Tennis Volley lesson: Volley technique for dealing with hard hit balls...

Do you sometimes feel like that image, where you're out there and the ball's coming super fast, you don't know what to do, your arms are flailing left and right, and it's just like, you have no time. Well, in this video I'm gonna show you how to look like this, where it's calm and relaxed. And even though I'm moving fast, you can definitely make sure that I can get to all the balls. And this comes down to the way you're preparing for your volleys. So many players, when we're out there, and the ball's coming fast, what do we do? We freak out. Meaning we take the racket back, and we realize like, oh no, I've taken too big of a swing. When what you really wanna do, is focusing on starting to turn your shoulders. Your shoulders will make you so much quicker. And the reason this is important, is because obviously when the ball's coming quick, you don't have time to do all that swing. Now if the ball's coming slower, maybe you can add a little bit more swing. But when it's coming really quick, it really comes down to how you're turning your shoulders, preparing for the volley. And in this video I'm gonna show you how to do that, and drills so you can start working on this, and getting much better at this. Because if you don't do this when the ball's coming fast, there's a big chance you're gonna miss a couple of those volleys, and we don't want that. So let's get started. So the very first thing we gotta understand, is your shoulders are gonna take the racket back. This is a big misunderstanding, that I think a lot of players have. Is that they think that, okay I'm here, I'm gonna take the racket back. And so the problem with this, is when I take the racket back like this, yes you can swing at the ball, but let's look at the racket for a second. Meaning that as I swing at the ball, that if I hit it here, the ball's going up. If I hit it here, the ball's going straight. If I hit it here, it's going down. There's no consistency to it. So yeah, you could do this and that'd be a lot better, but the problem with this is, because the hand is away from the shoulders, I'm not gonna get any power. So what I mean by this is, think about this for a second. As I was gonna push on you right here, this would be the perfect position. Because my hands are behind my shoulders, I could push. And my hands get way out here, as I push my chest forward and my body, my elbows kinda take more of the brunt of the work than my arms, and that's no good. What we want is making sure that our hand is in front of my shoulders, so now when I push, bingo. You can tell that I'm pushing my weight through the ball. Now, what does this have to do with my shoulders and taking the racket back? When I'm in this position to get set, and I get ready for the volley, look how, if I take my arm back, it takes me off that pushing position. But, if I just turn my shoulders, my shoulders are still in line. I'll do it this way so you can really see it. So if I turn my shoulders here, my shoulders are in line so I could push forward. And so now, I get a stable contact because my body's pushing through the ball, and I don't have to have a big swing. This works the same way on the backhand. Backhand's really nice because in this ready position, and if you don't know about this ready position, you need to go watch this video because it'll explain why I like this ready position. You see so many pros doing it versus this ready position. It's because here, in this position, especially when I'm trying to react quick to the ball, I don't have to pull the racket back. I can just simply turn my shoulders and bingo, look what's already set up. That's a backhand volley. And then, if I just flip my wrist over just a little bit and then turn my shoulders, bingo, there's a forehand volley. And this is now how you can get so much quicker at the net. So here's the thing I want you to do. I want you to start off in this ready position and just practice turning your shoulder just a little bit. So what I mean by that is I'm gonna flip my racket over on my forehand side, and you can see my shoulder. That's all I need. Now, obviously, if I'm going for a different target, it's gonna be different, meaning that I want to make sure that I turn enough so my racket doesn't have to do so much work. It now looks in the right position I wanna hit it. So what that means is if I'm gonna hit a ball cross-court, I'm gonna go here, and you can see how my shoulders are almost pointing towards the cross-court. Now, if I'm gonna hit a ball on this side, I'm gonna go, and you can see how I turn my shoulders a little bit more to line it with the direction I wanna hit the ball. Now, this isn't a one-to-one lineup. It's not like, hey, here, okay? There's a subtlety to it. Now, on the backhand side, you're gonna feel like there is almost like a one-to-one direction because I've already got the racket turned, so you're gonna feel this. My shoulder's pointing at you, therefore, I'd hit the ball at you. So if I was going cross-court, you can see how my shoulder's going cross-court, and if I was going the opposite angle, you see how I had to turn my shoulders and my body a little bit more, but you didn't see this on my backhand side, okay? I got lucky there, but what if I do this? Well, it's because when I take the racket back, I'm flicking like this. When you turn your shoulders, and you can see it here, when I turn my shoulders, it keeps the racket face in a nice, constant position, so now all I have to do is pull out. Same thing on the forehand, turn the shoulders and pull out, and this is so important. You can turn your shoulders, and especially when the ball's coming really fast, you can probably get it back, but if you wanna hit a firmer volley, not trying to kill it, but a firmer volley where it feels more stable, what we really have to do is take ground force and push it through the ball. Remember, the first part was not just the arm position, but me pushing forward, and so what this means is when the ball comes to, let's say, my forehand, I shift my weight onto my right leg, being a right-handed player, so once I shift it there, and I turn my shoulders, I can just slightly shift my body weight forward. Now, here's the subtlety that I think is lost, where a lot of players here stomp, so they're doing this. The idea of stomping, I get it, you're trying to transfer weight, but the problem with this is there's a misalignment, meaning that if I'm trying to hit the ball this way, well, stomping or pushing this way makes sense, but if I'm trying to hit the ball forward, then I don't wanna necessarily stomp here, I just need to push my weight forward, so I'm not gonna do this to hit the ball forward, so when the ball comes to me on my forehand side, if I do this, you can see how crowded I feel, compared to if I just do this and shift my weight on my outside leg, outside leg shifting