One of the most important things a parent-coach should know is that helping a player achieve a highly competitive level of tennis requires a great amount of time, dedication and persistence. It is said to take 10,000 hours of serious practice and playing to reach the professional level of any sport or artistic endeavor, whether it’s becoming a pro tennis player or a concert violinist.

As a parent-coach begins or continues guiding his or her child down this path of the 10,000-hour journey, it is important to organize a player’s development with specific goals in training and competition. This organization is called periodization, which is intended to generate peak performance of both short- and long-term goals in the player’s career. Short-term periodization would have a player peak for an upcoming match or tournament. Long-term periodization requires understanding and establishing goals with a player’s entire tennis career in sight, whether the end is high school, college tennis or the professional level.

It is important for a parent-coach to create an organized periodization plan and assess his or her child’s short- and long-term goals. Consider the following: Where do you want the player to be in six months? In one year? In five years? What goals should the player accomplish in a certain span of time? These are some of the questions parent-coaches need to ask themselves as their child trains and develops his or her game.