Resources Guide · Lesson planning
A tennis lesson plan template, block by block.
The best lesson plan is the one you will reuse. Below are two templates written out in full, a 60-minute private and a 90-minute junior clinic, with times, a focus for each block, and a benchmark built in. Take them as they are or bend them to your court and your students. Either way, the point is to start every session from a structure instead of a blank hour.
What every template needs
A usable template is short and fixed in shape. It needs a total time, a set of blocks that add up to it, a single focus per block, and one benchmark you can measure quickly. It does not need a script. Write the blocks so a tired version of you can run them at 6pm without deciding anything, and leave the coaching itself, the feel, the corrections, the encouragement, to the moment. A template is scaffolding, not a screenplay.
The 60-minute private template
Here it is in full, ready to run for an intermediate junior working on a topspin forehand. Swap the focus and the drill to fit any student and the frame still holds.
0:00 to 0:10, warmup. Mini-tennis inside the service boxes, then a moving rally back to the baseline. You are watching timing and mood as much as warming the body.
0:10 to 0:15, rhythm. Cooperative crosscourt forehands, counting the longest rally, just to find the range and settle the eyes.
0:15 to 0:35, primary skill, topspin forehand. Feed for shape (low to high, brushing up the back of the ball), then feed for depth, then a rally where every ball has to clear a rope or a set height. This is the heart of the lesson and it gets the freshest twenty minutes.
0:35 to 0:45, secondary skill, forehand on the move. The same shot, now with a split step and a recovery, so the technique meets footwork before it meets a game.
0:45 to 0:55, play. Points started with a forehand feed, with a bonus for winning the point using the shot you built today. The skill has to survive a real rally.
0:55 to 1:00, benchmark and close. Ten forehands fed to a target zone, scored out of ten for depth, written down. One sentence on what to practice before next week.
That last block is the one coaches skip when they run long. Protect it. The benchmark is what turns a nice hour into a data point, and the one-sentence assignment is what carries the work home.
The 90-minute junior clinic template
A group of eight juniors, one or two coaches, ninety minutes, written for a rotating-station format so nobody stands in line.
0:00 to 0:15, group warmup. Movement, a footwork ladder or line drill, then partner mini-tennis. Whole group together, energy up.
0:15 to 0:35, station one, technique feeding. Small groups, coach-fed reps on the day’s skill. If you have an assistant, this is their station.
0:35 to 0:55, station two, live ball. Cooperative and competitive rallies that use the skill against a real ball. A floating coach corrects.
0:55 to 1:10, station three, target and benchmark. A scoring drill (serves in out of twenty, or a depth ladder) where every kid gets a number. This is where the clinic leaves a record behind.
1:10 to 1:30, games. Team tennis, king of the court, or a points ladder. The part they came for, and the part that makes them ask to come back.
Rotate small groups through the stations on a timer if you are solo, or run two stations at once if you are staffed. The benchmark station is the one to guard: it is the difference between a fun clinic and a clinic that can show a parent progress in June.
In Upswing
One plan, reused everywhere
In Upswing a template is a session plan you build once and attach to a session, an offering, or a whole program week, then run live from your phone with the benchmark logging to the record.
Bend the template to your students
These are starting points, not gospel. Shorten the warmup for older players who arrive ready and lengthen it for little kids who need to burn a lap first. Trade the forehand focus for whatever the student is actually working on. Move the benchmark to whichever skill you want to track this block of the season. The shape, warm up, teach while fresh, play at the end, measure one thing, is what stays fixed, and everything inside it flexes. If you want more measurable drills to drop into the benchmark block, there is a full guide to benchmark drills for junior tennis, and a companion piece on tracking that progress over a season.
How templates work in Upswing
On paper, a template is a page you photocopy. In Upswing it is a live object. You build a session plan once, as an ordered set of timed blocks with a benchmark linked in, and then reuse it: attach it to a session, make it an offering's default, or hand it to a whole program week so every clinic in the term runs the same structure. When you teach, you run the plan live from your phone, block by block on the clock, and the benchmark logs straight to each player's record. Duplicate a plan to spin off a variant, archive the ones you have retired, and your planning stops living on loose paper in the car.
Questions
Can I just print these and use them?
Yes. Copy the blocks onto a card, adjust the focus and the benchmark for your student, and you have a runnable plan. The templates are written to work on paper first; the software is only there to make reusing and running them easier.
How many templates should I keep?
Fewer than you would think. A private template at two or three levels, a clinic template, and maybe a red-ball version cover most of a solo coach's week. You vary the skill block per student, not the whole plan. A small set you actually reuse beats a library you built once and forgot.
Where does the benchmark come from?
Any drill that yields one clean number under repeatable conditions: serves in out of twenty, a rally count, a depth-ladder score. Pick one per template and run it the same way every time so the numbers compare. The benchmark-drills guide has a set worth starting from.
