Do this on the ball machine to improve faster!

Ball machines are incredible for improving your technique, but unfortunately not the way that most people use them. The way that most people use machines, it just reinforces bad habits. And that's why in this video I'm going to teach you how to use a ball machine properly. We're going to start with the three big mistakes that you have to avoid and then talk about the specific things that you need to do to improve your technique. Mistake number one is hitting too many balls in a row without stopping. Most players, they set the ball machine and they just go through an entire machines worth of balls without stopping and they end up doing loads of crappy reps. It is impossible to hit balls continually for five or six minutes and maintain high quality. When you're playing a point, it lasts between 10 and 30 seconds. Absolute maximum up to a minute. So the first thing and the most simple thing that you can do to improve your ball machine practice is set yourself a timer. Go for one minute or a maximum, absolute maximum of two minutes. It takes a lot of discipline because when that timer goes off, you're going to want to keep on hitting balls. But changing this one thing can make a huge difference all on its own. Mistake number two is not allowing enough time in between feeds in order to improve your technique. It's about performing high quality repetitions. It's about focusing on fixing underlying problems. And for everybody, a big part of the stroke is setting up in the right position in the first place. So if you're hitting one ball, you haven't even recovered back into your recovery position and the next ball is already on its way. It prevents you from performing high quality repetitions and developing the habits and the skills that are going to be most important when you're playing. So you need to make sure that your ball is bouncing before the next ball comes and you also need to make sure that you're recovering back into position before the next feed comes. And depending on how fast the ball is that you're feeding and what sort of shots you're hitting, you'll have to play around with it a little bit, but it's better to have too much time in between the not enough time in between. Mistake number three is working on completely unrealistic shots. I see so many players, they've got the ball machine set to the maximum speed. It's just launching balls at a hundred miles an hour as if they're playing against Sinner or Alcaraz when in actual fact they're a 3.0 or a 3.5 player. And the thing that they really struggle with is dealing with moon balls. If you struggle with dealing with moon balls, using a ball machine is the perfect way to enable you to practice dealing with that shot. So that's the feed that you need to set up. If you're a doubles player then you don't want to be practicing loads of balls down the middle because it never happens. You want to stick the ball machine in the corner and practice a pattern or a specific shot that's going to apply to you in doubles. Whatever it is that you struggle with or you need to improve in a match, you have to find a way to kind of set that scenario and that shot up on the ball machine. Now let's talk about what you need to do to improve your technique on the ball machine. And as I've already said, the key is high quality repetitions. We have to do lots of focus repetitions in order to develop a new habit. So when you're working on the ball machine, you have to work on one thing at a time. You're not going to get enough high quality reps. If you do a bit of forehand, a bit of backhand and a few volleys, you need to choose a one stroke, but then you need to focus on a one or two specific problems with that stroke. So say I choose my forehand, I can't be working on my split step, my unit turn, my spacing, my racket lag, my contact point, and my follow through because it's too much stuff. Instead I have to focus on whatever the underlying problem is. If you don't get a good unit turn as you move to the ball, that's what you need to focus on. If you get too close to the ball, that's what you need to focus on. If you're really working on trying to create the racket lag, that's what you focus on, but it's always going to be just one or two problems for the entire training session and realistically for multiple sessions in a row. So you might have one thing that you're working on for the next couple of months because it takes that many repetitions to develop a new habit. Then you're going to need to set your machine up. So you're working on whatever your underlying problem is at the appropriate level of difficulty. So generally what that means is it's going to be single feeds a lot of the time. So the example I'm going to use is I need to work on my spacing on my forehand, and I'm also going to work on my unit turn as well because I can be thinking about both of those things at the same time. And this is one of the most common problems that I see from players. So I might start my session out just with a simple neutral stance forehand, where all I'm doing is stepping in, thinking about that spacing, trying to make sure that I'm getting my unit turn as I step into my shot. And I'm going to hit the ball cross court because I need to practice that because it's a very high percentage play. So I'm going to work on that, stopping my feed after a minute, after two minutes, evaluating my performance. Did I get good spacing? Didn't I get good spacing? And then I'm going to go again and maybe I'll do a full machine worth of doing that. So maybe I'll pause four or five times until the ball machine's empty, but I'm just focusing on those repetitions, trying to get the spacing and the unit turn. Then after I've done that for the next round of machines, I'm going to set up a slightly different feed. I'm still working on exactly the same thing. I'm still working on my spacing, but now I want to work on moving out to a wide ball. So I'm going to set it up so that the ball is being fed out to a wider position. And then I'm still, all I'm thinking about is moving out to that wide ball and getting good quality spacing and making sure that as I'm preparing for my open stance forehand, that I'm doing my unit turn. So again, same process, go through a whole basket, maybe pausing four or five times, taking a rest in between, keeping the repetitions high. Then potentially after that, I move on. I'm going to do the same thing working on my inside out forehand, still focusing on the spacing, still