LTA Coach Development podcast

Are you passionate about the technical and tactical aspects of doubles? Listen to this podcast to explore with Rob Smith, LTA Level 5 Coach and former Head Coach of the LTA High Performance Centre in Bromley, top tips on how to effectively help players reach their doubles potential regardless of their level.Rob began his tennis journey at the age of 12, quickly leading him to compete at international level as a junior. His passion for coaching saw him become one of the UK's youngest Level 5 Coaches and later the Head Coach of the Bromley Tennis Centre in 2004.With over two decades of coaching experience, Rob has worked with players at all stages of development, from red ball players to top ITF juniors, top 100 WTA players, and even Davis Cup and Grand Slam winners.This is a great opportunity to learn from a true doubles expert.

Have you considered including Visually Impaired tennis in your coaching programme? In this podcast, Frankie Rohan, LTA Qualified Coach and British Blind Sport Workforce Officer, and Jo Cunliffe, LTA Senior Performance Coach, take you through the essentials of creating a welcoming environment for VI players, as well as provide tools to effectively coach and communicate with them. Frankie Rohan has experienced first-hand the difficulties of transitioning from fully-sighted player to VI tennis, after having lost the majority of her sight. She currently helps develop LTA projects focused on inclusivity and assists with coaching the GB National VI Team. Jo Cunliffe, with over 29 years in the coaching industry, brings a wealth of experience both as a coach, but also as a player, as she competed at the international level. Whether you're currently delivering VI tennis or planning to do so in the future, this podcast provides all the information you need.

Do you spend time preparing your players for tennis or padel practice or competitive games from a physical point of view? Or do you ever take time preparing yourself physically for the delivery of your coaching sessions? In this podcast we discuss the importance of physical preparation, not only for your players in regard to training sessions and competitions, but also for ourselves as coaches to make sure we have long and healthy coaching careers. Alex competed at a professional level, which allowed him to experience firsthand the demands of the game, and specifically how much stress our bodies need to endure during the practice of the sport. This ultimately helped him make the move to the S&C world and become an accredited S&C coach with the UKSCA. During his career as S&C coach, Alex has collaborated with different NGBs, such as British Bob Skeleton, England Netball and GB Badminton, before joining the LTA as National Physical Performance Coach for the GB Wheelchair Tennis Pathway. Under his current role, he has supported performance wheelchair players in the Grand slams, the GB Team for 2 Paralympic Games (Rio & Tokyo, plus preparing for Paris 2024), and has also held the Captaincy for GB in the Women's Wheelchair World Team Cup in 2023 & Quads in 2022. If you want to discover some top tips used by the best in the world to help minimise the risk of injury and also make sure you and your players have a long career, this is your podcast.

If you're looking for new options on how to grow your coaching programme, this podcast will give you all the knowledge on how to effectively collaborate with schools to tap into a vast pool of potential players. A total of 32,163 schools and more than 10 million pupils (full and part time) in the UK, according to BESA (2024), shows the scale of the market coaches could have access to if working in partnership with schools. Dave Earl, LTA Level 5 Master Club Coach, always saw this as an opportunity, and since becoming Head Coach of Boom Tennis in 2016, he has managed to increase his tennis programme from only 12 juniors actively training to an impressive 600 juniors and 150 adults attending coaching each week. This also meant that more venues were needed to welcome these new players, and as a result, Boom Tennis is now a multi-venue business with 4 clubs across Surrey. All this great work helped Dave become the Surrey Sports Coach of the Year in 2018, and the LTA Surrey Coach of the Year 2019. Dave is currently a member of the Surrey coaches committee.Whether you are just starting out or looking to take your tennis or padel programme to the next level, this is a great opportunity to learn from a true expert and unlock all the secrets to grow your programme tend-fold through schools.

In this podcast Selena Coburn, LTA Level 4 Senior Performance Coach and R2 Graded Referee, takes us through the essential information to effectively deliver tennis and padel competitions to service players in your programme and in the local area and to help build your business. Retention is vital to help grow a sustainable tennis and padel programme, and having a fun competitive outlet is proven to keep players in the game for longer. The Harvard Business Review reports that increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25-95%. It also shows it's 5 to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. So investing in competition is good for business.Selena’s R2 Graded Referee status has allowed her to obtain experience at all levels of the domestic grading system, running events all the way from Grade 6 LTA Youth Matchplay's up to Grade 1 LTA National Tour tournaments (including the Berkshire Junior County Championship). Such domestic pedigree led Selena to make the international jump and become the Tournament Director at various Tennis Europe (12U Cat2) and ITF Junior (J30) events.  All Selena's good work resulted in her being named “Official of the Year” for the Central and East region in 2023, going on to finish runner-up in the LTA National Tennis Awards. As a Level 4 Senior Performance Coach, Selena is currently based at Bradfield Tennis Centre (Berkshire), club where she has been coaching and delivering competitions for the last 7 years. Who better than Selena, to guide us through all her top tips to delivering a profitable and sustainable competition calendar in your programme/venue to help drive player retention and development.

In this podcast industry leaders, Luoise Assioun & Sue Morrison, with more than 27 and 30 years of inclusive coaching experience respectively, discuss opening up sporting environments to people with disabilities and the benefits of embracing inclusive tennis within your coaching programme.Across Great Britain, an estimated 11 million people have a disability, and they are less likely to participate in sporting activity than non-disabled people, which can be a result of a lack of inclusivity and accessibility to sport. Embracing inclusive tennis then represents a huge opportunity for coaches to help grow their programmes.Louise Assioun and Sue Morrison have worked throughout their coaching careers to make tennis more inclusive, and to equip coaches with tools that facilitate the delivery of disability tennis sessions. In their commitment to ensuring sport is an environment for all, one of Lou’s and Sue’s most recent ground-breaking moves was founding LUSU Sports in 2016, which focuses on the designing of equipment and activity programmes to support coaches involved in disability tennis. To this date, many tennis programmes and schools have benefited from their projects and ideas, meaning more disabled children and adults with long-term health conditions being active while engaging with tennis. Listen to this podcast to discover the top tips Louise and Sue use to be more inclusive, and explore what benefit this can bring to you and your coaching programme.

In this podcast Miles Maclagan, LTA Level 4 Senior Performance Coach and former GB Davis Cup player, discusses his coaching philosophy, which encourages the combination of hard work and good habits.Miles has had an extensive career in both playing and coaching, across singles and doubles, working with players such as Andy Murray, Laura Robson, and Borna Coric. He has faced the challenges of the tennis world from both a player and coach perspective, with a wealth of experience to share. Among his numerous trophies, Miles has achieved 2 Grand Slam titles and multiple Masters 1000s.

In this podcast Angela Crossley, LTA Coach of the Year, Director of Angela Crossley Tennis and LTA Level 4 Senior Coach, discusses her tennis career and offers advice on how to create a multivenue tennis business, whilst spending time on-court and also being a mum.Angela has run her successful business for 12 years. A business that grew from one venue to now over seven, with multiple school links, a plethora of LTA County awards and a continually evolving and growing coaching workforce. Angela achieved this whilst also being a mother of two, with (at the point of recording) her 3 year old and on maternity leave with her 4 month-old.Listen to this content to explore the opportunities and barriers of a career in tennis coaching as a female, alongside multiple top tips to grow both your programme and coaching workforce.