Vieraileva kirjoittaja Calvin Betton

Tällä kertaa blogini vierailevana kirjoittajana esiintyy Henryn, ja nykyisin koko tiimimme, valmentaja Calvin Betton. Calvinista on kiertänyt kanssamme viimeisen puolen vuoden aikana suurimman osan kisoista, ja hänen tarinansa ja ajatuksensa ovat vertaansa vailla. Toivottavasti nautitte tästä kirjoituksesta! Suomeksi tekstin saa käännettyä ainakin Chrome-selaimen kautta tai suoraan tästä linkistä.

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Hello everyone. First of all I’d like to say what an honour it is to be a guest contributor on what, I believe, is the most prominent tennis player blog on the planet! Secondly I’d like to pay a little tribute to Harri. In the 2 years since we’ve known each other, and the 6 months that we’ve got to know each other even more since working with each other, three things have stood out to me – 1: That he is an exceptionally talented tennis player; 2: That he is fierce, unrelenting competitor and winner, and 3: Most important of all, he is a great dude!

Ok, so, firstly I thought I’d give a short background about myself as most of you guys won’t know much about me at all, and then before you all get too bored with that, I’ll crack on with answering all of your excellent questions. So – I was born and raised in a small mining town in the north of England called Barnsley. My dad owned a car garage and my mum was a hairdresser. I came to tennis quite late. Although I played a little bit on local park courts with my friends, the first coaching or structured sessions I ever got was when I was 14. I played local and then regional tournaments and got to a semi decent standard pretty quickly, eventually representing my county both in juniors and seniors. I took a very short scholarship to a US college, but I did not particularly enjoy that experience so the less said about that, the better.

As I always knew I wouldn’t be a professional player (I was aware that my talent didn’t match competitiveness), I started coaching quite young. I coached at a local tennis club for about 8 years, while still playing league tennis. I then moved to a couple of bigger indoor centres and started producing a few decent level junior players – I coached 3 British number 1 juniors and 3 national champions. Around 2011 I felt that my coaching wasn’t really going anywhere though and wanted to learn more about sports coaching theory and how people learn. For the next 3 years I embarked on that journey and eventually took and passed my LTA Master Performance Level 5 qualification, which is the highest level of qualification a coach can achieve.

Since then I have been lucky enough to work with numerous world ranked players, and have won multiple Futures, Challenger, Tour Level events with them, and thanks to Henry and Harri this summer – a Grand Slam Title! I currently coach henry and Harri as a team (alongside Boris, who I’m sure everyone knows), and Luke Johnson. Hopefully there’s many more titles to come from these guys!

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Right, some questions. Here We Go!

Do you read Harri’s blog regularly? Well, until this week I didn’t realise I could translate it to English so easily, so no I haven’t read it. But rest assured, now I know how to do so, I will be a very regular reader!

Who do you coach? Just professionals or also juniors? Right now I just coach Henry, Harri and Luke. I don’t have time for anything else. Historically I have coached juniors but not anymore. I was doing work my county association with the junior county team up until earlier this year, but I just don’t have the time anymore so I made the decision to call a stop to that.

What makes Harri and Henry a match made in heaven? Haha. Honestly they just have such great chemistry as a team. They’re really good friends and their styles match up so well and they dovetail so well as a partnership. They both return great and serve well, they’re both sharp at the net. I really think they will go on to achieve even more great things.

What has changed in Henry’s game since he started playing with Harri, both on court and off? I don’t know if anything has changed as such, but I think Harri’s mentality and energy has just helped improve all of the things that Henry already did.

What is the next developmental target for them as a team? I think a couple of things. First of all they’ve shown they can win on the biggest stage of them all and against the best teams in the world. The next challenge is to do that repeatedly. For how good they both return, I think they can break serve a whole lot more than they do. And I would like to see us finishing teams off more ruthlessly when we are on top. Not letting matches get close when we could kill it off earlier.

How do you cooperate with Harri’s coach Boris? I speak Boris after every match. We get on great and are very much aligned in our thoughts. We’ll discuss how we want things to go, what went well, what didn’t. He’s a great guy and an excellent coach. I’ll actually be presenting with Boris at an upcoming coaching day in Helsinki, the week before Turin and am really looking forward to that. We should also have a word here for our team’s assistant coach, Henry’s girlfriend Ellie, who I know will be reading this! She’s been there for all the big wins so has to be part of the team!

