind of led him to wanting to have a conversation about the state of coaching. Who is who's tennis coaching for? What is it for? Some kind of existential questions like that. Joel, why don't you give us a little bit of background on yourself as a player and also what led you to wanting to have this conversation? What was your experience? Yeah, wow. Wait, it's a good way to phrase it. I mean, look, as a player, I'm probably like a 4-0 on a good day,
but really love the game. I mean, as you said, that's why I reached out to you because I wanted to dive deep into the book with my favorite coach online. And one thing it's done is it's made me so much more aware of what a tennis lesson can be and what it shouldn't look like and what good coaching is and isn't.
But all that aside, I've been on this big book tour for another book I just wrote and I had two weeks off and was staying in Texas and there's a club nearby where my uncle's a member and they have a coaching staff. I don't know many people down there and I thought, you know what, I'll buy this package of five lessons, four lessons, then the fifth one is free. And like, it's not so expensive. I'll have a good time and I'll probably learn something because even if you know, coaching isn't what
it should be, it can't be that bad, right? I mean, like these guys are coaches, they know what they're doing. So that was my impetus for this conversation is I came out of, well, I had five lessons, but I
called you after the first one and I was like, holy smoke, what am I going to hear? I remember telling you, I think I just, I prepaid for these lessons and I thought I'd wasted all my money because I, to put it mildly, I was not very happy after that, not just after the first lesson, probably 10 minutes into the first lesson. Why? Why were you, so what specifically, and I don't know how much detail you want to go into if you're trying to protect the innocent or you know, I will give you tons of
detail. Okay, well, what was specifically why were you so disappointed? After only 10 minutes, like let's just talk about the first 10 minutes. Why were the first 10 minutes so disappointing? The, I mean, the first thing that he'd me off is I told her what I wanted to work on and I said, um, you know, my, I just, I'm having trouble. I never really understood. I understand kinetic chain, but I'm having trouble executing kinetic chain. I'm having trouble loading weight and then
putting that weight into the ball. I would really want to work on that. And she said, you know, let's, let's just hit a few ground strokes and see and I thought, you know, great, great place to start. So we hit a few and immediately she said, you know, you're really too close to the ball and that struck a core with me because any other coach I've worked at has said that you're too cramped. So we agreed that for, you know, let's just work on getting some distance between myself and the
ball a healthy amount of distance. That was what we're going to work on. So we started hitting a few, oh, so what I asked her is like, could you just feed a few before we hit because I know the minute I start moving and the minute I start trying to hit well, it's going to change everything. So why you just feed me, make it as easy as possible. And she said, no, you know, I'd rather just hit him
from the other side of the net. That's what you do. So right away, it's just sort of like a bell when I was like, okay, here's the student knowing what will work best for him and the teacher is saying, actually, this is what I usually do. Um, and just knowing myself, I knew that I was, and I'm too nice the guy. Like, I'm a Midwesterner, you know, if I was, I was like, mean, maybe I would have
demanded it, but I wanted to be a good student. So I just went along with it and we started, you know, right started hitting, which was probably starting a little too much instead of just with feeds. And then about five balls in, she started giving me other instructions, you know, stay low, stay low, and then keep that left hand out. And then, you know, other instructions. And I, you know, from our conversations, I know that this is a typical coaching thing to overload the student.
But hearing it myself, I, as much as I knew that I should ignore these other instructions and stay to the main task, that part of me that wanted to be a good student in first grade, still wanted to be a good student and like following instructions. And it, I started feeling it, you know, sort of fall apart. So that very quickly, like, I kind of felt like I wasn't going to learn something. I was just going to please or not please. Wow. When you put it that way, I almost,
almost kind of, I feel sad. Like I feel bad for you that you were put in that position of feeling like you had to choose between like yourself. It feels like a parental, you know, like child kind of like you're put between the two, like relationships that you had to choose. That's too bad. Well, what made it more complicated is maybe this other instruction was not wrong. Maybe it was right that staying low will help. And maybe keeping that left arm out longer will also benefit.
But so then there's this balance of like, well, if I do all three of them, well, I actually get it finally. But obviously what happened is the more you try to do the more confusing it gets and and you keep forgetting things and you're hearing more instructions come and I just, you know, I felt like I was getting hearing good phrases of not really being able to put into action. And that's the tricky part is everything that she said may have been in fact, 100%
act. Let's just, you know, go with like best case scenario. Everything she said was spot on and you really need to make those adjustments and changes. And those, they're all like good, productive things. But overwhelming you, you know, with more, any more than one thing to think about at any one given time is just going to make the experience pretty frustrating for you. And it's funny. A few times I would, a few times I would say to her, you know,
kind of like jokingly, I'd say, you know, like my brain can only handle one thing. Let's stick to one thing and she'd say, okay, but then I think, you know, we all have our habits, a big part of our book is about how deeply ingrained our habits are. And just the same way players have habits, I'm sure coaches have habits and I'm sure as a coach, it's very hard to see a student doing three things that can be corrected and not mentioning two of them. It's just, it's your instinct to
want to fix as many things as you can. And I think that's a habit that they, that's probably holding a lot of them back if they even are aware of it. Yeah, I think there's a general undertone or undercurrent of misunderstanding between players and coaches that the more information, the more valuable it is, like the more insight that I provide as a coach, the more the students can be like, oh, wow, that was such a good lesson because I learned so much.
