Good Luck to American University Scholar Nirva Patel

After over 8 years, it’s mixed emotions as I say goodbye and good luck to Nirva Patel who is off to University in America.  She has earned a scholarship to NCAA Division One University, Oakland to study as well as pursue her tennis.
It’s been a pleasure to coach Nirva from such a young age and see her develop not only into the tennis player she is today, but the young lady that she is, from the little girl that started.

When I’m first approached to coach a young sports person I look at the long term development of that athlete.  My aim is to instill good principles of training and to help them understand what training and exercises we do, why, and how that contributes to their athletic development and their sports performance.

The main principles of structuring  session for anyone, as was the case with Nirva, is emphasising the importance of a good warm up and warm down for every session.
The main part of training for Nirva was to help develop her movement with a variety of dynamic drills; starting generally and getting more tennis specific. In addition, looking at common injury areas for both her and tennis players in general, and trying to minimize the chance of getting those by gradually introducing conditioning exercises.

As Nirva got older we did more conditioning sessions in a gym environment where again the initial aim was to help educate her in good gym etiquette and session structure. Over the last 2 years in particular Nirva has worked on a variety of exercises including Olympic lifting such as power cleans.

Nirva goes well equipped to the USA to cope with the rigors of University tennis and their athlete programs and I wish her all the best.