Bushnell Velocity Speed Gun

Knowing how fast a player pitches or runs can instantly influence a coaching decision. Enter the Bushnell Velocity speed gun, which tells you the speed of an object within plus-or-minus 1 mile per hour. The Bushnell Velocity is outfitted with digital signal processing technology, which can measure the speed of a baseball from up to 90 feet, or a moving vehicle from as far as 1,500 feet. As a result, it's a breeze to take a player's 40 time or measure the speed of a tennis serve. The Velocity is also a breeze to use, with a point-and-shoot pistol grip that displays the fastest speed timed once the trigger is released.

Specifications:

• Baseball/softball/tennis range: 6 to 110 mph (90 feet away)
  
• Auto racing range: 6 to 200 mph (1,500 feet away)
  
• Accuracy: +/- 1 mph
  
• Dimensions: 4.3 by 8.4 by 6 inches (W x H x D)
  
• Weight: 19 ounces
  
• Warranty: 2 years

Price: $142.95

Click here to buy from Amazon

Controlling Your Emotions

I recently answered a great question about keeping your cool on the tennis court. Basically the question asked: “How can we keep from going crazy after stupid errors out on the court?”. I’d like to share my answer with the rest of you because I know many of you reading this can fall into the trap of getting negative while playing tennis!

This is a really good topic. So many of us tennis enthusiasts take our game very seriously, so seriously that any kind of failure or mistake becomes inexcusable. I battled with this while I was in college and wish that I had learned how to deal with it then, I had so many practices and matches that made me just miserable on the court, it was really a shame. Here are a few of my thoughts on the subject:

This is kind of an obvious thing, but something that I think many of us lose sight of since we take the sport and our improvement so seriously. None of us play professionally, whether or not we win is not going to have any bearing on our income, livelihood, success in life, or if our friends and family love us any more or less at the end of the day. It’s awesome that people love tennis so much that they take it seriously and really try their best to reach their full potential, but at the end of the day it’s just a game, something that we should all be doing for enjoyment! It sucks being so hard on yourself, it’s really not fun at all. Be realistic about the implications of your performance that day and lighten up a little bit. I wish I had started practicing this earlier in life.

Next I’d like to make the statement that emotional and physical reactions to both good and poor shots on the tennis court are habits, they’re practiced and learned whether you’re conscious of it or not. Somebody that I teach with recently had a great quote during a clinic: “If you practice being negative, you’ll get good at being negative. If you practice getting angry, you’ll get good at being angry. If you practice being positive, you’ll get good at being positive. What do you want to be good at on the court?”. Many of us fall intro the trap of thinking that when we hit a crappy shot we have to be disgusted with ourselves. Well, it’s your choice. You can make the choice between focusing on the negative emotions and feelings, and projecting those on the court, or to let those feelings pass and move on to the next point you have to play with a level head. I’ve recently started to make a habit out of smiling and making light of my errors, especially the really bad ones. Have a sense of humor about it. It’s not that I’m actually “ok” with screwing up, I’d obviously rather not, but heading out onto the court I know that errors will occur, and I want their occurrence to affect my game play as little as possible that day. Make a conscious effort to practice being positive on the court. It will improve your game.

Why will it improve your game? Because nobody plays well when they’re angry. Almost always getting angry and frustrating becomes a terrible cycle on the court. An error is made, your emotions go south, the next point is played with a poor attitude and another error is made furthering that crappy outlook on your game and the match. I’ve only ever known ONE player who honestly played better with a chip on his shoulder and angry at himself or his opponent, it’s an extremely, extremely rare trait. Break the cycle by forming new habits and having more positive emotions on the court.

Lastly, I’d like to reiterate something that I mentioned before: you’re going to make errors. It doesn’t matter how good you become, you will never leave a tennis court without making unforced errors. I’m not pointing this out to be negative or a pessimist, but rather to make sure that you all have a healthy expectation on yourselves out on the court. So many tennis players make those inevitable errors and immediately focus on how stupid they were to make a mistake, as if they’re above it and too good for such things. This kind of attitude will only set you up for frustration and a constant feeling of failure which is simply unrealistic. When errors happen immediately give yourself positive feedback, tell yourself specifically what you’re going to do better next time you get that same shot or are in that same situation on the court. It’s not the end of the world, errors are all just part of the game of tennis, nobody plays without them.

View the original article here

Wilson Ball Hopper Pickup 75

Great for gift giving and storage. Some assembly required (tool included)

Price: $29.99

Click here to buy from Amazon

Maximize Movement

Many people claim that the serve is the only shot in tennis that you control from begging to end – of which I won’t necessarily disagree with. However, each player can control their footwork and the aggressiveness of their movement. While a person’s energy will ebb and flow depending on the day, each person is still capable of giving 100% of what they can on every time they play.  It’s imperative to understand proper movement and the pressure it puts on your opponents.

Learning how to correctly move on a court is much more important than any single shot a player might hit. By being able to recognize where to move to on the court, and the speed it takes to move to the shot, puts pressure on your opponents to do more with their shots. Tennis is a sport dictated on time, those who maximize their time while taking the most away from their opponents will prosper.

Frequently, Club players cite difficulties with their mobility. However, that is only a small part of the equation. Even those players whose movement is above average often fall prey to bad footwork. One misstep per shot in a rally leads to off-balance play and limited shot making. More importantly, instead of dictating play the player becomes reactionary. Here are a few tips to help improve your movement on the court:

Split Step: Right before your opponent makes contact on every shot including the serve, you should take a small balanced hop. This action allows for quick movement in any direction.

Large Steps: Use large steps initially to get to the ball as fast as possible. The quicker a player can get to a shot, the easier it will be to take control.

Small Steps: As you approach the ball shorten up your steps. Using small steps allows for you to adjust to the ball and hit the ball in your contact zone all while staying balanced.

In conclusion, proper movement before and after your opponents hit the ball gives you an unbelievable advantage.

View the original article here

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.

View the original article here

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.

View the original article here

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.