We all understand how important movement is to playing high-level tennis. This statement is true for every level of the sport – junior, collegiate, professional, adult and senior tennis. The best players are nearly always the best movers. Djokovic, Federer, Halep, Nadal are all some of the best tennis movers to ever play the game. They all move differently, but are highly effective and utilize very similar fundamentals. The challenge for coaches and physical trainers has been the lack of consistency in tennis movement language. which is unfortunate as it makes it challenging to ensure the right movements at the right time and to link on and off court training effectively. After speaking with thousands of coaches all over the world, it is very clear that coaches do not have a consistent language around footwork and movement patterns.
About two years ago, I was at a coaching summit with some of the best coaches from all over the world – including Australia, Argentina, the United States – and we were talking a lot about movement. It was a select group of coaches who have worked at the top tennis federations, worked with number #1 players in the world and all had decades of experiences working with the best tennis athletes. However, when we were looking at the same movements on the tennis court, most of us had different names for the exact same movement. This set a series of steps in place that required extensive research and evaluation. The first step was to evaluate the thousands of possible tennis movements on the court and then simplify and summarize the most common movement patterns used consistently on the tennis court. We connected with some International Tennis Performance Association (iTPA) professionals and started the in-depth process to create a tennis movement and footwork guide with consistent language. This process took nearly two years to complete and now allows for all coaches, physical trainers and movement specialists to use the same language when describing on-court tennis movements. The goal was to provide all individuals working with tennis players a simple-to-follow guide to help them use the same language. We made this available free to everyone to ensure this language would be used across different aspects of tennis teaching.
The Steps
When simplifying tennis movements they can broken down into the following categories:
- Lateral movements
- Backward movements
- Forward movements
- Recovery movements
- Volley & overhead movements
- Movements off the return of serve
- Movements off the serve
All movements on the tennis court can be categorized into one of those movement categories. This creates a common language for all tennis players, regardless of location in the world, to understand and learn from. The entire movement list has over 35 specific movements that occur regularly on the tennis court and the entire workbook is provided free by the iTPA if you sign-up for the iTPA email at www.itpa-tennis.org
For example…
Now that we have established a common language for movement, here are a few examples of the different types of movements a tennis player uses during a game.
Front Cross-Over Recovery Step is used when recovering from wide balls after contact and to help get back into better court position. Understanding the mechanics of pushing through the outside leg and driving back through the line of future movement is the hallmark .
Forward Hit and Hop is a common footwork pattern used on offensive groundstrokes when the athlete may perform a forward energy transfer, or a forward hop. As the athlete aggressively hits the ball, his/her body will move forward through the air due to the high amount of power being produced. One normal result is the back leg will kick up behind the athlete.
Serve into Push Back is one of the more common serve +1 movement patterns. This is used many times during a second serve or a weak first serve. As the athlete lands inside the court after serving, he/she aggressively pushes back to position the body behind the baseline.
We detail these movements in our course: Tennis Movement & Footwork Common Language Live Presentation by Dr. Kovacs. Click here for the short course *
If you want our very in-depth movement course which includes over four hours of quality education all performed on the court with specific drills and progressions you should check out the SECRETS OF TENNIS MOVEMENT COURSE which Coach Gabe and myself showcases some of the best tactics, drills and exercises to help you expand your tennis-specific movement and bring your game to the next level. Featuring the best experts in the game and over four hours of instruction to help you become more efficient, faster, explosive & powerful in all aspects of tennis-specific movement Click here to be taken to the full course with all the details *
*(note this is a separate course and cost than the KI academy website).
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