Two Common Mistakes On The Volley | Tennis Volley Technique

Hi guys Nick here from Intuitive Tennis. In today's video I'm going to show you the two most common problems on the volley at the recreational level and I'm going to give you a solution on how you can fix these problems. So problem number one I see at the recreational level when it comes to the volley is an excessive turning. So it's completely unnecessary to turn your body like this on the volley. You do need a little bit of a turn just to accommodate hitting the ball on the outside of the body but you do not need to turn your body all the way on the forehand and even on the back and it's unnecessary to have a complete turn as something you would see on the ground strokes. And the reason why it's unnecessary to turn is that when we make a big turn it puts our hand and our elbow too far behind the body and then from here we end up making a swing with the entire arm and it's very difficult to control the volley in this manner. The same issue we can see on the backhand volley. If you make a turn that's too big it puts our hand too far behind the body and we end up with a swing that's too large. So we have to keep the turning minimal on the volley. So on the backhand it's going to be a little bit more than on the forehand and we have to keep our hand in front. Now we can lag the racket behind a little bit to get additional power. We have to keep our hand in front, keep the elbow in front and then make a slight turn. On the forehand volley we only need a minimal turn to about right here. Now we have to keep our hand in front of the body on the forehand and even here with the hand in front we can still lag the racket behind to get additional power. But we must never turn all the way on the forehand volley. You must keep the turn at a minimal. The second most common volley mistake at the rec level is when the elbows get tucked in and the first thing you have to do in order to correct these problems you have to have the proper ready position where you don't necessarily need to bend your knees that much. This will not solve the problem. So you can bend the squat down and you can still get the elbows tucked in. So you must have a comfortable bend and then what's more important is that you put your upper body slightly down and you get into what's called the sprinter stance. When you're in this sprinter stance where the body is in a slight c-shape this comfortably keeps the elbows in front and it's unlikely that you're going to tuck them in. And what happens on the volley when you tuck your elbow in is that the volley becomes very heavily dependent on forearm and wrist movements. So when you are tucking the elbow in you almost are forced to swing with the wrist and the forearm. Now on the backhand on the other hand we don't have the problem of tucking in of the elbow and this is why the majority of players actually has an easier time hitting backhand volleys compared to forehand volleys. The forehand volley is a more complex shot and so since we cannot tuck the elbow in on the backhand volley naturally the backhand volley ends up being a little bit more solid on most players. And a great way to prevent the elbow from tucking in on the forehand volley is to get a broomstick and stick it underneath your elbows and now obviously the elbow cannot go back. You can see here that I can get a beautiful angle of the wrist and get my racket parallel to the net very easily and this actually helps the backhand volley as well it keeps it more under control. And now for five minutes you're gonna have this broomstick underneath your elbow so you're gonna volley and you're gonna see an immediate improvement in control. Your volleys are gonna be much crisper this way. You are gonna make better contact. Now to get power you can start lagging the racket behind the broomstick and now you can see the hand cannot go back and it's just the tip of the racket is lagging and then from here you can make contact and you can actually get more power this way as well. This works on the backhand volley the same way. So we cannot get our hand back because we have to hold the broomstick with the elbows. We can lag the racket behind and then go into the contact and therefore achieve more power. Thanks guys for watching this video. If you have any questions please comment in a section below. I'll be happy to respond. Hit that like button and subscribe if you haven't already. I'll see you next time.