Advanced Tennis Volley Technique - The "Flowing" Volley

You probably know this as the punch volley and this is what you've all been taught to do. So you're taught to step forward, firm up the racket, keep the racket head above your wrist and then punch the ball. And that's all fine but that is true only for one type of incoming ball and basically one type of situation that's when you're very close to the net and the incoming ball is slow so you can take a little swing and really have time to firm up and hit the ball hard. For most other volleys that's not the case. You actually have to do exactly the opposite. So you have to have much more feel in the volley and the contact with the ball is not short and firm but rather it's much longer and we play with much more feel and also you don't want to step and stop and create this jerking movement moment in the body but you want to flow through the volley. So how would the flowing volley look like? It would look something like this. So the key point in the flowing volley is is that there's no sudden step, no sudden move and that everything is flowing through so your footwork is flowing through. It doesn't really matter how your feet are and when you're hitting the ball you want to guide the racket through with a little bit more feel and not so forcefully. So here's another example. So this would be a flowing volley so I can also demonstrate that on the backhand side but just for today's ideas I want to show you a few drills how do you develop this flowing volley and how do you develop the feel for this volley. So one of the things that I want to change when teaching this type of volley is this firmness of the arm. The arm becomes too tense or the body becomes too tense and then it's very difficult to adjust if the ball is a little bit faster and it's also very difficult to play with feel so actually you don't have good feel when you grip the racket tight or when you have a tight forearm and so it's very important that you learn to to move your arm gently and you don't squeeze the racket tight and so it's something that you do naturally actually when you just bounce the ball so when you if you try the bounce drill and you just bounce the ball you will see that most of the time you're holding the racket very gently and only when you know that the impact is going to happen then you just bounce a little bit more. So you can try this with both sides so you can hold a volley grip and bounce the ball like this a little bit high and just try to realize and feel become aware that when the ball is approaching the racket you're not very tight and then you just do a little bounce when the ball comes so Shahid and Angela are today with me again so they will demonstrate how to do the bounce okay so go ahead just bounce the ball a little bit it's what you did in your first tennis session in your life so now we're going back to the basics okay so forehand and backhand you can change a little bit and just try to become aware that of how gently you hold the racket when the ball is approaching and then you just bounce a little bit when the ball is coming okay and now we will progress to a bounce volley so i want them to realize that now they're doing this thing in the vertical plane so they're they have a very nice grip and they're approaching the ball and then they just bounce and now i want them to do the same idea now that they feel it i want them to do it in the horizontal plane with their volleys i want them to approach the ball very nice and then just bounce it a little bit okay so Shahid and Angela are now trying to to play the bounce but in a horizontal direction so they're trying to feel in a very similar way how to bring the racket very nice to the ball without any tension and then just do a and usually they will feel very quickly that it's very comfortable to volley like that and that they're able to control the ball well but my main goal is to get rid of the tension and so uh this is a nice little drill of course it might look like you just volley to volley drill but the key idea the key difference here is that they're focusing on the bounce so that when they're approaching the ball with the racket they're not very tight they just hold the racket nice and then they do a little bounce in order to feel the flowing movement of the arm through the point of contact so rather than punching it but more guiding it we can achieve that by asking the players to move back to mid court and volley from there so Shahid and Angela can you move back to mid court and volley from here and they will soon realize that punching the ball will not work well from this distance so and it's quite challenging to be consistent volleying from this distance but this is a great drill to teach them the flowing movement the flowing movement of the arm through the contact point so the first step in teaching the flow volley was to get the feel for the arm and for the hand and now the second step is i want to teach them to move through the volley so i don't want them to stop and firm up so i use this little drill to practice moving through the volley in a very flowing way okay Shahid so we go uh six balls here we go okay very good Angela so here we go one two three okay so after we've done a few repetitions a few sets of this drill where the players get a feel for for moving through the ball we can progress to a few drills where i feed the ball from the baseline we can do approach and volley and they try to implement what they learned here so the next progression would be just one of the typical approach and volley drills where i feed the ball and Shahid and Angela will approach and play the volley and i just want them to focus on flowing through the volley rather than punching it just flow through the volley flow through the volley okay very nice yes that was very good so you're moving through the volley not stopping here we go Angela same idea moving through the volley moving through the volley moving yes very good so this was an example of a flowing volley where i don't stop and i don't punch the ball i just flow through the volley both my arm is going to the contact point and my feet keep moving and this is the type of volley that i think happens the most often times in doubles and in singles because that will be your first volley in doubles your first volley in singles and probably your second volley in singles before it actually comes so close to the net that you can punch it away so practice these drills and let me know in the comments how they work for you