How is it to coach a 30+ year old veteran who knows everything about tennis? Haha. Its great! Harri is a student of the game but he isn’t a ‘know it all’ personality. He really has a thirst for improvement. And as I said earlier, coaching isn’t about telling people things they have to do better. Especially with adults and professionals. It’s about us all having discussions about how we think we can all improve.

How much do you coach the team’s emotional and psychological resistance? I think a lot of that is done subconsciously. We try to always be positive and we know how the sport works and that there are ups and downs. I also have to be adaptable in this regard. For example in the Wimbledon semi and final, I was aware what an emotional pressure cooker the situation could be, so I made a big point myself of being calm and composed, because when the lads look over to be, they can’t see me being too emotional. They have to see composure to be able to feel it themselves. In other instances they may need the opposite of that and I’ll try and add some energy. I also think Harri and Henry help each other so much in this regard. Their contrasting personalities blend really well to help each other.

How does a coach decide whether to change a player’s technique or to leave it alone? First of all I think ‘technique’ is a very misunderstood word in sports coaching. What it usually means is that someone has an aesthetic idea of what they want a shot to look like, as opposed to what is the most functional shot. The idea of a “perfect technique” doesn’t exist. The example I’ve always used on this is if you take Federer, Nadal and Del Potro, for many years the 3 best forehands in the world, but all 3 of them have completely different “technique”. So ask yourself, who has “the best” technique? And who is going to tell the other two that their technique is wrong? In truth, none of them has the best or worst technique. I come form very much an ecological position as a coach – if a player is given a task of something they need to achieve, lets say a finishing forehand, you give them the task and then try and help them organise their body in a way to organically achieve that themselves. There might need to be fundamentals in place, but there is no perfect technique. There are just some shots that look nicer than others. When someone says to me they want to work on their forehand technique, I always ask them “Which forehand?” There are about 200 different types of topspin forehand – on the run, high, low, off a slow ball, off a fast ball, out of the corner, behind the baseline, mid court etc etc. When I see a coach with a basket of balls either hand feeding or basket feeding to the middle of the court at a medium pace for 100 balls, it does my head in. What shot is that? What context is that in? Is that shot repeatable in any context? No. What I’m more interested in is “skill”. Skill is the ability to do something dynamically in the context of where and when it is required. If a player can do that thing So, to answer your question, at the level of player and age of player I work with, I’m very much opposed to changing technique in the commonly accepted way of thinking. What I would do is try and encourage different feelings of the hit. Or say “a little more of this” rather than change something. If a player changes a technique and it isn’t done dynamically, and in a correct skill acquisition process, it will freeze them when pressure comes. We don’t want that. I want adaptable and skilful players who can handle any situation in context. I do realise this is a very long answer, but I have only scratched the surface here. A lot of my coaching is based around ‘letting the game coach the players’. I’ll spend hours thinking up drills and games with particular constraints and affordances that encourage players to think and act and make decisions that will improve them, perhaps without them being aware at the time that its happening. As I said earlier, I have a very keen interest in coaching theory, skill acquisition theory and constraint led coaching. It is such fascinating topic. I have presented on the topic to coaches on these areas previously and should anyone be interested I would be happy to expand further.

Do you focus on quick fixes or long term improvement of a player? I would absolutely never attempt a quick fix at the long term detriment of a player. But not all coaching has to be complicated. Often by focusing on how a shot “feels” something can be improved in a very short time but still maintain over a longer period.

How much can a coach influence what happens on court during a match? That varies massively from match to match. For starters, the angle that we have to watch the match form isn’t ideal, especially for doubles. The coaches seats are always from the side, on the baseline, so I can’t get a full picture of the court. In some matches I feel like I’ve had a decent impact with things I’ve said to the guys, but in other matches there isn’t anything that obviously presents itself. I don’t consider coaches to be geniuses who can see things tactically that players can’t. We’re just another pair of eyes that might be able to spot something that the players have missed in the heat of battle. Or to tell them to focus on something that they may not be doing at that moment. Also a lot of coaching is done when players don’t realise it, that is the art of coaching I suppose. I try and keep my feedback to a minimum, I don’t like repeated white noise going at them all the time. But rather than, for example, telling a player to be lighter on their feet, I’ll wait for them to hit a shot where they have done that and I might say “great footwork there”, in the hope that they notice that, and subconsciously do it again.

