The 5 Footwork Fundamentals Every Tennis Player Needs

You've heard me say it before, but I'm going to say it again as it's so important. Your tennis is only as good as your footwork, but don't worry as in this video, I'm going to go through five footwork fundamentals that if tweaked could really level up your game. And for each one, I'm going to give you one very simple exercise that you can do without any equipment and with very minimal space. And if you hang around to the end of the video, I'll show you how you can piece them together to make a very simple 15 minute workout. Let's get into it. Now, when it comes to having great footwork, it's not just about how you move your feet. It's also how you use your brain and your eyes to read the oncoming ball. I've made quite a few videos on your anticipation skills, which I'll link in the description below. But this video is going to be purely on the mechanics of your footwork and how to improve those. And so getting straight into footwork fundamental number one is having an explosive first step once you've landed your split step. Now your split step happens every single time your opponent makes contact with the ball. As soon as you land your split step, you'll know whether you need to go right, left, forwards or backwards. And it's that first step after your landing that needs to be the most explosive. The more explosive your first step is, the quicker your movement will be. Giving you more time for the next fundamentals I'm going to talk about. I see so many players of all levels that aren't making the most of their first step. It's too small and it's too slow. Now there are tons of different exercises that you can do to help you to improve your explosivity out of that split step. But one that I really like and that I recommend you try is called lateral bounds, otherwise known as speed skaters. Now I like to do this using the tram lines, but you can use any small space. Your aim is to start on one leg, load and explode out into the other leg. As you're doing these, focus on being explosive, not just driving side to side, but driving up using your arm and your leg power. But equally focus on being really stable and balanced as you land. Not only is this going to help your explosivity, but it's also going to help you to feel much more stable when moving laterally around the tennis court, which is going to help out in some of the other fundamentals. Now you might be thinking that that looks slightly different to what you would do out of your split step. And you'd be right, as what you do most of the time when moving laterally out of a split step is a crossover step. But we're going to cover that one later in the video. And so for now, to improve your explosive first step, use lateral bounds. Get good at these and you're going to feel far more powerful out of your split step. Fundamental number two is spacing. And it's something that so many players struggle with. And yes, this does come massively down to your anticipation and your ability to read the ball. But there are some technical cues that can help you to space yourself from your ground strokes. In fact, most players that I see actually find it easier to hit a ball on the run than it is to hit a ball that comes straight to them. The reason for this is when you have to move to a wide ball, you only have to move in one direction as you already have a lot of space between you and the ball. Whereas a ball that comes towards you, you actually have to move away from the ball first to create enough space to step back in towards it. This is where people struggle. And so one exercise that I like to use to help with spacing are hoop shadows. Using a hoop or any small space again, your aim is to do laps of the hoop. Now to begin with, just to get used to it, you're going to run a few laps of the hoop facing in one direction, making lots of small adjustment steps to get yourself around the hoop. Do this in both directions, again, just to get used to that movement pattern. Once you're used to it, you can incorporate your shadow swings. To begin with, we're going to imagine that we're receiving a ball that's coming straight to our body and I'm gonna run around and hit a forehand. Now, I don't know if you guys have seen me play, but I definitely wouldn't run around a forehand to hit a backhand, but I'm still gonna practice it. But using this hoop or a circular space allows you to create that space and get your weight transfer going forwards before recovering for the next ball. You'll notice when I'm doing this, I'm really consciously using my offhand here to give myself space between my body and the ball. This is a really good technical cue for anybody that struggles with spacing as it acts as a bit of a gauge between you and the ball. You can actually link this in with fundamental number one, where we spoke about explosive first steps. If you start yourself slightly more off center, so you've got further to travel, after your split step, you're gonna make a back foot crossover to create space behind the ball. Here. And linking that in with the hoop. Footwork fundamental number three is so overlooked and it's your deceleration. Now, so