Getting Started: Movement & Tracking

To be a confident player and in control of your shots, you need to develop the underlying skills that help you get in a good position consistently. Tennis technique is not very complex or difficult to master but tennis is a very challenging sport because each ball is different. In a warm-up rally, your hitting partner will never hit the same ball twice. During point play, the variation increases more. The speed, the landing spot, spin, and force will always vary, even if by a little. This means you need to notice those changes and adapt, or you’ll be out of position and make mistakes. So, the skills required to adapt to each ball are the most necessary skills. Those are movement and tracking skills and you want your kid to spend more time developing those than anything else. You can teach them to swing perfectly but without good movement and tracking skills they will be too close or far from the ball – the technique will break down. Over time, that is how tennis players develop bad technique.

Tennis requires a diverse set of movement skills. You need to be a good sprinter, light on your feet, a good jumper, move laterally well with shuffles and crossover steps, and know-how to backpedal. Plus, you should do most of the movements with a wide base and knees bent.  Below are a few exercises I recommend that help with movement and tracking (but you can always find dozens more, vary them, or invent some yourself).

• Side shuffles are standard and easy to understand. You want your child to keep a wide stance, knees bent, and heels slightly up. The width of the stance should be around the length of their racquet (not an adult-sized racquet). They should maintain an athletic posture while shuffling sideways. And you do not want the feet to clap.
  It is more fun if you shuffle with them. A game you can play that will make kids laugh is Mirror: Facing each other, your child must shuffle in the same direction. You change directions and make it less predictable. It’s a drill that will closely mimic tennis because players must react and change direction during point play.

• Roll the Ball & Recover. A bit like playing hockey but with a tennis racquet. Mark a spot for your kid to start from and recover back to. Then roll a ball somewhere away from that spot. Your child should run, roll the ball to you using their racquet, and then shuffle back to their spot. This can be fun too. Make sure to keep it slow and easy. It’s more important for your child to learn to control their movements than get a high-intensity workout (the high intensity part comes many years later). The drill is not just about movement. They learn to control the direction of the ball with their racquet, and the concept of recovering. It’s also a great tracking exercise as the drill teaches your child to move in position for the ball.

  • You can do another variation of the same drill but with a bounce, catch, toss back, and recover. Everything is the same, but your child does not use a racquet. They catch the ball with their hand(s) and toss it back to you.

For Mirror and Roll the Ball & Recover (or catch and throw), you can reverse the roles as well. Give your child a chance to take the lead role. Try your best to show good form as kids often learn by example. If you’re moving without trying to recover, then you may find it more difficult to convince your child to recover each time as well. Finally, keep it positive and fun. The key here is to do these drills consistently.

Author: Leo Rosenberg.