And this is, and I think the opposite is also true, that there's this maybe fear that if the student comes away after an hour with only one thing, the student is going to think, what, what did I just do a lesson for? It's like going to the grocery store and buying a carton of milk and nothing else on your shopping list and then you come home and your wife is really upset, well, why don't you buy all this other stuff? Maybe get through the store there, but you never
know. So I posed the question in the intro, what are tennis lessons for? And I think, I've been thinking about this. I think that's what it kind of comes down to. If a tennis lesson was for changing habits, meaning like taking Joel from a four or four hand to a four or five four hand, then we would need to go through a very different set of drills, of progressions, of like focus
points of processes, then if the goal of the lesson is to just dump information, or the goal of the lesson is to give my student as much of a workout as possible, or the goal of the lesson is to have as much fun as possible, or to allow my students to interact with each other and have a good time. Like, there's a lot of different reasons why people take lessons. And I think maybe what's most unfortunate about the culture around taking tennis lessons is nobody talks about that up front.
And it's, I think what you experienced makes the most sense for everybody intuitively. And that is, well, it's the coach's job. I'm paying them. They're the expert. So I'm just going to defer to whatever they want to do. But the reality is different coaches can have a completely different objective for that hour of time. And different students can have completely different objectives. And but there's no conversation. I mean, there is. Like you get together a coach like, hey,
what do you want to work on? But I don't think everybody's really honest. You know what I mean? It's like everybody's just kind of like going along to get along and nobody wants to rock the boat. And whoever kind of takes charge of the frame and is like, we're going to do like X and is the most assertive about it. It kind of takes that tone. Otherwise, it just defaults to whatever the coaches preferences are, which might be totally different from your goals as a student.
So maybe that's on me because I definitely did not initiate a conversation where I said, I want to be clear. Unlike many students, my goal is to change one or two habits over our five hours together. And I would be completely satisfied if I do nothing else. So for some reason, it didn't do that. And my, so I've been doing this a while. And I have heard many reports back from students who've gone to their local coach and said exactly what you just said. And like kind of advocate for
themselves and say, I really just want to fix my serve. Can we please just like, I just want to work on my serve. And some students have reported back to me that their coach is like, thank you. That would be amazing. Like I would love to just focus on like, let's really make a change that's like substantive and real tier game. But I've also heard the other report back from, from online students of mine who go to their local coach say, I just really want to work on my back.
And like, that's all I want to focus on. And the coach just like can't do it. Like they can't just like let go of the structure and the framework and like the, the tempo that they're used to delivering information. And they maybe half heartily at first are like, okay, yeah, we can do that. And then 10 minutes later, they're like shifting over to something else because they just don't have the attention span or frankly, the toolkit or the tool set to be able to like really drill
down and go hard with one player on one stroke. It's honestly a completely different skill set. I think another thing, I just want to tell you one other little episode from our time together is my volley. I've never had great volleys. And I thought, you know what? In my last lesson of the five, let's just, because the ground strokes didn't quite work out the way I'd hope. Let's just spend an hour on volleys. And the first few minutes were like again, pretty good. And we didn't even go to
the net. I was up against a back fence and just kind of like intercepting the ball on my forehand side, not really doing anything with it, but like hitting in the middle of the racket. It felt very inescapable. So that was, I thought we were on the right track. But then she would start throwing in a backhand volley here and there, which we didn't even work on. And she'd say, well, when you're at the net, you're not always going to get forehand. Like to me, it was so obvious like this,
that what we were doing now was building a new skill from scratch. The last thing I needed was not a worry if there's going to be a backhand volley coming all of a sudden. And I told her this, but it just, you know, I think I think a few more still kept on coming. It was just, it was almost like she was trying to trick me and keep me honest. And maybe she was thinking, oh, I'm a good coach. If I don't let him only only do his forehand and throw him a
backhand here and there. But to me, it was totally messing me up because I could no longer just concentrate on the one thing I needed to focus. Yeah, the whole one thing is just so foreign. It's just so countercultural, I think, to coaches and lessons in general. And I think it stems back to
that idea of more is more. And I think it also stems back to like, you're a weird, you're a weird student like with that mentality, like you're one in a hundred that she's going to see throughout the course of her year, you know, coaching lessons with maybe spending time with a couple hundred,
maybe, I mean, maybe a thousand, you know, people over the course of a year, she's going to see like 10 people like you all year who are like so dedicated to the improvement process like that they're coming in with like a very particular a they even know what it is that they want to do in the first place. B, they actually already have like some kind of structure or understanding in their head about about what the change probably like in the ballpark should be. And then they want to actually
just focus on that for a big chunk of time. So they actually fix it or change it. That's a weird thing in terms of like her experience day to day. And so I think it's like a question of repetition
of like exposure. If you're only seeing, you know, 1% of students or 5% of students that are like you, that's just not going to be like the communication style, the training mechanisms, the progressions that she uses, the level of challenge that she introduces you to, it's going to be completely different because you're unique and special and differential. But here's the thing like what it's already been about six weeks since this happened and I've
calmed down. But I remember I remember when I called you, I was furious and I used the word criminal like I really, you felt really felt if I remember correctly. I was mad not just for me, but for all the students across America who are going to tennis lessons, thinking that they are going to get better at tennis. When all they're doing is hitting a ball for an hour and then
kidding themselves, they're being lied to. That was a phrase I remember. I used the word criminal and I used the phrase lie to and I do feel like tennis students are coming home from their coaching sessions after having been lied to that this is making you better when the coach is, knows and the coaches must know that this isn't really going to, that this what they're doing isn't
really going to make their player better. I mean they must and that's why I was so mad because I thought there, I feel like as much as she might have a habit, there was also a willful acceptance that she was just giving me kind of a bogus bag of goods and that she could send me on my way. That's why I said that. Yeah, that's the crux of that accusation. It would have to be conscious, so it would have to be willful in order for it to be air quotes like a lie.
