Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast, your place for free, expert, tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Welcome to episode number 407 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Today we're going to talk about how to FLOW Around The Tennis Court. When you watch high-level tennis players, including those on TV, sometimes you know Federer
obviously was really known for this. Sometimes when you watch them play, it feels like they're not even touching the quirt, but when we play, it tends to feel very jarring and kind of jerky and not very efficient or smooth. And there's a reason why that happens. And there's one move in particular that very high-level tennis players use in order to really get that flow to that flow around the court, that efficiency, that smoothness. And today I'm going to tell
you exactly what that is, unpack the specific move and the timing of it. And I'll share with you a drill that you can do at home with a partner to start to develop that same flow. I've been using this with students the last year, so it's really worked super well and can't wait to share it with you. So let's talk about first things first, the split
step. What people think the split step is, and I'll be honest, early in my teaching career, I was definitely in this camp is, I think a big misconception about this split step is it's some kind of hop or some kind of jump that we're supposed to do when our opponent hits the ball to prepare ourselves and it's partially correct, but it's not the full truth.
But we're not trying to attempt. And what the pros are not doing and what players who do have this flow around the court are not doing, excuse me, is they're not just hopping up and down and then moving to the ball. There's a certain sequence that's going on and the timing has to be just right so that there's no downtime. Ideally, there isn't any time at all that we're just standing there, whether we're on the ball's or feet or not, and
wondering, huh, I wonder where the ball is going. Instead, very high level, level players are timing their split step and then adding the flow step that we're going to talk about in a second, precisely so that when their brain recognizes what direction the ball is going, their energy and momentum is just about to touch down on the court. And then there's no dead time. There's no time spent being static and waiting and watching and wondering
what's going to happen. Instead, there's seamless movement from the lifting of the split step and then reading and recognizing where the ball is going on the way down. Ideally, right before the touch so that when the players are touching on the court, they're already in motion. That's when the split step really becomes powerful and that's when tennis players
start to really become very smooth and efficient is when the timing is perfect. And I think a lot of times tennis players try the split step because their coach makes them do it. And they don't nail that timing just right. And so it ends up feeling like a waste of energy and a waste of calories and they're they're right because if you don't time it correctly, then you're doing this jump kind of just to jump and then you still have to get moving
again and go right after the ball. And if that's been your experience, then you haven't nailed the timing to really feel the benefit and feel the effect that you're supposed to get from the split step. So here's what high level players do differently. Instead of hopping up and down, waiting to know where the ball is going and then running towards the ball, they're lifting for that split step move on the way down their brain picks up where
the ball is going. And so by the way, the like super key factor here in element and thing to understand is that when you lift up, you don't know where the ball is going yet. And before you touch down, you should know where the ball is going. And by the way, it takes the brain in the eyes about a quarter to a third of a second to actually process that information, which means we do not want to be touching down in our split step when
our opponent hits the ball. That would be too early. It would mean we have another quarter or third of a second before we can actually do anything, which means that the split step motion, I don't want to say it's wasted. Like if you're going to hop up and then touch down on your toes and land in a good quality athletic ready position, even if you touch down early and you've got a quarter of a second to kill, I think that's
still better than just standing there. And just to be really clear and listen, all of you all be listening to my voice right now. Most of you are really actually just standing there. And I know all of you are saying, no, okay, yeah, that's the other person. It's the other player. It's the other people with my local courts, but it's not me. But I'm
telling you, there's a very high likelihood. If you're listening to my voice, if you're below a four or five level, there's a very high likelihood that you are actually just standing there and you're not even activating your body pre hit at all. And out of all the options, that's the worst is to have no energy, no momentum, no flow at all, no activation and instead just kind of a static, unathletic standing, waiting and watching for the ball
to get hit. Most, and I don't mean this as like a, you know, a condescending thing or as a judgmental thing. I'm just giving you the facts here based on my 30 years in the sport and over 20 years teaching it. Most of you listening are honestly truly just standing there. Even if you've heard about this place of a million times, you've been told to do
it a million times and maybe you've even practiced it hundreds or thousands of times. But when push comes to shove and you're in the middle of a match, in the middle of an important exchange, most of you do not have the habit of just automatically subconsciously lifting, activating, getting your energy going, getting on your toes and being prepared for the ball. Now, so that aside, so like big hurdle number one here is just, is just doing it and just
building the habit for doing it. If you have to remind yourself to do it, then it's not a habit and if it's not a habit, you're not going to do it when it really matters most. And so that's step number one, but that's kind of a tangent. That's not today's topic. Let's just assume now that you are doing it and you're doing it automatically, you're
doing it subconsciously as a habit, you don't have to remind yourself anymore. The next iteration of the split step is to time it perfectly so that your toes are touching down in the court about a quarter to a third of a second after your opponent hits the ball. So we do not want to touch down when our opponent hits the ball. And I'll be honest, years
ago, I used to explain it that way and it's just not what's actually happening. As I've studied professional players more and more over the years with slow motion video, it's just not when they're timing their split step because even professional players, they're still human, their eyes and their brain and their neurological pathways still work the
same way. It might be a little faster, but they're still human. And so it still takes a quarter to a third of a second, maybe closer to a quarter if it's a professional player, maybe closer to a third of a second if it's a normal player like me or you, but it still takes time. And so professional players are not touching down when the ball gets hit.
