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Video Capture: Tennis Footwork: Better Court Coverage — Tennis Evolution
Court coverage is extremely important in tennis if you can cover the court well and hit the ball deep to your opponent without making too many unforced errors you'll win a lot of tennis matches similar to stroke technique there are certain key body movements that all the top players have in common and these are based on the physical laws involved in playing tennis in this video I want to show you the two most important movements to master and these are.
Shuffle steps and crossover steps now let's take a look at how the best players in the world use these here we see Novak Djokovic who is certainly one of the best movers in the world we'll see a typical footwork sequence where Novak uses crossover steps as shuffle steps so here in this situation Novak is getting ready to hit a forehand deep in the corner from which he will then have to recover back to the optimal recovery position which is not in the.
Middle of the court by the way so let's take a look at how Novak manages to do this he hits the forehand and from here he's going to recover with one big crossover step and then a shuffle step so let's take a look at that Novak crosses over in front with a big crossover step because this covers a large distance he then finishes the movement by bringing the back leg around into a split step and from here Novak is now going to continue with a shuffle.
Step because he's already very close to his optimal recovery position so let's take a look at that shuffle step and while in the air Novak recognizes where the next ball is coming and I already turns his foot out in that direction from here he now uses a crossover step 2 once again cover a big distance to the next shot Novik then hits his backhand and here he recognizes that he's already very close to his optimal recovery positions now he uses shuffle steps to that.
Position and once again the next ball comes and he goes with a crossover step to hit that last shot now let's take a look at a footwork sequence from Roger Federer here Roger hits a chip return and afterwards he immediately recognizes that he has quite a distance to the optimal recovery position so he uses a crossover step now he splits steps and reacts to the next shot he decides that a shuffle step is enough to this shot even though it is relatively far to.
The outside so he shuffles and then slices the ball down the line from here he uses a crossover step and this is actually a reverse crossover to get back to the optimal recovery position then once again we'll see that Roger shuffles to cover a small distance and get ready for the next shot he uses a big crossover step to attack this short ball and then hits a winner down the line so as you can see Novak and Roger use the same basic footwork techniques shuffle.
Steps and crossover steps to deal with these situations okay so let's work on those shuffle steps and crossover steps now once again the crossover steps are the most important steps when you have to the ball towards the corner and when you come back towards the shuffle steps are usually used around the middle of the court when you're just covering a small distance in order to get into the optimal position so now I'm going to show you a sequence we're going to start.
With a shadow swing without hitting a ball and this is the basic sequence that you should work on and that you should master to cover the court well so you start in the middle I'm going to show it very slow you start with a split step so from the ready position split step and now I'm going to the forehand with a crossover step like this the front foot is crossing over crossover and then I move to the forehand I hit my forehand and now I'm crossing.
Back over with the outside foot once again in front crossover and then shuffle back to the middle let me show that one more time split step crossover again in front and then shuffle back to the middle that's the very basic sequence that usually happens when you have to hit a shot over on the forehand side same thing over on the backhand side so now I'm going to show that one more time in regular speed a little bit faster okay so split step hit back crossover.
And you practice that over once that feels somewhat natural it's time to start hitting some balls so let me demonstrate that right now split step crossover and again cross over back shuffle still one more crossover shuffle okay now on the last one I actually did not cross over into the corner because the ball was not that far out so I just started with a shuffle like this and then hit right here so if the distance.
Is not that big you can go ahead and use the shuffle also to get out there so now let's take a look at that sequence in super slow motion okay I start with a split step then a crossover step in front to the forehand I hit my forehand with a neutral stance here and now it's time to the middle with a big crossover step in front once again and then I use a shuffle to get back into position so much for the basic court coverage sequence that I want you.
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