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Run Around your Shots for Better Footwork David W. Smith, Senior Editor TennisOne Any experienced player knows the importance of footwork. Studies show that the top players take around twelve steps between shots; a top college player takes about ten steps. Skilled recreational players take about eight steps, and the more average player takes between four and six steps.
While many players trying to play better tennis, those especially who have developed skilled strokes, often find the footwork issue hard to wrap their arms—er, feet—around. There are many drills players can integrate to train better footwork. On TennisOne, we have dozens of these drills and exercises to work in a practice routine. However, when you are in a match, it is hard to simply tell yourself to “move your feet” and have a response that isn’t either forced or simply doesn’t happen the way you want. Is there a way to help players move better within matches so they are not consciously telling themselves to move or trying to force extra steps for the sake of taking extra steps? Yes.
There is actually a simple way to integrate great footwork and develop such movement in competitive moments. It is called “running around your shots.” Have you ever noticed how well players who have a weak side move? Why? It is because they avoid their weaker side like the plague. We often see players run around their backhand to hit forehands. (Occasionally we see the opposite, with players running around their forehand to hit a backhands, but this is less common.) This desire to hit a more favorable shot gives the player an unconscious desire to move the feet. It isn’t that they are moving their feet for the sake of movement, it is because they have a sincere purpose: they want to hit a different shot. Next time you go out on the court, try this pattern: Run around a forehand to hit a backhand or run around your backhand to hit a forehand on as many shots as you can. (Some shots come too fast to create this intention.) However, there are ample opportunities including second serves in most cases and returns after your serve, etc.
Practice Routine It may be very helpful to work drills with a hitting partner or ball machine where you specifically move to run around forehands or backhands. Pros can help you in clinics or in private lessons where they feed you or your group in what we call “backing out drills.” If your pro is not familiar with these drills, it is where the pro feeds balls to your backhand side across the court with the student starting on the forehand side of the court. Usually a pro can feed two to four balls towards the backhand side having the student run around each backhand to hit a forehand. The drill can be reversed to be feed towards the forehand side of the player having them run around and hit backhands. A second drill would be to have a pro toss balls to each side of the student with high, soft-tossed balls, from about 8 feet away, and have the player alternate between running around and hitting a forehand on the backhand side and then move to hit a backhand on the forehand side. (The shot hit should be down the line to avoid hitting the tossing instructor!)
You may be surprised to find yourself moving very naturally when your intention is to run around one shot to hit another. Even if you are running around to hit a weaker shot, you will often find that you hit the shot better than normally because you moved better to set up for the particular shot. Take it into a practice match also. Give it a try for a set or two and see if indeed you not only discover better footwork, but because your intent is defined quickly (by running around a shot, you are being proactive in hitting the shot YOU want to hit, as opposed to your opponent making you hit the shot they might want you to hit), you will hit with more authority, too.
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