So what percent do you actually believe that she knew it would be better for you not to hit forehand ball? I'm sorry, backhand ball is just focused on the forehand, I don't remember which it was. What percentage of you actually believes that she was willfully not giving you the repetition you needed on one side and instead like keeping you on the toes? I don't think she said in her head.
I know it's better to do X but I'm going to do wine instead but I think if someone, if someone had sat her down and said what do you think is really the best way to improve Joel's volleys? And don't just give me your instinctive answer but think about it. I just think she's never given it thought and I think a lot of coaches have never, I think two things have never occurred to them. One, what would actually really improve their
students playing habits? And number two, I don't think you're right, I don't think it's ever really occurred to them that students are coming to them to drastically change their game. I think they just sort of assume they want to get a little bit better and also have some fun on the court and run around and exercise and know that they're getting, or think they're getting maybe a little bit better. Or think that, or think that the aura of being on a court with a coach,
somehow biasmosis, that will make that. I'm serious. Oh, I know. I'm laughing. Yeah, there's a percentage of students that actually believe that they might not say it out loud or they might not invent to it but they really do believe that. And that's why everybody gravitates pretty intuitively or naturally to like who was the best player. Like which of these coaches has the most impressive playing resume? Like which, oh, he was like in a grand slam. Yeah, I'm taking lessons
with Steve. Like, why would I take a lesson with Jim? Jim was just like a college player. And so everybody goes to Steve's. Steve charges more. Everybody pays more because Steve has the stronger
osmosis ability. Like that's for sure a real thing in tennis. Joel, I think at the end of the day, like the whole culture around like what a lesson is and what it's for has to change because she might, if she sits down and just thinks about it logically and intuitively might come up with the right answers, like you said, but nobody is asking her for what you wanted. But how come when I go to the doctor,
there is two pages of checklists about my heart and my prostate and my history. And when you go to a tennis lesson, why is there no checklists? Why is there no evaluation at the beginning? Wouldn't that save all the pain that in all the wasted money and wouldn't make it easier for anyone? Ian, why are you not? Maybe here's an idea. Why are you not coming up with that checklist? We needed to develop a checklist that students take in with them to lessons so that if they're
afraid of speaking up and like rocking the boat, they have this checklist. You can say, you know what, I did some work on my own. Here's what I really want. Let's spend 10 minutes going over this and talking over the best strategy because those conversations aren't going to happen unless I think
there's guidance out there. I think you you said the magic word like like 90 seconds ago and the magic word is fun because the vast majority of people who play tennis play it because they want to have fun and it's not fun for people to change their habits because that means being uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable is not fun. Missing more shots at first is not fun. Losing the people that you normally beat at first is not fun. Like none of those things are fun and fun is the top priority
for most people. And I don't mean that in a condescending way at all. I don't mean that like in a judgmental way at all. We're playing a sports, we're playing a game and the majority of people play it because they want to have fun. And so the checklist, not fun. Checklists are not fun. Unless it's a checklist for how to have more than an awesome idea.
Yeah, so like checklist, yeah, you're speaking to like me 100%. But I'm I've come to understand over the years and like taking a step back from what I did at a private, you know, country club where the culture was. I mean, why do people join a country club? They have just dump trucks full of expendable cash and they want to enjoy themselves and have a good time. That's why
they're showing up at the country club. It's not because they want to have some deep meaningful challenging journey of like self exploration through tennis to like like challenge or deepest beliefs and like understandings about the universe. Like they just want to have fun. And so this is why I quit my job, you know, is so many people I like I don't I don't want to have. Because Ian can't stand. I don't want to have fun. For me, right. People are enjoying themselves. I can't
be part of this. So I don't think I don't think in this case. Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I don't think we can have our cake and eat it too. At least for I can't like I don't have the personality to boy like somebody like a Vic Braden. Vic Braden, I don't know how much you've watched his materials. Like he could be super nerdy, super detailed, super improvement focused, but his personality was so effervescent. Like he was so like his energy was so incredible and he
was so engaging. Like you couldn't help but have fun even though you were actually doing. You're not that guy. I think I'm sorry. You are not universe. Like it's not that's not who I am. So I wish I could hit both ends of this spectrum. But I'll coach who is really a commission sales associate has to make a decision. Oh God. That's such a painful way to phrase it is. But you're probably right. When you're at 10 to 10. Break that down. Break that down. Why are you generally a commission
sales associate if you're a tennis coach? Because you make a commission on every lesson you teach. You make a percentage. At least when you work in a club environment, like you don't keep all the money. You have a contract with the club. They keep a percentage. You keep a percentage. And you frick you when you get that job, you figure out, okay, if I'm making this percentage and their hourly rate is X is $80 an hour. And my rents and my food and my car payments are XYZ. I have to
work this number of hours in order to make ends meet. And you're doing the math in your head. And when somebody walks out on the court for you and they just some random Joe or Jane walks out on the court and they're like, Hey, I signed up for a lesson. And they ask for X, Y or Z. You have to make the judgment call in the first like 90 seconds of that time together. What do they want? How do I provide it so that they come back again? Because if they don't come back
again, I'm not going to be above 30 hours or 35 hours on the court. And I'm not going to be able to pay the bills. And that's the position that your average tennis coach is put in. And so they get on
this hamster wheel of just providing the lowest common denominator service. Now, just to be clear, I'm speaking from a country club, like if you go to a high performance junior academy, the whole conversation changes because the whole reason why people walk in the door is a completely different thing than if you're just at a general, you know, commercial, local tennis club or you're at a high-end country club or something like that. So it's a cultural, I think the bottom line is
a kind of exonial cultural thing. Does that make sense? It does. I'll also, I want to add one thing. A couple times this coach I was working with said something along the lines of, it's so nice to be with a student or I'm not used to being with a student who cares so much about really getting better. Like she let it slip. And it was almost like I caught her off guard.
