Category: Sports

Learning the Proper Form in Tennis for Beginners

September 08, 2017

Once you have learned the basics of playing tennis, it’s time to practice consistency of your form when serving, creating a spin, and judging the ideal height and distance (trajectory) of the ball.

 

Although having the correct form will not matter in the number of points you’ll get in a match, being able to do it naturally will help you hit the ball faster and to control the ball with less effort.

 

Basic Drills

Learning comes from repetition. The correct form and movement should come as natural as breathing for you allowing you to concentrate on your opponent. It might sound easy, but those endless drills given by your tennis coaching staff during your tennis lessons in Singapore are the key. You might be itching to play matches, but techniques that could win professional matches are learned through boring, repetitive drills; such as grips, swinging your arm with the racket, running around the court, receiving, and serving.

 

Basic Strokes

These are the basic strokes that the tennis coach in Singapore will teach you. Later, you can vary your strokes to adjust to different attacks.

  • When practicing this stroke during your tennis lessons, the tennis coach will tell you to use your dominant hand while the other will load the racket before you hit the ball. Tennis coaching instructions will drill you to bend your knees while the torso and hips are coiled.
  • This can be either a one-handed or two-handed backhand depending on which one you’re comfortable with and your reach. Some younger players will be advised by the tennis coach to use two-handed backhand to add more power to the stroke.
  • This refers to act of striking a ball while it’s still in the air and has not yet reached the surface of the court. To do a volley, you need to practice backswings while hitting the ball in front of you or from the side.
  • An overhead will not need a ball toss, but your coach will tell you to practice proper footwork to pull this off. Balance and positioning are key when trying to anticipate where the ball will drop next so that you can make adjustments to hit the ball overhead.

 

Basic Grips

To learn tennis by developing your own style, you should at least be familiar with the construction of the racket and with all the grips, which are all based on where the heel pad and the index knuckle are resting in your hand. The basic grips you will learn in your tennis lessons are the continental grip, eastern forehand grip, semi-western forehand grip, western forehand grip, two-handed backhand grip, eastern backhand grip, and semi-western or extreme backhand grip. The tennis coaching staff in Singapore can help you find which one works for you best if you’re still a beginner.

 

Basic Serves

There are four types of serves you should learn as a beginner from your tennis coach in Singapore, such as; the flat serve, slice, serve, kick serve, and underhanded serve. But what is common among these serves are the proper positioning of the feet when you make a stance, the tossing of a ball, the backswing, weight transfer and bending the knee, the trophy pose, racket drop, leg push, and the swinging up to contact or pronation. All these can be learned during the drills in your tennis lessons, that is why the only way to get better in tennis is to keep practicing.