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Welcome to the Atlanta Tennis Podcast.

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Every episode is titled "It Starts with Tennis" and goes from there.

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We talk with coaches, club managers, industry business professionals,

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technology experts, and anyone else we find interesting.

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We want to have a conversation as long as it starts with tennis.

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Hey, hey, this is Shaun with the Atlanta Tennis Podcast,

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we are here with Justin Yeo, Australian Tennis Pro in Puerto Rico,

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and we are our host, Justin Yo, Australian Tennis Pro in Puerto Rico.

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We are our host, Justin Yo, Australian Tennis Pro in Puerto Rico,

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and we are our host, Justin Yo, Australian Tennis Pro in Puerto Rico.

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We are our host, Justin Yo, Australian Tennis Pro in Puerto Rico,

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and we are our host, Justin Yo, Australian Tennis Pro in Puerto Rico.

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And we are on the 10 minutes of tennis, which is slightly different

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from the Atlanta Tennis Podcast, powered by Go Tennis.

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So today, 10 minutes of tennis, Justin Yeo, we are asking the question.

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And I've called around a little bit this week.

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I'll admit it wasn't an exhaustive search,

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but I've called around and this doesn't seem to be as common as you want it to be.

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I'll just put it that way.

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You think this should be a more common thing because it works.

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And you're going to give us some information on how it works and why it works.

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But the question is, how can high performance tennis help the adult club player?

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Let's say I'm a member of a club, and I'm a three-o guy,

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and I've got some time, and I'm thinking about working out.

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I could lose a few pounds to get fitter, and I go to Justin and I say,

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"Hey, man, get me fit. Get me playing. What's the program?"

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Is it a high-profile?"

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Am I going to look like those kids over there in Academy?

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Is that really what it's going to look like, Justin?

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Uh, no.

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Oh, come on.

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Those kids starting at a young age get the luck of having that swimming very soon.

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Different thing, right?

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Yeah, totally different thing.

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When you're talking to an adult, probably the first thing I would find that is exactly what sporting background he has.

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When you find out what sporting background he has, you can start to utilize some of the muscle memories he already had.

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And that's a bit of a high performance mentality.

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This suggests someone, "Oh, let me see your swing."

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Okay, let's get this grip right, and let's get this right, and let's get that right.

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Let's take ten weeks to finally hit a ball over the net.

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I come in a totally different perspective.

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I will do a 10 minute, 15 minute review of Fiend and Balls.

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Let them just hit ball the way they see it.

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And you start to identify the things they already have.

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They have the perception, they have the footwork, they're contactable in front already.

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They have the rack of pace open or closed, but understand what that means.

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There's so many things you can do to make it very simple for them to start learning how to hit the ball back and forth,

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and start to rally, and then build things around the rally.

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When you know what restrictive positions they have, and they're not good at going side to side,

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you know, then you can start to understand, "Are they going to have a short swing, or they're going to have a big swing?"

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There's so many, what you claim, high performance elements that you can look for

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to make the amateur player accelerate their growth a lot quicker, and become a tennis player, then taking a slow way.

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And then I'm like, "Alright, I'll say it. I'm so sick of hearing it. Rack of back.

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There is no more rack of back. So a high performance boat will turn it to about a unit turn,

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show them how to use their body, show them how to move to the ball, and hit the ball.

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You don't stand in one position. You don't take your rack of back.

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You take your rack of back, you're always going to have a late contact.

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It's a guarantee every single time, finishing for a 3-0 then.

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There's no turn, there's no party, the shoulder starts to hurt, the wrist starts to hurt.

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"Come on, so there is an important element of high performance in club level tennis."

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It is a very much on the player, to be open-minded too.

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What I've understood too very quickly is to understand, are they an analytical person,

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or they're very visual and they're demos and it's very simple.

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If you go very simple and the guy comes to you, you guys can go on this grip.

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I'm talking about this string tension.

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Is this rack at the right weight? Is this the right headlight?

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Okay, this guy has a lot of details that I have to shut down and try to simplify,

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for him to just play tennis.

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The other way, so you have to work away with the player and work with them.

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Again, to me, that's a bit of a high performance background.

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It's a high performance when you're in the trenches, you tend to learn a ton on how to teach tennis.

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And that means it's just a little fine element.

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That's not putting down a club pro.

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Club pro is a very, very, very good at communication.

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They're very, very good at working with people.

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They're very, very good at working with numbers.

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But if you've seen, I'd have to say in the last 10, 20 years,

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at least when you go to these conferences, there's a very big element around high performance.

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And teaching pro has taught you the new ways versus the old ways.

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And so a lot of pro's are interested in that.

