A few weeks ago I came across a blog called 50by25, written by a woman named Laura, who in 2010 broke the world record for being the youngest woman to run a marathon in all 50 states. I asked Laura if she wanted to take a private tennis lesson with a MyTennisLessons instructor in her hometown in Colorado and write about it on her blog. Much to my excitement, Laura was very interested in taking a lesson! Laura was a pleasure to work with and she ended up having a fantastic time with our instructor Erik W. Read a snippet of Laura’s review below and to see the full post check out “Why I ‘Love’ MyTennisLessons.com” on 50by25.
The court where we chose to meet was less than a five minute drive from my apartment, which was super convenient. I arrived wearing what I thought was appropriate tennis gear (I hoped?) and carrying a tennis racket, but not really sure what to expect. Was I supposed to have brought my own tennis balls? I was such a newbie! But my instructor, Erik, had a huge basket of tennis balls to use, which made drills really easy since we could go a long time in between having to retrieve them. It also helped that we had the entire (beautiful) court all to ourselves until the very end of the lesson!
While we walked over from the parking lot to the courts, Erik asked about my tennis background, so by the time we got to the courts, we were all set to go. We started with a warmup where Erik would just lob the balls to me and I’d do my best to hit them back. After we’d done that for a bit, he was then able to provide some feedback for me – ironically, the same stuff my dad always told me! I don’t extend my arm fully to get the full power of the swing. But unlike my dad, Erik had a lot of specific drills to help me work on it. We did “progressions”: he’d toss me balls starting at the baseline, then we moved on to hitting from the service line, and finally a short volley. Each time, we did a bunch of balls at that particular line, then put it all together until we did a drill where I was running to a different line for each shot – but I knew ahead of time where the ball was going to be going. I felt like I was getting a great workout in, since I was working one-on-one and Erik could just keep the balls coming, and I also felt like I was learning a lot and really honing my skills.
The lesson flew by, and I was really excited both by how much fun I had and also by what a great workout I got in. Erik said in his profile that his lessons are high impact/cardio-style, and I definitely felt that! I could see myself improving really rapidly with private lessons like this, and Erik was so personable that I would definitely want to use him as an instructor if I did continue.
I was also really impressed with MyTennisLessons, which does a great job at managing the whole setup. I think it would have been really hard to find a solid tennis teacher on my own, and I would have been relying on Yelp reviews or something instead of the very detailed bios that MyTennisLessons puts on their site. I also like that all the management is in one place – you can pay with a credit card, have a bank of lessons available, schedule lessons online, and even track your lessons all in one spot. It was just amazingly convenient to be able to schedule and manage everything online, rather than having to call around for coordination! (Ugh, I hate when I have to do errands by phone vs email… it’s just so convenient to be able to email back and forth and respond at your leisure rather than having to catch someone at the right time on the phone.) After the lesson, I really appreciated getting emailed to double check that my experience is a good one, and while it was fantastic, I got the impression that if it hadn’t been they would have done anything to make it right. Definitely an A+ for customer service!
