Taking movement to the next level

I would like to address a question I was asked in reference to my last blog, “Movement is easy to understand, but tough to do right. It’s one thing to see it and know when each step type should be used, another to be able to feel it on court, and yet another to do it instinctively.

Any suggestions for going from one level of knowledge to the next?”

It’s correct to say that movement is easy to understand and tough to do right. This is in part because there are numerous steps to learn, correct patterns of movement, and more importantly, breaking through some of the counter-intuitive principles of associated moving correctly.

For instance, people understand that it’s faster to take large steps to the ball, but fail to realize that it’s not economical to take one last large step and effectively lunge to a ball. They don’t make the connection of the wasted energy and time it takes to do a lunge than take the extra 2-5 small steps to be on balance when they hit. I’ll often tell clients that if they feel like they can get to shot in 5 steps, to try to take 10. In essence, it forces them to break through their own psychological barrier.

Psychological barrier aside, people don’t understand how important maximizing time is while hitting. Many people from about a 3.0 level and up can hit decently when a ball is fed directly to them, but as soon as they are forced to move, their strokes diminish quickly. This is in large part due to people trying to time their movement to meet with the ball instead of getting there quickly and giving you the time to hit. If you’re timing is off by even the slightest margin, you’re going to be out of position for the rest of the point.

One of my old coaches used to tell me to just sprint to the area where the ball is going – I didn’t need to be exact, but to get to the area as fast as possible to set up for the shot. Since my game was and is based on foot speed, it instinctively made sense to me. Now as a coach, I try to teach the benefits of this mentality.

In terms of learning, it’s important to understand the movement, the patterns, the correct steps etc… but also the causation – what causes you to get out of position during a point.  Once you have a firm grasp on those aspects, just going out and doing it will really help you get a feel for what is correct and moving you from one level to the next. I remember when I first hit with Ian, Jason and the other guys on the team at Ferris – I had the strokes to hit with them, but I was nowhere close to being in the correct position to play points with them. I ended up feeling like a rag doll. After about a week or so of struggling to maintain my competitiveness, I started to be as aggressive as I could be with my feet. The subtly of being a passive observer to a conscious decision to be aggressive allowed me to play my game with them.

Am I advocating playing with better players? To an extent yes – they have a better grasp of the importance of time and from a movement perspective, it might mean taking a beating or two before you start to understand the subtleties as well.

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Good Tennis Instruction, Poorly Applied

So often I see and hear tennis instruction that just doesn’t make any sense. Recreational players can latch onto this poor information without knowing the difference and I think it’s really a shame. Below is a post on the ET forums from a new member, he gives a perfect example of what I’m talking about and then I answer his question!

“The other day I was exploring one tennis website and came across the explanation of Mogul move:

“Contact Move: The body becomes elevated after the hit where the hips shift powerfully sideways and both feet turn and finish pointing in the direction of the target. Again, weight moves sideways after contact and spinning or rotating the hips will cause the ball to be dumped into the net. Hit off a moving unstable stance, the secret to the Mogul Move is staying down throughout the shot instead of jumping or lifting on contact. ”

So how to do it? Only hips should move sideways but the weight should not?

This move is mostly used for a wide forehand, which is a headache for me. I’d really like to master it. In my practice, more often than not, I either dump the ball into net or hit the ball very long. Can someone explain to me why weight moving sideways and rotating hips will cause the ball to be dumped into the net?”

“You’re describing things that I often read online, things that just don’t make any sense. I think you’re asking a really good question: why will moving your weight sideways while rotating your hips cause the ball to go into the net? This is a perfect example of somebody online trying to teach something pretty advanced to recreational players, and claiming that it will fix a problem that is much, much more fundamental in nature.

Any groundstroke will only really hit the net for one of three reasons:

1. The racket face is too closed at contact, the strings are facing down towards the court.

2. The racket didn’t lift the ball enough, it didn’t start low enough before contact, or didn’t finish high enough after contact. The swing was too straight, or maybe even downwards.

