Today we have four great drills to share with you that are guaranteed to further develop your game, regardless of your playing level. You will even see some of the top pros just working on these simple, yet very effective exercises.
Drill no.1 - ‘Just keep it deep’ Focus on keeping your groundstrokes beyond the cones in the final third of the court. Depth is important in keeping your opponent back behind the baseline and preventing them from moving inside the court and putting away short balls.
Drill no.2 - ‘Anywhere but the pyramid’ Add width to your shots, find angles and open up the court to set the point up. Keep the ball out of the pyramid by mixing up depth and width to develop your offensive game. Remember, going down the middle is not a bad thing, provided your shots are kept deep.
Drill no.3 - ‘Defence to attack’ Two shot drill that requires you to earn the short ball. First ball is fed wide into the forehand corner, whereby the player must retrieve and put the ball back in the court with height and depth, placed down the middle of the court. The height will allow recovery time and placing it in the middle of the court will disallow the opposition to exploit angles. If the first shot is not in the target area, the second feed will also aim to put the player on the run again or just under some sort of pressure. This exercise is a true test of your speed, agility and fitness across the court.
Drill no.4 - ‘Switch up the pace’ Switching up the pace of the shot, again a two shot drill to begin with. The first shot is to be hit back at the coach with a reliable, consistent yet heavy shot in mind. The return volley will sit up whereby the player can now step in, switch the pace and attempt to put the sitter away by fully committing to the finishing ball.
Four great drills that players of all levels can try. There are also several variations that you can apply and play around with to make it more exciting and even more challenging for you advance/elite players out there.
Give it a go, before your opponent does! And let us know how you get on.
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How's it going guys? Welcome to Supreme Tennis and today we're going to discuss something a
bit different here. We're going to talk about four different drills that I want to share with you
and talk about the effectiveness of each drill and how you can benefit from them.
Charlie here is going to help me demonstrate, so let's get straight into it.
So drill number one, just keep it deep. A very straightforward drill, a very easy tactic,
yet a very, very effective one. Now I did want to film this the other way around so you could
see where I've placed the cones, but unfortunately the sun would have been facing straight into the
lens of my main camera. So basically I'll tell you where I've placed them. I've placed them
right between the service line and the baseline and all Charlie has to do is keep his ground
strokes beyond the cones and hit his shots in that back third of the court to get that depth.
Depth is really important. It's really important in keeping your opponent back behind the baseline,
preventing them from stepping in and being aggressive. Actually the deeper your shots are,
the more chance you have of receiving a short ball that you can attack.
I just really like the simplicity of this drill as a coach because as well as having the player
work on a useful yet very easy tactic that they can apply, it gives me the opportunity to just
have a look at their shape as well and make sure you know that they're doing their split step and
just address any other minor details before we might get onto something a bit more complex and
maybe some some more complex drills basically. So yeah, really good one here. Just keep the
ball deep, get tons of spin on the ball and just try your best to keep your opponent at bay. Keep
the second drill also a straightforward concept but another very useful tactic and that's just
to add a bit more width to your shots. Really try and open up the court and this one's actually
kind of a progression from the first drill and again I'll just tell you where I've placed the
cones exactly and what I've done is I've made a sort of pyramid in the back box and all Charlie
has to do this time is keep his shots, his ground strokes, his forehands, his backhands
out of that pyramid and you know it's also worth noting that there's still room between
the top of the pyramid and the baseline which basically means it's it's fine to hit down the
middle but provided that your shots are deep enough. So yeah that's drill number two and we'll
call this one anywhere but the pyramid. Drill number three here is going to really improve
your defensive game and it's just a two-shot drill with the first ball being fed wide into
Charlie's forehand and depending on how well he hits that first shot he'll either get a second
ball which will be nice and short that he can step in and put away quite easily or he'll get
another tough feed which I'll probably feed into the opposite corner or maybe even attempt to wrong
foot him. So with the first shot with the recovery shot or the neutralizing shot or the shot where
you can turn the point around what he has to do with this wide ball is try and get it high and
deep but down the middle. Now high and deep to allow himself the time to recover and get back
in the point but it's got to be down the middle because it it doesn't really give the opposition
much angle to work with. So high and deep down the middle and you know I've just progressed the drill
here by asking Charlie to stand even wider and you can see him every now and then using that
same side follow through which I don't mind because you know it gives him a little bit more
basically he can get away with hitting the ball a fraction late and it just helps him to get that
little bit of extra topspin that he might need and you can even see there he was pulled really
wide so he actually had to resort to the slice.
So the fourth and final drill here we're going to call this one change of pace
and again a two-shot drill but you'll see in a sec that we do progress to three shots in this drill
he's got to hit a normal trading shot and I'm just going to sort of sort of float up my volley
where he's going to switch up the pace really inject some power into the second shot and put
that ball away but I want to see a real difference of intent behind that first shot and his second
shot so yeah just a normal trading as you can see here we're doing two shots to me and then
switching it up switching the pace up with the third ball and you know I chose to stand at the
net but you can have your coach or your sparring partner stand on the baseline I just chose to do
it at the net today it makes it a little bit tougher you know if you're at the net you kind
of you take time away from your opponent and it just makes it a bit more challenging for Charlie
here and I think what we did at the end here is we just kind of played the point out and
I gave him some tougher volleys I didn't really float the volley up I put a bit more on my volleys
and yeah again just made it a bit tougher for Charlie anyway guys that was it thanks for
tuning in I hope you enjoyed this video go out on the practice court and try those drills out
see how you get on have fun with it play around with it maybe even add your own variation and
yeah just get involved in the comments section let us know how you found them and if you need
any help we'll be happy to to respond and you know give you guys a bit of advice if you need it
and yeah hope to see you in the next video take care guys
