Tennis is a great sport to introduce your children. In today’s society we have too many children sitting in front of the television, eating junk food and not wanting to get outside and play. If you were to take a look back about ten years you would see a significant difference in the percentage of obese children. Seeing that those numbers have jumped over the last ten to fifteen years shows us that children have gotten lazy. As have their parents. It is the responsibility of the parents to get their children up and moving, and involved in more physically challenging activities.
Here we have taken a few simple steps to get your child involved and active in the sport of tennis. This something you too can play with your child. There are several steps mentioned in this guide, some will be for younger children, as others will obviously be for more advanced children and teens.
If you, yourself are a decent tennis player, like Roger Federer, it will be a lot easier to teach your young child or teen to play as well. Children learn by example. But if you are not an experienced player, these easy to follow steps will help you both along the way. First here are a few tools you will need:
* Safe outdoor area to teach in (large field or back yard)
* Soft or squishy tennis balls (these can be purchased in bulk)
* orange cones
* Juvenile or Junior Tennis Racket
* Adult racket
When you are out choosing a tennis racket for your young child, you will want to make sure it is something light weight. Children as young as two or three are old enough to play tennis. You just need to be sure they are able to swing the racket, and hold it up with their wrists. If possible get them a bad mitten racket to start off, than when they have the hang of swinging a racket, and they are a little older you can introduce them to a juvenile (full size) racket.
After they understand the basics of handling their new tennis racket, and you have talked with them about the basics of tennis, this would be a great time to look into Father/Daughter or Mother/son lessons, something you all can get involved with together as a family. Often times, community centers and family recreational centers will offer affordable or free lessons. As your child’s hand eye coordination improves over the years you can introduce them to aiming the ball at a particular target. This would be a good opportunity to take the orange cones to a tennis court, set them up, and teach them which zones are good ‘play’ zones.
Getting outside with your child, playing a game of tennis, or bad mitten is a wonderful way to get your blood flowing and exercise your family into a healthy lifestyle. Tennis just happens to be one sport that the whole family can get involved with and everyone will enjoy it.