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Even tennis directors, they're very much interested in that,

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because if they've got the knowledge they're passing it down to their pro's,

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or they keep it an eye on things, they're more new age, new models for their program.

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And so in the long that line, there are different types of coaches out there.

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And I don't remember if we've talked about that specifically.

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Maybe we need to add that to our 10 minutes of tennis.

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It's different coaching types.

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I'm a director of tennis type.

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He's going to be more political.

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It's going to be less like you use the term in the trenches, coaching tennis, teaching tennis.

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And I'm a beginner type.

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I like the zero to one conversation with players, especially children.

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But there's also the high performance type.

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So I've worked in an academy, but I've never done high performance.

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That's a very specific specialty that not everybody has.

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Now, when I asked the first question, I said, all right,

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is it going to look like those junior players in the high performance academy?

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I didn't mean am I ever going to look like them because no, you're an adult, get over.

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You didn't learn when you were seven.

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Never going to happen.

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Now, depending on how athletic you are, like you say, you've worked with some volleyball,

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some D1 players, those people are going to get close to that.

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My question for the coach, someone like me, a director of tennis type,

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someone without the high performance background, what does this lesson look like?

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What does this hitting session look like?

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Where you've got an adult, you're not going to have 30 adults,

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and they're all going to drop and do 10 push-ups and do the running,

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and the academy style high performance hitting.

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What does this hour look like?

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Am I really doing the push-ups like the kids, and I'm going to do the sprinting,

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and I'm going to do the squatting?

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What's it look like?

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It looks like trying to get you hit the ball as quick as possible and running out of play.

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But there's anything I've gathered from my Braille system in the last probably 15, 20 years

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is just the whole concept of getting someone to play and getting them to back and forth,

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you can build so many things around that.

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You can start to work grip, you can start to work direction of the ball,

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you can work depth, but the advantages of that is when they go to play,

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they'll be focusing on playing, they'll be focusing on tacking,

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they'll be focusing on what it's like to win,

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versus being so technically minded about hitting a ball perfectly correct,

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that they won't be able to play, especially not at a three-o-level.

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And then they'll learn the lessons that they'll do great,

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and they'll go play and they'll be like, "Gabby, you know?"

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So you have to be able to create that scene in the lessons,

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so their repetition becomes better and better and better at playing.

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And hopefully you want to come back to and say,

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"Oh man, I hit some awesome shots down lines today, it's like great."

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So let's hit some cross-gorts today and let's keep improving the other way.

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So then you can then, "I'm going to hit cross-gort,

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you're going to try to hit down line with a changing direction,

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because you might have been able to break down line,

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because the ball's only coming down a lot."

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So, you know, varying the ball every time I teach,

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I never hit the ball or something.

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Mix it up all the time.

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You have to throw variation in all the time and learn,

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teach and learn and read it.

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And that's very different from the Country Club Pro,

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where we're taught to make you look good.

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And we've got to hit that ball right to you in this drag zone

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and make you look good.

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You're talking about making a player work.

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You're talking about making a player figure it out.

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Yep.

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You've been done.

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Yep.

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We're talking about fitness as well.

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Again, I'm just trying to picture what this looks like.

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If I'm a coach and I want to add a little bit of this mentality to some of my lessons.

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Yep.

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What does it look like?

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What's the lesson plan that's different?

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The other lesson plan is coming with a small basket of balls.

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I've done the mass on this.

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It's amazing how many balls that were the small basket balls.

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How many can you get in a live format rallying with a three other?

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Right?

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Because you're the ones who can keep the ball going so that they can keep getting more balls.

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But when you go small amount of balls, the ball will pick up as quicker.

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So they're back into it again.

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There's not 300 balls.

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Long break, which is not in the tennis anyway.

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The only long break is when they go to the bathroom and get a complete change of clothes.

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But leaves needs to pass out of this.

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Believe most of the modern players out there, they're definitely all doing it.

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That's true.

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They're all doing it.

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All right, Justin.

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10 minutes of tennis.

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You got one more for us on this topic specifically.

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No, just like I just said, expand your mind.

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Think of things differently.

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Think about changing.

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Honestly, it's probably biggest of both.

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It's moved the basket around and keep feeding in different directions.

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I like it.

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And I like the small basket idea where we like to come out with a ton of tennis balls.

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We only have to do one ball, pick up less balls.

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You know what?

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It gets in the mindset of, I got to keep the ball going because we're going to have the last ball happens a lot more often.

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Right.

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Right.

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Less feeding in your hitting.

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And the hitting is only going to grow the player because they're getting a perception of your hitting the ball.

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Well, there you have it.

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And with that, we're out.

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See you next time.

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