Hey everyone, Simon here with Top Tennis Training,
and in this video I want to help you to become a more consistent tennis player in just 10 minutes.
Now step one to becoming a more consistent player is having the right mindset.
If you're someone who steps out onto the court, this could be for practice
or a real match, if you have the goal of hitting a lot of winners, going for the lines,
hitting perfect shots, you're going to struggle in becoming consistent day in and day out.
Yes you'll have some really great days where you play amazing tennis
and you beat most of the players you compete against but you'll also have really bad days
where you're losing to players that you should be beating and you'll have a lot of days in between
both if your mindset when you step out onto the court is i want to make every single ball
straight away the way you approach the game will change drastically
instead of going for winners and then costing yourself by making a lot of unforced errors you'll
play that high percentage shot the one that you know you can make 10 out of 10 times and by having
that mindset you eliminate a lot of those unforced errors right away just because you have that
tunnel vision of i want to make every single ball it doesn't matter how i might have to slice the
ball i might have to hit the ball with a lot of net clearance a moon ball it doesn't matter what
i do i'm going to make that ball and i'm going to force the other player to miss before i miss
now by having that mindset you'll straight away become a more consistent tennis player
now before we get any deeper into the lesson if you're serious about improving your tennis
then make sure you have subscribed to the channel but also you turn on that notification bell
so that youtube will let you know whenever we release a new lesson step two to becoming a more
consistent player is getting rid of this feeling that you have to be perfect when you play tennis
we often step out onto the court we have visions of federer playing we have visions of nadal
of djokovic all our favorite players we imagine how they play the game and we try to copy them
we try to emulate them and this forces us into missing a lot of shots because we're
trying to be perfect we're going for that perfect forehand we're going for that perfect backhand
we feel like we have to play better than we actually do often we lose tennis matches
because we're trying to play two or three levels above our own level the one that we know we can
be consistent at and once you get rid of this feeling of i have to be perfect it will free up
your body it will free up your mind to actually improvise and hit shots that might look a little
bit unorthodox but will still help you to get the ball back in court at the end of the day the main
goal in tennis is to keep the ball in play more than your opponent does and if you can do that on
a daily basis you'll be a very very hard player to beat so now that you have the right mindset you're
ready to move on to more of the technical side of being a consistent tennis player now when we look
at the tennis court we have two main obstacles number one is that net we have to get the ball
over the net in order for us to be consistent and number two we have to get the ball to dip
before the lines so the first thing we want to do is eliminate the net by having good net clearance
if you think about a player like nadal someone who is famous for being so consistent
what does he do when he's playing tennis he eliminates the net by lifting the ball
if we can eliminate the net we're taking that first obstacle out of our game and will become
a much more consistent player right away so you should almost feel like the net doesn't exist
because you're eliminating it by having good net clearance now if you imagine a rainbow
that kind of arc if we can create this kind of shape when we're hitting from the baseline will
become straight away more consistent because we're eliminating that net now in order to lift
that ball i have two main options the first one is opening the strings which will help me hit under
that ball and lift it so if i open my strings and i aim for the bottom of that ball now i can lift
the ball really high with just a little dink the trouble with this is it becomes quite easy for the
opponent to attack but you can use this if you're in trouble let's say you're on the wide bowl let's
say you're on the full run you can still open the strings just to clear the net and make sure
that you get the ball back and court but the more aggressive option and the one we should be aiming
for more often than not is to brush that ball from low to high which will also produce that top spin
so the first obstacle is the net of course and the second one is getting it to dip before the lines
so by using good amounts of topspin we'll get the ball to dip before the lines
so i'm brushing up the back of the ball and i'm using that low to high swing
which will help me to then get that neck clearance and the ball to dip before the lines
so aggressive spin a lot of margin and i feel like i can make 100 balls out of 100 if i hit
the shot in that kind of way now something else that will help you to produce more spin
is that leg drive so making sure that you get under the ball with your legs it just doesn't
matter the stance it could be the neutral the open or the semi-open you're trying to sit down
prior to actually making contact so by loading the legs i'm now lower than that point of contact
i can then brush up i can explode up into the bowl using that ground force and i'm using that
loading and unloading to create that low to high swing with my legs along with the racket the next
step in becoming a more consistent tennis player is your tactical intentions when you're actually
playing so if we go back to the two main obstacles we have the net and we have getting the ball to
dip before the lines if i'm someone who plays down the line a lot what happens is by going down the
line i'm going over the highest part of the net because the middle of the the net is the lowest
point but i'm also heading into the least amount of space so if i miss time that down the line
shot just a little bit a fraction late the ball is going to go into the sidelines and i make an error
