Repetition is the mother of all skills.

We are what we repeat on a consistent basis. My experience has showed me, that at times good intention could end up resulting in a bad outcome; even if the intention is honest, it could be honestly inaccurate.
I believe that there are two components that can’t fail in order to become a high achiever that can last a couple of decades. One is psychological and the other physiological.They are Motivation and Speed.
It is very common to see young players in the development stage, ages before puberty, 12-ish to 15-ish putting in 4 to 6 hours of training a day - the major part of these being of technical aspect. Parents trying to do their best and pushing the little young players to move more, do more, play more, take more ownership. In summary, to behave more like little adults.
What happens in most cases is that these kids get used to “endure” long hours of training, but the motivation that was there at the very beginning starts to disappear and the game turns into work.
Finally, the wording changes and they go to “train" instead of going to “play”, which has to be done properly and hard.
The quantity of hours start to develop a certain constant tiredness and lack of motivation which slowly puts the kid in problems with their bosses. First of all, parents and second, coaches that demand more and more. Of course, everybody only has the players’ benefit in mind, so they try to do their jobs the best they can.
There are several symptoms of this syndrome, with one of the most important ones being that the young players start to get slow, therefore losing the ability to accelerate and be intense. At the same time they get more and more instructions from the outside in order to compensate, so a very important component for motivation starts to get lost; autonomy.
At this stage Tennis doesn’t belong to the kid anymore, it’s a project and it belongs to the family and to the chosen coach of the moment.
I have seen so many of these cases and if this process is not stopped at the right time, it will probably be too late to revert it. Simply because of what we said in the beginning: “We are what we repeat on a consistent basis”, until we create a habit and our system physiologically and psychologically is wired to be slow and with lack of intensity.
There’s a moment when this syndrome can still be reverted. First you have to show the young and inexperienced player that there are higher levels of intensity and acceleration and you can do that with a heart rate monitor. Once they learn how it feels to get to 180-190 bpm, you can start to teach them how to get there in shorter periods of time. This way their organism starts to work with a different system of energy production.
Once you have recovered the ability to train with focus and intensity you can reignite a new and improved process….