Throughout 2024, I am dedicating the first full weekend of every month to exploring the application of design-oriented thinking to improve our tennis lives. This series is inspired by a practice and philosophy described by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans in their book Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life. This weekend is all about the importance of building a great team around you.
A critical factor in achieving high performance in any field is the quality of your team. For career development, a network of people with diverse skills, knowledge, and support fosters growth, innovation, and resilience. A well-rounded team can offer multiple perspectives and expertise that enables learning from others’ experiences. It also accelerates skill development and exposure to new ideas. Collaborating with a strong team enhances problem-solving by bringing together different viewpoints and strengths. That leads to more effective solutions to complex issues and fosters creative thinking. Furthermore, working with a loyal team builds accountability and motivation.
Those same principles apply to high-performance tennis. Building a great team is crucial for unlocking a player’s full potential. Paradoxically, while tennis is an individual sport, the best professional players are backed by a team that contributes insights, builds accountability, and identifies growth opportunities. A well-rounded team typically includes coaches, hitting partners, fitness trainers, and mental conditioning specialists. Each provides varied perspectives and expertise necessary for optimizing continuous improvement.
Recreational tennis players can leverage these concepts from career development and professional tennis to assemble their own teams. While most players likely can’t afford full-time paid staff, a coach paid to render private lessons, a physical trainer to focus on fitness, and a physio paid by the hour to address injuries or rehabilitation can be a good investment.
Additionally, a network of friends who are genuinely invested in your progress can make significant contributions. The people who care about you enough to offer feedback are pure gold. This might be a regular hitting partner, a doubles partner, or a mentor dedicated to helping you achieve the next level of performance. Such relationships can provide invaluable perspectives to your tennis journey. A team can provide motivation, camaraderie, and encouragement that drives development. Building a personal tennis team might be the most important thing you can do to optimize your development in the sport.
Investing in the relationships that encourage and challenge you sets you up for a fulfilling and growth-oriented tennis experience. This is the perfect time to consider who might already be part of your support team and who else you could invite into your inner circle to produce even better results. Your team might be the key to transforming your performance.
Throughout 2024, I am publishing a series of essays imaging how to apply the principles in ‘Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life‘ (<- sponsored link), which is a non-tennis book that I have come to believe that everyone should read.
A chronological summary of all posts on this topic is available on the Designing Your Tennis Life summary page.
