One of the biggest concepts in tennis, they can really help you improve the way you can go on offense or defense is learning to play offense and defense. So many times when players step on the court they think of it is just one kind of mode, meaning that when the ball comes, I just play the ball. That's not really what you want to do. 

What you want to do is understand what situation are you in an offensive situation or a defensive situation and sometimes even a neutral situation In this video, we're going to just focus on the offensive and defensive situation because they pretty much cover most of the situations in tennis.

 After you get more used to this, you can start adding in the neutral situation. So the first question you might be asking is, why is this important and what is offense and defense? The reason why this is important because it's understanding if you're an offensive or defensive situation should also dictate what type of shot you're sending back to your opponent. 

If you start to choose the incorrect shot for the situation, you're going to probably make a lot of mistakes and you don't want that. So now let's talk about what's an offensive situation. How would I categorize an offensive situation? I categorize an offensive situation is when I can rotate and that I'm balanced, meaning that whenever I'm hitting a ball in an offensive situation I can rotate and balance a one more thing is that I'm generally moving forward or inside the court.

So what this means is that I can set up hitting approach shot or shorter ball. And as long as I'm set up and I feel balanced and I can rotate, I'm in an offensive situation. Now, one tricky element of being an offensive situation doesn't just mean I'm moving forward, meaning that a lot of times you can get a ball where you're moving forward, but you're scrambling for the ball so much that it's not really an offensive situation, which now brings us to a defensive situation. 

This is generally when you're moving away from the court, you have trouble being balanced and you can't really rotate generally when you're on the run and moving off to the court, either to the left or the right, or moving away from the court back towards the fence or the tarp. And even sometimes, like I just mentioned, moving up to the court. So in these situations, I'm stretching and I'm in a defensive situation. 

So now that you know the two potential categories that you're going to see on the tennis court, let's now talk about the situations or what you want to do when you're in these situations. So first of all, offense, when you're in an offensive situation, you generally want to force your opponent, meaning that if you're hitting an approach shot, hit the ball maybe a little bit bigger or continue to move forward so you can take time away from your opponent on the very next shot.

Another thing about an offensive situation is generally when your offensive situation, you're controlling the point. You have the opportunity to move the ball around or take some time away from your opponent. And these are all elements that you want to do. And because of that, generally you don't want to hit the ball as high over the net, meaning that we don't want to hit it too close like a foot over the net. 

But we don't want to hit five six seven feet above the net because now we're giving our opponent time to get back in the court. If it's a defensive situation, this is the exact opposite. This is what I want to send the ball up high, gaining time, giving myself enough time to get my feet back under me and maybe give myself another opportunity, another ball. 

And that's why understanding offense and defense is so important. Most players aren't really thinking about these two different categories, and if you start thinking about it, you'll notice more opportunities because you'll notice when you're on offense or defense.