C6L10: Off Court Drills

You know I have always been a huge proponent of these off court drills. I guess its because I am from Connecticut and so often we couldn't play maybe once or twice a week in the winter time. So this serving drill is really fantastic, we did this all the way through college. Where you just walk around with a tennis ball and you just practice reinforcing good habits. You're eyes are up you get the proper toss and you keep your coil in your hitting hand. See really nice form you do what you do when your serving. Really nice form you do what you do when your serving and you do it without your racket instead of hitting it you catch it. Notice here the tight coil look at my right hand its still cupped forward. See that I keep what I call the secondary coil the one out by the wrist you keep that tight so look at my hand its still facing the ball. See its never really left the ball so this really makes for a nice big pop because you get that as you palm the ball here you get that slight warble that saw like warble that we have talked about. The racket head speed is infinite and also you learn to keep your eyes up. You don't keep your eyes up you really can't do this drill properly. Here is what happens when you do it wrong. This is how the execution falters and its generally you open up to early or you pull your head down. So once again I am up there on a fairly decent toss but I open my hand way too early see that because I am trying to get speed out of my wrist and my elbow. What this does is disconnects me from my body #1 and #2 its just too much wrist, there is just too much that can go wrong when you open this early. You end up slapping the ball and it becomes a very sloppy and inconsistent serve because you are relying on these small muscles like the elbow and the wrist. You know that never pays off. When you are under pressure its the larger muscles that will be there for you when you need them. Practice this serving without a racket just toss and catch. Now here are some great body coordination drills and I say here get lost in the coil because thats really what I want you to do. I want you to understand your coil and how your hips work. So the first thing we do is hold our arms to the side and just leave them there while you do your figure 8. Isolate your hips and what this will do is it will show you how you can keep your chest fairly stable while you move your hips in a very wide figure 8. See that I have a full figure 8 going here but look at my chest its moving a little bit but there is a lot of tension pulling from my hips to my upper body. You have got to learn this coordination you need it. Same here you do the exact same thing with your fingers pointed straight ahead and a nice wide figure 8 in your hips. You need it on shots like pick ups or when someone is a hard hitter and they are rushing you. You still want the power of your hips but you don't want to pull off the ball too much. So you your chest fairly stable throughout the hit and just use your hips. Here is the opposite of those two drills. This is a very extreme coil where you move side to side, an 8 board is really the best way to do this. You really push your coil to the limit and you understand how balance works. How this coil affects your entire body look at Paul's hat look at the top of his hat see how its just about even with the fence line there on his full bend, when he is fully twisted. Now watch as he comes towards neutral position. Look at his hat look how its rising and that really explains the whole idea of bending your knees in tennis. I mean the fact is you don't just bend your knees arbitrarily. Its your coil that when screwing up and down into the court and this is what brings your knees into flex sort of like vines twisting right as they twist they get a little shorter. What you are going to discover in this drill is how to do a full turn all the way to the back fence and it affects your lower body and upper body. How you have to compensate and bend your knees and use your upper body to stay in balance. So have your students do these drills because they really do pay off when it comes to understanding and reinforcing a good strong tight coil.