Hey guys, in today's video I'm going to show you some exercises you can do at
home that can potentially improve your tennis game. And for you guys that have
wooden rackets at home remember they used to come with a cover that would
only cover the head of the racket and it was perfect to put a book in the cover
and then close the cover that could serve as a weight to the racket. And this
is a great exercise. So many of you do not have wooden rackets and it's not a
problem. You simply grab a book and then you're gonna take painters tape and
you're gonna tape it around your racket head.
Now make sure you use painters tape
when you do this because once you pull it off it's not going to damage the book but
not only with one book my racket is a lot heavier and now I'm gonna practice some
shadow strokes. And now all the weight of the racket is gonna be in the head of
the racket it's something very interesting happens when we do our
shadow stroke. So when I do my forehand when the racket passes this point right
here the weight of the racket almost pulls it backwards by itself. So you get
a much larger finish than you normally would. So on the forehand, once I pass
this point see the racket whips back on its own and it's the same on the
two-handed backhand, as I pass this point see the weight of the racket pulls
it backwards quite extensively and on the one handed backhand, for all you
guys that have some limitations with range of motion a weight in the racket will
make you finish far further than you normally would. And on the serve it's very
similar so once the racket goes up into the trophy phase the weight of the
racket will make the racket drop on its own and so this is not a bad way to
practice your service motion. Simply go through your serving mechanics and
you will find that the racket will come in almost by itself. The weight of the racket
will pull it down. And you can also do shadow volleys. The racket is extremely
heavy and just doing the shadow movement maybe for thirty seconds to a minute and
you're gonna start feeling it in your arm and you can do it on your backhand
side as well. And you can do these same shadow strokes with movement that mimics
the actual movement on a tennis court. So in this case the red cone is
representing the middle of the baseline. I have the green cone on the forehand
side and I got the blue cone on the backhand side. Basically I'm gonna run to the green
cone. I'm gonna hit a forehand above the green cone come back to the middle with
side steps and then run to the blue cone hit a backhand and then come back to the
middle with side steps as well. And do this for 45 seconds.
And a variation to
this drill is to work on your change of direction. So you're going to go to the
forehand cone come back to the middle and then go again
to your forehand cone and then run to the backhand cone hit it back to the
middle and then back to the backhand cone. So you're gonna hit two shots on
the same cone.
And now you can put the cones a little bit closer to each other
and you can do the same drill on the volleys. Basically going from the
forehand volley to the backhand volley.
And now you can do the same volley drill with working on changing directions
at the net and you need an extra cone that's going to represent the middle.
You can also work on your closing volley and this is a really good drill.
Basically you need two cones in front of you
one for the forehand one for the backhand. Do not put a cone behind you or
you're gonna step on it and trip.
You can also work on your overhead. You need one
cone that you're gonna touch and you're going to back up in a sideways position
and you're gonna mimic an overhead. You can actually practice getting airborne
where you jump off your dominant leg and land on your non-dominant leg and when
you're done you come back and touch the cone. Do this about 10 to 15 times.
Guys while you're doing this you're working on two different things. You're
working on your movement at the same time your arm is working too because you
have that weight on your racket and it makes the finishing the strokes much
easier which happens to be a problem at the recreational level where players do
not always finish their strokes when they're put under pressure on the run.
Guys I remember Michael Jordan sitting during a time out and on the bench he was just
bouncing the ball with his hand and I think he was doing this to
strengthen his wrist. So I was thinking why not do this with the tennis racket
and we can strengthen our wrist as well. So basically you're gonna do this for
five to ten minutes and you're gonna start feeling it in your forearm and
your wrist. This is a great way to strengthen those areas. Now I'm doing this now in a
forehand grip and the interesting thing is if I change my grip to a continental
now I'm all of a sudden working a little different muscle groups and my arm is in
a different position. So you can do the forehand grip for a while and then you
change it to a continental grip and also you can do it with an eastern backhand
grip and work on the back of your hand.
And guys I can tell you that I'm doing
it only for a couple of minutes now and I can already feel it big time in my
forearm if you see here my forearm muscles are flexing and I'm already
getting tired. So a great way to stabilize your hand your
wrist and your forearm which will help various areas of your tennis game.
You can also do this drill while doing the wall sit. This is gonna work your
legs and your forearm and wrist at the same time. Now do this as long as you can
I can hold this position for about a minute that's when my legs start to collapse.
Guys you can also play against the wall at your house but be very
careful and do not use a real tennis ball because you're gonna miss hit it
it's gonna go through a window. So take one of these softballs and this is
pretty safe. You can also go into a lunge position and then try to hold this
position while volleying. This is gonna be difficult in a couple different ways.
You'll have to control the ball really well and then work your legs to
hold the lunge position.
Works the same way on the backhand. Get into a lunge
position and then try to control the backhand volley. You'll have to hit it
very accurately so you don't have to lose your position you're in.
How about working on your abs and volleying at the same time. Basically lift your feet off
the ground and volley in this position maybe for a minute or so and you're not
only gonna start feeling it in your forearm but it's gonna work your abs as well.
And there is a way to hit your strokes at full speed at home and all
you need is a backyard you need a couple of trees and you need a rope and a blanket
make sure you set up your blanket high enough so that when you hit the top part
of the blanket it should be above the level of the net but I want to stress
that this is an advanced drill only for players who know how to aim.
If you're not sure that you're gonna hit the blanket this is possibly gonna be
dangerous you're gonna start spraying balls all over the place.
After doing all these exercises I feel like I had a pretty good workout. So if
you do this every day and then hopefully when we soon get back on the tennis
courts you're gonna be ready to play and in shape. Be safe guys.