"Our coaches don’t just run classes. They develop skilful tennis players.”
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S4K Tennis
Welcome to S4K Tennis, the most technical and beneficial children’s tennis coaching classes for your child!
S4K Tennis Classes are a tennis skills based coaching program for children 18 months to 18 years. Our tennis classes cater for 18 month old toddler children and up through to young adults in our kids tennis classes. We start off with exciting toddler tennis classes for the youngest children and build the core skills that will be used in competition at a later age. Our tennis classes have been specifically designed to develop every child’s physical, psychological and social skills. We teach the fundamentals of movement and motor skills in order to lay the foundation for technical tennis coaching as children get older.
Why Choose S4K Tennis?
As part of Sport4Kids, the S4K Tennis Program features our wonderful S4K Sports Entertainer team, specialising in developing children from toddlers and upwards in order to improve their confidence, listening and social skills like turn taking and listening to instructions. All of our toddler and kids tennis classes are designed around our easy to use S4K Tennis Player Pathway, which allows parents, coaches and children the chance to monitor their progression in learning new skills at every session. Sport4Kids is the only place to combine toddler and child learning of sport in a program that focuses on making sure that our children have fun, but also develop tennis skills and techniques that are at the forefront of international tennis progress. Our aim is to engage every child with tennis fun, while using our innovative approach to nurture our children through to competitive youth tennis.
We have a unique toddler tennis classes for children from walking age up to 3 years old. This unique class introduces very young children to the world of tennis. We use picture-book stories with animal characters to help your child learn and love the beautiful game of tennis. With great focus on agility, balance and co-ordination, we use specifically made smaller tennis rackets and tennis nets to get children active on our fun-filled tennis programme.
Children between three and ten years old can now get stuck into the world of tennis with an exciting programme developed by the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), the governing body in the UK. With smaller courts, nets and rackets and lower bouncing balls, this programme offers the perfect introduction to the sport, with all the fun and energy of the real thing. Find a class today.
Developing talent in appropriate learning environments There are three stages of the LTA mini-tennis programme, Red, Orange and Green, each with their own court size and type of ball. This tailored approach enables children to develop vital skills and techniques at an early age.
Tennis Coaching With Sports Entertainers
At Sport4Kids, it is not enough to be a tennis coach. We are proud to call our coaches “Sports Entertainers” and these are our talented individuals who are responsible for keeping every child engaged, having fun and being excited.
By focusing on ensuring that every child has fun, we are psychologically able to create high levels of engagement and ultimately develop a passion for children to participate in tennis, sport and most importantly, a healthy and active lifestyle. Our exciting tennis classes are structured to capture the imagination of our budding tennis kids as they embark on a sporting journey of imagination and fun filled exercise.
S4K builds from the core tennis strokes and prepares the ground for our children’s tennis success. Every child is treated as an individual and our sports entertainers allow each child to develop at their own pace with different methods of learning.
At a young age, simply learning to listen and practice at home with the family during the week all supports a fun-filled introduction to a structured learning environment.
Parents and Tennis Coaches Working Together
We see teaching your child to play tennis as a partnership. Our mantra is “Learn at the lesson, Practice@Home”.
In every lesson, we try to enthuse your child and get them really excited about learning this great sport. We will introduce them to the great players of the game and try to inspire them to maybe one day be one of the great players of the game themselves. Either way, we want them to learn and have fun. This is where you come in!
We have designed a range of drills and fun activities for you to practise with your child based on what we have been learning at the lesson. The improvement we see from children who practise is phenomenal. As with all of our Sport4Kids classes, we combine the best coaching techniques from around the world of tennis to create a curriculum that is both child-centric and technically advanced compared with the competition. Innovation is at the heart of everything that we do at S4K and we adopt the best practices from the leading coaching techniques around the world. Adding in our S4K magic to entertain and develop skills has allowed us to naturally develop fantastic tennis players.
The Big 5 Tennis Stars
A large of part of this innovation involves continuous research and development by our S4K Tennis Team. We have studied and leveraged coaching methods from countries including Spain, France and Switzerland, taking the best bits and designing lessons to engage children while focusing on technical capabilities for tennis.
We have also taken the best technical execution from the Big Five Tennis Stars of Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray and Wawrinka. We refer to the “S4K Way” at Sport4Kids and the development of this teaching method is based around the work of child psychologists and educational experts using the Montesorri learning technique.
The combination of world class tennis lessons, Montessori development techniques and the magic of our sports entertainers wrapping everything in fun filled games is unique and not taught anywhere else in the world of tennis. Come and see for yourself by booking a free taster.
The S4K Tennis program takes it lead from the very best players, and we have been in a golden era for world class all-time greats for a number of years. Starting with Federer and his personal dual with the King of clay and top spin Nadal and more latterly with Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray making up the Big 4 who will all make it into the Tennis Hall Of Fame. We may also include Stan Wawrinka, who produced one of the greatest tennis performances to beat Novak in the 2015 French Open final, to make up 5 Tennis Stars from which we have taken amazing technique and tactical genius.
