I had several lessons over the weekend with Coach Kyril and Coach Mauro. Luckily we were videotaping for their DVD series so we also turned the camera on when they were training me.

Mauro is extremely detailed in his instruction and he won’t let up until you do it right. The slightest little nuance can make a big difference in whether the stroke works for you or not.

The problem is that so much was coming at me so fast I couldn’t remember all the little details he gave me . . . but the video tape did.

I got about three hours of tape with the microphone on coach Mauro, so even if he was feeding me balls from the other side of the net and the camera was on me, I could clearly hear his comments. This has been a tremendous follow up tool for me because I don’t have access to him every day and have to practice on my own.

Videotaping your lessons is one thing, but you should also videotape your practice sessions. If I’m having a problem, I can upload parts of my practice session to YouTube and Mauro can evaluate what I’m doing. If your coach is local, you could take a portable DVD player with you to the courts or use the one many people have in the back seat of their car for their kids and watch it in the parking lot.

Just about any modern video camera will work. If it has a high speed shutter, that’s even better because you can still clearly see what you are doing when you slow down the playback.

Just about any modern camcorder will help you improve your game tremendously

Another interesting thing about videotaping is that you probably won’t believe some things that you are doing unless you see it for yourself. When I train presentation skills using videofeedback, people would swear to me they were NOT jingling keys in their pocket while they were speaking. . .  but they were.