When Success in the Session Only Lasts Until the Next Match
I left a coaching session feeling uncomfortable because I felt I had done something I am increasingly trying to notice in my own coaching.
The player came to me because his forehand felt tight when the ball landed shorter. We set out to explore the problem rather than begin with a technical correction. But as the session continued, I felt myself guiding that exploration too much.
I wanted him to experience success before the session ended. He had trusted me with his time and money, and I wanted him to feel that something had improved. By the end, the improvement was visible.
Yet afterwards, I could not stop thinking about what that improvement meant. Had I helped him discover something he could find again in a match, or had I guided the exploration towards an outcome that reassured both of us inside the session?
“That was the source of my discomfort. I had not prescribed a quick technical fix, but I may still have shaped the session around the need to make something look solved today.”
What did the improvement actually show us?
The player’s problem was not simply hitting a forehand from a shorter ball. It was the tightness that appeared when he had to deal with that ball in a match.
Inside the session, we could explore possibilities and create conditions in which the forehand became freer. That visible improvement mattered. It gave us information and showed that other solutions were available.
But it did not automatically tell us that he would find those solutions when the ball became short unexpectedly, the score mattered, and nobody was there to guide his attention.
This is where a familiar cycle can begin:
A problem appears in a match. It improves inside a session. The player returns to competition, the problem appears again, and the next session produces another form of immediate success.
The method used to create that success may change, but the loop can remain.
Different methods, the same pressure
Another coach may enter this cycle through a technical cue. “Prepare earlier.” “Create more space.” “Relax your arm.” The forehand improves for the next few balls, but the change may disappear when the player has to recognise and solve the situation independently in a match.
I entered it differently. I used an ecological approach and invited exploration, but I felt myself guiding that exploration towards success. The method was different, yet the professional pressure underneath may have been the same: the player has paid me, so something should look better before they leave.
This matters to me because ecological language does not make my coaching automatically honest or player-centred. I can avoid prescribing a movement while still quietly prescribing the destination. I can give the player choices while arranging those choices so carefully that success becomes almost inevitable.
“I can replace prescriptive instruction with prescriptive exploration and still leave the deeper problem untouched.”
That does not mean the exploration had no value, just as a technical cue is not automatically useless. Both can open possibilities for a player. The question is how much meaning we attach to the change we see inside the session.
Why it felt dishonest to me
I did not deliberately mislead the player. I was genuinely trying to help, and the improvement we saw was real.
The discomfort came from the possibility that I was allowing that success to carry more meaning than it deserved. I wanted the player to feel that the session had worked, and I may have guided the exploration partly to produce that feeling.
Once I recognise that pressure in myself, I have to ask:
- Did the player discover something, or did I lead him towards what I wanted him to find?
- Did the situation become more representative of the match, or simply easier to solve?
- Was the improvement becoming more adaptable, or only more visible?
- Was I helping the player investigate the problem, or helping both of us feel that it had been solved?
“The dishonesty, for me, begins when I know the session has demonstrated possibility, but allow it to feel like proof of learning.”
The session demonstrated that a freer forehand was possible. It did not yet prove that the player could find it in a match.
What we would expect from a doctor
This is where a medical analogy feels useful to me.
Imagine going to a doctor because your knee hurts whenever it is placed under a particular load. The doctor may see where it hurts, but that does not mean they immediately know why.
They may need to ask questions, examine the movement, request tests, or observe how the knee responds over time. The pain may come from something close to where you feel it, but the cause may also sit deeper in the system. It might relate to how you have been training, recovering, sleeping, or eating. It might involve several things interacting. The doctor may have possibilities in mind without yet having a confident answer.
We tend to accept that uncertainty because investigation is part of responsible care. We would probably become more suspicious if the doctor looked at the painful area, offered immediate relief, declared the problem solved, and repeated the same process every time the pain returned.
“We do not expect a doctor to know everything immediately. We expect them to take the symptom seriously enough to investigate what might be underneath it.”
Sometimes the examination may reveal something clear and the intervention may be relatively simple. But sometimes the honest answer is, “I do not know yet. We need more information.” Or perhaps:
“Look, you need ten sessions to be able to fix that knee.”
You might not enjoy hearing it. Ten sessions require time, money, and trust. But if the doctor explains what they are investigating, what each stage may tell them, and why temporary relief is different from lasting recovery, you can understand the process and decide whether it makes sense for you.
Why should a tennis coach find it so difficult to say:
“Look, you may need ten sessions to be able to fix that forehand in matches.”
Ten sessions is only an illustration, not a formula or a promise. The tight forehand is what the player feels, just as the knee pain is what the patient feels. But it may not tell us where the problem begins. It might involve recognising the shorter ball, moving towards it, deciding what to do, feeling pressure to finish the point, or adapting the movement when time and space change. It may involve several of those things together.
Sometimes the answer will become clear quickly. Sometimes we will need to recreate the situation, watch what changes, and gather better information across several sessions and matches.
“The professional responsibility is not always to know immediately. Sometimes it is to investigate honestly, explain what remains uncertain, and resist treating the first visible symptom as the whole problem.”
Staying honestly inside “I don’t know”
In a conversation with Steve Whelan, he described the starting point simply:
“I don’t know. Let’s discover.”
I value that sentence, but I am beginning to understand how demanding it really is. “Let’s discover” does not mean guiding the player quickly towards the answer I hope they will find. It means allowing the investigation to give us information that may be incomplete, inconvenient, or less reassuring than visible success.
“If I already need the exploration to succeed before the session ends, I am not fully standing inside ‘I don’t know.’”
That does not mean the player should leave with nothing while I ask for patience. An honest session should still give them something meaningful:
- a clearer understanding of when the tightness appears;
- evidence that a freer forehand is possible;
- some conditions that appear to help or hinder it;
- something specific to notice in the next match;
- a useful direction for the next stage of the investigation.
The player should also understand the difference between what we discovered and what we have not yet established.
“Today we found conditions in which your forehand felt freer. We do not yet know how available that solution will be in a match. That is what we need to explore next.”
That sentence feels less impressive than saying the forehand has been fixed. To me, it also feels more honest.
The confidence I am still trying to develop
I still want a player to leave feeling that their time with me was valuable. I still want them to experience success, especially when they have paid me and trusted me with a problem that matters to them.
The uncomfortable lesson from this session was that even exploration can become a quick fix when I guide it towards the result we both want to see. Ecological dynamics does not remove that temptation. In some ways, it asks me to become even more aware of it.
I cannot promise that the forehand a player finds today will be available in the next match. I can be honest about what we saw, what it may mean, and what remains uncertain.
“Perhaps my responsibility is not to make the exploration succeed before the session ends. It is to help the player build solutions that gradually require less guidance from me and can survive more of the game.”
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