Our Academy

The academy goal: building motor pathways and character pathways. For many years at the Human Performance Institute, we operated a small tennis academy for juniors, aged 9 to 18. The tennis program's goal was to leverage all the demands and stresses of elite junior tennis to build, first and foremost, muscles of character. The objective was to repurpose all the disappointment, hard work, uncertainty, injuries, wins, losses, and more to build in each young athlete muscles of honesty, integrity, respect, humility, kindness, resiliency, and confidence. While the players were myelinating the motor pathways for their forehands, backhands,serves, and volleys, they were also myelinating the character pathways for engagement, generosity, positivity, and gratitude. Character Muscles Each day, players selected a specific Character Muscle they wanted to strengthen. Building the targeted muscle happened by acting it out on court, thinking about it, and writing daily in a character journal. The player's highest priority every day in practice and competition was not winning or achieving a certain strict performance goal but determining who they were becoming because of the demands of tennis. We called our approach "intentional adaptation." Human beings are always adapting to their environments, but sometimes it's to the detriment of...