3. The ball hit off the frame, poor contact, it didn’t travel as it should have.

That’s it. Put me in any position on the court, with my feet in any stance, my momentum traveling any direction, my hips turning either direction, using any grip, and I can make the shot. Period. Now, any of those things may cause good technique to become more difficult, and can INDIRECTLY cause you to miss a shot by throwing you into poor mechanics, but which direction your hips are turning, and which direction your weight is moving has nothing to do with the direction that the ball travels.

Is the footwork described a good thing, can it improve your game and be beneficial? Yes, absolutely, I’m not knocking the idea of the mogul move, or saying that it’s wrong. All I’m saying here is that you should be careful what results you’re expecting to get out of instruction like this, and saying that doing a mogul move correctly or incorrectly will either cause you to make or miss forehands is just plain wrong.”

Next time you read tennis instruction online simply ask yourself “does this make sense?”. If you can’t answer “yes” then leave it alone, the vast majority of differences between different levels of tennis players are the basic, fundamental parts of the game. Anything more complicated than that shouldn’t be paid attention to most of the time.

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Tips for beginners tennis

Without the first learning movement and developing skills for your success, you should take lessons in the databases of tennis for beginners. Whatever the talented how can you be, regularly practise is the only way to stay in shape and build technique tennis.

-For example:

-Here are two basic types of stroke for people just learning the game:

1. Groundstrokes:

(a) tennis player (or student) learning for beginners must groundstrokes are very important to maîtriser.Un groundstroke begins with a mild, short-term backswing.

(b) an option for you would also use a few shortened on club.

(c) use the regular follow-up.

(d) extend the backswing at a slow pace.

(e) drag the handle to the handle.

(f) souvenir, in Basic for beginners, that you first drop power tennis!Then, make your food short drop is fine and finally, after falling short power, you will supply your racket.

(g) of course, you must start the inside line service - and you can return to the pace of increase.Begin slowly and generally try to finish with a run.

2 Overheads:

(a) Snowshoeing must start at the point of contact, and once more slowly, a plue swing can be presented.

1. The student should be instructed to stay close to the net - and take his time, then start to go back.

2. Be sure to begin your students with a right of incredibly soft-stream of snowshoeing.

3. You can show them some higher flow at first - but do not too much at once.

4. In particular for young children, keep your brief and productive lessons as possible.Attention span a child does not take too many longtemps.Et you do not want to fail as trainer by losing attention votre.Sessions with young students student cannot exceed 30 minutes in the fois.Souvent, it is good to develop lessons several times a week.

If a student is having trouble with exercises - make and don't forget to work with individual students at their own levels of compétences.Tennis for beginners is sometimes more challenging with some people than others.

Similarly, if your students seems to be "natural" and will have no problem with his or her exercises - challenge the more - first more advanced exercises.

Always work on a technical says, make sure that your student has the exact shape and bodylines and uses movements good! about lessons, your plans always depends on what students or students are able to turn faire.Par, establishing a comprehensive program of tennis for beginners is almost a waste of your time - because you never know what kind of talent will be confronted with.

Anne Clarke written numerous articles for Web sites about gardening, parenting, entertainment, education and maison.Son background decoration includes education and the jardinage.Pour more articles for tennis and tennis and lines education guidelines, please visit the tennis for beginners.

Tennis Video 101

Digital video has revolutionized so many aspects of our lives in the past decade, including how we learn and interact as tennis enthusiasts. It wasn’t so long ago that the only way we could view video of tennis players was either on TV or by checking out tapes at your local library. Nationally recognized tennis pros and coaches would often times come out with instructional videos as well which you could purchase from the backs of magazines or at tennis conventions.

These days absolutely anybody with an entry level camera, entry level computer, and connection to the internet can become a star on the tennis court. Below I’ve outlined the top 5 components of creating your own videos so that you can receive the best feedback and instruction possible. Follow these instructions and your videos will be a pleasure to watch instead of a pain.

Digital video doesn’t cost an arm and a leg anymore. In fact, you can now get full HD quality video right to your computer screen for less than $200. Hands down my favorite way of shooting high quality digital video on the cheap is the Flip UltraHD camera. This camera fits completely in one hand, takes two hours of HD quality video, and can be had for as little as $155. For examples of the video quality coming from this camera check out the point play analysis shown in the Video section of Essential Tennis.

