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I filmed this one walking down a street in Malaysia, half-distracted, thinking out loud about coming home. I even apologised mid-video for rambling. But underneath the rambling is a question I get asked constantly, and it deserves a proper answer: what does a doubles training block actually look like when someone plans it on purpose?

Here is that answer, with the room a phone-in-hand clip never has.

First, the practical bit

I am back in the Philippines on 17 September. The weekend group session I had already arranged filled up before I could properly announce it, and enough people messaged me afterwards that I am opening more. The window runs from 17 September through roughly the first or second week of October. Format is once or twice a week, two to three hours a session, with exact timing settled once I know the numbers. Sessions are in Cubao.

If you want in, comment or DM me. Like I said in the video, if enough people show interest I will open up a more public session and we can figure out the schedule together. I am also taking a limited number of privates. And if you are waiting on gear you ordered from me, it is coming home on the same trip.

Every week has one focus, and the order is not random

The part I mentioned in passing in the clip is the part I actually care about. Each week targets one thing, and they stack deliberately. Here is the order I use and, more usefully, why it is that order.

1. Court coverage

Coverage comes first because everything else is built on it. If two players do not agree on who owns which patch of floor, then rotation is just two people guessing politely. Most club pairs lose more points to hesitation than to bad technique — both players move for the same shuttle, or neither does, and the rally ends without anyone being beaten by skill.

So week one is boring on purpose: side-by-side defensive shape, front-and-back attacking shape, and the handful of shots that force you to switch between them. No tactics yet. Just: where do you stand, and where does your partner stand.

2. Attacking rotation

Once the shape is stable you can start moving it. Rotation is what happens when the pair keeps the attack alive while swapping roles — the smasher drifts in, the net player rotates back, and nobody has to reset to a neutral base.

This is the week where most pairs discover their attack was never really an attack. They were hitting downward and then standing still, which hands the rally back on the third shot. Rotation is the difference between one smash and sustained pressure.

3. Service situations

Serve and return are trained third, not first, and people find that strange. My reasoning: the first three shots of a rally only matter if you can do something with the fourth. Drilling a lovely low serve is wasted if the pair collapses the moment the rally opens up.

By week three you already have shape and rotation, so now the serve becomes what it should be — a way of choosing which rally you are about to play, rather than a ritual you perform before the real point starts.

4. Combine it, then pressure test it

The last block puts all three together and then deliberately breaks them, using overload games: three versus two, two versus one, three versus one.

Why overload drills work

Uneven-numbers games are the most underrated training tool in doubles, and it is worth explaining what they actually do.

When you are the outnumbered side, you have less time and less court help than you will ever have in a real match. Decisions that felt comfortable at two-versus-two become impossible. That exposure is the point — you find out which habits survive when the margin disappears, and those are the only habits you can trust at match speed.

When you are on the overloaded side, the job flips: you have to keep quality high with more bodies in the way, which forces genuinely tight rotation instead of the loose approximation that gets you through a social game.

Run them in short bursts. Ninety seconds to two minutes, then rotate who is outnumbered. Any longer and the outnumbered pair stops problem-solving and starts just surviving, which teaches nothing.

The mistakes I see most in self-organised training

Three, over and over. First, treating a session as a collection of unrelated drills rather than a block with a theme — you cannot build anything in ninety-minute fragments that never connect. Second, going straight to match play because it is more fun, which just rehearses your existing habits at speed. Third, changing the focus every week based on whatever went badly in the last game, which means you never stay with anything long enough for it to stick.

Pick one focus. Stay with it for the whole week. Let it be slightly boring.

If you cannot make the sessions

You can run this yourself with a regular partner and one willing extra body. Four weeks, one focus per week, and finish every session with fifteen minutes of overload games. You do not need a coach to follow the sequence — you mostly need the discipline to not skip ahead to the fun part.

The takeaway

Coverage, then rotation, then service situations, then pressure. Each layer only works because the one under it is already solid, which is exactly why the order matters more than the individual drills.

I have learned a lot training out here, and there is still plenty I do not know. But as always, whatever I pick up abroad, I bring home to you lot.