They're touching down a split second after. And I know that sounds like not a big deal, but it's a huge deal because what it allows high level players to do is if they time their recognition and they time their move just right, instead of coming down back in a neutral position, which is what you should begin as you learn the split step is just come up in
a neutral position, come down in a neutral position. Now we're ready to move in any given direction when we recognize where the ball is going, but that's not what Federer is doing. The reason why he looks so smooth and he looks so efficient is he's lifting in a neutral position with the ability to either right or left or forward or back. And then slightly before touching down, he's timed it so that his brain recognizes whether the ball is
going right or left or forward or back. And then seamlessly, rather than coming back down again in a neutral position, his outside foot, meaning if the ball is traveling to his right, his right foot, pivots to the right, if the ball is going to his left, his left foot pivots to the left seamlessly. Before touching down, this is like in air on the way
down high level players from four five, let's say four. Oh, high level four all the way up through elite world class professional players are seamlessly pivoting their outside foot in the direction that the ball is heading and then coming down essentially in a running
position. So world class players are literally hitting the ground running. And so they maybe in the middle of their recovery, maybe they went out to their left to hit a ball, they're moving back towards the center of the court as their ball travels towards their opponent
and then seamlessly on their way back towards the middle. They're lifting just before the ball gets hit and then shortly after the ball gets hit, they're reading where the ball is going and then even if the ball is going back to the left again, they can come down with their left foot already pointing to the left, their right foot catching their energy momentum and then seamlessly propelling themselves to the left or to the right depending on what
direction the ball is going. And so there's no break in their energy. There is no static waiting and watching and wondering where the ball is going. They're processing that in real time as they move around the court and then coming down with their energy and momentum already propelling themselves in the correct direction. That is a whole different. So just to just to kind of paint this picture again one more time, kind of 30,000 foot view.
The vast majority, I mean well over 50% of tennis players aren't doing any of this at all. They're a lot of I have documented hundreds and thousands of tennis players who might be very successful and win a lot of matches at 3035, even 40 that are just standing there. And the ball is being hit and they're just standing there and there is no activation at all. So that's like level one and that's where most tennis players are. Level two is they're
not just standing there. There's some proactive like preemptive movement with their body, but it's just a neutral hop and a neutral land and then there's still a little bit like it's not as bad as standing there, but there's still a little split second of static kind of getting rooted on the court. Then they see where the ball is going and recognize that they process it. And then we have to start our engine again. Now it might not be from
square one. It might be from might not be from no energy or momentum, but it is not as good or flowing or smooth as option three, which is proactively preemptively lift before knowing where the ball is going. Then before touching knowing where the ball is going and then seamlessly, smoothly pivoting left or right and flowing our energy or momentum in
the direction of the ball. That move, which I've heard called the split flow or split floats or something like that, it's a kind of a variation or a cousin of a split step. It is using a split step motion or kind of concept, but then on the back end of it, touching the pointing of our outside foot, which opens the hip, which turns our lower body in the direction of the ball and allows for seamless transition in the direction the ball
is going. Now, so just imagine for a moment, what if every time your opponent hit the ball, you literally were pre-aligning yourself in already in a running position the second, and I mean more like nanosecond, like the nanosecond your brain recognizes, oh, this is a forehand or this is a back end. What if your whole body was already in alignment, moving and pointing in that direction already had momentum already had flow and energy moving in the direction
