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Florian (Tennis Evolution)
Video Capture: The #1 Secret For Great Movement — Stop Being Late To The Ball — Florian (Tennis Evolution)
Hey this is Florian I want to ask you a question do you feel like you're often late to the ball maybe you often find yourself off balance and out of position which makes it very difficult to hit good shots in today's free video as the next two we will show you important steps on how you can go from being constantly late and chasing balls around the court to anticipating balls early said you can be in good position which will make it much easier to hit good shots tennis is.
A movement game and when you watch the best players in the world on TV you see that their movement is rhythmic and they seem to flow around the court ficient movement is very technical and in my opinion there's nobody more qualified in the world to teach you how to improve your movement than oti instructor Ian really is a movement guru and he will show you can stop being a chaser on the court and become an anticipator instead to become a great.
Mover you have to master what Ian calls the five R's of movement in today's video we start with the first R in the circle of ours and that is the ready part you must have a great athletic foundation or base if you want to move quickly around the key of course is to have a sequence of effective drills to master this and that's exactly what Ian shares with you in this video let's go out to the court and get started good let's look at the first R and the.
Circle of ours they're really part of it comes to being ready to move one of the first things you want to accomplish is that base you've heard people talk about you see how the pros do it but it's really important that you understand your ability to move is directly related to your center of gravity okay so if there's one thing I can tell you for sure that's going to make you a better mover and if it's the only thing that you take away from this.
Whole series that I'm doing a movement here is the athletic foundation the base as I call the base right if you take your feet and you put your feet double shoulder width apart you'll see how everything just goes lower right everything syncs all but so when you look at the pros something sometimes these people like three shoulder widths apart you want to be at least one and a half to two shoulder widths apart depending on your flexibility we don't want you to be.
Uncomfortable we want you to be comfortable because you're supposed to have a platform that you can push from but we see this quite a bit especially at recreational levels people playing with their feet almost perfectly together all right and if you play with your feet perfectly together there's just no way you can ever become explosive on the court so that's one thing that I can guarantee you will make you a better mover and a better player is if.
You can widen your base a little bit so just by but even if you can add two or three inches to your base it's going to make you a better mover the other thing it brings your eyes down a little bit and the next segment we'll talk about that a little bit more but it's really important that you understand the athletic foundation so if you look at me from the side a little bit you'll see that it creates a position of strength if you look at me.
My back is at more or less 55 degrees my hips are pushed out a little bit which now allows me to move in different directions because my hips now will become a rudder or a steering wheel so just by widening my base and sticking my hips out now I can maneuver myself in different directions without sliding my feet together you I find when I work with players when I do this some will say to me yeah but that puts tremendous strain on my legs are.
Going to get too tired when I play a match it's actually almost opposite if you do it correctly you'll feel that the weight is going into these parts of your legs into these parts into your glutes and into your hamstrings and you can maintain that base all day long the opposite thing happens when you bring your feet together then the weight is going here into this part of your leg and that's what makes people tired when they play.
With their feet very close together now so to become more explosive wider base notice how when you look at racecars how low they built them low and usually with a strong base especially the Formula one cars if you look at them they built very low to the ground with a very wide base and there's a reason for that they have to go through those curves with a lot of speed and that's kind of what tennis is about the ability to change.
Direction very quickly on the court very quickly and that's good but that's what this helps with now it's one thing to have the base it's a whole nother thing to maintain that base so your job as a tennis player is not to just establish that base but you also have to defend that base and this can be challenging for players because I say as a playing the tendency is to change that and when you watch good players watch this spacing.
Here they always try to maintain it yeah sometimes you can have to run two balls but when they get to the ball you see them slowing there for themselves down by doing stutter steps and going back to that base so it's establishing and defending that that's spacing between your feet this is key now you'll see when you widen your posture will also become stronger you your back work becomes stronger and your abs will tighten up a little bit and this is.
What's going to make you explosive off the ground okay so now we're going to establish that base and we're going to try to maintain that base and I'm going to show you a couple of drills that will help you establish and defend that base and you want to get yourself a ladder if you don't have a ladder I know use some chalk on the clay you can draw it on the hard cord you can use chalk but they get something like this with spacings like this right so that you can learn to.
Do to use the spacings of the ladder this is how you get your muscles to do the right thing I find the ladder is very effective so I'm going to bring Elizabeth in I just want to show you how I do it through the ladder when you do ladder drills you have to make very sure you do them correctly many players do ladder drills but they don't do them at any specific there's hundreds of ladder drills that are good for different sports but you.
