Parents and their role in the training of junior tennis players

We received the following question from a tennis mom:

“I have a 13-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl that are both playing tennis. And they both run for at least 30 minutes early morning (6 am) from Monday to Saturday. They have tennis practice for 2 hours (4 pm – 6 pm) from Monday to Friday and my husband also wants them to take boxing training from 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm every Monday, Wednesday & Friday. Is this healthy, is this good for our 12 and 13 years old children? Please advise. Thank you.”

Our tennis expert Marcin Bieniek answers the question:

Modern competitive tennis is brutal. Athletes have to do much more to get advantage over opponents. Parents are important in this process to show ways for improvement as also to push kids to do more.

Unfortunately there is a fine line especially at young age which decides whether kids are going to get to the highest level or they will give up on sport. I see that your kids already run really early in the morning and have consistent tennis schedule. That’s really good.

You said that your husband wants them to do boxing too. Do they want it too? That’s the most important question. If they are full of energy and want to have another activity that’s great. Boxing offers many skills that will let them achieve better results on the court. On the other hand if they are pushed to do another activity it will end up really bad for their athletic experiences.

What I can recommend is to talk to your kids and if they want to do another activity sign them up and observe how they deal physically and mentally with this pretty tough daily schedule.

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