The Flip Cam isn’t the only option for HD quality video at a cheap price. Take a little around Amazon.com and you’ll be surprised how many different companies are jumping on board to give us tennis players a wide variety of hardware.

Sounds like a no brain-er, right? Well believe it or not people submit videos of themselves to me that were shot without the use of a tripod all the time. Do your viewers a favor and make a small investment in one of these incredibly useful devices, otherwise you’ll have myself and other tennis enthusiasts reaching for the motion sickness meds faster than you can say “action!”. This does not have to cost a lot of money! People are always surprised when I tell them that they can pick up a tripod to do the job for under $20, but it’s true. Here’s a link to a full sized tripod on Amazon that costs only $16 with shipping included. A favorite of mine is also the “Gorillapod” mini tripod that has flexible arms to wrap around things like a fence or net post. This is really cool when combined with my little FlipCam, especially since it only costs $17 on Amazon.

Your video camera is able to “see” a certain amount of space on the court and where you place yourself within that space is your framing. I often times see stroke videos where the subject is literally on the other side of the court, barely taking up any space in the frame. This makes it extremely tough to pick out technique keys and give good feedback to players. On the other hand, if you’re looking for feedback on strategy and point play you want to be able to see as much of the court as possible, which means both players are going to take up much less room in the frame. It totally depends on what you’re trying to get information on, strokes or point play. Do your viewers a favor and put a lot of thought into setting up your camera and tripod properly so that everybody can clearly see what you’re trying to show them!

Stroke technique videos: fill the frame as much as possible without leaving it constantly. Point play videos: place the camera to see as much of the court as possible. At the top of the back fence pointing down is definitely the best.

One more thing about framing your shot for stroke technique. In my opinion the two most useful angles to view tennis strokes from are either directly to the side of the player (90 degrees to the right or left) or directly behind the player looking forwards towards the net. Pointing your camera towards you from the other side of the net or skewed off to the side at a random angle makes it a bit more difficult to give the best technical feedback possible.

Have you thought about editing your technique or point play videos? I’m not talking about color correction, chroma key, or anything else fancy like that. What I suggest is simply cutting around your most important content to make it easy for your audience to watch. When editing out all of the dead time in a typical 6-4 set there’s actually only 6-10 minutes of actual play time. Not only will it be that much easier and faster to watch, but when all of the points are back to back it’s much easier to pick out patterns in the match play without all of the time searching for balls and taking water breaks in between. Just like tripods and cameras, it’s not necessary to spend a lot of money to get this done. In MacOS iMovie is definitely the way to go, very easy to use and included with the operating system. If you’re a Windows user then a great free option is Windows Movie Maker.

Obviously YouTube is the most popular way to put your videos up for the world to see. Some tennis players don’t want their content to be available for just anybody to see, however. Within YouTube are a vast array of privacy settings, including ways to create private links that only certain people can access. It’s totally up to you how public or private your videos will be. Keep in mind that YouTube limits the length of your uploads to only 10 minutes, and file sizes have to be within 2gigs. Alternatives to YouTube include blip.tv, Vimeo.com, and Viddler.com.

Once your videos are published to a video hosting web site make sure to drop by the Forums at Essential Tennis to receive free feedback from certified tennis professionals!

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Overhead Footwork and the Three Step Drop

Moving backwards is not something that us humans do very naturally. This makes sense of course since our bodies are designed to move forward. What does this mean for our tennis games? Moving back to cover a good lob is very often a huge weakness for tennis players, especially doubles players who spend a ton of their time up at the net. In my experience very few recreational level players move correctly when trying to get back towards the baseline for an overhead and this causes lots of problems when even a relatively easy lob gets hit up into the air. Don’t be this person! The lob is the highest, slowest, most defensive shot in tennis, not something that you should be fearful of or afraid to hit. Hopefully this quick article will give you a good idea of how to best move in a backwards direction to cover even the best lob and give you more confidence when you’re up at the net.