Want to make sure you use your ladders for the fourth in a specific movement and this is one I'm going to put in a ladder now watch carefully we're going to establish her base of one square it remains open right so you put your feet and the base so one squares open so when you move on to the next square that spacing needs to stay the same that and the beginning players find this very difficult to do they bring their feet into the same box and this is kind of.
Something that you want to avoid in tennis you don't want to slide your feet together in tennis we call it heel clicking so you click your heels together first of all it changes your center of gravity you can see how my athletic base when they come up like this my center of gravity changes and it makes you slow it takes a long time for this foot to come up to this foot so what we want to do is move maintaining that athletic base and.
Moving in small steps so that spacing can be respected or maintained so what I'm going to put a little bit through she's just going to move all the way and by the way you can also use this as a workout it's a great workout for your legs you can condition your legs through ladders so I'm going to put her in this square I'm going to ask her to keep her feet apart and I want to look at her athletic base first okay so I wanted to tilt her body slightly forward right so we.
Have a strong athletic foundation and she's going to roll forward onto the balls of her feet so her heels will be slightly off the ground okay now just go to the next square a pop yep next square very good keep going very good at the end of the ladder push back okay very good do one more push very good keep the bass you see that is that looks really good there she has a strong base.
She gives small steps and that's going to maintain that base now that's important in tennis you won't believe how many times people become really slow and they the the head starts to bob up and down just because they don't understand this basic concept of establishing and maintaining the base now we're going to do an another one a little bit more tennis specific where I'm going to actually tell her to.
Change right becomes a little bit more challenging where I say to her okay now start your base move and every time I say change she's gotta go in the other direction tennis is a game of direction changes so you have to be able to maintain your base and change direction alright in the ladder there anywhere yep so she's going to move to her right and when I say change she's simply going to go the other way alright and start change well got the.
Ladder that happens all the time you have to practice this stuff it it's just an awareness it happens all the ladder will show you if you're aware of what your feet are doing okay ready go change change change that's very good.
And hold she does it pretty she's an established player if you're just starting out doing this it's a and you will have to do it a bit slower almost at this speed just easy change she does it pretty fast but no she said she's a very good tennis player already she's done this many times all right now the next thing I'm going to do is a similar but I want her to change on the sound of the ball so I'm going to simulate the sound.
Of the ball bye-bye clapping so this is the sound of the ball coming off the opponent's string so now I want her to go through the ladder and then every time I clap my hands I wanted to go the other way and I don't want it to look at all I just wanted to listen all right so it's standing the ladder for strong base okay go nice and slow this time I just want you to simulate what people will do at home all right so start to your right.
Start nice and every time I clap she's going to go the other way very good keep going excellent and hold that that's really good you see right on the clap and don't think is this easy you're going to see all kinds of things happening to people I work with when.
They do this the first time players at all levels by the way not just recreational levels but when they do this they have this habit of when they change direction the body goes off center all right so the body has to stay centered the body has to stay postured right so that that's a very important part of maintaining establishing and maintaining that base is strong posture we're going to talk about that a little bit.
In the next segment a little bit more but what you can see if I go through the ladder and I change direction and I don't have control of my upper body would fall off Center before I can change it kind of looks like this that kind of thing I'm exaggerating to show you but we see that quite a bit people they have a good concept of what the feet are supposed to do but they don't have quite control of the upper body the head flies a little bit all.
Over the place so now just a variation of this and there's so many drills you can do to help you with that aesthetic pace but I'm going to put her in front of the ladder this time right in front of the line here just so you can see stand in front of the line so you don't step on it all right so um this time I'm just going to toss her balls very easy from side and all I wanted to do is maintain that base she doesn't have to turn like you do.
In tennis yet we were only trying to establish and maintain that spacing between her feet so she doesn't have to think about turning now when she's catching all I wanted to do a shuffle side catch the ball on this side with the right hand and catch the ball on that side with the left and then toss them back to me so I'm at us and she's going to the right and then to the left and left and keep your base okay nice and loved think about lower even.
Very good low center of gravity very good and this is already at a very very good level but when you go out there and you get yourself filmed when you first start to do this thing you you're probably not going to look that good but it takes a little bit of practice it takes practice just this latter I can't explain to you how few people understand not sliding the feet together this it's a bit of a challenge for people but part.
Of the reason is they got into the habit of playing tennis off of a very narrow base and so say they used to sliding the feet together once you go into that wider base it starts to feel much more natural not to slide your feet together okay so that's it for the first free movement video in the next video Ian will move on to the second are in the circle of ours and that is the read part here the split step is critical and in the next video.
Ian will show you in detail how to execute the split step properly and especially how to time it properly so make sure you check your inbox for that video.
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