but if i hit around 80 percent of my shots cross court what happens is i'm heading over
the lowest part of the net i'm also going into the most amount of space
so if i hit the ball slightly late the ball still goes in the court
it just goes in the middle so my margin is much greater when i hit cross court
not to mention also the recovery when you're going down the line you have a lot more space to
recover to get into a good position but if you go cross-court your recovery is then much less
so cross-court is the higher percentage shot in tennis and this is why we should aim
around 80 percent of our shots cross court so next time you play tennis practice going cross court
and you'll see how much more consistent you'll be just by that slight adjustment
another way for you to become a more consistent player is to use a method of finding the ball
and then accelerate often we make errors because we're speeding up too quickly before that point of
contact and what happens is we lose control of the racket angle at a point of contact now the
most important part of any tennis stroke is that contact point i can do everything perfect in the
backswing i can look like roger federer but if my contact point is wrong if my strings open up
too much or if my strings are close to the ground if the angle isn't right the ball isn't going to
go in so i can be perfect here and do that and the ball goes into the ground and on the flip
side of that i can do everything wrong in the preparation i can make a crazy swing like this
but if my contact point's right i can still get the ball in so find the ball and then accelerate
will help you to really eliminate those unforced errors because you'll have much cleaner contact
points so next time you play find that contact point don't feel like you have to rush this swing
or speed up too quick feel like you're finding that ball and then accelerating
find the ball then accelerate if you can do this you'll see a difference right away in
that quality of your contact point and you eliminate a lot of those unforced errors
the next step to becoming more consistent is your targets where are you actually aiming
within that cross-court or down the line exchange now you might be hitting cross-court a lot
and still missing but where are you aiming when you go cross court so if i'm aiming for this green
coin i'm aiming for the corners i'm still going to miss a lot of shots because my margin is very slim
it's still a high risk shot even though it's cross caught but if i aim for this red cone which is
five feet from the baseline and five feet from the single sideline that will make a
lot of margin for my shots now so creating those margins going for those bigger targets
feeling like you're eliminating the lines by not going for them you don't have to hit the lines to
hit a great shot this kind of shot with a lot of spin and a lot of neck clearance will bounce here
but push the player way behind the baseline if i hit it correctly so if i hit my shoulder around
this red cone it's still a very good shot so a brief overview firstly we have the mind
having the right mindset stepping out onto the court with one goal in mind which is to
make every single ball step two is eliminating that feeling that you have to hit perfect shots
getting rid of that feeling like i have to hit everything perfectly to be a good tennis player
your goal is now i want to make every single ball however it looks then we're going to eliminate
the net by lifting the ball with a lot of net clearance and we'll also eliminate the lines
by hitting with good top spin then we're going to go cross court 80 of the time because this is the
higher percentage shot compared to down the line then we're going to find the ball and accelerate
so instead of accelerating too early we're finding that ball and then speeding up the racket so
slow to fast and then we also have aiming for bigger targets so there you have it i hope you've
enjoyed the video and i hope this will help you to become a more consistent tennis player if you've
enjoyed the video make sure you click the like button subscribe to the channel as well of course
and turn on that notification bell now if there's any lessons you'd like to see from us in the near
future leave them in the comment section and also share this video with anyone who would
benefit from watching it this might be your training partner someone who you want to go
out and work on being consistent with now they have to be on the same page as you so make sure
you send it to them they watch this video and you're both training with the same goal in mind
signing off simon from ttt all the best and see you soon guys
so if my goal is to hit winners and hit the ball quite flat it's it's going to be very hard for me
to become consistent day in and day out but if i'm stepping out onto the court and i'm feeling
like okay i eliminate the net by lifting it i eliminate the lines by hitting a lot of spin
now i feel like i can be consistent every single time i play the game
now if you choose to slice the ball and you want to still keep that consistency
and that bigger margin you can use these two things first one is opening the strings more
prior to contact so the side of the strings you're going to hit the ball with
you open up more to the sky so on the backhand side instead of hitting the ball and having
your strings quite flat towards the net you're now getting under that ball and this will help you to
produce more underspin that slice so by increasing the slice on the ball you'll increase your margin
because now you have more control over that shot when you hit a slice that's very flat
it's hard to control the ball but if you open the strings and you really cut under that ball you'll
create that under spin and that will help you to increase your margin on that slice now on the
serve if you have this mindset off i'm stepping up to the line but i'm not going for aces and i'm
not going for the lines i'm going for big targets and i'm going to use a lot of spin on myself to
make sure that i clear that net and i get the ball to dip so this could be slice or a kick serve by
using those two serves and using them a lot you'll become a much more consistent server right away