of the ball every time you saw where the ball is going. How much easier would the game of tennis be if you just knew ahead of time, oh, this ball is going left. And so before your opponent even hit the ball, you cannot like align yourself in like a sprinter like pose in that direction. And what if you knew ahead of time, oh, this ball is going right and you could align yourself ahead of time in the correct direction. This is what high level
players are doing in practice in real time, shot after shot after shot. Now, to be clear, the timing here has to be extreme. As you might imagine, as you're maybe processing through this and maybe you haven't even heard of this idea before, maybe this kind of sounds like a bit of a pipe dream, like how in the world am I going to time this so that I nail it just right. I'm lifting before I know and then I know then I read it and then I'm
touching down just a fraction of a second after. How is that possible? Well, to be clear, the pros don't nail this every time. And so like not every time the ball gets hit is a high level player floating back and forth. But it's a big chunk of the time. And the higher the percentage is that the timing is perfect, the more smooth and the more flowing and the more efficient you're going to be moving around the court. But even if you could nail it,
let's say half the time. How huge would that be? How much more court would you be able to cover? How much smoother would it be? If half the time you seamlessly came down with momentum and energy and just flowed in the direction of the ball. How much more fun would tennis be? How much more court would you cover? That's my goal for you. That's my goal
for all my students too. And here's the drill that I've been using a lot recently. And I recommend, so we're going to later this a little bit, there's going to be a progression to this. The first drill is just to practice your split step. And you're probably way more narrow than you think. I would highly recommend you record yourself. I've done this a lot just this past year. Kind of do an audit of people's ready position in split step.
And across the board, like the pattern that I see is observe people doing a practice split step, which the three core elements of a good split step or good ready position are your stance, your feet more than double shoulder width apart right around double shoulder width apart. So however wide your shoulders are, your feet should be in a stance twice
that wide. Number one, number two, bend in the bend in the knees. And number three, wait slightly tipped forwards on the balls of your feet so that your heels aren't flat on the courts. We don't want to be in a, like a standing flat footed position. We want to have a little bit of spring. And the bend, the bend in the knees helps accomplish that. And the weight on the balls of the feet helps accomplish that. And then double shoulder
width apart. I'm telling you across this last year is I've asked people, I don't go a little wider, go a little wider across the board. People are telling me that's exaggerated. That's, that's too wide, right? Yeah, like there's no way that's correct. And then I stop recording on my iPad, I bring the student over and say, Hey, look, does this look too wide to you? And the student says, Oh, no, that looks really good. That looks athletic.
That looks like a good tennis player. The reality is most people are used to a very narrow unathletic ready position. Even when they know they're working on the ready position, it's not very wide. It's not very low. It's not very athletic. And that just makes more effort and energy required in order to move in one direction or the other. So step one here is practice a two X shoulder width apart. Weight on the balls of your feet, ready position.
Step number one, step number two is practice coming up off the ground and then landing softly in that position. That's drill number two. So physically leaving the court surface and then touching down softly and gently on the balls of your feet in that new ready position with the three checkpoints that we just talked about. That's drill number two.
Drill number three is practice lifting up and then instead of coming down in a neutral position and touching back down with both feet facing forwards, practice flowing to the left and practice flowing to the right. So what that's going to feel like, what that's going to look like is you're going to lift with both feet facing forwards, at least a couple inches off the ground. And then on your way down, you're telling yourself ahead of time,
right? Let's practice flowing to the left. And then on the way down, your left foot is going to point about 45 degrees to the left and your right foot will stay pointing forwards. What that's going to do is it's going to point your left knee and point and open your left hip out to the left. And then your right foot, the inside edge of your right foot can touch down and you can push off that right foot to propel your energy smoothly to the left.
