Hi, it's Nadim for Online Tennis Instruction. Today I'm going to show you
an exercise where you really can see the difference between proper early preparation
in live ball scenarios, and when the preparation with the split step, the unit
turn and the racket take back is too late!
So let's take a look at it in real action. Ok we're going to look at early
preparation which is properly done right when he makes contact, I get into my
split-step and then my unit turn. I'm early prepared!
Ok that's barely it. I have no hesitation and I have absolutely no stress when I
have to hit the ball.
Now let's take a look at that in super slow motion.
I'm sure that you have heard coaches and other people say "prepare earlier"
"take your racket back earlier" and in my experience many players are very
confused by these statements. Now what we want to reference our preparation to is
the contact point when the other person on the other side or the ball machine
releases the ball. What happens at that moment is we initiate our split-step,
you can see I'm actually initiating it right before he makes contact.
So you will see right here
he makes contact and at that time i'm in the air. Now watch my movement after I
realize that the ball is coming to my forehand. So we're talking a split second
right here. The ball is about to leave his racket and you can already see
how I am initiating a movement as I come back down after the split-step and now
the split-step is completed, you can see I'm already preparing, my shoulders are
already moving. The ball at this point right here is passing the
net and you can see my posture is already going into the correct direction.
This is what i mean by early preparation! You want to see that you're tracking the
ball over your non-dominant arm. So the ball is
traveling for quite a bit longer. I'm still not moving my arms as you can see.
I have used my unit turn but I'm still not really using my arms which is very
important to point out. Only after the ball is about to drop, you can
see that my
arm is going down! I'm not really going back much further but as the ball is
rising, I have more than enough time to just drop the racket under the ball and
then have a 'low to high' swing path to contact.
I don't have a very big take back. You can see the racket is continuously on the
right side of my body.
Now i have no rush in making contact with the ball. In comparison
to that let's take a look when i exaggerate it, but it does look like this a
lot of times when i watch players play. now I still have the split-step.
Although it's a little bit shorter. I now stop my movement and what you can
see is the ball is traveling but there is no unit turn at this point. Nothing has
really happened. You can see i'm still facing the ball with my chin over my
chest, rather than my non-dominant arm/shoulder.
So I'm tracking the ball in a open position and depending on the pace of
the ball now I'm at the mercy of the ball. If I'm not prepared at this
point the ball comes in fast, deep or both....
then i will be in trouble and most likely not be able to generate loose
power, be late on the ball, not get under the ball and over use my arm
rather than my body. So you can see the ball is about to bounce and only
now I start the turn vs before I was long gone
in this position already you could clearly see my left arm coming out.
Now it all becomes an arm movement. My shoulders are barely doing
anything. It's all an arm movement and my swing in turn becomes much bigger and I
can't possibly generate as much power also because you can see right here
my swing path to contact from this position out to the ball is rather linear.
So making sure that when you think of the unit turn and early preparation....
it is your body that does the talking not your arm!
So now after watching it in super slow motion and clearly seeing the difference
between proper early preparation and late preparation.
I hope you have a visual that you can take on to the court with you next time
and when your coach references "early preparation", "prepare early", "you're late"...
You now have a visual that you can actually go back to and say okay this is
what my coach means when he says "You're late on your preparation"
So go out next time when you play, have fun improving
and let me know how you do!