Five Ways To Improve Your Tennis Alone
In this video LTA Senior Performance and RPT National Professional coach Simon Konov of Top Tennis Training will show you five different ways to practice tennis by yourself.
Now you will have no excuses for not training alone!
The five different ways are:
1. Using a ball machine
The advantage of using a ball machine is that you can hit the same type of ball (low backhands for instance) over and over again and fully master that one shot. Some of the new ball machines on the market are also capable of feeding the ball in different zones on the court so you can change the ball length and width and replicate pointplay against the machine.
2. Using a practice wall
This method is great for any level player, indeed pro players use the wall often. For beginners you might choose to practice with 2 bounces so you have time to set up and execute a proper shot. There are so many drills you can do against the wall and the truly great thing is – the wall never misses!
3. Hitting serves alone
The serve is the most important shot in tennis so it would make sense that players spend the most amount of their alone time hitting serves, however not many players actually do this at club level but the further you go up in levels, the more time players will spend hitting serves as they truly understand the importance of the serve in tennis.
4. Training your footwork and movement
Footwork is one of the most overlooked elements of tennis the world over. Ask the majority of club players what they struggle with and you’ll rarely get the response “my footwork”. However ask 100 pro players why they didn’t play well and many will tell you “I didn’t move very well today, my footwork was slow and heavy”.
The fact is, if you can’t get into the right position to hit the stroke, you won’t be able to execute properly. Just look at Federer dancing around the court and you’ll soon realize just how important footwork is for tennis players.
5. Self feeding balls to yourself
This is another great way to train alone, it’s something that anyone of any level can do and you’d be surprised that even Pros use this when they have nobody to hit with and their coach is not on hand to feed them balls.