S4K Tennis is based upon researching these 5 great players and picking up on their technical prowess in each tennis stroke. Each stroke and movement is broken down to its minute parts, emulating the Montessori technique of preparing the child to do more complex and combination movements whilst building muscle dexterity, power and control for a wide range of movements.
Each stroke is broken down into 5 constituent elements and each movement is treated separately. S4K Tennis then takes each element and builds exercises and fun games to emphasise the correct movement. This helps to build instinctive natural movement, flexibility and control. It also helps build fun and confidence that when children then put all the pieces together they are surprised at their ability to execute with confidence each of the strokes.
The Big 5 are renown for taking tennis to another level and each has their own specialities and areas of prowess.
Roger Federer is recognised as the most fluent and natural tennis player that glides with ease and athleticism. When he is in full flow it is sublime tennis with style and fluency never seen before. His biggest weapons are his serve, his volley and a wonderful cross court forehand.
Novak Djockovic has the most powerful ground strokes and is equally at home on either side. He has the best backhand in the game and is an ambi-style baseliner meaning he can either counter punch against aggressive players or aggressively take the ball early and punch holes in the most defensive opponents. He has the best movement on court and the most deeply placed shots on court.
Nadal has a great top spin forehand and is powerful in defence and is by far the greatest clay court player of all time. Andy Murray has the best two-handed back hand and taken early down the line is a technical tennis masterpiece feared by all opponents. He also has one of the best sliced backhands in the game with lots of spin on the ball, great disguise and a consistent penetrating shot. Andy Murray’s variety, creativity, improvisation and net play from dinks to feet, drop shots and stop volleys are great examples for children learning tennis. He also has great defence and counter punching and passing shots which help in developing great technical execution for coaching kids back hands in the game tennis.
Stan Wawrinka has technically one of the best and most powerful single backhands, the power and finishing prowess with this shot provides a great role model.We have taken examples and lessons from each of these great players in building our S4K tennis program, taking inspiration to see what it would take to develop a world class tennis player from a very early age – and of course have fun!
S4K Tennis Player Pathway
Our S4K Tennis Player Pathway is completely bespoke and demonstrates that children can be taught the correct footwork, hand-eye coordination and racket technique from a very young age using specifically designed tennis rackets, balls and equipment.
Some tennis coaches programs get younger players to stand at the net, hold the racket with two hands and get a rally going by planting their feet close to the net and playing with the coach or a peer on the other side. This instantly teaches them the wrong physical movement.
This technique fixes the child’s feet, legs and body in one spot. They are rooted, stuck in the mud, there is no movement, no core muscle memory being developed – alarmingly all the wrong movements! The child needs to build a range of flexible movement in their legs, body, arms, head and hands all wrapped in ball and eye coordination.
Any tennis coaching program needs to take in the whole child and strengthen in the right muscle areas and build flexibility of movement.
Our S4K Tennis Pathway demonstrates that children can be taught the full range of movement, made easy by breaking each element down to one or two simple movements. Children can then develop their mini motor skills with confidence – they are then prepared to combine into more complex combinations without struggling against lack of physical strength or flexibility. It then becomes natural to combine movements with ease. Teaching the correct movement and mini techniques from a very young age pays dividends as they become natural tennis players. All our exercises, equipment and games are uniquely designed with exactly this in mind.
Our unique Tennis Pathway is focused on developing the core tennis skills of every child building innate motor skills for advanced tennis strokes for all court and all surface techniques. S4K Tennis builds a child’s basic motor skills. These include holding and catching the ball, holding the racket, fast flexible footwork, speed and movement around the court and all the core motor skills for confidence and agility. To develop these, S4K Tennis classes are designed using imaginative and exciting ball catching, throwing and hitting games that encompass all of the mini-motor skills required to become a highly skilled tennis player later in life. We encompass twisting, precision, picking up and placing the ball, running, weaving, jumping, throwing and catching games – all designed to provide a young tennis player with the ability to move better around the court, to prepare for a shot, to address the ball properly and to execute the five phases of a tennis shot with precision, control and flexibility.
Coaching Toddler and Kids Tennis
Highly technically advanced coaching is one of the most crucial factors in increasing participation in tennis. This is also the bedrock of how we build a strong base for the sport to succeed at international level.
By starting our players from their very youngest step through combining fun, entertainment and personal development we can build the advanced high performance player pool that when the sport moves into high pressure moments our players revert to their core skills and do things instinctively.
Securing the future and quality of tennis starts with the young ones. To be an effective sports entertainer coach, you need to fulfil a number of different roles, covering the emotional, progression, technical, tactical, physical and mental aspects needed for a comprehensively high performing rugby development program.
S4K Tennis is committed to offering a world-leading coaching development service for our young players.