many tennis players focus on acceleration, moving quickly to the ball, but neglect the deceleration, the part where you slow down. This is equally as important as your acceleration and it links directly with the spacing that we just spoke about. As if you're sprinting at the ball, but don't slow down efficiently, you're gonna jam yourself up. But the challenge is it actually works different muscles to your acceleration muscles. And so we have to train them. Now, I've actually got a few exercises to help you with deceleration as it's so neglected. The first is lunges, specifically reverse lunges. The reason why reverse lunges are good is because it works the muscle groups that you need to decelerate. And so starting from a static position, rather than lunging forwards, you're gonna step back and come up. Another lunge variation, which is great, are drop lunges. This is where you drop into the lunge from a height. So starting with your knee at 90 degrees, you'll fall forwards, land, and push back. Forwards, land, and push back. Just like you would when you decelerate for a running forehand or backhand, your front leg is absorbing and slowing you down to a stop. But the third exercise is the one that we're gonna incorporate into your workout at the end. This exercise is called sprint and stick. The aim is to start on the doubles line, sprint as fast as you can, but as soon as you get yourself to the centre line, you've gotta start slowing down. Your aim is to see if you can stop with as few steps as possible. As you can see, I did about four steps after that centre line. The key here is to make sure that you fully commit to accelerating, only slowing down once you reach that centre line. Now, naturally, this will be different on different surfaces. You can see me on a clay court here, slightly more difficult to stop. That's not an excuse. But training yourself to decelerate to slow yourself down is gonna help you to be far more balanced and stable when you get to the ball. The last thing you want is to be moving quickly whilst you're striking the ball. When it comes to maximising your speed with your acceleration and your deceleration, what you're wearing on your feet is vital. And you may have seen that during this video, I'm wearing Wilson's brand new Rush Tour 5. Now, if you've seen me reviewing shoes before, you'll know that I love a stability and durability shoe, which is exactly what this is in the Wilson line-up. Designed to keep your foot firmly in place in the most extreme movements around the tennis court, helping you to feel locked in, but at the same time feeling super comfortable with its cushioned midsole. What's unique about this shoe is it's got a dual-axis speed carbon chassis, which helps to keep your foot stable both laterally, but also with this carbon fibre insert, it acts a bit like a high-end running shoe, giving you extra pop off the ground when you need it. In fact, this carbon fibre plate inside has the same technology that Wilson use in their braided rackets like the Pro Staff. And so, if like me, you're looking for a shoe that gives you maximum stability and durability on the tennis courts, to help you to maximise the things I'm talking about in this video, then maybe this shoe is a good one for you to try. I'll pop the link in the description below, but let's get back into footwork fundamental number four. Footwork fundamental number four is having weight transfer through your shots. Now, we're talking specifically about ground strokes, but the same can be said for your serve and your volleys. If you can get weight transfer going forwards, it's gonna be the most efficient way to hit your shot with depth and power, without having to use your arms too much, which results in you losing control. Now, you'll start to notice that all of these footwork fundamentals start to link together. You can only get body weight transfer going forwards if you get good spacing in the first place. You can only get good spacing in the first place if you have an explosive first step to save time, and that you have great deceleration skills when you get to the ball. But hitting your ground strokes with good body weight transfer going forwards in the direction you want to send the ball to can be created as a habit. And one of the best ways is to replicate the movements you want with the tennis ball using shadow swings. For you to be able to execute good body weight transfer, you need to load most of your body weight on your bat leg as you initiate your swing. So from my ready position here, as I prepare for the ball, I'm gonna load on my bat leg with the aim to drive my bat leg forwards into the court. Now, yes, it does depend on what stance I'm using, but where possible, I want to get my weight going forwards. So if I'm using a neutral stance where I get sideways on, that feels the most natural way to get body weight transfer going forwards as I can get my bat leg to drive through and finish out in front. Same on the backhand side, boom, here. However, if I'm hitting with an open stance, it feels slightly less natural, but I still want you to try to get weight transfer going forward. As I prepare for an open stance