focusing on the unit turn. And after a ball machines worth of that, I'm going to set up maybe a shorter ball. And now I'm feeding myself a shorter ball and just moving into that short ball, focusing completely on my spacing and getting my unit turn as I move towards the ball. So all I've done is set up four or five different single feeds, but I've maintained the same focus throughout. Now something I've mentioned there, that's going to be really important is giving yourself feedback as you practice. We want high quality reps. I'm working on my forehand spacing and unit turn. So I need to get feedback about, did I get a unit turn and good quality spacing on my shot? So it's not about, did I hit a good shot? Did the ball go in or out? It's about, did I get good spacing? Because it's that that I need to get lots of repetitions off. And hopefully you've got the body awareness to detect that in real time. And I can feel how close I am to the ball. And hopefully you've got the body awareness to go, yes, I got a good unit turn or not. But I find that most people unfortunately don't have that level of body awareness. So it can be really handy to record yourself and watch it back so that then you can give yourself feedback. So you do your first minutes worth of balls. Your timer goes off. You stop it. You watch your recording. You go, how did I do? You're having a rest while you're watching it. Okay. Now I was still a little bit too close. Then press play on the ball machine again. And for the next minute of balls, okay, I really need to focus on setting up further from the ball or getting the unit turn. And then again, you pause it and then you watch it back and see what happens. So it's going to slow things down a little bit, but this is going to enable you to get high quality repetitions and feedback because the feedback is a crucial part of the learning. The last thing you want to do is 2000 poor quality repetitions to reinforce a bad habit. So what I've explained so far is the nuts and bolts of how you use a ball machine to improve. But then over time, we can also progress the level of difficulty of what we're working on. So we're still focusing on one specific thing. I'm still focusing on my spacing, but I'm going to go back to the scenario I talked about. I have set myself up this neutral stance forehand, and I'm just working on my spacing. What I can now do is change the target that I'm hitting out. So instead of hitting the ball cross court, I'm now going to hit the ball down the line. I'm still evaluating my performance on, did I get good spacing and did I get a good unit turn? But now I've just changed the target from there. I could then alternate targets. So now what I'm going to do is same neutral stance forehand. First two shots, I'm going to go cross court. Next shot, I'm going to go down the line. So I'm just going to repeat that pattern over and over again. Again, all I am focusing on is do I get the spacing and do I get my unit turn? Because that's the problem that I'm trying to fix. The different targets are there to just create a little bit of a distraction and see whether I can maintain my focus while I'm working on the thing that I'm working on. And then I could do exactly that same progression for the other balls. So I move out to the wide forehand, try hit his different targets, inside out forehand, short forehand, different targets, but in all variations, my only concern is do I get good spacing and do I get a good unit turn? Because we're trying to increase the percentages of times that we get that part because ultimately that's what leads to a new habit and better technique. The next way that we can progress things is by making the feed more variable. And obviously this is going to depend on what your ball machine is capable of doing, but we're going to add in an extra type of feed to create a distraction. So I'm still working on one thing. I'm still working on my forehand spacing, but I might be able to set my ball machine up. So it sends me one ball that's into the middle and then one ball that's out wide. So what I'm going to do when the ball is in the middle, I'm going to step in neutral stance, hit that, just thinking about the spacing. Then I'm going to move out to the wide ball. Just think about the spacing. I could also set up a completely variable feed. So now I don't know exactly where it's going, but it's going to feed me a spread of balls in positions that I can get to with my forehand. And I'm just going to be every ball, wherever it goes. All I'm thinking about is just trying to get the spacing. I could set it up. So it's one forehand and one backhand. So I've got my wide forehand. I'm moving out to that. I come back in, I'm working on a backhand, but I don't care where the backhand goes. I don't care. You know, obviously I want to hit a good shot, but I don't care whether it goes in the net or over the back fence. It's just there as a distraction so that when I move back to my forehand, can I refocus on my spacing or unit term? So that's going to be the next progression. And obviously the layer on top of that would then be doing that same thing, but hitting two different targets. So that's how you can use a ball machine to get high quality repetitions to improve your technique. But then the other thing that's going to be really important for your technique is your level of skill. Tennis is a difficult sport. It requires tremendous eye to foot and eye to hand coordination. And if your systems don't function well enough, it prevents you from kind of getting past a certain point. And this is why some players get stuck at the 3-5, others get stuck at the 4-0. It's about your physical ability. The good news is that you can actually train and improve that using brain-based training. And it lets you improve your visual skills. So you can read the ball better. So you can track the ball better. It lets you improve your balance and your coordination so that you can set up in better positions and so that you can use your kinetic chain more effectively. So if you'd like to learn how to do that, I've got a free class. It's going to teach you all about it and I'll leave a link to it down in the description. But hopefully this video has been helpful for you. If it has, I'd be much appreciated if you could give me a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. If you have any questions about how to structure your ball machine practice, obviously leave those down below. Otherwise, thanks for watching and I'll catch you next time.