And I saw the other lessons before me and after me. It was exactly as you described. People who are talking about their new lake house as they're hitting their forehand and how are your kids? And then 100%. Okay, let's go. And then they can come over and be like, yeah, I had about an lesson with Marta. So, so just perspective like for me, Joel, is over the years, I've put more and more and more responsibility on myself for how naive I was. Knowing how deeply I cared about the
game and how badly I wanted to help people make breakthroughs. Like how how how fulfilling it was for me to see people have epiphany, you know, moments and to make improvements. Knowing like I knew in my late teens, that's what I would really like set me off. Like that's what I was really excited about. And then I got lured into the world of like private, you know, country clubs. And it was the absolute wrong decision for me to go. Did you think you would create epiphanies in country
clubs? Like did you think, oh, this is a good way to do it? Yeah, I did. And I was I was blown away that people didn't want what I was offering at first. And it was how do you know? Oh, well, it was like just constant friction. It was like me trying to give what I thought or knew was like the best possible advice. And my student rejecting it. Yeah, hour after hour after hour, like wanting something different. I love what you have been a memory of like a student rejecting advice.
Like I'd love to hear not a set. I mean, it was like, that was that was routine. And it was like, I so like in an eight hour day, I would average like about eight, I worked five days a week. I tried to hit 40 hours a week on the court. So I was averaging about eight hours a day. And six or seven of those hours was me just trying to like sneak in. It was like doing the airplane thing with your kid trying to get them to eat there like broccoli. And just like desperately trying to get
them to take what I knew was the best thing for them, but constantly fighting resistance. And like, no, let's do something that's not so yucky. And that was the that was like 80% of my time on the court was was trying to coaxing like horse people into like doing something a little bit uncomfortable so that they could make some kind of breakthrough or improvement. And initially, it was like shock. I was I was naive. Like I just didn't know. I just didn't know any better. I assumed that if
people were going to pay me money, they would value my best input. And that just wasn't the case. And that at first was like very jarring. And like I had multiple like meetings like behind closed doors in the office of the director of tennis at my my first job because I was so thrown off by this and so disappointed. Honestly, but I didn't move to a high performance academy or some place where like that was the goal I stayed in the private club world. And now as I look back and hindsight,
I realized like, Hey, I was really naive going into it. And B, I didn't set myself up for success because I joined I signed on to a culture that valued something other than what I wanted to provide. So for you, the and for everybody else watching, Joel, I would highly encourage all of you A, to just be aware that these big culture like differences and like the value, the what is valued from like culture to culture to culture in tennis is wildly different.
And so you have to like kind of take ownership of your own improvement journey, know what you want, and then kind of go in eyes wide open about like what is this club likely to provide? What kind of service are they likely providing day to day to their membership? And that's not something that players are used to thinking about. And you're like in your defense, like you would just kind of assume if I go to a professional coach at a real tennis club, they must know how to tell me how to get
better at tennis. But that might not mean isn't that the specialty? Isn't that like the biggest no brainer? Like if I go to the car wash with my car, Wushunday assumed they're going to know how to clean it. That's the service they provide. It just seems so obvious. And yet it's obviously overlooked,
something wasn't clicking. And I know I'm not the only one. No, you're not the only one. Yeah, it's like saying it all out loud and like talking about your story and your experience and my story and my experience, like it's obvious that certain things just aren't really talked about. It's not really possible to have this understanding or perspective unless as a coach, you invest a lot of time in one corner of the industry and then bounce over to another corner
of the industry. But generally coaches find their niche pretty quickly. They figure out what their core assets and skills are. They get really good at delivering that product or service. And they just kind of keep the momentum rolling. And students, same kind of thing. They find the type of club that resonates with their values as a consumer. And they just generally just stay in line with that track. And they don't bounce around from like, I'm going to go to a camp at like a
resort. I'm going to go to a commercial club. I'm going to go to a private club. I'm going to go to an academy. I'm going to go to a junior like high performance specialty place and sign up for a lesson with the top coach there. Even though I'm a 65 year old adult, I've had students that have done that. And it's a breath of fresh air. How is that going by the way? Usually it's a breath of fresh air into the coach. Well, so it's so it's polarizing. Either the coach is like,
what are you doing? Like I don't know what to do with you because you're just so outside the norm of the person I'm used to working with. Or it's the type of reaction that you got from your coach who's like, wow, somebody just walked in my court that actually gives a damn. And like this is so refreshing that I get to actually like kind of bear my coaching soul and tell them what I actually think. And they're going to like be like, wow, this is great. And they're used to coming up against
like friction and resistance all day. So it's like one of those two reactions typically. How well does the student need to know how to communicate what heat or she wants? Because I can see myself going to a coach and saying, look, all we're working on is movement. If you can help me move better to the ball, I know my strokes will be better. I'm bad at movement. Let's only work on that. Like is that enough? Or do I need to keep reminding that coach over and over? Stay away from this.