forward, I'll do it again, shift forward on outside leg, you can see a big difference in how I can shift my weight in the direction I want, so even when I'm falling or the ball's coming fast, you'll see me subtly shifting my weight in general direction of where the ball's coming, so I'm gonna hit three forehand volleys and I want you to watch where I'm shifting my weight, I'm gonna hit one cross court, one middle, and one to the outside, ready? So I'm shifting my weight there, I'm shifting my weight forward, and I'm shifting my weight here, so you can see how my weight's now shifting here, at no time did you see me do this, and so when we combine these things, now you have the recipe for dealing with balls that are really fast, because a lot of times when the ball's fast, I'm not gonna have time to step across, so many players are trying to do this, they've run out of time, let's do a drill, because it's no point in learning all this stuff and just having it all be theory up here, so we take action down here, so the drill I first want you to do, is just you're gonna do a forehand and a backhand volley, really simple, and all I'm gonna do here is turn my shoulders, and then turn my shoulders, all I'm gonna do is turn and push out, turn and push out, make it really simple, because all we're doing in this portion of the drill section is I just want you focusing on getting used to turning your shoulders and not taking your hand back, so I'll do it like this, forehand, backhand, okay, I'll do it one more, so you can really see this, forehand, backhand, now you can see how I'm turning my shoulders, now, you may be out there going, I'm trying this, Kevin, but I keep swinging, it's an addiction, I can't get rid of it, so what I want you to do is basically act like you have handcuffs, I've had students, and some of you out there have probably had, or you're like, I remember when Kevin did this to me, I would tie their hands up, sometimes duct tape, I apologize, right here, and I'd keep their hands together, so what this does, when your hands are together, it makes you turn your shoulders, it's very hard to take your hand back, because this is the position you wind up getting in, to turn, compared to just turning your shoulders here, so what I'm gonna do for you, obviously, I don't want you to have to get duct tape at home, take your wrists and stick them together and hold that in front, so here, again, shoulder turn, backhand, shoulder turn, if I was two-handed on the backhand, you could almost keep it on with both hands, shoulder turn, and shoulder turn, but you can see the main thing is that I'm turning with my shoulders, now, what I want you to do is start incorporating a little bit of legs, so when we do the shoulder turn, I want you to turn and load, just a little load, so just to practice this, I want you to do a couple with me, without the ball, and so what this means is I'm gonna shoulder turn and load, and when the ball comes, I'm just gonna push, now, notice my push, it's not in the direction, a lot of times, even when the ball's coming fast, if I just push a little bit to the side, it still sends some energy forward, even though I'm not hitting it there, so I wanna make sure I'm clear on this, if I have time, I can push in that direction, but a lot of times, as the ball's coming fast, I may just scoot to the side, that's still, that scooting to the side sends a little energy forward through the ball, so as I scoot slightly sideways and forward, I'm sending some energy through the ball, so I'm gonna practice this four times, two times on each side, so you can see it without the ball, so it would just be like this, ready, boom, here, I'm loading, okay, I'm loading, I'm loading this leg now, forehand, I'm loading, ready, and backhand, I'm loading, and then now I want you to do the load and push, so load, push, load, push, notice how my pushes aren't big, load, push, load, push, and now we're gonna incorporate it with a ball, we're gonna go side to side, forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand, four balls, and I want you to see exactly how you wanna do this, so ready, load, push, load, push, load, push, load, push, okay, and this is key, now you can see how I can deal with balls coming a little faster, I'm gonna have Daniel do four more balls a little bit quicker, okay, and so now load, ooh, that was a lot quicker, ready, good, okay, so I'm a little bit more active, there we go, you can see I had to be a little bit more active on that one, I had to really now go out and push in that direction, and so it's really important that you line this up, you slowly increase the pace, because it's really important, you just don't go crazy, because if you do go crazy with it, what'll probably happen is that you're gonna take your hands back too far, you're back to swinging, and you don't want that, now, the very last thing I want you to understand is how important the racket face is to getting the ball to go where you want, not only in just pointing in the direction, but the height or the openness or closeness of the racket face, so I'm gonna have Daniel feed me a very low ball in a second, and I'm gonna open the, or sorry, before we open it, I'm gonna keep it probably about right there, I want you to see what the ball's gonna do, so low ball, good, you can see how when I'm hitting that volley there, it doesn't go over that, so how do we make that happen on a low ball? We simply open the racket up a little bit more, perfect, okay, do one more, there we go, you see how I open the racket there, and then it allows me to hit up on the ball, so think of it this way, as the ball's lower, we're gonna have the racket more open, and as it comes up, the racket face starts to close a little bit more, and that's crucial to understand, so as I'm moving to hit a ball, I'm measuring how high am I making contact above the net, and that'll tell me how open I need the racket to be. You wanna think of the ball having a trajectory of going up and then down. I'm gonna hit one more volley, you can hopefully see from this angle, and so my volley's going up and then down, that's how it's going deep, and it's going up and then down. Can you feed me one more? Too many people are trying to do this on the volley, woo, okay, or they're going this. Now, if that's where you want the ball to go, fine, but you notice how my margin over the net has shrunk. We don't want that to shrink. If we're shrinking margins, we're taking more risk, means we're making more errors, means we're losing more matches, so we don't wanna do that, so understanding this is crucial. Now, the very last thing you have to understand is, how do you get up here? Because, great, maybe you're playing doubles, and this works, but there's gonna probably be a transitional volley you're gonna have to hit, so if you wanna learn how to hit a transitional volley, the very first thing you need to do is watch this video.