I want you guys to check out this youtube video of Jay Cutler demonstrating a “three step drop”. The three step drop is a series of steps used by high level football quarterbacks to get themselves off the line of scrimmage quickly and efficiently. The quarterback makes this move to give himself some space to work with and also to buy some time between himself and the oncoming defenders trying to make his life miserable. This guy is a professional athlete, he definitely knows how to move, even backwards away from his own end zone. Obviously his tips on where to hold the ball aren’t applicable to us, but I want you to pay very close attention to what he says about his feet and how he moves them.

Jay begins in essentially a “ready position”. Tennis players should be in a little bit wider of a stance than he demonstrated but everything else is identical: knees bent, facing forwards, and hands in front. From this position he turns himself to the side by bringing his right foot back around his left to put himself into a “square” or “neutral” stance. This is absolutely critical and where things break down for players who are poor at moving back for overheads. Not only does turning to the side give you a much wider base to move back from with your feet but it puts your body in a strong position to hit an overhead from as well. Imagine trying to hit an effective serve in a stance that starts you off facing the net head on, it just doesn’t make sense from a technique perspective.

From this sideways position Jay uses two different types of steps: a cross over step and a shuffle step. In my opinion as long as you get sideways to the net and lead with your right foot either type of step is perfectly fine to get yourself back underneath a deep lob. The cross over step will definitely get you back more quickly than only using a side shuffle, but it definitely takes some more coordination and athleticism to use. Try them both out, as well as combinations of each to see what feels most natural to move you back towards the baseline. When I get an easy lob I only use side shuffles to make adjustments while turned to the side, on a tougher lob that I’m really having to work for I’ll use one or two cross over steps at the most and then shuffle steps from there, just like Cutler did in his demonstration.

Check out the image at the top of this article of Favre and Rodgers as well (can you tell who my favorite football team is?). The images of both players show them in the middle of a cross over step. While their shoulders are perpendicular to the line of scrimmage their hips are actually facing back towards the opposing end zone. This is why they’re able to get back off the line so quickly, it’s almost like running backwards, but with their upper body sideways ready to throw. As I said earlier this takes a lot more athleticism and coordination, but definitely give it a shot. Moving back this way for an overhead is the ultimate in speed and balance.

Get out there on the court and practice this! With some time and repetition you’ll be moving back more quickly and in better balance in no time.

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Tennis-tips for learning tennis - depth is King

Focus on the depth

Keep the ball in the back Court is really your No 1 weapon at this stage of your career.

As the former French Open Champ & Player tennis world no. 2 Michael Chang said "depth is King".

And he should know, as he retained only the top ranking and played against Wimbledon and US Open tennis immortals Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras.

It was also really the precursor to some of the major players players today as Rafa Nadal.

Anyway, what this trick tennis can do for you in the real world tennis is (and this is where it really counts)-

It will keep you at the point of hitting more and is that we all know at this stage, keeping many hits in court is not always easy.

Will ask for your opponent to knock an extra 1 or 2 shots each point that they may feel uncomfortable with and will often lead to mistakes.

Remember what is said in the rules of tennis - "winner of the point is the last person to hit the ball in court" - consistent depth will help you to be this person.

To help achieve this, use the large rectangle formed by the line of service, line basis and singles sidelines as your target.

Spend 5 minutes before your next practice/lesson etc and look over the net and keep watch as you walk towards it referencing.

Dropping a few balls for yourself and strike them over the net to get the ball in this "back box".

You can even try to add in this simple rating system in order to add a little fun and pressure.

Give you yourself 5 points if your decision-making exceeded and land a service dialogs.

Assign you yourself 10 points if your decision-making exceeded and land in the rear area (the rectangle we discussed previously).

You score zero if the ball does not go on the net.

You also mark zero if the ball is going too deep and filed beyond the baseline thus as if it is too broad and fails in the intended or completely out of court.

Keep a note of your scores for say 10 plans and see how long does it take to regularly reach 100!

As your scores go up, this will be your game.

