Smart skipping, the pros of pickleball and happy birthday to SELT!
by Ruth Jarvis
SELT Team
SELT turns 12 this month – celebrate with us in the April edition of our blog, and help yourself to some new skills for your tennis and fitness life.
SELT back in the day!
It’s 12 years to the month since SELT held its first ever tennis session at Ladywell Fields, so this seems like a good time to look back on the progress we’ve made and the rise of community tennis in Lewisham.
Back in 2013, Chris and Michael had a vision of bringing the borough’s neglected tennis courts back to life and instituting an accessible, affordable and high-quality coaching programme to enhance the lives of southeast London residents of all ages. In April of that year, they launched SELT to the public with an open day at the three usable courts at Ladywell Fields (the other two being patchy lawns mainly of interest to dogs!) After extensive leafleting and lots of calls, the open day attracted 74 prospective players.
It’s fair to say that things have gone well since then. In 2024, SELT ran 380 courses and close to 1,500 individual sessions across the adult, youth and pickleball programmes, at 22 newly renovated park courts, one tennis club (Catford Wanderers) and one sports hall, serving some 2,000 players. Our youngest is four, and our oldest 79.
By 2022, Sport England was noting that 38% of Lewisham residents regularly took part in a fitness activity, well over the London norm. We like to think we played a part in that, and it seems that Lewisham does too: the council has recently contracted us as its long-term coaching partner.
To thank you all for your brilliant support, we are offering a birthday discount of 12% off junior or adult group coaching sessions for the first 20 people to use the code Birthday12 when booking.
Showing off the new Ladywell courts in 2017
Balance, co-ordination, agility and explosive leg strength, not to mention cardio – skipping makes short work of training multiple key tennis skills. Here, our Level 5 LTA coach Michael Raphael shares a quick routine to make it count. Mike knows all about performance tennis, having trained ATP-ranked international players during his accomplished 35-year career. To find out more about him and book a private class, click here.
It’s official: pickleball has now become an official sport, with Pickleball England as its governing body in the UK. This is great news for its governance, standards and promotion, and should ensure its meteoric surge is sustainable (there are now around 40,000 players in the UK). In the USA it has already overtaken tennis in popularity.
Pickleball has emerged in an era of digital data collection, which has led to some fascinating fitness insights. An Applewatch study of 250,000 US players shows that its benefits are comparable to those of tennis, with workouts typically lasting a little longer and peaking in slightly lower cardio zones. The stats bore out the sport’s broad appeal, with high participation among girls, women and older people. They also showed evidence of the dramatic effect that racket sports have on mental health, with pickleball players 60% less likely and tennis players 51% less likely to report depressed mood.
We put this down to pickleball’s unique blend of endorphin-friendly physical activity and mentally healthy social engagement, and, in case you’ve been blinded by all those stats, the fact that it’s enormous fun!
We offer various levels of pickleball coaching and social play indoors at the Ladywell Centre. The next introductory course runs for three weeks from April 28 – book here.
High Intensity Interval Training is any workout that alternates short bursts of activity performed at high levels of intensity or power with periods of rest. It’s the exercise trend that has refused to go away – having crossed over from pro sports into general fitness in the 2010s it remains popular in gyms, online and at home, for its effectiveness, versatility and time-efficiency. Known to burn fat, improve cardiovascular health, increase endurance and build muscle, HIIT has now been found to have significant benefits for cognitive function in middle-aged and older adults, says a new study published in Nature.
HIIT is the perfect cross-training partner for tennis, which similarly alternates short, sometimes explosive bursts of movement with quick rests between points and games. Sessions can be configured to include related skills such as lateral movement – think ladders in cardio tennis. If you are new to HIIT, Joe Wicks has a wide variety of training videos, and there are classes at Lewisham’s Glass Mill centre.
… and Happy Easter! All you fair weather players can come out now 😁. We recommend a quick burst of cardio to get you in shape for summer (book here) – and don’t forget that our kids’ holiday camps start on 7 April.
We hope you enjoyed this month’s blog. If there are any subjects you’d like us to cover, let us know at ruth@southeastlondontennis.com.
Website by Dan Stevens