How to Hit the Perfect Tennis Volley | Volley Technique Intermediate and Advanced | Volley Drills

Hey guys welcome to Supreme Tennis where today we're looking at your neck game and I want to share several valuable tips that you can apply to really lift the level of your volleys. So in today's lesson we're going to discuss the following. How to lead with the edge of your racket also referred to as leveling your swing out. Secondly we're going to look at squeezing the grip just before contact and this tip really is a game changer. Then again with regards to the technique we're going to look at tilting your racket head before contact and then lastly how and when it's okay to actually swing on your volleys. Now if you apply these pointers correctly you're going to gain so much. You're going to be able to get more stick, more power on your volleys. You're going to build more confidence in your neck game. You're going to start to put more volleys away and you're going to add more versatility to your game. It will also improve your consistency at the net and just make you a better doubles player as well. It's going to make you a better match player in general. So before we get into more detail guys please subscribe, throw a thumbs up and drop a comment below if you have any questions and yeah don't forget to hit that notification bell to be one of the first to view our content as soon as we publish it. Now I've just slowed this clip down to discuss what I mean by leading with the edge of the racket. At contact here you can see the racket From this point a common mistake I see a lot of players make is hacking down or chopping down on their volleys and the red arrow here indicates that incorrect volley path. Instead I'd like you to follow the green arrows by leveling your swing out. Some coaches will refer to this as carving butter so literally try to imagine that your racket is being pulled away from you in the direction of the green arrows. Just to get this swing path right I've got a quick drill that I want to share with you. You can practice this to familiarize yourself with the right swing path and as you can see in the clip here I'm just working on skimming the top of the net cord and because the net's there I can't hack down and you can see it's a very similar sort of technique to the one we were just discussing that high to level swing path. So before you get out there and hit some volleys just try this drill beforehand for two minutes and you will see an immediate impact. Now to talk you through tip number two on squeezing that grip just before contact. This is going to help you keep the pace of the incoming ball and get more power on your volleys. When volleying this is the only time really when we want a firm grip on the handle. If however you want to play a drop volley you want a loose grip and that loose grip is going to absorb the pace of the ball to get it to land short but for the most part squeeze that grip before contact to get more stick and more power on your volleys. Before we get on to the next part of the video I just want to throw in a quick power tip for you guys and we're going to quickly look at loading with the outside foot. So on this backhand volley here you can see I'm loading on my left foot the outside foot and I'm going to use this foot to shift onto my right foot as I hit through contact and this load foot just helps me to get more weight going forwards and as a result even more pace on my volleys. And here's just another example on my forehand side where I load this time on my right foot and shift onto my left foot again to get more momentum and more weight going forwards. Okay so moving on to tip number three and we're looking at tilting the racket head before contact and you will see all the top players where the forehand or backhand volley will find this same position before they hit the ball and this just helps maintain the proper technique and that carving butter motion. I find that if you're too square in this take back position a lot of players tend to slap the wrist down and dump too many volleys in the net so remember to lay that racket head back slightly around 45 degrees to help keep proper shape throughout the shot. The final point I want to make is about swinging on your volleys and you might think ah Leon my coach says I should never swing on my volleys, well they're right to a certain extent and everything we've discussed in this video so far is about the textbook sort of volleys so short, sharp and compact but you will see the pros swing on some of their volleys especially in doubles so in terms of the right time to swing you need to look at the characteristics of the incoming ball, is it coming slow, is it coming relatively high, if that's the case it's there to be hit and being textbook if you like isn't going to help you it's not going to do you any favours so you can see with a swinging volley I have a more exaggerated tilt of the racket head followed by a more exaggerated swing path and because the ball is high I can afford to hit down on the ball which will increase my chances of putting that shot away for a winner so just to close out the video we're going to summarize everything that we covered in this lesson first we looked at leveling the swing out and one thing I actually didn't mention is this will also help you to get more depth on your volleys we then discussed the importance of a firm grip just before contact to get more stick and more power on your volleys now remember if you want to play a drop volley if you want to you want a loose grip but for the most part you want to squeeze that grip you want a firm grip on the handle just before contact to get more power on your volleys we then spoke about the purpose of loading on your outside foot and how this too can give you more pace the fourth tip we discussed was the tilt of the racket head before we hit through our volleys and then finally we looked at how and when it is acceptable to swing on a normal volley now if you practice and apply these tips successfully you will see a huge improvement in your net game and that I guarantee so anyway guys as always thanks for watching don't forget to subscribe and throw a thumbs up if you like this content and also comment below if you have any questions at all we respond to 100% of our comments you know whether it's a question that you might want answered or whether it's constructive feedback whether it's just a bit of appreciation we appreciate all of your comments so feel free to drop a comment below and we look forward to seeing you in the next video take care guys