Tip

The largest error that most players at this level is that they hit the ball too low and therefore possibly in the net or too short if they take it.

Your ball when struck the baseline must be approximately twice the height of the net it exceeds.

As you hit the shot with some topspin, the ball should fall comfortably into the Court on the other side of the net.

Practicing this drill (on forehand and BACKHAND), with a partner or on your own will pay large dividends for you in the future as it will teach you on how to hit the ball and where it lands.

Try it today.

Instantly Improve Your Tennis Serve With These 7 Simple Tips

1) Know Your Optimum Hitting Zone
Stand close to and facing the fence on a tennis court. Reach up with your tennis racquet to the fence with maximum arm extension and note where the racquet touches the fence. This is roughly where your arm and racquet should be reaching towards when you hit the ball.

2) Don't 'Toss the Ball' - Lift the Ball!
I believe that many people get confused with the term 'toss the ball'! A much better way to think is of 'lifting the ball' towards the hit zone.

Hold the ball by forming a tripod with your thumb and first two fingers, palm facing upwards and use a very light grip. Keeping the arm as relaxed and straight as possible, raise the arm upwards towards your hit zone, releasing the ball in front and to the right of you (for right handers) by opening the 'tripod'. A good image to think of for proper ball release is of your first 3 fingers looking like a flower opening its petals. The ball should be getting to just above, or a maximum of one foot above, your optimum hitting zone found out from tip 1 above. You can experiment with the ball height to find what suits your serving rhythm.

3) Get a Consistent Ball Toss
When you find your optimum hit zone, you need to be able to consistently put the ball in this spot, which will in turn improve your serves consistency.

When you know where the ball should be placed for your optimum hit point, toss the ball to that point and let the ball land in front of you, noting where the ball lands. Place your racquet on the ground where the ball landed and use your ball toss to get the ball to consistently land on the racquet.

4) Keep Your Toss/Lifting Arm Extended for as Long As Possible When You Release the Ball
This really does help you reach for the ball and will reduce the amount of times that you put the ball into the net.

5) Back Scratch
To get maximum power you need to feel like you are throwing the racquet from the middle of your back towards the optimum hit zone. To practice this, start your serve by having the racquet placed as if you were scratching the right hand side of your back with the racquet (for right handers). The racquet tip will be pointing towards the floor at this point

6) Throw the Racquet at the Ball!
From the back scratch position it should feel like you are throwing the racquet at the ball. If you have an old racquet that you no longer use then you can get this feeling and practice it by throwing your old racquet from the 'back scratch position' towards the hit zone and letting the racquet go! The racquet should fly upwards and land some distance away from you. Apparently this is one of the methods that the Williams sisters use to practice their serve technique!

SAFETY NOTE: please ensure that nobody is close to you that may be hit by your flying racquet!

7) Check that You Have a Good Finish Position
To get maximum power you need to have good racquet head speed. If you follow the steps above then when the stroke finishes the racquet should be stopping at your left hand side, with your right hand finishing up in the middle of your left thigh (for right handers). Don't try to force this follow through, your finish position should be as a result of throwing the racquet at the ball but if you do naturally end up in this position then it is a good sign that you have a proper swing path. If you don't end up in this position, check you are doing the tips outlined above correctly. If you are doing those correctly then try to visualise your hand finishing in the middle of your left thigh. That should get you finishing your service motion properly.

A Final Word on the Service Grip
You should also try to develop hitting your serve with a 'continental grip' (also sometimes called a 'chopper grip') but that is not an instant tip so please feel free to look up information about this grip and try it out. If you don't currently use this grip and want to give it a try then practice it gradually, so as not to cause any injuries. If in doubt about this grip then seek the assistance of a professional tennis coach who can help you with this!

Remember, whilst these tips can lead to instant improvement, if you want to also see medium and longer term results then please keep practicing these tips. Your whole game will thank you for it and you will really look forward to serving in any situation!

To get more tips, news and advice from Ian Clark visit http://www.simplytennisinformation.com You'll also get a FREE REPORT called 7 Simple Tennis Tips that will Instantly Improve Your Game.

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