Don't make me do this. Let's just do movement. Like do you think a coach any good coach will hear that and get it? Or is it still a matter of finding the right coach? So good for what? What is the coach good for? And I know that sounds disrespectful at first blush, but is the count? Like I said, just a minute or two ago, each coach is going to recognize pretty quickly early in their career. Like what? What am I really good at? Some coaches are really good at energy and it's like personality.
And it's like they're just like a magnet, like personality wise. And you can build a whole career. I'm not exaggerating. You can build a whole career just on having that personality. And you might not have much insight. You might not be good at changing habits. You might not know anything about like pronation or like releasing the racket head or the kinetic chain. But if you go to the right club and you just have that personality, you can make a great living your entire life.
Other coaches might figure out early on. I'm the technician and like I've got no personality at all. I'm talking about myself now. I've no personality at all, but I'm super analytical. And I like the way my brain works. I like to explode things, inspect all the little pieces, and then slowly put it back together again. So I understand like how it all works so that I can explain it simply and exactly the right way to somebody else. That's a wildly different like skill set. Those two
different types of coaches. So you need to ask yourself a question Joel, before you invest in a five lesson package, what is this coach good at? They could have wildly different skills that might not be in sync at all with your goals. And in the first 10 minutes, you like you experienced, you'll know what is their core skill set. And we could probably come up, it'd be interesting to like to have a round table discussion with passionate players like yourself and career coaches
and come up with like the core personality. I would actually really like to do that because I'm trying to think to myself, like what was this coach really good at? What are some of the other coaches that worked out really really good at? And they all really were good at different things. Yeah. But look, there's another element that we need to talk about is that the expense? I mean, it's not like tasting one flavor of strawberries and then tasting another. Like this isn't,
but it's an expensive one. Before we go to that, just just just just call that in your mind real quick, the expense. Let's just kind of tie a bow a little bit on what we, I feel like we just kind of wrapped up this whole concept of you have to know what you want as the student. And then you have to judge what your coach is good at providing. And totally fair what you said before about like the car wash. I'm not going to go to the car wash to get my taxes done or you know, whatever.
Like I go to the car wash to get my car clean. And so as an average consumer, it's very easy to assume that I go to a tennis coach to get better at tennis. But that's not what all tennis coaches provide. It's not. And that might be shocking for some people to hear, you know, like the first time. But those of you who have been around the game for 10, 20, 30 years, you just think back about all the lessons you've watched. You'll know intuitively that, you know, what I just said is accurate. And
it's not black and white. Like there's obviously different gradients of like maybe a mix of like different like traits or skill sets. But I think you can't be happy or satisfied or get value out of a lesson. And once you really deeply know what you want out of it. And then very deliberately unconsciously, like you have to, unfortunately, you have to be kind of a student of coaches.
And go watch like if you're, if you're going to be in town for a week or two weeks or whatever, go watch 10 or 15 minutes of a lesson of the five coaches that were at that club that was conveniently placed to where your location was. And you got to take some notes and figure out like what they deliver. Otherwise, you're just not going to have good alignment with what you receive. Wow. I mean, is that unfair? Is that unfair? No, no, no, no, I want it. It is what it is. I want
it to be easier. But that's the best. Sorry. Yeah, I it would be better for all of us if we knew up front like early on. I said, we all need to just have an honest conversation out of the gate. But I don't know how many coaches even really, I don't know, I don't know, I don't want to be too like cynical. I don't know how many coaches even really know where they are in that skill set, you know. Some coaches, just like any other career, walk of life, certain percentage people are just kind
of out of themselves and think that they got all the boxes checked when they really don't. Just like players, you know, we all have blind spots in our games. We just don't know what we don't know. So a conversation is not even good enough. Like the student just has to be educated enough and do their own homework enough that they can make the right choice. And it makes me feel bad as a career coach to put that responsibility on the student. But unfortunately, in my experience,
in real life, that's just the way it is. Is that responsibility is actually on the student and it's not on the coach to communicate it. That's not the way it should be. I agree. Probably right. You're probably right. I mean, as you travel around teaching, taking part in group workshops, do you meet a lot of coaches who you think to yourself, whoa, this, she is one of them. He's one of them. He's one of the, he's one of my kind. Like,
do you meet a lot of coaches out there who where are they? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're out there. They're, um, is there a way to find them? Because remember, remember fun, remember the fun conversation. Yeah, the majority, the majority of tennis players prioritize fun. And so the majority of tennis coaches have learned to deliver that as kind of the core value and the service that they provide. So coaches that are like me are a minority because we have to kind of fight for
enough hours. If we're, if we're going to kind of ignore the fun, like part of it, like we're kind of fighting for the scraps. Like that's not the majority of people that want to pay for that service. And so it's, it's not a majority of coaches, but they're, absolutely, they're out there. There's, there's lots of them, but they're kind of hiding and nooks and crannies of the industry. Wow. I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I brought up expense before I can't help
but think, and I'm sure I'm not alone. I can't help but think of how much money I've wasted on coaching that didn't go anywhere. I mean, it's, it's not insignificant. And like, how do we not kick ourselves for having made that mistake over and over? Nobody told you, Joel. Nobody told you this was the way it was. So you can't, you can't really blame yourself, you know, but this is, this is why people go way the hell out of their way to come to Wisconsin to work with me because
they already tried everybody in their, you know, local area. And they didn't get what they were looking for. So they have to come to the middle of nowhere to take a tennis lesson. It's not easy to find. And it's not your fault that it's easy to find that that it's hard to find. It's just, just a cultural, that's just the way it is in the game of tennis. I do sometimes wonder if you should be harder on coaches for doing this, that if you should be
more vocal, because you're very forgiving of them. You, you, you stand up for them and, you know, in a way like they don't know they're not aware of it. They're only providing what the customer wants. Like part of me thinks you need to be a hard ass and you need to come down on them and be like, guys, you're, it's broken. What you're doing does not work and shake them and shake the tennis players out there and be like, Hey, if you really want to get better, wake up. You're not getting better.
