Part 2 - Are Your Practice Sessions NOT Transferring Over To Your Matches?

I want to follow up with a couple of more thoughts about my recent post.

About practice and how to make those sessions actually transfer over to your matches.

Unless you're a true pusher, and even pushers tend to 'go for it' in certain situations, we tend to want to end points waaaaay too soon with outright winners.

There are several reasons why ...

It feels good ("dude, you are THE man!"), we don't trust that our opponent is ever going to miss, we start to run out of gas (really?, get you arse in shape!), and we certainly don't trust that we can stay in the point long enough without eventually missing with an unforced error.

I'm not promoting "pushing".

What I am promoting is this ... think of winners as standard rally balls that bounce twice over there.

Standard rally balls come with BIG targets. A safe spot inside the lines and a safe spot over the top of the net.

When you go for outright winners, your targets shrink to small spaces that end up being unforced errors.

No bueno ...

When you get out there to practice, and assuming you've got a target in mind, make sure that target is set up as a standard rally ball.

Too often I see players put a cone or something on the court where it's a spot like two inches inside the sideline and two inches from the baseline.

Fed couldn't consistently hit that target. No one can. Stop practicing what isn't reality in your matches.

So being a consistent shot maker and thinking you've got to 'push' to make that happen, you can maintain swing freedom (plenty of swing speed) by relaxing your grip tension.

Not floppy loose, but a little relaxed.

We tend to squeeze the racket handle for extra swing speed --- to get power.

And especially when we go for that outright winner? Yeah, the death grip.

Too much grip tension and you disrupt the consistency of your timing, you lose confidence, and in fact, your swing speed and spin all get slower.

In your next practice session, tinker with relaxing your grip tension a little and get a sense of what that feels like. Especially just prior to contact, see if you can NOT tighten up, and instead, create some real freedom through the ball.

Ahhhhh ...

So ... think of winners as standard rally balls that bounce twice, and relax your grip tension 

Would love to hear back from you. What's on your mind from this post?

Come on now ... get out THERE wherever you are and help someone else have a great day 

Brent

Also ... if your topspin serve is sitting up over there, allowing that returner to unload, then I've got a comp instructional video for you that might give you the answer how to get a high bounce.

That combo of power with spin for control. You can get that video over at http://WebTennis.com

B-