Bakersfield-born Hank Pfister was a fixture on the pro tennis circuit with achievements as both a singles and doubles player.
Born in 1953, Pfister was heavily influenced by his tennis coach father. At five years old he was hitting tennis balls and by age seven he had played in his first local tournament.
While attending Bakersfield High School his talent led him to club tournaments in Los Angeles. Pfister later attended Bakersfield College before receiving a full scholarship to San Jose State University, where he was an NCAA Division I First Team All-American in 1976.
In 1977 he began a pro career that included French Open doubles championships in 1978 and 1980, and Association of Tennis Professional singles titles in Maui in 1981 and Rhode Island in 1982.
At his peak, Pfister was rated in the ATP top 10 among doubles players and the top 20 in singles.
Pfister is currently the Director of Tennis and Fitness at Stockdale Country Club in Bakersfield. He has twice been selected as the U.S. Professional Tennis Association California Division Pro of the Year.
Lee Couillard, USPTA, Head Tennis Professional, Punahou School shows a simple device you can make to get your students to stay in a straight back or strong back body posture position. By lowering your Center of Gravity (COG) your body produces stored elastic energy. Your feet should have a wide base to support dynamic balance.
Lee Couillard, USPTA, Head Tennis Professional, Punahou School explains proprioception to the tennis class. A lost art in the game of tennis is the ability to volley, however, there are proprioceptive exercises that can help heighten volley awareness at the net.
There are five common senses that are discussed and learned from an early age: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. One overlooked sense, known as proprioception, is as important, if not more important as the other senses, for normal functioning. Proprioception is "the process by which the body can vary muscle contraction in immediate response to incoming information regarding external forces," by utilizing stretch receptors in the muscles to keep track of the joint position in the body.
Proprioception, also often referred to as the sixth sense, was developed by the nervous system as a means to keep track of and control the different parts of the body. An example that enables one to best understand this sensory system is one showing what happens if this sensory system is no longer there. Ian Waterman lost his sixth sense along with the ability to feel light touch when a virus killed the necessary nerves. The man still had all the nerves to control muscle movement but had no feedback from the outside world about where his limbs were except that obtained by sight. A normal person is able to move a finger, knowing where and what the finger is doing, with little effort. The normal person could just volunteer the finger to move back and forth and proprioception would make this an easy task. Without proprioception, the brain cannot feel what the finger is doing, and the process must be carried out in more conscious and calculated steps. The person must use vision to compensate for the lost feedback on the progress of the finger. Then the I-function must voluntarily and consciously tell the finger what to do while watching the feedback.
The eyes have to also be trained to judge weights and lengths of objects. As Waterman attempts to lift objects there is no feedback on how hard to flex the muscles except from what clues vision gives. Studies of Waterman support that through feedback from proprioception the brain is able to calculate angles of movement and command the limb to move exact distances. If vision is taken away, the lights are cut out, then Waterman will fall in a heap on the floor, with no ability to make successful voluntary movements. The examples of Waterman illustrate the type of information obtained because of proprioception and the great importance of this information. Without this sense humans would be forced to spend a great amount of their conscious energy moving around or would not be mobile at all.
The proprioception sensory system is carried out utilizing proprioceptors in the muscles that monitor length, tension, pressure, and noxious stimuli. The muscle spindles, the most complex and studied of the proprioceptors, informs other neurons of the length of the muscle and the velocity of the stretch. The density of muscle spindles within a muscle increases for muscles involved in fine movements, as opposed to those involved in larger course movements. The brain needs input from many of these spindles in order to register changes in angle and position that the muscle has accomplished. There is also more spindles found in the arms and legs, muscles that must maintain posture against gravity.
Lee Couillard, USPTA, Wilson TEAM Member shows 3 grips changes on Federer's volley. First the continental or eastern backhand grip on a "Stretch Volley", next the eastern forehand grip on a "High Volley" and lastly, the eastern backhand grip on a "Half Volley."
Lee Couillard, Wilson TEAM Member, USPTA breaks down two points played by Courier and Kricktstein. Courier does not grip change on his volley when transitioning from the baseline to the net.
Gary Sakuma, USPTA Honolulu, Hawaii - Volley tip, have students sit in a chair and volley. Progress to bumping the ball off their racket and volleying it back to their partner.