Tennis Game Improvement - Winning Volleys

Jimmy Nguyen: Hi, Jimmy Nguyen here, Founder of Easy Tennis. Today I'm going to teach you how to improve your tennis game. In this segment, I going to teach you how to hit a winning shot off your volleys both for forehand and the backhand volleys. The key thing to remember about doing the proper volleys is having that proactive footwork and I notice I always to emphasized this in the previous segments, always making sure that your feet always constantly move. In tennis you don't want to stay static, it's a dynamic sport. So you want to make sure that both of feet, you're always on the balls of your feet as you're hitting doing a preparation. So making sure that your footwork having that proactive footwork always making sure that you're always moving. When you are at the net, the key thing to remember is that your anticipation is one of your greatest allies, why? Because when you're at the net, your reaction time cuts off significantly at least by 50%. So the key thing to remember is to make sure you're moving that feet. As the ball is approaching, the first component when doing the forehand volley or the backhand volleys, is you want to make sure that the grip that we're using is the continental grip.

The continental grip should feel like you're holding the racket, like you're holding a hammer. And the key thing if you don't know how to use a continental grip, just to make sure you want to pick up the racket with the left hand just like, that's very simple. Take the right hand, place it on the edge of the racket just like this and you'll slide it all the way down to the bottom of the grip and you should feel like you're holding a hammer. That's how you know when you got a continental grip. We have to use the continental grip because basically we're going to have that a reaction time whether we're hitting the forehand or the backhand side. We're not going to have enough recovery time, that's why it's important to use both the continental grip on both of sides.

So as to get started, we want to make sure when we are doing the volleys, we're going to step into the ball. Too often times many players they're waiting for the ball to come to them. Remember, it's about being proactive when the ball is coming, you want to make sure you take an extra step or two. Volley in front and you notice when I volley my left leg is always stepping up as I'm approaching to the ball. I don't volley like this because we don't want to get into lazy position.

Again as I step up to the volley, notice where my left leg is, it's stepping in but point of contact is in front when I volley. Notice what my palms are doing, they are slightly open. You want to make sure when you do the volleys it's not closed. You don't want to hit a square on the ball if you do this, the chances are that the ball is going to go into the net. So the key is slightly open up the racket face, so you can apply that under spin as you're doing the volleys vice versa for the backhand.

You don't want to volley square on the racket face like this but you want to slightly tilt the racket face in angular motion. Notice what my footwork is doing, this time I'm stepping with my right leg. Remember we're doing proactive footwork. I can show point of contact is always in front. Notice how after I hit my volleys I'm always moving my feet. So remember folks, it's about having proactive footwork, I make sure you take that initially as when you're doing those volleys.

In our next segment, I'm going to teach you how to do an approach shot with a net transition volley.