Tennis basic number two is positioning your body to the incoming tennis ball. Leverage and weight shift are the two mechanics directly relating to this.
To the beginning tennis player, young or old, it is difficult, for most, to understand the importance of aligning your body correctly, combining your weight shifting from back to front foot while swinging your arm and racket forward to contact the moving tennis ball.
While the kinesiology of largely open stance hitting by the professionals of today is highly effective, I have found the basic side-to-the-ball stance to be most teachable. It would include the following in an instructive sequence(starting with our first basic):
Basic #1 Racket back – pointing the head of the racket to the back of the court. You will note as your racket goes back your shoulders naturally turn as well.
Basic #2 Step with your foot (left for right handers-right for left handers) so you are now sideways to the net.
This sets up the body for a natural mechanical swing, combining both leverage and weight shifting while putting the stress on the large muscle groups, not the small. The tennis racket and tennis ball have weight associated with them, unlike badminton, which uses a light bird and racket. In tennis, the heavier racket and ball promotes using the larger muscle groups as much as possible. This can greatly reduce the possibility of injury (pulled ligaments,tendonitis,etc.). As we get older the tendons, ligaments, muscles lose much of their flexibility and strength, which also supports the use of these mechanics for the normal parks or club player.
The third basic, that of where, in relation to my body position, I will contact the ball, will be my next blog.
While this may appear so basic it doesn’t warrant being talked about, racket preparation, leverage and weight shift (movement) is indicative of the mental control a tennis player is exhibiting. A prime example of this in today’s market of players is, of course, Roger Federer. The application of movement on the tennis court he exhibits comes from not only natural athleticism, but from hours and hours of training with his ‘movement’ coach.
One year at the US Open, I asked a top junior player I was working with to pick out the top junior players (they play in their own tournament), not by looking at the seeds on the posted draw, but by watching their footwork. After making the rounds of all the courts we had picked the numbers 1,3 and 4 seeds, simply by watching their footwork and movement on the court.
How much thought and work have you put into your footwork and movement?
