El Conquistador Tennis

06/09/2026

By Carlos Bermudez

The Tale of the Two Lumberjacks & How it relates to tennis

Two lumberjacks, an older, experienced man and a younger, stronger man, enter a woodcutting competition. The rules are simple: whoever chops down the most trees by the end of the day wins.

As soon as the whistle blows, the younger lumberjack goes to work. He is full of energy, swinging his axe furiously, barely stopping to catch his breath. He looks over at the older man and notices something strange—every hour on the hour, the older man sits down for about ten minutes.

Seeing this, the young lumberjack smiles, thinking, "He’s getting old and tired. I’ve got this in the bag." Powered by confidence, the young man pushes himself even harder, working straight through his lunch break without a single second of rest.

At the end of the day, the results are tallied. To the young man’s absolute shock, the older lumberjack chopped down significantly more wood.

Exhausted and defeated, the young man walks up to the veteran. "I don't understand," he says. "I worked through the entire day without stopping. Every hour, I saw you sit down and rest for ten minutes. How did you cut more wood than me?"

The older man looks up, smiles, and says:

"I wasn't just resting. Every time I sat down, I was sharpening my axe."

This analogy fits tennis perfectly because it is a sport where players constantly try to "force" their way through a bad match using pure, exhausting effort, rather than pausing to fix the tool that’s actually broken.

In tennis, swinging a "dull axe" usually means trying to hit the ball harder when your footwork or your spacing has broken down.

Here is how you apply the lumberjack lesson to your game:

The Blunt Axe: "Manhandling" the Ball
When a player starts missing or feels inconsistent, the natural, panic-driven instinct is to try to control the ball with muscle. They tighten their wrist, squeeze the grip, and try to force the ball into the court using raw arm strength.

That is the equivalent of the young lumberjack swinging a dull blade harder and harder. You burn an incredible amount of energy, your muscles fatigue, and your shots actually lose depth and control because you’ve sacrificed fluid acceleration.

Sharpening the Axe: The 3-Step Reset
To sharpen your axe on the tennis court, you have to stop focusing on the contact point and start focusing on the preparation. When your consistency drops, you take a "mental break" between points to reset your physical tools.

1. Sharpen Your Footwork (The Foundation)
You cannot hit a clean, consistent stroke if your feet are glued to the court. When you are struggling, stop worrying about your swing path and focus entirely on the split-step and small adjustment steps. Getting your body into the ideal position relative to the ball automatically fixes 80% of your hitting errors.

2. Sharpen Your Tension (The Tool)
Check your grip pressure on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 10 is a death grip). If you are struggling, you are likely playing at an 8 or 9. To get your spin and fluid power back, you need to consciously drop that grip tension down to a 3 or 4 before you receive the next serve. A relaxed muscle reacts faster and generates more effortless head speed.

3. Sharpen Your Targets (The Strategy)
When the axe is dull, stop aiming for the lines. Give yourself a massive margin for error by aiming three feet inside the baseline and three feet over the net. Use heavy topspin to create a safety net, letting the geometry of the court do the work for you instead of trying to hit winners from a defensive position.

The Takeaway: The next time you find yourself in a rough patch during a match, don't just run faster and swing harder. Pause between points, take a deep breath, and fix your feet and your grip. Work on the preparation, and the ex*****on will take care of itself.

05/21/2026

Footwork tip by Carlos Bermudez

The single best piece of advice for tennis footwork is to focus on the split-step right as your opponent makes contact, and then transition immediately into small, adjustment steps as you approach the ball.

Many players think great footwork means sprinting fast, but it’s actually about rhythm and spacing.

1. The Split-Step (The "Reset" Button)
You shouldn't be standing still when your opponent hits the ball. Just as they are about to strike it, take a small, low hop onto the balls of your feet.

The Timing: You want to land just after you see where the ball is going. If you land too early, you get stuck. If you land too late, you're chasing the ball.

The Benefit: It loads your calves and thighs like springs, allowing you to explode in any direction instantly.

2. The Adjustment Steps (The "Fine-Tuning")
Once you sprint toward the ball using big, explosive strides, players often make the mistake of stopping abruptly. This forces you to reach or jams your swing. Instead, use small, stutter steps as you get close to the bounce.

The Benefit: These tiny micro-adjustments allow you to calculate the perfect distance from the ball so you can hit it squarely in your strike zone.

The Rule of Thumb: Big steps to get to the neighborhood, small steps to get to the front door.

A Quick Drill to Try: Next time you practice, consciously count your steps out loud after the ball crosses the net. Try to squeeze in three or four rapid "stutter" steps right before you plant your feet to swing. You'll notice immediately how much more balanced and consistent your shots become.

05/06/2026

Anticipation in tennis is often-times overlooked and underutilized. However, if a player can develop great reads on their opponents and combine that with quality footwork, they give themselves a significant advantage on the court.

When anticipating shots from your opponent, it is important to remember that you're not attempting to guess what is about to happen, but rather gathering information about what type of shot and where they will be going with that shot.

Good footwork and positioning are critical for all tennis players, but if you also observe your opponent, players can begin to note patterns within somebody's game. You can also gather information by looking at their body language (their stance positioning, posture, swing path) which will give us vital clues about how much and what type of spin our opponent is going to give us, as well as if they are changing the type of shot they will hit.

Next time you are playing, instead of watching the result of your own shot, observe your opponent as they approach the ball, looking for any clues and patterns you can discern and you might just give yourself the advantage you need to capitalize during a match.
Benjamin

05/05/2026

We are canceling the Women's Beginner Clinic for today due to weather. The clinic is still on next week with the last one being May 18th. Thank you!

