TennisOne Lessons

Practicing With Purpose

By Jordan R Coons

Are you a player that steps out onto the court with your practice partner and just hits the ball back and forth in hopes you will improve? Then perhaps you need to practice with purpose. While hitting back and forth does help groove your stroke you could be making leaps and bounds instead of baby steps if you practiced more purposely.

I have people that come up to me saying they practice three to four times a week, yet they are not seeing much improvement. The first thing I ask them is how are they practicing. Almost always they say they are rallying or playing sets. That is great if you are practicing with a specific purpose on the court. But most are just hitting or playing sets without much thought. You won't improve if you are going out onto the court and doing the exact same things. Why would you expect different results, it just doesn't make sense.

In this article I will reveal the three steps to practicing with purpose. Using these steps over a short period of time will take you, to that elusive next level.

Let's first talk about the three ways to win a point.

1. Your opponent makes an unforced error

2. You make your opponent miss which is called a forced error

3. You hit an out right a winner.

That will take us into stage one.

Step Number One

The first purpose driven stage will be consistency. When you practice at this stage there will be three things you want to accomplish. First hit every ball in. The best way to accomplish this is by hitting the ball with sixty to seventy percent of your power and hit back down the middle.

It doesn't make sense to try to hit every ball in while you hit with ninety percent of your power or go for the lines, so go down the middle and take some power away. Remember you cannot miss. When you accomplish this you are telling yourself no matter what, I will not miss this ball. I will draw the error and if they hit a winner so be it. But I will not miss. It really doesn't matter if they hit winners because that is not your purpose out there. Your purpose is to simply hit every ball back. (For 3.5 players and lower this step alone will win you matches.)

Second use spin. Hitting with topspin and backspin will greatly increase you control on the ball.

And third hit with depth. Since you are hitting every ball in and down the middle, aim to make sure you are hitting 2 feet or more past the service line.

When you first start this stage practice with it half the time. So if you are hitting for an hour, use step one for half that time and the other half hit like you are use to. I don't think that it is great to just jump into something full bore so work your way up to using this stage the full time you are on the court.

Step Number Two

The second purpose driven stage is to Force the error. While trying to force the error, your goal should still be to use spins. When forcing the error you are not trying to hit winners so do not go for the lines simply move your practice partner side to side until he or she cannot setup for the ball anymore and makes the forced error.

This is different then the first stage in the fact that your purpose now is to make your partner miss the ball by moving them side to side This is what Andre Agassi does so well. He goes out onto the court with the purpose of taking out the legs of his opponent he does not have the mind set that he will blow them off the court but to just wear them down and force the error.

There is a difference between a forced and unforced error. When forcing an error your opponent is missing for two reasons. One, he or she is out of position trying to hit too good of a shot, or two, there is to much pressure being put on their game. This stage should be applied the whole time you are on the court. Hit with seventy to seventy five percent of your power and move the ball back and forth. Though you will make more errors keep in mind your purpose is to move them around not to hit the winner, just force the error.

Step Number Three

The third purpose driven stage is to hit the winner. In this stage it doesn't matter what kind of ball your practice partner hits, you are going to go for the winner. This means that now you will be hitting with eighty to ninety percent of your power and go for the lines or hit behind him or her.

It is pretty rare to use ninety five to one hundred percent of your power because too many errors occur due to your form breaking down when swinging so aggressively. To accomplish this third stage goal, you will need to flatten out the ball, not using as much spin so you will be able to drive the ball through the court to hit the winner. Going for a winner off of every shot will divide stage three from stage two.

In order to get the full benefit of these stages they will need to be completely different from one another. Keeping them completely separate from one another will give you the full scale of how each one has its own purpose and own technique. With these three stages you will be able to understand what you need to do during a point play situation.

Practice each stage until you are confident in each one. But remember, stage three will be a much lower consistency then stage one or two so keep that in mind if you are getting frustrated during stage three. When you understand how each stage works, apply them to match play situations according to the stages. Doing this correctly you will allow you to play more effectively and more efficiently, and that may just take you to that elusive next level.

Your comments are welcome. Let us know what you think about Jordan R Coons' article by emailing us here at TennisOne.