Tennis Drills

Like any other ball sport, a tennis player needs sufficient training for their skills and strokes if they want to become one of the best. Coaches teaching tennis drills generally provide their players with drills that boost a player’s physical skills. But unlike other ball sports, tennis is not just a physical sport, but a mental sport as well. Tennis players can be most competent and capable of great results when they’re “in the zone” state.

The “zone state” is where the mind of a player is empty. Players thinking about things during a game, disturb their concentration that results to errors. A player’s most distractive thoughts are on negative outcomes “just before” a point. Thus, a player does not only need physical training, but also mental training through tennis drills that sets the mind to be on the right state during a ball exchange.

Mental Drills

The most common mind drills are the “tennis serve drills”. These drills teach players to empty their mind and serve the ball with focus, as well as how to shut-off pressure during “pressured” conditions while serving.

“Serving In A Row”

This drill is done through dividing the two service courts into two halves. A “server” serves a ball into each half beginning from the left to the right. The server needs to hit four serves, and they must serve two serves successively into every half of the tennis court. Hitting every serve would mean eight serves. The player must serve three serves successively, which means twelve serves if they’re hit each time.

This type of drill is unlike usual “target practice”, as the player serves under pressure. He/she requires as few serves as they can, and they start from 0 if they muss a second or third serve. While the player trains his precision serving, he/she is also more focused compared to simple target serve practices.

Psycho Serve

This drill is similar to “serving in a row”, but with extra pressure through playing against a tennis partner. This drill is performed by two players making a serve against the other on cross court. The first player-A serves first, then the other player-B. If the first player hits the court, and the other player misses, first player wins the point. If A hits court and B hits court, nobody gets the point. If A misses and B hits court, B wins the point.

The drill is done in 3, and players switch order of serving. This time, second player gets more pressure. This drill is great for warm-ups, as players serve in a “focused” manner. Players develop the ability to combine serving and their mind at all times during practice, which is stored in their mind’s subconscious, making it come naturally when needed.

There are also many tennis conditioning drills that players can practice regularly. Some tennis drills focus on one’s hitting skills, while others focus on footwork. Here’s an example of a tennis hitting drill:

20-Ball Suicide

A player stands at the court’s center on the baseline. The other tennis player has the bucket of tennis balls, standing at the court’s center anywhere on the baseline to the net –this player throws the balls to other player. The aim is making a player successfully run down and hit balls that are being fed. A ball hit is a plus one, while the missed ones are a minus. Once a player achieves plus twenty, he/she completes the drill.

Both physical and mental tennis drills are vital in honing one’s tennis strokes, skills potential, and mind capabilities. Physical tennis drills will help enhance a player’s strokes and footwork, and his physical ability to endure the game. On the other hand, mental tennis drills are intended to find the “zone state”, and how better he’ll perform in that state.