04/18/2026

By Carlos Bermudez

In a sport like tennis where you spend about 80% of your time between points rather than actually playing them the biggest mental hurdle is often "The Memory Trap."

The best mental tip for staying competitive is the "15-Second Funeral."

The 15-Second Funeral
Most players lose matches because they carry the ghost of a missed overhead or a double fault into the next three games. The "funeral" is a ritual to bury the last point so it cannot haunt the next one.

The Mourning (5 Seconds): Immediately after the point ends, give yourself five seconds to be human. Clench your fist, take a sharp breath, or look at your strings. Acknowledge the frustration, but don't verbalize it.

The Burial (5 Seconds): Physically turn your back to the net. Walk toward the back fence or your towel. This physical movement creates distance between you and the "scene of the crime."

The Rebirth (5 Seconds): As you turn back toward the baseline, visualize exactly how you want the next point to start. Feel the grip of the racket and focus on one specific target (e.g., "Serve to the T").

04/15/2026

Results-Based Learning in Tennis

Tennis is oftentimes a frustrating sport. We as players can work hard, put in the hours and still not see results on the court as quickly as we believe we should. When we are training, it is important to remember if you are a results-based thinker that you can actually use that as an advantage rather than drawback, all we need is to shift our perspective a bit.

Say I go to practice my serve by myself after working on technique with my instructor. If I go out there and base my results on how many I hit in, there is a good likelihood that I could be falling into my old habit rather than what I was working on during a lesson. Because otherwise, if I'm trying this new mechanic but I am missing serves, I will begin to get frustrated since I am not receiving the result I wanted.

However, if you shift your thought process going into that serve practice, you may view you result differently. I go in thinking that I have to get a higher toss, getting my arm up higher. Now, my timing may be a bit off now that I have changed something, causing some misses, but I cannot let that deter me from practicing the new toss, or else you will struggle to change old habits.

Long term, that toss change is going to help my serve get better. But in the meantime, I need to remind myself that the result I want may not immediately lead to all of my serves going in. This can be a difficult change to make, but can lead to much better results in our training sessions and ultimately on the court.

Benjamin

04/09/2026

Getting Better is NOT Linear
By Chip Tidd

Improvement in tennis or any sport is often thought of as a steady, uphill climb, a predictable result of hours logged on the court. Unfortunately the reality is far more erratic and humbling. For most players, progress doesn’t look like a smooth diagonal line; it looks like a jagged up and down staircase with potentially long agonizing plateaus. You might spend months hitting thousands of backhands with no apparent change in your win rate, leading to the frustrating sensation of thinking all your hard work is for nothing. However, this stagnation is rarely what it seems. It is actually the period where the brain and body are assimilating the mechanics, even though the scoreboard might remain stagnant. Improvement in tennis is less about incremental tangible gains and more about crossing invisible thresholds of coordination and subconscious trust.

These intangible milestones are the true markers of growth, and they are unpredictable as to when they will occur. One day, the ball simply starts to "look bigger," or you find yourself moving to a short ball better, or you start to handle certain shots that you've been struggling with. These leaps in anticipation, spatial awareness and consistency are skills that can’t be measured like a 100-mph serve but are far more vital to your path of improvement. You might not be hitting the ball harder, maybe you are hitting it with a newfound sense of comfort that was previously a foreign language. It’s not the moment where the racket starts to feel like an extension of your arm rather than a clumsy tool, but a reflection or realization that the shift has finally occurred in the subconscious.

Ultimately, getting better at tennis requires a high tolerance for invisible progress. The game is so technically demanding, that breakthroughs usually occur when several minor, seemingly unproductive adjustments finally click into a unified rhythm. You might actually lose three matches in a row while playing "better" tennis because you are successfully implementing a more complex technique that hasn't quite yielded results yet. The true victory isn't the set score; it’s the internal realization that you no longer fear the lob or that your footwork has finally become instinctive. In tennis, you don’t just get better you evolve in microscopic bursts that won't occur without the thankless work done during the plateaus. So the next time you feel like it's all for nothing, remember your breakthrough might be just around the corner. It may have even already happened and you just haven't seen the result of it yet.

04/05/2026

2026 Summer Junior Camps Registration open Monday, April 6th!!
Copy & paste link for form:

2026 El Conquistador Summer Junior Tennis Camps Camp Information Where: El Conquistador Tennis at Pusch Ridge ~ 10000 N. Oracle Road (520) 544-1780 Ages: 4 to 18 years Times/Days: Day Sessions: 9 – 11 AM ~ Monday through Thurs...

03/20/2026

Volley Tips from Carlos Bermudez

The single most transformative tip for volleys is often the hardest to follow: Keep your swing short.

In tennis, we’re conditioned to love a big, beautiful groundstroke follow through. But at the net, time is your enemy. If you take a full swing, you'll likely hit the ball late or lose control.

The "Punch" Technique
Instead of swinging, think of the volley as a compact punch or a "block" with a tiny bit of forward movement.

The V-Shape: Keep your racket head above your wrist. At the point of contact, your arm and racket should roughly form a "V" shape.

Imagine a Wall: Imagine there is a literal wall just a few inches behind your shoulders. If you take the racket back too far, you’ll hit the wall.

Use Your Legs: Power doesn't come from the arms; it comes from your forward momentum. Step into the ball with your opposite foot (e.g., step with your left foot for a right-handed forehand volley).

03/17/2026