Get A Lesson From A Non-Tennis Person

There are lots of amazing tennis instructors out there on the web. Even better, you might have taken a few classes with your local pro. They teach you drills and procedures that will improve your game by a mile. Hence, let's say you find everything you learned really helpful and you want to go out on the court to try it out. Perhaps you don't have access to a coach or maybe you can't afford to see a coach so frequently.

While some decide to call it quits and just wait to train until they see an instructor again, others try to get someone to mimic what a lesson would be like. Therefore, in today's article, we will be teaching you how to train your significant other, sibling, or parent to give you a lesson.

Hand Feeding

The difficulty for people who don't know how to play tennis is going to be feeding the ball. In fact, this is probably the most important part. Feeding the ball with the racket is going to be impossible, so you have to teach the person that's going to be training you how to feed the ball by hand, in other words, hand feeding.

Something that becomes extremely common when you try to teach someone how to feed, is that they throw the ball. Now, the ball will come too fast and the player has no time to react. As a result, the important thing when it comes to hand feeding is that the technique is correct.

Technique

There are going to be two techniques. The first technique is the drop feed. The palm of the hand is to the ground, and you just let the ball literally drop. That's technique number one. Thus, the drop feed will be used when doing drills that require the player to stay stationary.

Now, another way is to throw the ball to the person. Most people will go overhand, which launches the ball over the player’s head. Instead, your new instructor will aim to do it underhand. It's going to be nice and slow, and generally, it's going to be a lot easier to control the ball.

In your lesson, start by having your friend close to you, meaning if done correctly, the ball will drop in your strike zone. Obviously, where your hand is positioned is where the ball is going to drop. To add, when practicing your forehand, make sure the ball is coming from the right side and vice versa for your backhand.

Another important element to remember is that the feeder must move his/her arm out of the way. No one wants some bruised and bloody knuckles afterwards. Furthermore, put your basket or ball hopper right next to you so you can increase the frequency and let them drop the balls faster.

Many players don’t like to train with non tennis people because they’re always reaching to grab another ball. However, remember this is new to them and they go out of their way to spend time doing what you love.

Lastly, make sure to keep it simple. Once the person starts to get a hang of it, they might get a bit sloppy and try weird techniques. Remind them to only extend your hand and just let it drop. Then, it's going to be super clean and consistent, allowing you to place the ball wherever you want.

Running Around

The next progression that you should do is hitting on the run off a stationary ball. Start by standing in the middle court and have your feeder closer to the sideline. Once again, make sure they don’t start trying to throw the ball so you can reach it.

By having them simply drop it at an arm's length, it forces you to run all the way to the ball and improve your defensive skills. Now, what I love is working with cones because that forces the player to go towards the middle.

All of us will naturally not go all the way back if there's no cone. So, working with cones will make us go all the way back to the middle, and it's going to increase the intensity to a whole new level.

Another mistake that the feeder might commit is dropping the ball too frequently. There is no way you will get to a ball in one bounce that is being fed when you are still recovering to the middle. Explain to your feeder that they must wait until you make your way around the entire cone.

A great way to level up and make the drills more challenging is by changing the feeder’s positioning. Doing so will allow you to work on different movement patterns and be in situations that usually occur during a match.

Underhand Feeds

Now, drop feeds are great because you have to generate your own power. In other words, there's no pace coming at you. However, you also want to practice when the ball does have a little bit of pace, and this is where underhand feeds come in very handy.

In this drill, you’ll have your feeder hand-feed you some balls diagonally into the corner. The feeder will be located a bit in front of the T. Hopefully, they trust you in not hitting them with the ball.

Moreover, remember to still run around the cone in the middle and don’t be afraid to tell your feeder to toss it close to the sideline. The purpose of this is to get you running and doing what you can to get the ball back. Most likely, the ball will be very low and you really have to lift the ball with lots of topspin.

Depending on how you feel, these drills can be done in sets of five or ten. By the end of the set, you should be breathing hard and those legs should be burning. Remember that we are trying to mimic match scenarios where you are getting that one extra ball back to save your life. Plus, it makes your defense indestructible.

Serve Positioning

One negative aspect of serving to an empty box is that you have mentally this freedom of not having an opponent there, so you don't feel that much pressure. Targets help for sure, but also what's a good thing to do every now and then is positioning a person at the baseline.

Now, the person who is going to be training you is not going to be a tennis player, so don't serve right at them. If this does happen, they will most likely not react quickly and can end up getting injured.

Instead, you're going to serve the opposite of them. Hence, have them stand in a neutral returning position, far from where the two best targets are. In other words, hit your serves down the T or angle it way off wide, so it doesn't get anywhere near them.

Just having a person there will change things mentally, and you might feel a little bit more pressure. As someone that has tried this, I can tell you that just my mom standing there is shrinking the box.  

Of course, it's just the optical illusion, the box is the same size, but mentally it feels like a smaller box just because she's standing there. So, this is good practice.

Final Thoughts

Practicing by yourself is no fun at all and makes you modify drills so you can do them by yourself. Get someone you know, a friend or a relative, to give you a lesson. They don’t have to be a tennis player or know anything about tennis. Therefore, make sure you show them how to feed properly and explain their timing and positioning. In addition, be patient with them, for all of this is new for them.

These people are taking time out of their day to make you a better player. Thank you Mom for putting up with me in our practices. You are the best.