In the last couple of posts Your Game On Warp & Never Too Old, we have seen that tennis footwork is a key ingredient to tennis success and that age and injury are not barriers but in fact reasons to get it into your schedule asap.
Well, apart from all of that I believe that all success is traceable and that you should learn from the tracks left by success because they accelerate your progress.
So with that said, let me alert you to a paper that came out from Germany a few years back that looked into why so many very promising players never made it or had mediocre careers while others with so called “less potential” made it to the very top of the World game and also what the common traits of all of the greatest players (including Laver, Borg, Sampras etc) of all time were.
“Great players like Federer have traits that you can copy to get better”
Now, without going over the whole paper…..the dozen or so characteristics outlined included 4 (and I could easily make a case for more if I wanted to) related to footwork.
They were…. Economy in movement. Footwork and balance in all situations Speed of start/action and frequency (e.g. quick off the mark and quick feet) Low (if not zero) injuries (how often has Federer been injured….was Sampras injured???/) – I told you this kind of movement training significantly reduces injury!!! No mention of a great forehand or backhand….in fact there was only one truly technical reason. So what does this tell you? It tells you that to truly excel in this game you need to pay more attention to this part of the game. Think about it…you spend more time moving around the court than actually hitting the ball don’t you? That being said, tennis players tend to fall into 3 categories – 1. They don’t know that improving footwork will dramatically help their game. 2. They know it will help, but don’t know where to start. 3. They are doing something to help themselves but are going about it the wrong way. What category do you fit into? In the next post, I will show you how to easily move from whichever category you are presently in to a place where quick efficient movement becomes the norm.
