hey guys in today's video I want to show you the top five most dangerous moves on the tennis court
and the first move that you want to avoid is serving full blast when you're not warmed up
I am guilty of committing this dangerous move and what can happen to you if you
serve at full speed without warming up your shoulder it's pretty obvious you can blow
out your shoulder now for demonstrative purposes I did not warm up I'm going to
blast the serve completely cold and I'm gonna guide you through my experience
okay I don't think it broke anything but a tremendous amount of pain in the shoulder so guys
you have to absolutely avoid going onto the court and start serving fast without warming up your
shoulder one of the simplest warm-up exercises for your shoulder is simply going through your
service action dry like a shadow stroke this will loosen up your shoulder also you want to perform
stretches where you're stretching the inside of your shoulder the back side of the shoulder you
can also use bands these are going to be great to warm up your shoulder or you could simply step up
to the Baseline and serve very gently at first maybe 20 miles an hour and you do five serves
like that and then you slowly start increasing the speed and then once you're ready to go fast
your shoulder is going to feel just fine
on Hardcourt I'm going to be honest with you I've tried this many times the first player that I've
ever seen with a professional level slide was my friend Felipe from Brazil who was a former
professional soccer player a phenomenal athlete and he was sliding like Djokovic on the hardcourt
and I was super serious about learning how to slide and he showed me how to do it he said
you have to move really fast and then kind of stop with the side of your foot and then slide
out and I tried this once and I almost broke my ankle and mind you I've been playing tennis my
whole life so unless you're a high level Junior who can naturally slide on a hard court under no
circumstance should you attempt to ever slide on a hardcourt because the risk of injury is enormous
you are guaranteed to do something to your ankle or your knee now how about clay courts well here
you might be surprised that I'm going to tell you a very similar thing because a lot of my audience is
in the United States and we don't have red clay in the United States we have har tru and sliding
on Har tru is tricky because a lot of times the lines might be raised a little bit and you slide
and your foot gets caught on the line and you go flying I've seen more injuries at the recreational
level on the har tru courts that I've seen on Hardcourt why because on the hardcourt the footing
is secure you can get out of the blocks safely you can stop safely where on the har tru the
clay on the surfaces unfortunately not as evenly distributed as it would be on a red clay court and
also the maintenance is not of the same standard usually so if you slide and you catch one of these
spots that has a ton of clay your foot might get caught on the other hand a spot with very little
clay super slippery and then your foot slides out and all of a sudden you pull a muscle so for
those reasons if you're playing tennis at the recreational level and if sliding is something
that doesn't come natural to you in other words you want to learn it I'm advising you to not
slide even on har tru you can play on the har tru surface just like you play on the hard courts
now for my Watchers in Europe South America or any other place where red clay courts are more
common here the sliding is more intuitive it is definitely easier the quality of the clay is
higher the consistency of the clay is better and the maintenance of the clay is generally better
than it is in the United States so for those reasons it is okay to slide on the red clay even
at the recreational level now there's one caveat to sliding on red clay you have to understand that
at the highest levels players slide laterally in other words if they slide out to a forehand
they're not going to slide this way they're going to slide laterally like this and when you slide
laterally even on the red clay there's a danger of you rolling your ankles so what I recommend for
the recreational level is the forward slide where the tip of your shoe is going forward and you're
sliding into your shots that way yes this is not optimal we're talking about lateral movement
because you're going to be able to recover much faster when you do a lateral slide all also with
a lateral slide you have the ability to stop yourself in other words hit the brakes when
you're running down a drop shot sometimes when you slide forward you might slide out or slide too far
so there's no doubt in my mind that the lateral slide is the better slide otherwise you wouldn't
see it at the elite level however despite its advantages keep in mind that the risk of injury
is higher when you slide laterally and it's for that reason that I recommend the forward slide for
my recreational players that play on the Red Dirt the third most dangerous move that you can make on
a tennis court is the closed stance hip Destroyer now for you guys that have been following me for a
while you know that being open stance or closed stance mainly depends on the penetration of the
incoming Ball but when I say mainly there are a few scenarios in the court where you either
have to do closed stance or open stance and one particular scenario is when you're pulled out
laterally and forward at the same time now this doesn't affect the backhand this is only an issue
for the forehand and if I get a ball that's wide but also short in other words I'm moving towards
this corner right here if I attempt a close stance forehead in other words I go like this
and the momentum of my movement is carrying me in this direction I'm going to lock my hip without
the ability to rotate and I'm going to destroy my hip let me demonstrate what happens when you
do the closed stance Destroyer now I didn't hit it hard because I'm scared to blow out my hip that's
definitely not something that I need right now but what happens when you're moving this way the
momentum is carrying you in this direction and if you do a closed stance forehand in other words if
you hit the shot off your non-dominant foot you lock yourself from having the ability to rotate
so you're probably going to be okay if you hit a forehand like this but a lot of times when we play
tennis we want to intuitively hit our shots the best way so if you try to rotate and your weight
