The abstract behind Evolve comes from the acknowledgement that future is unpredictable.
It means in other words that a 6 years old kid who dreams about becoming a pro player one day is usually trained as it should play professional tournaments today than in 12 years from now.
This huge gap between tennis pros wannabe and the standard demanded by the sport in 10+ years from today makes the job of coaches harder than ever.
Tennis is a constant evolutionary process. We look at players who are only few years of age apart, and we immediately realize how dramatically the way of playing the sport changes in just 4-5 years.
That’s why, even if climbing the top might seem really hard, the real challenge is to secure a spot among the best players in the world over a long period of time.
Being consistent at getting results over time is crucial in order to build a successful sport project.
Our approach to teaching comes from the acknowledgment that we cannot predict the future but, thanks to science we can give to players and organizations the tools to build successful careers, ones that are sustainable over time. Because when the time to make some changes in their game or strokes will come, players must be able to adjust, doing what’s required in order to succeed.
We heard multiple times coaches and players talking about sports as a figure of speech or a lifestyle and we cannot agree more with them.
At Evolve, we see tennis as a metaphor of life, a powerful teaching tool that anyone should benefit from.
It’s well known how hard is to become a pro player, especially in game sports, where competition can be brutal sometimes. Kids often have the feeling that there’s always someone around their age that’s better than them and in order to make a living is not enough to be a pro player but instead is required from players to be highly ranked for a long period of time.
It’s also well known that this hustle is not happening only in tennis courts but, more in general, that’s how life works. So that’s why we want to prepare kids to be competitive and adapt to what will be out there, no matter what the future holds.
We give them the cognitive tools, the mental & emotional maturity plus the grinding spirit and perseverance that always help when it comes to achieving results in hard times.
We work with the most up-to-date science, biomechanical tools and teaching methods in order to make them competitive high-performance players, not being worried about our players’ future because we know they have all they need to be successful no matter what pattern they decide to take in life.
Tennis is a very fast sport that cannot effort too much thinking while playing.
That’s why we create specific game situations to be solved on a cognitive level through progressions from easy to hard where our students must be able to take quick decisions on a subconscious level.
When the intensity goes up, game sports become more and more demanding for the body even if, we must not forget that tennis is based on decision making.
Our student must develop a “cognitive wisdom”, that ultimately sets the gap between good hitters and pro players. It will make a lot of difference when there will be a lot at stake, like important matches or crucial points.
Our cognitive program is designed to stimulate both sides of the brain through the movement, one of the most powerful tools we have! The ultimate goal is to create players able to express themselves in multiple ways, both logical and creative, both in and out of the court, winning a lot of matches and being good prospects in school at the same time.
At Evolve, we consider technique, a tool that can equally represent a strength or a weakness for our players.
In fact more than “instructions” we believe on biomechanical principles, all pointing to: elastic energy development.
The stretching-shortening cycles are our main focus since the very first steps into tennis and so we prefer to give, within the essential biomechanical principles, freedom to the players to express themselves, playing a guiding role in the discovery of those patterns that exploit our students’ full potential.
Is common knowledge that men and women cannot be taught the same tennis as well as right and left-handed players don’t process information in the very same way when it comes to learning.
In order to shape our technical model on players we adopt a scientific method based on creating a profile for everyone of them.
As we always say to our students, tennis is like formula 1… It’s essentially based on speed.
On one side, generating power is essential in order to make it possible but, on the other, as any other game sport, tennis is based on tactics and strategy.
Following our cognitive training program we teach our students how to use the safe trajectories and patterns of play on a subconscious level so they cruise through most of the rallies and then we teach them how to get out of that very same box we created in the first place, pushing them towards being creative, surprising the opponents and mostly trusting their own instinct.
This balance between safe choices and taking risks we hope can be a powerful tool in life, if they decide to become entrepreneurs, in running a family or whatever path they will decide to take.
Achievements in tennis are not only determined by factors like technique, tactics and fitness level, but also by the mindset.
The relationship between body and mind has a huge impact on the player’s game, who must able to quickly to adversities. At Evolve, we deliver specific programs to everyone of our players in order to help them out in emotions management, understanding that mistakes play a key role in learning.
The attitude, the way of getting out of difficult situations, the personality and commitment are key factors when it comes to results, success or failures.
Our goal is to create a mindset for our students that allows them to step in the court ready to fight the battle of the day and keep grinding on every single point until the match is over, doing whatever is in their power to get through adversities so one day they will be able to win their own war.
Tennis can happen to be very stressful sometimes, both mentally and physically. The brain and body are part a whole and they must work together in order to make our students’ game consistent.
The body must be ready to be pushed to the limit as sometimes it has to balance the mental fatigue and must be ready to execute when it's time to take decisions under a lot pressure.
If we observe 5 novices playing for the first time, we’ll notice that all of them hit the ball in a very different way.
After a long study, we realize that style and patterns of play, even in elite athletes, are not casual. They are instead the combination of a certain number of genetic traits, a mix of lateralities, for which some motions are easier to perform than others and so by consequence also certain patterns of play.
In our fitness sessions, we teach kids how to balance out this set of traits, opening a much wider range of options when it comes to build a tactical plan or making some changes in their game or in their strokes.
As we said it’s impossible to see what the future holds for our students, so we aim to prepare them for whatever challenge they’ll have to face.
All our students are exceptional in their own way.
We realised soon enough that even if practising sports is a very beautiful way of bringing people together and creating community, at the same time we are all different.
Players come with a set of different physical predispositions, motor experiences, skills and cultural backgrounds, all summed up in a very unique combination.
So when new players come in, we measure all these characteristics and create a training plan that suits their needs with the goal of empowering their strengths, minimise their weaknesses as well as injuries.
Besides the genetically set that students already own, we also know that players may interpret the game in multiple ways. So, instead of changing the player’s game, we adapt our program to the vision of our students, giving them the best tools ever to reach their full potential.
We believe is easier to get good at something they like rather than at something imposed by the coaching team and hopefully players will learn from each others peculiarities, enriching the Evolve learning experience.
Eyes are part of the brain.
They are a very powerful source of information from our surroundings. In tennis, eyes are undoubtedly the most important piece of hardware of the player's toolbox, especially when it comes to decoding trajectories, speed, spin and opponent’s motions.
Most of the times players have poor shots not because they perform bad motions but instead they don’t have enough informations to organise their movements early enough.
That’s why at Evolve we decided to train vision in a very specific way, giving to player a well rounded set of tools that we believe it will make a huge difference when they’ll try to become pro athletes.