Tennis Technology and Training
The tennis ball machine is a powerful tool for fine tuning stroke mechanics and building consistency. Effective ball machine use starts with the identification of the purpose for each drill. In the absence of that, machine sessions can regress into simply standing flat-footed while playing easy balls from the center of the court. There is an art to getting the machine settings “just right.” However, the real skill is identifying an objective and coming up with an appropriate pattern to work on it.
Today I am sharing a video clip of a recent hitting session when I was working on backhand recovery footwork patterns. For some reason, I have developed the unfortunate habit of watching my backhands sail off my racquet as if I were Tiger Woods standing on the 18th tee box at Augusta. Consequently, I am not getting that quick first step required to recover effectively back to the center of the court.
For this session, I set up the machine to deliver balls at a rapid clip so I could focus very specifically on the first crossover step. The high number of repetitions in a short period of time was intended to build the muscle memory that will hopefully carry over to competitive play. The quick succession is also efficient, providing a high number of balls in a short time. I want the movement to be reflexive and automatic.
I was specifically working on releasing my left leg into a plant before taking that first crossover step back to the middle. Limiting the work to those specific movements results in a drill that is not overly taxing. I easily maintained the pattern for the complete capacity of the machine without loss of form. Cardio is not the objective of this particular drill. As a bonus, It is pretty easy to set up. It is as simple as pointing the machine into the right location and then getting the feed rate right.
Chance are there is something in your game that can be improved with a targeted session on the ball machine. So what is your opportunity?