is on this foot but at the same time the momentum is still carrying you this way you're going to
destroy your hip so what you have to do under these circumstances is do something what I call
open close you see there that I hit the ball off my dominant leg and the movement was Dynamic so as
I continue to swing through my forehand the other foot came through and because of this Dynamic
movement I was fully capable of rotating my torso and maintaining my normal forehand now you're
probably asking yourself Nick what about doing a dynamic close to open footwork pattern it's
not going to work because if you hit your shot of this foot your hips are going to be locked and you
won't have the ability to rotate even if this foot comes through so in other words you might be able
to rotate if you come through with the back leg once you have hit the ball but that's not going to
have an effect on your forehand because remember on the forehand you have to rotate into the shot
and not after you have made contact now one caveat with this particular ball is that if you have
plenty of time to come to this area of the court and set your feet now it doesn't matter so much
because you don't have that forward momentum carrying you in this direction so you might be able to
execute a regular closed stance forhand but under no circumstances you ever attempt a closed stance
forehand on a ball that's making you run in this direction because this move will destroy your hip
the fourth most dangerous move on the tennis court is moving backwards now you're probably thinking
Nick we have to move backwards on the tennis court what if we get pushed back by a strong ball or if
we're maybe hitting an overhead that's pushing us back yes you are going to move backwards but under
no circumstances should you ever move backwards like this with your chest pointing towards the
other side this is one of the most dangerous moves at the recreational level I've seen more players
whether it be Juniors or adults fall backwards and hit their head because you don't have a good
sense of balance you're not looking backwards where you're stepping you looking at the ball and
when you move backwards like this your foot can get caught and you go flying to the ground and
hit your head on the court so what you have to do when you're moving backwards you need to initially
turn your body and now the movement is going to be more secure because you're going to be moving
laterally you have several options you can move side step like this so you can even cross
over step now because of this lateral backwards movement you are less likely to fall backwards
in other words your balance is not going to be affected as much and on top of that you're going
to be moving backwards much faster now most importantly this movement also makes sense
in the context of the sequencing of the stroke production so think about it this way if you're
moving backwards like this let's say you want to hit an overhead and once you're ready to hit you
start turning late like this you're going to be out of time so whatever shot that you're hitting
while moving backwards you turn towards the side that you're hitting the shot from so let's take
the overhead as an example I'm going to see a lob that's going deep the first thing I'm going to do
is not go back like this I'm going to initially turn because I want to hit an overhead and now
I'm going to be moving backwards I'm already in the correct position that I need to be in
now let's say that I'm running down a lob is going to be the same sequence I'm not
going to go back like this I'm not going to turn around and lose sight of the ball
I'm going to track the ball and I'm going to turn my body sideways and run like this
so guys this is super important under no circumstance should you
ever move backwards on the tennis court because it's a very dangerous move
and last but not least the fifth most dangerous move on the tennis court is
hitting yourself with the Racket and I made a video four years ago where I was hitting
myself with the Racket in my shin on purpose on the serve and my shin blew up like this
Let's redo that video why not but this time only using two balls and I'm gonna try to hit my shin on the
serve I can't do it guys I can't do it I don't know how I did it four years ago but I can't
do it I don't have the courage to smack myself in the shin because it hurts really bad let me
tell you let me try one more time no I can't do it I'm sorry I guess I'm older and wiser
oh but in any case a lot of players will hit different body parts with their Racket and
this is due to technique so let me tell you why a lot of players hit themselves on the serve or
the overhead for example so they will attempt a flat serve usually where the racket is more going
forward a lot of times these players will not have any torso rotation so they will swing forward with
the rack and stay sideways and naturally when you don't have torso rotation look where the racket
goes it's not going to swing out around your left pocket if you have the right-handed it's naturally
going to go right towards your non-dominant shin if you don't properly rotate the same is true for
the overhead if you don't have torso rotation and you accelerate really fast forward you're going
right towards your shin so what you have to do you have to execute your serve and your overhead
with torso rotation so that naturally the racket can swing out towards your non-dominant pocket
is there such a thing as a dominant pocket and a non-dominant pocket I'll let you be the judge but
in any case if you have to be right-handed go towards your left pocket but the serve is not the
only shot where players have a tendency to hit themselves one of the most common ways players
get in trouble is when they attempt tweeners or behind the back shots this is where players will
usually hit themselves either in the shin or at a much worse place now will avoiding these top
five dangerous moves guarantee that you won't get hurt on a tennis court no because tennis is quite
dangerous for the body it puts a lot of stress on the body and some of these things that happen to
your body you're not in control of in other words nobody plans to pull their muscle or throw their
shoulder out in the context of a normal match but the things that are listed in today's video are
definitely things that you have full control over and things that you should definitely try to avoid