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"Mini vs Biggie: The Warm-up"
On my own search for excellence in teaching for over 29 years I’ve always had a tough time accepting the famous “minis” which almost everyone endorses. Every junior, adult (mostly women ) and women pros use this technique to warm up. Why don’t I like it... for the simple reason that is not as effective as the drill pretends to be.
What is the use of it... warm up right? Well if you look at all the Jrs. and Ladies trying to get a little rally going this way, you’ll see that they have a tough time keeping the rally going. Someone misses after 2 or 3 balls. They are both using topspin (flat is definitely impossible) so very quickly the ball gets out of control. Then they go back and the “real” warm up starts and players have a problem keeping the ball straight because the "step in" and the "flat follow-through" are rarely taught any more in the so called “modern tennis.
The real solid groundstrokes must be “big”, a long backswing a long follow-through. It used to be that the hard courts in this country were quite fast and it was a necessity to develop compact strokes, however the game has changed. What we see is Wimbledon played from the baseline and very few daring to go in and a lot of players with poor volleying and approaching skills as well. So, what I propose to develop your game is the idea to learn an “all around game” starting with the way you warm up.
- Learn to use your hand by doing 5 minutes of mini-quick volleys. Get no further than 3 or 4 feet from the net and using a continental grip try to keep 10 or more ball rallies. Soft please!!!.
- Now move a few feet back, still inside the service box and move each other playing minis with a little bit of slice (no super drop shots!).Do this for 5’ without trying to win the point. Just focus on soft hands and “tiki-tiki” (small quick steps).
- Now go to the baseline and start rallying straight back to each other quite slow just to get your body sideways and mostly stepping into the balls to produce good long follow-throughs. The idea is to increase racquet head speed progressively.
- Then you get to the “biggies”. Now we are hitting really long shots. The deeper the better .Higher too, warm up some high bouncing balls. You must back up 6 ft at least to do this and being able to rally with your partner. These are the real groundstrokes. If you want to be solid from the baseline you must be strong from the back of the court. Long backswings and long follow-throughs. Just look at the pros.
- Now you are ready for some volleys and overheads.
BYE-BYE MINIS, HELLO BIGGIES!
P.S. It’s important to learn how to roll your wrist (the windshield wiper) for topspin, but this is best done with feeding balls to the player around the service line.
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