So I can't judge somebody's intent. And we talked about that earlier. Like it's, it's only a lie if it was knowingly misleading or like knowingly disruptive, right? And I can't make a judgment, you know, in good conscience about what percentage of the coaches out there are maliciously just delivering regurgitated stuff over it. It is a thing. Just to just to like lay it out there. There are coaches out there that just pair it back the phrase of the day and the old cliches from
years gone by and charged for it. And they know it's, it's not helpful. And they make a living out of it. And that is a real thing. I in good conscience can't condemn the entire industry because a couple of people take that road. And I also can't realistically make a judgment call about what percentage of the industry is actively doing that. And what percentage of the industry is like knowingly doing that. And what percentage of the industry is actually get like really truly like putting
their best foot forwards and trying to provide the best insight possible for the students. Like I, if you know, I could guess, but I don't think that's fair to anybody out there, especially for me being part of that group, you know, I don't think it's fair for me to cast judgment, to be honest with you, but it does exist. It is a thing. There's no question about it. Let me ask you this then.
With the, we've never lived in a time in history when so much good information was available. And with all the good information out there on how to get better at tennis, your site, and then some other coaches that both of us respect, et cetera. Yeah. Why is it still so hard to get better at tennis? Why is it? I mean, the information is still with, I know. But I guess what I'm saying is between the information being available and the number of coaches out there, it would seem there'd be some
way to put that together and have it lead to execution. And yet it's still very difficult. I think for me, don't let me forget. I have like an idea, a content idea that we'll talk about in a second. For me, it comes back around to what the market wants, right? Like if the market doesn't want, if every coach, I keep forgetting that. If the coach overnight was like me,
the tennis instruction market would absolutely fall off a cliff. It would just nose dive hard because something like 80% of people wouldn't get the lesson that they thought they were getting when they showed up the next day. And the whole industry would just explode. So that's the answer, I believe. I keep forgetting that. I always assume there has to be a foundation of much better. Yeah, there has to be a foundation of like fun rinse repeat, fun rinse repeat. Like that's like
at the foundation of our sport. Oh, you want to hear the most money I wasted on that trip? I signed up for a clinic like a hour and a half clinic. And it was, I mean, I could have lit $60 on fire and watched those 320s just burn. It would have been just the same thing. I mean, hitting a forehand and then running into the back of the line and hitting a backhand like it was, that's criminal as well. But that's not the most. You said the moat. You mean just like that was the worst money you
spent because the five years would have cost a lot more than that. Yeah, yeah, you know, no, I'm just the fact that like I got nothing like there was no improvement. But I guess people are not people. But you think people think people think they go to a clinic and get better. And that's the real yeah, that's the hardest part. That's the stickiest part of this whole thing is
there's so low. And I hopefully this just doesn't come off as really condescending. But there's just such little understanding from a players like there's very low understanding for your average coach of what it takes to actually change habits. Much less the players have not like there just like you. They're just completely trusting and like putting their future in the hands of coaches that are used to delivering a service that doesn't actually really get people significantly better.
Just to be clear, there's degrees of improvement. You can get better at the habits you already have. And you can get a little bit more precise. You can get your timing, you can get a little better and all the bad habits that you have. That's very different thing than fundamentally changing your bad habits to a different habit. That is very poorly understood among coaches and even more poorly understood among players. And so it's just a feedback loop of like of it's just married
around of like kind of useless but fun, you know activity. And a lot of players get burned out by that. Players who lean more in the direction that you do get burned out by that end up going to something else because they kind of they kind of but this is a minority. I think a minority of players sense the BS and it really rubs in the wrong way and they end up burning out and going
to some other sport. But I don't I think that's a pretty small minority and everybody else is just kind of along for the ride and they're still getting exercise and they're still winning some matches. They think players and it's good enough. Do they think they're getting better? So again, like players do get better at what they're already doing. But and so and depending on your core. Yeah, I define better. I define better differently.
You're depending on your genes and like how long you've been in the game. You like even with poor coaching. If you're a great athlete and you're new to the game, you're still going to get a lot better really fast even with poor coaching. So it all depends like we have to know like what are the inputs here? What's the level of talents or like natural ability of the player? How long have
they been in the game? If their level of talent is very low and they've been in the game for 30 years and they're still signing up for the same lesson, they're hell no. They're not getting any better at all. They're just repeating the same literally the exact same thing day after day, year after year after year. So depending on where they are on the spectrum of talent and where they are in the journey of improvement, are they on the upswing? Have they plateaued? Are they
on their way down on the other side of the hill? It's different for different people depending on where they are. Did you have a content idea you want to tell me now or offline? Yeah, no, I'll tell you now. Yeah, so I had this idea in my head for a long time. I think it would be amazing. And yet really disruptive and disrespectful to go to lessons. To go to take lessons.
