good how many times do you play this week two times one time with the wall only nice
you're still going on the wall i'm proud of you i like the wall the wall is fantastic good music
oh you play with music no i don't recommend no no you know why i don't recommend music this is so
funny like when i used to play college tennis some teams would have music during practice
and i always hated that and our coach thankfully never used music
and i would get so distracted when we would go uh to away matches and would warm up and they would
blast music here's why i don't like music for tennis because tennis is such an intuitive game
when you're listening to music you get distracted you start thinking about the music yes it can be
inspirational sometimes listening to music but it doesn't really work for tennis in tennis you
really gotta concentrate you gotta focus you know that's why everybody has to be quiet for example
in the stands when players play it's a sport where you really have to concentrate and focus
and you don't want noise coming in for the outside therefore next time do not use headphones when
maybe the best forehand of your life but nick i have a question about like directions
go ahead when the ball is going across the court sometimes i feel like the opponent is
standing and we are rallying and i want it to be easy for the partner yeah so when i do it
the ball is not going the way i want all the time and especially if he is like when she is outside
of that corner okay i got you i mean does it mean i have to turn my body a little bit more away so
the sense so i finished not in the middle okay that's a really really good question so you know
like right now at this stage of your game when you're playing with other people are you rallying
like mostly through the middle yeah okay but i want to be able to like when the person went
this way i wanted to be easy for him and return the ball to the close proximity where he right so
here's the deal with uh directional control if you rally with someone through the middle and you're
hitting it right to that person you actually are working on directional control so it's not so
easy to get the ball right down the center every time so if you master that skill if you can hit
the ball right down the center that means that you can hit it anywhere on the court that's number one
okay so don't worry that you're rallying uh through the middle of the court you are working on
directional control by doing that now you notice how sometimes when we rally when we do drills
i will stand in the corners and i'll have you hit to me so i did that very early on i was very
sneaky about that this was maybe our third or fourth session i would already start sneaking i
didn't tell you anything right i would just slide to the corner and you would start hitting to me
and that's where you learned how to let's say aim because here's the problem with aiming if
you are literally aiming with the racket towards the target you're doing yourself a big disservice
because you're slowing down at the moment of contact and you are steering the ball pushing
it guiding it towards the target and what you want to do instead is make a small change in
the angle of the racket face at the moment of contact so the fascinating thing about tennis is
that this angle of the racket face change is so miniscule that you do this movement intuitively
and you already know how to do it you're not aware that you know how to do it but you already know
how to aim intuitively and we learned that very early on i'm going to prove it to you right now
okay anna i'm going to prove to you now that you already know how to aim so these i want
you to hit right through the middle of the court down the center here we go
very nice very nice
okay now go to the left which is basically cross court i want you to hit your forehand to the left
okay good another one okay now hit your forehand to the right
which is inside out you're gonna hit the forehand to the right here we go good
okay it's okay if you miss i'm gonna hit it to the right
all right now how did you do that you have no idea right you're brilliant you are brilliant
for sure you are brilliant but you have no idea in other words there was no conscious changing
in the angle of the racket face of contact you didn't think of anything you just hit the ball
i told you where to go and you just went there i feel like you tricked me i didn't try no i have
no idea how i did it well like i told you the way directional control works is the racket angle of
the racket face of contact so if i hold my racket like this if it's like let's say aligned with the
baseline like this it's completely parallel to the baseline if you hit that ball it's going to go
right down the middle now we're assuming that we're going to have the same finish on all strokes
okay if we turn the racket just slightly over this way look just a slight angle change now that ball
is going to go cross-court because over the length of the court the angle doesn't have to be that big
yeah so we're talking about a small little change so the important thing is your question when you
ask me how do i aim is just to tell yourself where you're going to go and do not do what most
rec players do is by literally aiming let me show you so most players will aim by going towards the
target with the with the racket so when they go cross-court it will go cross-court with
the racquet down the middle that will go down the middle with the racket and inside out they will go
towards the target with the racket so they're literally steering the ball towards the target
now what that is it's an inferior forehand because you're losing a lot of acceleration you're slowing
down the moment of contact and you're losing a lot of speed because of that so you should do instead
is what you just demonstrated here is by simply telling yourself i'm gonna hit the forehand down
the middle cross-court inside out and just do it because you already know how to do it and don't
change a single thing ana so are you more clear now on how to aim in tennis yeah you're not gonna
you're not concerned about it anymore no you don't be concerned just trust in your guts trust in your
guts you already know how to do it and your concern initially was like hitting it right
to the person sometimes you might not be able to hit it to them because of other technical flaws
it's not the fact that you can't aim maybe you're hitting the ball late your timing is off maybe
you're you're doing a mishit you're moving your wrist that contact could be many different things
but you should definitely not concern yourself with trying to aim and spend any thoughts
about that at all okay i decided i just want to hit inside of the court and let them run around
yeah and there's absolutely nothing more good well listen there's absolutely nothing wrong with
hitting right to the person down the middle like i said this is going to train you to
direct the balls to other parts of the court as well the middle is my bread and butter anyways
there's nothing wrong with the middle yeah do you know how the pros warm up have you ever been to
a tournament yes professional tournament where in delrey right yes if you see how they warm up
they warm up down the middle yeah yeah and one thing you can do which is good is like you go half
court so you can go from like from here to here so have your partner stand over there on that side
and you guys rally cross court there's something you can do you know as an addition to that okay
and i'm going to test you now see if you know how to aim with the incoming ball go cross-court
okay cross-court again
cross-court again get a little more angle on it all right now go down the line
down the line again
all right hit it cross-court you got a little too jammed there cross court again
and match point your choice you call it where you going cross court
absolutely perfect it's okay listen when i was giving you a little bit of pressure
there that's why your forehead was a little bit tight that's normal but uh see how easy
aiming is you already know how to do it therefore don't worry about it good job