How do you manage the logistical problems of working with 2 separate players on the doubles tour? I don’t see it as a problem to be honest. Its never really presented itself as a problem. We are often at the same place anyway, so I just work with both of them separately, or if we’re on the same court I’ll work with them at the same time. Week to week everyone is pretty relaxed about where I am and when.

When Henry split with Julian Cash, was there a discussion about him playing with Luke? Not really to be honest for a couple of reasons. Firstly they both play the same side (deuce) and both are excellent returners so it wouldn’t make sense for either of them to switch and take away a big strength. Given, Harri is historically a deuce player, but he had played and been successful on the Ad as well. Secondly, at the time, Luke had just started a new partnership so it wasn’t really a consideration. They’re really good friends though and in weeks when one of them has been without a partner, the other has stepped in to help out.

How much do you travel? A lot! I don’t have a set number of weeks with the guys, either Luke or Henry and Harri, and I think it suits us all that we don’t feel constrained by having a set number of weeks as some players do with their coaches. Whenever they need me, I’m ready to go with them. s it happens, I’m usually away with one of them. I don’t have any children so it’s easier for me to be on the road than some others. I enjoy the travel and the lifestyle though. I think by the end of this year I’’l probably have done about 30 weeks either abroad or travelling in the UK, plus then the weeks where we train in London, which is quite far from where I live.

How do you spend your time at tournaments? Honestly it varies every week, depending on schedule, weather, location, hotel location etc. But most of it is work based. I do a lot of scouting of opponents both in person and with the data we have, so that takes up a lot of time. And as doubles guys we often have to practice later in the day so we end up being at the venue a lot of the time. When I do get some pare time I like to see a bit of the place where we’re at, but if its not anywhere interesting I’ll probably just read, or if there’s some football on TV i’ll watch that.

How do you sustain a family life while travelling around the globe, especially with more than one player? Easy, I don’t have a family! Haha. Both my parents are still alive and i see a lot of them when I’m home. They both love tennis as well so they watch every match. I’m single atm and don’t have any children, so that isn’t an issue. I fully understand that it’s an issue for some coaches though, I thoroughly sympathise with them. It cannot be easy. The flip side of that point though which can sometimes be difficult is that at the end of long days whether a win or loss, there’s no one really for me to talk to about how the day has been, so I’m left alone with my thoughts a lot of the time. But, it’s the life I have chosen.

What music do you listen to? Oh wow – loads! I absolutely love music. Where and when I grew up in Barnsley, all me and my mates really did was play football and listen to music. I spend most of my free time listening to it, going to concerts or reading about it – I love music biographies. In terms of genre, I like everything really except dance, jazz, and much to Harri’s disappointment, Queen. I hate Queen! I’d say the artists that I listen to most are the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, New Order, Stone Roses, Guns n Roses, Radiohead and Suede. Suede were the first band I ever saw live, in 1994, and I think Ive seen them 21 times since then. I actually had a ticket to see Suede on the day of the Wimbledon final this year, but for good reason had to miss that. My favourite albums of all time I’d say are The Stone Roses eponymous debut album, Radiohead’s The Bends, Appetite for Destruction by GnR, Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, New Order’s Technique and Marvin Gaye’s Whats Going On. I could go on for hours on this topic, but I’ll end it there … for now.

Favourite football team? I’m a die hard Manchester United supporter. It’s not been so good of late, but boy we’ve had some good times over the last 30 years. I go to matches whenever I’m back and in my life I’ve seen us win 13 league titles and 2 Champions League’s. I’ve been to 3 Champions League finals. It’s sport, you have to take the rough with the smooth. One of the great days this year was when Harri and Henri won the title in Lyon and then United won the FA Cup later that afternoon. I was in Lyon watching the final (what a match!) and then got a train to Paris and arrived just in time to watch the last 10 minutes of the cup final in a coffee shop! I let out a huge roar when the final whistle went!

Worst punishment – 2 years in prison or never being able to watch Man Utd again? The way we’ve played over most of the last 10 yeas, not being able to watch United again would not be a punishment!

Ok guys, that’s all the questions done! I really enjoyed doing that and maybe if you guys enjoyed it, I can do it again sometime. Really looking forward to spending a few days in Finland in a couple of weeks time! Näkemiin!