Teach Your Kids Tennis: The Essential Basics

11, keep going, keep going. 18, nice, amazing. Today, me and Elijah, we're gonna do some tennis forehand and backhand. Now, EJ, you haven't done too much tennis before, have you? No. All right, so we're gonna go through the basics. We're gonna show you what you can do to get started with tennis. Let's get into it. All right, so we need to warm up our feet first. I wanna see quick feet. We've got a little box here. What you're gonna do, you're gonna go one, two, three, four. I want you, Elijah, to stay on your toes, okay? Quick feet, bending your knees. Using your arms in and out of the box. You ready? Three, two, one, go. That's it. Nice and light on your toes. Good, a little faster. We're gonna go 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, and stop there. Okay, next one we're gonna do, we're now gonna go sideways. So you're gonna step in and out. So you're gonna go one, two, three, one, two, three. Notice that I've got my knees bent and I don't want you bobbing up and down like this. I want you to try and imagine you've got a roof above your head and you gotta stay low the whole time like this. You see how my knees are bent and I'm just on my toes, nice and controlled. Go for it. Good, that's it, excellent. Nice and controlled. Good, here we go, 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. It helps if you stick your tongue out, you know that? Okay, next one, figure of eight. All right, so now I'm gonna go a little bit wider, staying low, watch out the way. You're just gonna stay low, you're gonna go in and out, always facing forwards. Okay, you're doing a figure of eight around. Knees bent on your toes. Ready, go. Good, stay nice and low, nice and wide. Make sure you stay low, bend your knees. Keep going, here we go, five, four, three, two, and last one here, excellent. We've got a last little footwork warmup game called through the tunnel. So Elijah, what you have to do is you have to stay along that line and you've gotta let the ball run through your legs. You get a point every time it goes through your legs. Ready, go. Good, that's it, move, move, move. Nice, stay on the line, good. Stay low, keep your knees bent. Go, go, go, nice. Stay low, stay low. Here we go, a few balls left, keep moving, keep moving. Get it through the tunnel. Nice bonus ball here, nice, well done. Forehands, let's get into it. Elijah, first I wanna show you how to hold the racket. Hold the racket out like this, okay, and now put your hand on the face of it and slide it down and grab it like that. That's how you're gonna hold it for forehand, excellent. Now I want you to get into your prep position. So I want you to stand, feet on those markers, excellent. And we're gonna say prep. When I say prep, I want you to get into a prep position. So we're gonna have your racket out here. The face of it is almost pointing to the corner. Your other hand is there. That is your prep position. I don't want you close like this, okay, and not reaching too far. Your racket head is up in the air, not down like that. That's your prep position. Can you bend your knees a little bit as well? Just a little bit. And I wanna see that you're nice and balanced. Excellent, you're nice and balanced, ready to go. So that is your prep position, racket back. What you're gonna do from that prep position, you're then gonna make a small C. You're gonna drop the racket head. It's gonna go down. It's gonna go up. You're gonna contact the ball out there. I don't want it up here. I don't want it down there. Out about the height of your belly button, I reckon. And then you're gonna follow through and you're gonna point your elbow over to your target on the other side, okay? That's what I'm looking for. So show me your prep position. So prep position, I want that racket out there. Your arm's ready and now go for a swing. Swing, good, finish over your shoulder. Point to your target with your elbow. Excellent, I reckon you're ready to go, okay? So I want you to wait for the ball to bounce, okay? I'm gonna give you an easy feed. Wait for the ball to bounce and swing. Ready, off we go. Perfect, and reset back to prep, here we go. Good, good, fantastic, Elijah. Mate, good, nice, let's go, three more. One, two, excellent. Now, that was so good. Some of the ones that went too high, that's because your racket face was pointing up. If your racket face is pointing, where's the ball gonna go? Up. It's gonna go up, right? If it's pointing there, where's it gonna go? Down. Down, if it's pointing over there, where's it gonna go? Over there. Over there, so we wanna make sure that that face of the racket is going exactly just over the net where we want it to go. Yeah. Nice, you're watching that ball, really good. All right, next thing I want you to do now is as you hit, I want you to step with that right foot. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna hit and step forward. That's a bit more of an advanced part, but, and then you reset back to prep position. Ready, excellent, and reset back. Let's look at the ready position. Elijah, do you know what the ready position helps us do? It helps us move right. Left and right, it gets us ready for a shot. So, I want you to copy me. For our ready position, we're gonna put our legs a little wider than our shoulders. You're gonna bend your knees. You're gonna hold the racket out like this with two hands. Okay, your left hand can just sort of hold it nice and gently around here. From this ready position, when I say go, you're gonna step out to the side and then you're gonna step forward and you're gonna be in that prep position here. Then from there, you're ready to swing through and finish over your shoulder. Okay, so can you show me from there? Ready position, prep. Excellent, swing. You reckon you could do that with a ball now? Yep. Good, excellent. Back into that position. Excellent, make sure you really get into that prep position. Once we swing, let's step through with that right leg now. Okay, so we're adding a bit of power and balance into it. We're staying balanced with our knees bent. Yep, yep, make sure you get to that prep nice and early. I want you to prep before that ball bounces, okay? Yes, excellent. Smash it. Hey, that footwork, really good, okay? It's so important that you're nice and low here. Your legs are ready, ready, engaged. Out, out, swing, step forward. You keep your legs low, you're gonna be able to get to all those shots. I think you're ready for backhands. Let's do some backhands. That's when it comes to the left side of your body as a right-handed player. So first what I want you to do is you're gonna take your