In today's video, I'm gonna show you how to stop foot faulting on your serve. Foot
faults on the serve occur at every level of the game from the recreational
players all the way to professional players and there is one specific type
of foot fault that takes place at the recreational level and I'm going to get
to that later and also show you how to fix it but first let's talk about what
kind of foot faults you see at the pro level. One type of foot fault that happens
infrequently at the pro level is one where the back foot will step over the
middle line and this affects players that number one have a very wide stance
and also stand very close to the line. So if I serve like this in a platform
stance, this is considered a foot fault because my back foot crossed the middle line.
And one player that was affected by this type of foot fault was Marat Safin. So
please remember if you happen to have a platform stance to give yourself enough
space so that that back foot doesn't cross the middle line on your serve.
Another type of foot fault that's very common at both the recreational level
and the pro level is when players are standing on the line prior to the
service motion. At the recreational level you'll see more extreme cases of this
when players are standing inside the baseline prior to the serve.
And this is a mistake that can very easily be avoided just simply check and
make sure that the foot is not close to the line prior to your serve. Give yourself a
little bit of space so that there's absolutely no chance that the foot is
touching the baseline. Now some players will remedy this by standing way behind
the baseline and this is very unnecessary. Just give yourself about an inch between
the tip of your front foot and the baseline and that is sufficient to prevent
you from foot faulting in this manner. And finally the most common type of foot
fault at the recreational level is the moving of the front foot in the middle
of the service motion
And you'll see this type of foot fault even at the pro level not necessarily
where players are stepping over the line prior to the contact but more just a
slight movement of the front foot inside the service action.
And the solution to this problem where it makes it absolutely impossible for
that front foot to move lies inside your serve rhythm. And this is how you're
gonna prevent this foot fault from happening. So basically, you're going to
have to transfer the weight onto your front foot prior to your take back. So
basically, you're going to bounce the ball and now you're going to shift the
weight onto your back foot and now as you toss the ball up you need to shift
the weight back onto your front foot and now as you toss the ball your racket is
gonna start going up and as the racket goes up you're gonna start shifting all
your weight to the front foot, get on the balls of your feet where the heel is off
the ground and now the back foot is gonna do the same thing and you're gonna bend
your knees slightly and now as you accelerate you're gonna go up towards the ball.
The majority of times a player commits this type of foot fault is a stepping of
the front foot when the racket goes up. Something like this, so the
racket will go up the player steps in and that makes contact.
So if you apply pressure to the front foot as your toss goes up and now
consequently the racket will start going up from a lag and as the racket goes up
you start applying the pressure towards the tip of your front foot you get the
heel up this makes it absolutely impossible to take a step. When we take a
step we do it from the heel to the toe. Now as we are applying pressure to the
front part of the foot, this front foot is set into the ground and it makes it
absolutely impossible to foot fault from this position.
I hope this video can help you to stop foot faulting. If you have any questions
please leave a comment in the section below, hit that like button and subscribe
if you haven't already. I'll see you next time.