forehand, I'm gonna be more parallel to the baseline, but what I really want is to get my weight going forwards into the court. Same on the backhand side, loading my outside leg, driving up and forwards into the court. There are some super defensive shots where you're not gonna be able to get your weight transfer going forwards, and that's fine. But where possible, encourage yourself to step through the court. The shadow swings you're gonna incorporate are gonna be a mixture of forehands and backhands, neutral and open stances. You can do them in sets of five, just getting into the habit, loading that back leg, and getting your weight transfer going forwards through the court. Same on the backhand side, weight transfer going forwards, stepping through, and recovering afterwards. Maybe a tip for fundamental number five. Open stance, and same on the backhand. And last, but definitely not least, footwork fundamental number five is your recovery. And this ties everything back together. One massive difference that I see between amateur players and professional tennis players is when they're moving at their quickest. Amateurs tend to move their quickest towards the ball. Once they've hit it, they tend to take a second or two before they recover. And the recovery tends to be quite slow, meaning that they have to sprint to the next ball. Whereas professional tennis players do the opposite. Yes, they have a very explosive first step after their split step, but that allows them to move much more fluidly and calmly to the ball, meaning that their deceleration is gonna be easier, their spacing is gonna be easier, they can get good weight transfer going forwards, but they do the most work with their recovery. Because they sprint back to the center of the court so quickly, they give themselves more time to do all of those things on the next ball. And so rather than doing what you currently do, sprinting to the ball, admiring it, wandering back and sprinting to the next one, flip that around. Focus on an explosive first step to move calmly to the ball and sprint back to the middle. Calmly to the ball, sprint back to the middle. And to do this, you need another explosive first step, but this is your recovery step. We call it the crossover. The exercise to practice your explosive crossover step is very simple, very similar to the lateral bounds we did earlier. But this time, instead of starting with your outside leg on the tramline, you're gonna start with your inside leg on the tramline. As from here, we're gonna make an explosive crossover. My outside leg is gonna cross over to the other tramline here. And we repeat. Now, just like we said before, focus on being very explosive and very stable upon your landing. This exercise is super specific for tennis, as not only is it gonna help your recovery, but it's also gonna help your explosive first step. As tennis players need to have very, very strong and explosive hips. As we're not just running in a straight line like runners, we're moving laterally from side to side. And so as promised, I'm gonna tell you how you can put those five exercises into a very simple 15 minute workout. Although you can tailor it to five or 10 minutes if you're short on time. Using a stopwatch, you'll press go and do the first activity, lateral bounds. You'll do this for 30 seconds before having a 30 second break. Once your stopwatch hits a minute, you'll start the next exercise, which is hoop shadows. You'll do this for 30 seconds before taking a 30 second break, then moving on to the next activity, which is sprint and stick. You'll do this as many times as you can in 30 seconds before you take your 30 second break. Then doing the same for shadow swings and then finishing with your crossover steps. Once you've done five activities, that's five minutes up, which without teaching you to suck eggs, if you do that circuit three times through, that's a 15 minute workout. Now, this is great for tennis players as this interval style training session is just like what you're going to be doing on the match court. You'll be sprinting around playing a point before having a short break. So not only does this train your footwork patterns and your explosivity and strength, but it also trains your heart and your lungs to deal with what they're gonna have to put up with on the tennis court. Now, if you want to go the extra mile, what I would do is record how many repetitions you get in within those 30 seconds and try to beat it next time you do the workout. And finally, if you find it too difficult or too easy, you can always fine tune things. If you want to make it easier, do the work for 20 seconds and have a 40 second break. Or if you want to make it tougher, flip it, do the work for 40 seconds and have a 20 seconds break. But as long as you start each activity on the minute, you'll stick to the plan. As always, a massive thank you for watching all the way through to the end of the video. Let me know if you have any footwork questions in the comments below. And again, a big thank you to Wilson for sponsoring this video. I put the link to their new Rush Tour 5 in the description. Thanks again, I'll see you in the next one.