right hand and you're gonna slide it down the frame and you're gonna grip it there at the bottom. With your left hand, put it on the face of the racket, slide it down just above your right hand. That's that backhand position. In your prep position, the tip of the head is gonna be pointing more towards the back of the fence, the back of the court. So I want you to hold it out here. I don't want the racket down here, not way back behind you, just pointing over in that direction. Excellent. I want you to bend your knees just a little bit. Yep, are you stable? Let's see if you're stable. Okay, show me the prep position. So from here, and then you're gonna swing through from low to high. You're gonna contact the ball in front of your knee, again, about your belly button height. Remember, not like this. We want it like that. No, we want it like that. We want it like that. No, we want it there. Nice. So you can bounce off. And then finish over your shoulder, your left elbow pointing to your target over there. I want you to see that racket back here. Your knees are bent. You're gonna contact in front of you, finish over your shoulder. Okay, so remember those ones. Those two were quite high. That means your racket head was there. Where do you think it needs to be? There. Perfect, okay. Yes, you see that difference there? That's what we want. Good. Oh, that was perfect. That was the one. Same again. Finish here. All right, so now we're gonna progress that, Elijah. So again, like the forehands, once we swing, okay, we're also now gonna step through with your left leg. Okay, again, I want you to stay nice and low and just get a good balance. So it's like you're stepping forward, following through. So here, you're getting that prep position. All right, contacting and step through. Step through. Perfect. Good. That's the one, because you want your body weight going forward into the ball. That's the one. Excellent. Yeah, remember that racket face? You've got to turn it. Show me where you want to contact the ball. Excellent. Okay, again. Good. I like how you're stepping through with that left leg. Good. So again, the footwork, the footwork is just so important. It's a real big one in tennis, to getting prep in that sideways position, keeping a low, strong base. If they can keep a low, strong base, they're gonna be very stable when they hit. They're not gonna be falling back or falling off to the side. But if they're here with a strong base, nice and stable, all that control comes through the ball. So we've done a lot of reps with him now. I think he's doing really well. Ready position. All right. What you're gonna do is, knees bent, this time out to the left. So what I'm gonna do is, from this corner, I'm gonna step out with my left foot. I'm gonna step forward with my right and I get to that prep position before the ball bounces, remember. So then from here, I can swing contact out in front of my knee, step through, elbow to target. Okay. So show me without the ball first. Okay. So ready position and head up, prep, left, right, back to there and then swing. Good. Show me once more. So prep position and nice and slow, go. Prep. Yep. Swing. Good. You know what I liked you did on that second swing? On that first one, you went really low and you kind of scooped it and the ball would have gone off. I like on that second one, you kept it at a good path, low to high, but not scooping it. Remember, I want you to prep before the ball bounces. Prep. Yep. Good. Okay. Make sure you bring your racket back to prep nice and quick. Go. Yep. Excellent. That's the one. Prep. So what I want is, with your prep, I don't want it slow like this. I want it bang. Yeah. So you're here, ready position. I'm ready. And then you can go. That's perfect. Make sure you prep nice and early. Before the ball bounces, I want it there. Before it bounces. Let's put that together now. Forehands and backhands from the ready position. So I want to see you reset every time back to the tee. Okay. Back to here. Racket out in front. Not bending over. Just from this. All right. I'm going to give you a forehand. Step out. Prep. Swing. And then get back to this position. Okay. And then a backhand. Out. Prep. Swing. If I can see you working on that stepping forward as well, that would be amazing. All right. Now the balls might not go perfectly to you. So you need to, you need to just be ready to move, ready to move. You might have to move a little bit and then go to. Understand? All right. Show me what you got. Perfect. Okay. Just with that backhand. Can I borrow your racket? Make sure at the moment, the ball's bouncing and you're here and then you're suddenly going. I want you to be here. Bang. Get to that position nice and early. Yeah? Yeah. Good job. Good. Forehand's looking really sharp. Perfect. Okay. Just watch where that ball is bouncing. I'm going to go backhand again. Show me your backhand. So remember Elijah, backhand especially. Let's say the ball goes quite wide. You've got to move, move, move and then step out and prep. Okay. So you've got to make sure you move those feet first. It might be wide. It might be short. If it's short here, you've got to adjust. Left. Right. Make sure you get that racket head pointing back behind you. Okay? Good. Pointing to the back. Good. Excellent. Perfect. Excellent. Last one here. Finish strong. All right. Let's do a rally. In the service boxes, what I want from you Elijah is moving your feet first. What do we got to move first? Feet. Okay. Always moving feet first, getting in the prep position. What should our target be? 20. 20? Okay. Let's go back. So remember, staying low, always ready to move. Off we go. One. Two. Three. Four. Good. Five. Six. Seven. Put it on. It's good. Sorry. Eight. Nine. 10. 11. Make sure you prep early. 12. 13. Oh. Okay. 13. We're doing really well here. Oh. Three. Make sure you prep. Six. Keep that racket head low. Oh, bit of spin there. Eight. Nine. Nice. 10. 11. 12. Keep going. 13. 14. 15. 16. Here we go. 17. 18. 19. Finish. Let's keep going, keep going, keep going. Keep going, keep going. 22. Oh, hey. Hey, we did it. Amazing. All right. You see how much better you did when you prepped early. All right. So that was the lesson for today. Fundamentals of forehand and backhand. Did you have fun, Elijah? I reckon you guys need to make sure you subscribe to the channel. We've got loads of fun games and ideas, haven't we? We do soccer, tennis. We're gonna be doing a lot more things like basketball, fitness, volleyball as well. Subscribe to the channel. Hopefully this helps you out and just keep training. Reps, reps, reps. Keep training, have loads of fun. We'll see you next time.