022 - Marc Gelina - The Salt Story

022 - The Salt Story - Marc Gelina, USPTA

The PTM Podcast Welcomes Marc Gelina, Associate PTM Director, University of Central Florida Rosen Campus.

The salt story is an analogy on how power of the mind and taking action can change your habits.

Salt is made of up two elements: Sodium and Chloride.

Take each one alone and it is poison.

Combine the two and you have the spice that used to rule the world.

The same goes for how we approach tennis.

Power of the Mind - Think and believe.  What the mind can conceive, the body can achieve.

Taking action -  changing your habits

Similar to your signature.  If you signed your name 100 times, it would pretty much look the same from #1 to #100, but if someone showed you how to do it properly (Or differently),  maybe it could improve.

When you are changing habits, remember: “A yard is hard and an inch is a sinch”

Little tiny habits can change your results on tennis.

Similar to termites (small little things) do more damage very year than hurricanes and tornados combined.

When you combine power of the mind and taking action, this is where you are going to see the most improvement and how we have to coach our students.

W.I.N. - What’s Important Now

Thinking this all the time can help keep your mind in the right place and combining this with actions.

Today’s Quick Tip: Applying the salt story to teaching

We need to teach our students to combine both.

As a teaching pro:

You can have a good plan and taking the right action.

A great plan with no action is worthless, pretty obvious.

Great drills, with no plan can be detrimental as well

For example if you just go out and have your student hit a bunch of balls, improvement will be limited, but if you have a good long term (and daily plans), this will keep you on track as a coach, because you can design good lesson plans around these goals to make sure you are achieving these, inch by inch.

A  good plan and taking the right action will help your students reach their goals and you as a coach as well.

To get a hold of Marc you can go to: [email protected]

Good luck, 

Coach Mick, USPTA