Training through Play!

During the kids' practice sessions, many children were absent due to the flu or COVID.
The parents who were keeping the practice balls also had their children catch COVID,
so they couldn't bring the balls, and we had none. I could have borrowed some from another school,
but (haha),

In times of crisis like this, I often get a flash of inspiration, so I decided to intentionally come up with practice methods that don't use balls.

I lent the tennis court to another club for their practice,
and took two energetic kids with me to the park across the street.

The north wind was blowing hard in Okinawa today, so it was cold if you didn't keep moving.
First, we went running to warm up our bodies.
After warming up, we did speed training with hill sprints.
We went to the slide for stamina training to see how many times we could slide down in five minutes.
We did arm muscle training by wiggling like caterpillars using our hands, and muscle training by sitting backwards and rowing using only our abs and back muscles, or sitting sideways and rowing.

The most amazing part was running up the 40-step staircase before sliding down.
Since they slid down 20 times, they climbed at least 800 steps.

After that, they played on other playground equipment and played tag.
Looking at the amount of training in that hour and a half, it was three times that of a tennis lesson.

I thought to myself, the power of play is truly amazing.

How can I incorporate play into tennis?
How can I incorporate play into studying?
I learned that perhaps the path to happiness in life is also about how to turn things into play.