Is one lesson a week enough?

Posted on July 17, 2026 by - Hot Shots

The science of skill

Is one lesson
a week enough?

The forgetting curve

In the 1880s, psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus mapped how quickly we lose new information when we don’t revisit it: memory drops steeply at first, then flattens out. His work was replicated with modern methods by Murre and Dros in 2015, and the pattern holds up remarkably well. Within a day, roughly two-thirds of newly learned material is gone. By day six, only about a quarter is left.

25% of what your child learns is roughly all that’s left six days later — if they don’t touch a racquet in between. And six days is almost exactly the gap between one weekly lesson and the next.
One session a week 2–3 sessions a week
Relearning zone 100% 75% 50% 25% 0% Lesson Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Days since the lesson ~33% by day 1 ~25% by day 6

Retention after a single lesson (orange) versus training two to three times a week (green). Each new session resets the curve before it crashes — so a well-spaced week never lets skill fall into the relearning zone. Percentages based on Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve as replicated by Murre & Dros (2015).

A forehand is a memory too

A stroke isn’t a fact, but it’s still something the brain and body have to store and retrieve — and motor skills follow the same curve. Decades of research on distributed practice point to the same fix: spreading sessions across several days produces better retention and better performance on later tests than long gaps or one big hit-out. In tennis specifically, studies comparing massed and spaced stroke practice land in the same place. Little and often wins.

The fix: train before the drop

Every time your child trains, the curve resets. The trick is to reset it before it bottoms out. Come back on day two or three, while the skill is still fresh, and each session starts from a higher point than the last. Skills stop leaking away and start stacking up.

  • One session a weekYour child spends most of the week near the bottom of the curve, relearning what they already had.
  • Two to three sessions a weekThe curve never gets the chance to crash. Each lesson builds on the last, and progress compounds.

Ready to stop starting over?

Adding a second or third weekly session is the single biggest change you can make to your junior’s game. Chat to our coaches about the right schedule for your child.

Book a second session

Sources & further reading

  1. Murre, J. M. J., & Dros, J. (2015). Replication and Analysis of Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0120644. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120644
  2. Ebbinghaus, H. (1885/1913). Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. Teachers College, Columbia University. (The original forgetting-curve study.)
  3. Shea, C. H., Lai, Q., Black, C., & Park, J.-H. (2000). Spacing practice sessions across days benefits the learning of motor skills. Human Movement Science, 19(5), 737–760. sciencedirect.com
  4. Fuentes-García, J. P., Pulido, S., Morales, N., & Menayo, R. (2022). Massed and distributed practice on learning the forehand shot in tennis. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching. journals.sagepub.com
  5. Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. (Meta-analysis of 184 studies confirming the spacing effect.)

Comments are closed.

© Baseline Tennis Coaching Academy 2026

Website created by RJ New Designs