And so you're lifting your energy straight up and then on the way down, you are kind of sling shotting or flowing your energy to the left. And so you can come down literally already moving to the left. And if you practice moving to the right, it's all the same thing. You're going to lift with your feet facing forwards, come down with the inside of your left foot, kind of the edge, the inside edge of your left foot landing, your right foot seamlessly
pivoting and pointing out to the right about 45 degrees. And then you can sling shot your energy out to the right on the way down from your split step. So practice the flow. So those first three, you can do totally alone by yourself. I mean, just in your living room or bedroom or basement or whatever in your driveway, practice those three things first by yourself before worrying about trying to time it. Now, here's a drill that you can do with
a partner. And this is what saw a I bring my students through those first three drills. And now this fourth one I do with them. I stand in front of them like 10, 15 feet away from them, facing them. They face me. And I have them lift up in a split step from a neutral position. And as they lift up, I'm standing 15 feet away from them with my arms
straight out to the side holding a tennis ball, palm down. So I'm like in a in a T position with my arms straight out, facing them, a tennis ball on my right hand, a tennis ball on my left hand. And right as they start to lift into their split step, I drop one ball or the other. And that's going to correlate to either them moving to the right or to the left, whichever hand I drop the ball from, they're going to come down and seamlessly propel
themselves in that direction. So they lift, I immediately drop. And this is, this is important if you do with a partner, you don't want to drop before they lift so that they already know where the ball is going. But you also don't want to hold the ball too long because we want to give them a quarter or a third, a quarter to a third of a second after they've lifted to be able to process where the ball is going. So if you drop it too soon, then
it's kind of cheating. It's like, well, they already know it's to the left or to the right before they even lift. And so that's kind of defeats the purpose. And if I hold it too long, then they don't have the opportunity to seamlessly flow and pivot because their brain
doesn't have enough time to pick up on where the ball is, which ball is dropping. And so they're going to land back in a neutral position and then have to reengage and pick up whichever foot it is again and then move towards the ball, which is not going to be nearly as efficient or smooth or flowing. So there's a little bit of skill involved in the person dropping the ball. Honestly, the, like the timing has to be just right for it to be productive.
If you hold it too long or you let it go too soon, then it's not really going to correlate exactly correctly to real life. But even if it's not perfect, it's still going to get you the idea. Even if your, if your partner's like ballparking it and not doing it perfect, at least you'll be able to practice this idea. Your body will start to get a sense for what it feels like. And then the fifth progression is to go out and actually do it in real life.
Do just a short court rally or like a down the middle ground stroke rally with the explicit goal of lifting, reading the direction of the ball on the way down and then seamlessly pivoting your outside foot and flowing in the direction of the ball. So there's five drills for you. If you layer all five of them together, which is typically what I do when I teach people, like when I see ten spiders just standing there, which is a lot of the time, we move through
that entire sequence. And usually by the end of it, player is starting to actually feel that seamless flow of energy, which is so wildly different from just standing there watching the ball get hit, which is super exciting. And it's really fun to see them in slow motion as I kind of play it back smoothly, like effortlessly start to propel themselves, kind of slingshot themselves in the direction of the ball. It's a totally different feeling and a totally different paradigm of
moving around the tennis court. And it just really opens up the door to covering much more court, much more smoothly. All right, hopefully it's been super helpful. By the way, if you want to watch examples of everything that I just talked about, go to YouTube and do a search for essential tennis. The title is slightly different on YouTube. We called it how to flow like Federer. I used a bunch of Federer examples of this footwork that we're talking about. I mean, he's just like
the the poster child for this idea, right? That smoothness and that efficiency. So if you want to see it in action and also see the drills in action with my students, go to YouTube and do a search for that and check it out. And if you'd like to continue your learning and level up your game, I highly recommend going to tennis secret.com where I've got some training for you. It's free. All you have to do is just enter your email address. I'll send you the link right to the coaching.
It's going to show you how to cut in half the number of errors that you make in your next match. And also cut in half the amount of running you have to do in your next match. If I'm picking smart targets, picking smart positions on the courts and using intelligent patterns can dramatically increase your success rate even without changing your habits or your skills or like what your technical tools that you have in your toolbox at all. So that's a free training that you can sign up for
at tennis secret.com. It's definitely focused on singles play. So if your singles player definitely go check it out. It'll be super helpful for you. That's tennis secret.com. Thanks for listening today. Hope this was helpful. Keep up the great work in your game and I'll talk to you in the next episode. For more free game improving instruction, be sure to check out essential tennis.com where you'll
find hundreds of video, audio and written lessons. Also be sure to subscribe to essential tennis on iTunes and YouTube where we are the number one resource in the world providing passionate instruction for passionate tennis players. Thank you so much for listening today. Take care and good luck with your tennis.