The following tennis movement tips help you feel more stable, engage legs better in your groundstrokes and consequently generate more power in your shots.
While simple movement tips cannot completely replace long-term footwork training with various drills, they can give you a quick boost in how you move around the court and how you consequently hit the ball better.
Tip #1 – Be 10 cm / 4 Inches Lower
The first tip is very easy to implement but it will course require a bit more hard work.
Tennis players are often too upright as they move around the court and that makes it more difficult to start moving quickly towards the ball, brake well before the shot and more difficult to change direction.
The yellow line marks my normal height and I am almost the same now as I am about to hit the ball.
If you lower your center of gravity, you will be able to move much quicker around the court.
A simple tip that helps your overall movement is to lower yourself by about 10 cm / 4 inches compared to your normal height.
Now I am moving better because of a lower center of gravity.
As long as the ball is in play you should be in that lower body position with 2 exceptions:
- when you split step you will of course rise up higher,
- when you are executing the shot you will rise up higher because you will drive up with your legs.
Otherwise, keep a simple tip in mind as you move around the court – be lower than your normal height.
Tip #2 – Move In The “L Shape” When You Can
Let’s start with the usual incorrect way how players move to the ball laterally.
They tend to be too close to the baseline and they tend to move just toward the ball laterally.
Just moving laterally often ends up in a closed stance...
The consequence of such movement is that they will often end up in a closed stance which blocks the hips and body from turning into the ball and that robs the player of power and good ball control.
The solution is to imagine a movement toward the ball in the shape of “L”.
That means that you stand a bit further behind the baseline, first move two steps towards the ball and get well behind it so that with your last step you can step forward and transfer weight into the ball.
Get behind the ball first and then step into it if possible.
So your movement path looks like the letter “L”.
When you move in the “L shape” you will have more time, you will be able to transfer weight better into the ball and you will be able to hit the ball more in front of you which will give you easy power and good ball control.
If you happen to end up in an open stance since there was no time to step into the ball, then at the recreational level do not try to transfer weight forward into the ball because you will likely lose balance.
The key to playing open stance well is good stability on the outside leg.
You should focus on good stability on your outside leg and good body rotation into the ball.
While a one-handed backhand can be played quite well in a closed stance, a two-handed backhand and the forehand strokes work much better in neutral and open stances since they require much more hip and shoulder rotation into the shot.
Tip #3 – Move “Down The Slope” Towards The Ball
So let’s start first with describing the problem first – when you have to move to the ball and you eventually reach the right position from where you will execute your stroke, you end up on straight legs and you are unable to use leg drive as one of the sources of power to hit the ball.
You will also struggle with giving the ball enough lift and topspin if your legs are not driving upwards as you were hitting the ball.
Players tend to end up on straight legs just before hitting the ball...
When you move to the ball laterally and you are too upright you will simply run out of time to lower yourself and then go up to hit the ball.
The solution is to visualize “moving down the slope” as you are approaching the ball.
With every step you will gradually and incrementally lower yourself so that when you reach the ball your legs will already be bent and loaded and you will now have extra power to use and extra lift and topspin to apply to the ball.
My legs are now loaded before the shot since I was moving "down the slope" towards the ball.
Moving down the slope is first easier to implement when playing an open stance since you will make just two steps towards the ball compared to typically making three steps if you wanted to play in a neutral stance.
The leg drive is also more pronounced when hitting an open stance forehand or backhand so you will feel the improvement much better if you use the legs more.
Bonus Tip – Always Keep Moving!
And to conclude this set of effective tennis movement tips I have one more bonus tip for you – always keep moving as long as the ball is in play.
I see so many recreational tennis players who will stand for a brief moment or slowly walk as they recover as the ball is flying to the other side and that’s not how we play tennis.
You will find it impossible to get any rhythm and timing into your game and you will find it much harder to start moving towards the ball from a static standing position.
We must always keep moving, dancing on our feet either doing small split steps or dancing from foot to foot so that we are light on our feet and can react quickly to the incoming ball.
Either do small split steps or dance from foot to foot - always keep moving!
The only exception to this is the short calming down and stabilizing moment after you hit the ball which is what I explained in “How To Calm Down In Tennis” video article.
Every other moment during the ball exchange you should be moving in one way or another to move to the ball, recover or be alert to react to the next shot.
So I invite you to implement these simple movement tips into your tennis game and let us know how they worked for you.