Get an old racket at a garage sale and sign up for lessons around the country and secretly film them and play opposite-handed and go out for a tennis lesson and just expose bad lessons and have a whole other channel just showing this because I honestly like it's full sincerity.
Tennis players just need to know the difference between a good tennis lesson and a bad tennis lesson because there really are bad lessons being sold and consumed and I don't blame players for not knowing the difference if they haven't been around the block a whole lot of times. And I would, if I wasn't so straight-laced and like if I didn't try to be so respectful to my own industry, I think that's a killer content idea. Maybe in the future when I'm old and I don't
care anymore, I'll go and do it. But that would be fantastic. It would be, and I think it'd actually be really helpful and that's the one way you could actually convince yourself to do this and be mean is because you're actually helping a lot of, you would be helping a lot of people because they'd recognize, oh, this is actually what my lessons are like and this is why my serve still stinks after three years of once a week lessons. So you'd be doing a favor.
Logistically, legally, could you do that? Would you have to black out the coach's faces with like a rectangle? What would be? Yeah, I would, yeah, I would like, like, blur out the face and I wouldn't say the location and stuff like, yeah, I'm not interested in destroying like an individual career. But yes, it would be helpful for players while simultaneously throwing my own people under the bus. Like the people in my own industry under the bus, you know, is there a certain point
where that's necessary? Probably, but like, is a tennis lesson on average that bad? I don't know, like it's kind of subjective. So I don't know. I think the way for now is more kind of education like this for the serious players about here's what you need to be asking in your first conversation. Here's what you need to make crystal clear. Here's why you shouldn't be embarrassed to say it. Here are some phrases you might want to use if you're having trouble coming up with them yourself
because I didn't do any of this for thought. I just put on my shoes and got my racquet and I was psyched to get out there with a pro. I wasn't really thinking about how this could be a serious conversation I needed to have. But why not? Well, why not, Joel? Like you and I spent five years together writing, writing this book about how hard it is. Because I knew, first of all, I knew it was only five lessons and I didn't live here and I was tired and I just didn't like, I wasn't tired.
Kind of the energy to like go deep and also I kind of assumed that if I just said, I really want to work on this and let's keep it simple that whoever my coach would get it. I didn't think it would require so much explanation and connection on that same idea. Just to help you out a little bit, you also, you had taken a break for a while. Correct me if I'm wrong, but right? You were kind of away from the game for a while.
I think the exact phrase is, I'm quitting tennis for the time being. I was trying to help you out. Yeah. So like since writing the book, it's not like you've been exposed to lessons all throughout writing the book and since then. So I like, I'm trying to, again, like kind of help you out a little bit here. I think a little blindsided because you had kind of created some space between yourself in the game since completing the project with me and I think you forgot, you know, because you've
been around the game for a long time. You've invested a lot of time and energy and money like you said before and I think you kind of forgot how stark the difference is between the content that you and I worked on together and the status quo around the world. I mean, you and I were talking every day, literally every day for probably three years about tennis, about the state of tennis lessons, about what makes for improvement. And I probably did get out of touch. Like that became my world,
that became my baseline. And you got slapped in the face with cold, hard reality. Yep. That was the slap I felt starting my career and walking out on the court every day. That's what motivated me to quit my job was that slap in the face. Well, this is what's going to motivate me to think very carefully. I mean, look, I know I need
lessons. There are areas I need to improve and I keep making the same mistakes. I just, I'm, I'm going to be very careful now about how, how I go about choosing that person and how I go about communicating what exactly I'm looking for and what I expect from them. Good. I think that's the best solution. So the kind of like, I guess wrap up the topic. I think the best solution is students, whether it's fair or not, have to educate themselves
about what a good lesson is for them. For them. Yeah. I should have said, been a little more clear on this earlier, but it's purely subjective. If you're the type of person that hugely values just the high energy, fun kind of lesson, then it's worth every penny that you pay. I should have said that like 45 minutes ago, but I really truly believe that. Like the industry needs
those coaches because it needs to service those people that want that service. So you as a consumer have to educate yourself and be realistic about the fact a, just at first that lots of people get a lot of different things out of lessons. Oh, you know what? I did a, let me show you, let me show this to you. This is perfect. So I did a workshop just like a week ago for coaches online. And we met together. Wow, why did I not think of this before? Let me show this to you. So this is
a question coming in from a career tennis coach. And let's see, what was the gist of this? I'm looking for ideas the best way to structure where it's a premier product in the best in my local area. So this coach is looking to, to ramp up their career in terms of their income by providing a better product or service than what's out there to attract more and better clients and upgrade their career. And so I talked a bunch about like, well, we need to provide value first.
And then I asked the coaches, there's probably like 10 or a dozen or so coaches watching live. And I asked the coaches on the spot, let's make a list together. What value do we provide in a lesson? In a tennis lesson, you know, product, what is the value that we provide? And so here's a list of 11 things, activity, energy, workout, fun, entertainment, how enjoyable it was, a friend, a connection, socialization. This is this is coming from myself and other coaches. I came up with
about the first four or five and then we brainstormed on the other the other ones. Technical insight or revelation. So this is the Joel. This is the Joel value that he's looking for. Therapy, talking out problems, event, eventing session. People pay weekly lesson fees just for this. I swear. If you're watching this, you probably don't believe me, but I promise you, this is like a thing. Technical insight, learning strategy or patterns. I mean, other peers, practice partners get
connected with like the coaches like the hub, right? Of like the local area, maybe other people that are like minded. Baby sitting, childcare is a huge part of tennis lesson industry. I never was big. It's really big. Sounding board, hope, like mental toughness, in terms of like game performance, like mental toughness, like performance in a match kind of sense.
