Automatic tennis session generator: plan your lesson in a minute

Planning a tennis lesson takes longer than it looks: choosing the warm-up, picking basket drills that suit the group's level, fitting everything into 60 or 90 minutes and not repeating the same thing every week. Multiply that by every group you coach and it adds up to hours.

An automatic tennis session generator does that work for you: you describe your lesson and it gives you back a complete session, with a drill for each part and its timing. This article explains how the AdvanceTenis generator works and how to get the most out of it.

What the generator needs to know

To suggest a sensible session, the generator asks the same questions you would ask yourself before going on court:

• Group level, on a 1–10 scale. It only chooses drills at that level or easier, never harder.
• Number of players. Every drill in the catalogue has a minimum and maximum number of players, so it won't suggest an 8-player game when you have 2.
• Lesson length, for example 60 or 90 minutes.
• What you want to work on (optional): strokes such as forehand, backhand, volley or serve; technical aspects such as topspin or slice; or tactical intentions such as building the point, attacking or defending.
• No rackets, if there aren't rackets for everyone that day, for example at a school activity.

How it builds the session

1. It picks a lesson structure. A structure is the skeleton of the session: which parts it has and how many minutes each one lasts. The generator chooses the one that best fits the length you asked for. You can also choose a specific one yourself.
2. It looks for a drill for each block. Warm-up drills for the warm-up, basket drills for the basket block, and so on, filtered by level, number of players and duration.
3. It prioritises what you asked for. If you ticked "volley", it first tries to find volley drills for each block. Among several valid options it picks the ones most focused on your request, and varies randomly between them so no two sessions are the same.
4. It shows you what it found. You can see which blocks match your request and which were filled with a general drill because there wasn't a more specific one.

An example generated session

A group of 4 players, level 6, 60-minute lesson, focus on baseline play. A possible session:

Warm-up (15 min): footwork along the lines of half a court (twice without racket, once shadowing strokes), then a cooperative rally down the line to find rhythm.

Basket drill (15 min): series of 4 baseline shots; after each one the player must touch a cone a metre behind the baseline before hitting again.

Game situation (15 min): one king against the rest; the king scores 3 points for winning the point on the first shot, 2 on the second and 1 after that.

Final game (15 min): team game with individual points; as soon as a player loses, the next team-mate puts a ball in play straight away.

Make the session your own

The generated session is a starting point, not a rule:

• Swap any drill for another one from the catalogue or one of your own, and adjust its duration.
• Confirm the session when it is ready, so it can't be changed by mistake.
• Export it to PDF as a printable sheet to take on court, with each drill's court diagram.
• Assign it to a class day in your Virtual Club, where you keep each group's calendar, attendance and term planning.
• Duplicate it to reuse it with another group with small changes.

Why it really saves time

The generator doesn't replace your judgement as a coach: it takes away the mechanical part (searching, fitting times, avoiding repetition) so you can spend your time on what matters, correcting and motivating your players on court. And the more the drill catalogue grows, the more varied the sessions become.

To see the kind of drills it can choose, have a look at our tennis drills for every part of the lesson or our fun tennis drills.