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Adam Naseer
Video Capture: Movement Tip: A Great First Step To The Ball — Adam Naseer
Welcome everybody in Adam Nasir master Ochiai instructor here I would like to you about a very important topic regarding the footwork and my colleague Greg lesser and I as you may know we traveled the world these days for our clinics and there's something that we noticed pretty much every single clinic other than the surf clinic when it comes to foot work and it's just basically knowing which foot should lead on a ball that is not pulling you wide or pulling.
You back significantly which foot moves and why so that we stay in balance and can execute our shots and that's what I wanted to get into this a topic with you guys is our colleague Ian Meyer and my opinion one of the very best out there especially when it comes to footwork it has introduced me personally to this since when I don't really know what my feet are doing but as I started instructing I became very much more aware of it here's what I would like for.
You all to pay attention to when you are working on your ground strokes okay so let's assume you're standing in the middle of the court and you just rallying back and forth with a friend and you worried about not being able to stay on balance when you execute your forehand and on your end or your backhand and again let me repeat we're not talking about a ball that's pulling you wide or significantly far back so what you always want to think about.
Doing after you get into from your split step and then think of outside leg first so for me as a righty when I want to hit a forehand it looks like this split step outside leg first and that is pretty much coupled with a small little half turn they go hand for preparation purposes one more time split step out and when I have that step out my balance as you can see is still centered and I have pretty much done everything I need to do from an.
Upper body perspective unfortunately a lot of players don't even split step on let's say they do split step but then the first step that happens is the inside leg crosses over and that throws off balance that throws off the perception of the proper spacing to the ball and so much more but just to say the least it messes you up as a player and when we work with our players doing clinics and private sessions we see it every single time so what I'd like you.
To work on go home and record yourself and see what you do just from a subconscious state of mind not knowing what it is that you're doing but recording yourself and then going out and doing the very simple exercise of simply going split step out and it's not just a glide it's not just a pivot it's truly a split step out to get used to using the outside leg first on the backhand side it's the same thing split step out and I have a semi.
Semi turn with it on top so you can almost think my colleague Greg always says pretend as if you have a rope connected between your wrist and your outside leg so when you step out you have a half turn and that outside leg moved for the backhand split step out same thing over here on the forehand side and then as the ball is going a few feet away from you simply try to maintain that base of yours ok so in other words what am I talking about I'm going to demonstrate.
For the forehand side you split step out and let's say the ball is a few feet away from you maintain your base as you can and you set yourself up one more time so split step out you see I maintain that outside leg on the outside and I'm pretty much able to hit anything about 3/4 on that forehand side starting from the middle here let's do that one more time split step out and then it's up to me I would then go into a neutral.
Stance still have plenty of time hypothetically speaking I can stay on that outside leg as well but the goal is to make sure that the spacing to the inside sorry incoming ball is correct so that outside leg does two things a it maintains your balance and B if it's the closest part to the incoming ball you're not going to be able to swing outside in as much and get jammed as often okay and that's what we see players do a lot when they start working with us and over.
The course of the clinics we really make sure that we work with them on maintaining that correct space let me demonstrate to you a level of progression where I work on this outside leg the same way I would like for you to include it in your practices as well it's a very important concept and here I'm self feeding me the forehead you can also do it for the backend of course and this concept applies to regardless which stands you end up going into whether it's a neutral stance open.
Stance or semi open stance I will demonstrate here in a neutral stance and in the next clip a quick demonstration of how to use it on an open stance so here we go split step out and earlier in a turn and it's a half turn with that so they pretty much go together right here my semi turn and the open leg goes at the outside leg goes first which means that the weight is on the inside leg so that I can free up the outside leg to get open here.
Then I sell feed the ball away from me and you will see how I maintain my base okay the base is being maintained meaning that the left leg is not crossing over and front of or behind the right leg meaning the outside leg is still always leading and you can see here this could be a position where I now either hit with this particular open stance or since the ball isn't really pulling me wide or significantly back I can get and have enough time to go into.
My neutral stance which is exactly what I do here so you can see that my outside leg is now the closest part of my body aside from my left arm to that ball which means my body itself is not quote-unquote too close to the ball meaning I would have to make upper body adjustments to hit that shot and I can still get into my neutral stance you get demonstrated right here illustrate it with my feet being in front of one another on one line and now I can still swing inside out and away.
From our body contact and execute a relatively straightforward forehand let me show you that one more time split step out feed the ball away and then get into a nice neutral stance always leading with the outside leg okay and now let me show you this last one time in real speed next up is the open stance demonstration.
Again this is for demonstration purposes to show you this open stance similar to the previous clip the outside leg begins moving first okay and in this particular clip you'll see me take several steps that maintain the base meaning the outside leg truly remains the outside leg at any point in time okay and the inside leg remains the inside leg at any point in time now yes of course I could go into a neutral stance here because the ball isn't pulling me wide nor is it.
Pushing me back and so it's an easy hand fit ball if the ball was this deep on the court when it comes from the other side of the net then it would be most likely a semi open stance and I would make contact significantly further behind the baseline again for demonstration purposes the outside leg leads and is the closest part of my body alongside my non-dominant arm to the tennis ball that bounces right to the outside of my outside leg and that gives.
Me proper spacing so that my body is not too close as we all say and that's when the mistakes happen because the upper body will have to make adjustments due to the lack of spacing so here you will see the outside leg becoming a transition as a loading and lifting leg so it does everything that in the previous clip the inside leg helped out with by going into the neutral stance okay so the outside leg is the closest part of my body aside for.
My not non-dominant arm which directly due to its stretch out here gives me significant space to the ball and from here on out I can execute a regular forehand one more time okay so keep in mind that regardless of which stands you're trying to accomplish the outside leg should lead for spacing purposes so that you can execute any foreign and you plan on executing as on the back end as while you've been pulled wide or pushed back or just simply.
Coming into the net it's all the outside leg goes first let me show you one more time in real speed here so as you saw in these couple of demonstrations it doesn't really matter what foot you end up stepping with at the end whether you're in an open stance or neutral stance a semi open stance it doesn't really matter that shouldn't be the focus here is that if the ball is within your grasp and I would say about two-thirds from the center of.
The baseline to the singles line if you can cover two-thirds of that space with two rhythm steps that should pretty much be your guiding realm so to speak okay anything that goes beyond that you will indeed have to cross over because the main goal is in balance and space the main goal is getting there in order to get there I need to get there faster if I have rhythm steps and I rhythm step all the way out that ball will be long gone by the time I make it to where it.
Should be so keep that in mind when you're working on this it's very important to understand what this is used for what these rhythm steps to step out this outside leg type of lead situation when it applies when you're not being pulled and under stress having to run in any direction other than being in your comfort zone so that is very important to understand and this holds true for the forehand side as the backhand side and I want you.
To make use of these exercises so that you can hopefully gain a more balance on your ground strokes and be maintain better space to the contact point itself if you like this video please do as a favor and hit the like button subscribe to our channel and leave your comments share with your friends let us know if this exercise is one that helps you with your game so we can have a nice discussion about it and I will welcome you to the next video again next time.
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