Through playing points against a pro, there is a big chunk of the tennis lesson industry that is dedicated to people just signing up for the person who's the best player on staff at the club because they just want to win a point against Julio who like made it to the quarters of the French Oven or you know, whatever, whatever it is. Big chunk of money gets spent just on that. Or a hitting point. Do you think they genuinely win a point against Julio or does Julio cost them a
point? Julio is incredible at customer tennis and like making it feel like, oh, they're just right in it and the, you know, the student doesn't think they're playing at his peak level, but they believe that they hit a good enough shot to beat him. When if he wanted to, he would not lose a point ever. That's kind of what I thought. So okay. Eleven, like these are all unique, different reasons why and there's more than this. I'm sure we didn't come up with the entire list.
But does this helpful, Joel, like perspective? I would get one more to that list. Yeah, sure. What? The knowledge that I'm taking tennis lessons. I must be getting better. You know what I mean? Like I must be getting better. I'm taking lessons. And that's that's it. Is your son getting better at piano? Yeah, he takes lessons. I mean, not even questioning whether, you know what I mean? Look, there's a certain comfort there that I must be doing since I'm
doing this, I must be getting better. I'm doing what I'm supposed to put. All right, there's like an understanding. It's the logical, like you said, going to car wash and get to get your car clean. I'm taking the lessons. So I'm checking the boxes. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. You know what reminds me of marriage therapy, which I've also spent a lot of money on. We should I wish I'd gone on to tennis when you and me, but when you go to therapy, you can say,
well, we're we're in therapy. Of course, of course, we're making things better. We're in marriage therapy, even though we all know what that turns into. So hopefully that didn't feel like as much with Bayon Switch as that tennis lesson you took. No, I bet we can do another episode different topic for another time. Why a merge therapist so bad. There's probably a lot of there's probably a lot of catch phrases just like carver on the bar for a slice. There's a lot of
catch phrases in the merge therapy. Ah, sure, sure. But is that for you as the consumer, is that helpful to see that list of 11. It was. It was. Because I would have named three of them. Technical, a little prep and reminders of like you can do it and maybe tactical. I would not have thought about hitting a point off a pro or a fun or even fun. Like I look forward to lessons, but I'm not going to have fun. I want to come out knowing I've moved the needle.
All right, so sounds like you've got some reflecting to do Joel. And I'm sure this has been great. This has been great for me. But I think for your audience too, we wouldn't be following you if we didn't need someone like you in this kind of guidance and this kind of candle in darkness because as you said, the vast majority of the industry is focused on that other thing and not what we're after. So I hope this was helpful for everyone. I think it will be. It's going to be. It's just like all the
other content. It was like all the other content I create. It's going to be really helpful for like a tiny, tiny sliver of tennis players who feel like they've been banging their head against the wall, just like you felt in those five sessions with that coach. And for those people who are like way down at the bottom of the funnel, who tennis is like such a deep, important part of them. And they're looking for a coach to share that deep connection with and help them down a journey of
like real transformative changes and improvement. For those that tiny little slice of tennis, you know, the whole like thing, this is going to be a fantastic conversation. And from the beginning, I always just wanted to connect with those people. And so I know this will be really valuable for that subset. And that makes it all worthwhile. So I'm thanks for like being open and transparent, and being willing to talk about it. Joel, I appreciate it. No problem. I might have been embarrassed
in the past about admitting not knowing this kind of thing, but I know how hard it is. And so if you can help others and make myself feel better too, why not? There you go. There you go. I'll send you a bill for the therapy. All right. Tell people where they can find out about what you're up to. Joel. What I'm up to. I've got this other book out right now. But very simple. My name, Joel, chazknopf.com and maybe Ian, wherever you post this, you can actually spell that out for
people. But that's where you can find me. And hey, I travel a ton. So if there's any way I could play with other essential tennis players as I go around the US. There you go. I'd love for that to happen. Yeah, I don't know how you're on the road so much. I would get burned out so fast. But yeah, and Joel literally is like all across the country for long stretches of time. He loves to hit. Do you do you love to hit now? Are you back? Oh, yeah. Okay. I quit for a week.
Yeah. Yeah. So you're you've got your email addresses on the website, right? And Joel chazknopf.com. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Reach out to Joel. He'd love to connect with fans of the book, fans of the channel. And that would be an awesome, awesome connection point all around. So yeah, reach out to Joel. Check out what he's up to. He's super talented, comedian and writer. And maybe we'll have another conversation like this in the future. If you enjoyed it, let us know in the comments down
below. There's any other topics you'd like us to talk about. Let us know in the comments down below. Any any final thoughts, Joel? Just it's nice knowing that others recognize how hard it is. It is hard, but it's also fulfilling having conversations like this and getting it off your chest and being part of a community that recognizes the difficulty. So yeah, here's to us for that. Here here. Thanks to the lager. Appreciate your time. We enjoyed it a lot. Of course.
For more free Gabe improving instruction, be sure to check out essentialtennis.com where you'll find hundreds of video audio and written lessons. Also, be sure to subscribe to essential tennis on iTunes and YouTube, where we are the number one resource in the world, providing passionate instruction for passionate tennis players. Thank you so much for listening today. Take care and good luck with your tennis.