Moving on, the core is probably one of the most important skills that you need to develop to be a great player, whether you're playing singles or doubles, it will always include some sort of movement to get to the ball.

 You can almost say tennis is a game of movement, and that's why we're going to focus on how to move in this video. I'm going to show you how to move so you can move very efficiently on the court. 

The reason why this is important is because movement will help you hit a better ball. If you can't get to the ball, you can't hit the ball. And if you can't get the ball balance and be able to rotate, you're not going to be able to hit a quality ball. So let's get started. 

The number one thing that we want to think about for movement is how can I be balanced and how can I rotate? When you can combine those two things, you can pretty much get to balls and hit difficult shots because you set your footwork up in the right way. The very first thing we going to start with is our ready position.

 In our ready position, we want to make sure that we're in a nice position here or our knees are bent. You can see the our feet are probably a little bit more than a racquet length apart because the wider our legs are, the more stable our base is going to be when our base is stable.

We're not going to tip over, we're going to be able to be balance. Now this will vary the more difficult your shots are going to be and more you have to run, you're going to probably find yourself in a nice wider stance.

 And then generally in a warm up, you see pros where they're warming up and they don't really have a wide stance because they're not really being challenged either way, making sure that we're in this nice athletic stance where I'm going to be on the balls of my feet a little bit more and I'm going to bend and keep my weight on the balls of my feet with my back straight. That's a great athletic position from here. 

The very first thing I want to do is decide what type of ball I'm going to hit. Now, the great thing about learning footwork this way is you can take what we're learning on the forehand and stamp it over on the backhand. It's all the same, so don't feel like, hey, we just talked about forehand footwork. Well, it's the exact same on the backhand. 

So the very first we're going to make once we're in the ready position is our split step, which means I'm going to land when my opponent is making contact so I can now move into a direction. So I split and I'm going to take an outside leg step. So we're going to pretend that I just received a forehand. So my first move is going to be outside leg.

So by using my outside leg, it's going to point in the direction that I'm going to move. Now, this is key. Think about it for a second. How would you walk and shake somebody's hand? I think that's the best analogy for learning how to have great footwork on the tennis court. 

Just think about it. If I was going to shake your hand right now, what would I do? I would take the very first step and come towards you like this Now let's pretend that I'm in a ready position here, and I'm going to shake your hand now. 

Look what I'm going to do. I'm going to take that step. My toe is going to be pointing towards you, and I'm going to walk over directly to you in that direction. Just like if the ball's over here, I'm going to take this very first step and start moving towards the ball. 

Now it's so important that you understand that this is seamless, meaning that I'm going to split and turn and start moving now. The next part is this. You want to arrive to the ball on your outside leg. You might be thinking like, What's my outside leg? You're outside leg? Is this leg or my right leg? If I'm a right handed-player from a left hand player, it's going to be my left leg. 

The reason being is, arriving on your outside leg gives you tons of options, meaning you can hit from this open stance or you can step in if the ball shorter compared to if you arrive on your inside leg, you're stuck to basically the stance.

And remember, we're going back to that balance and rotation if you arrive stepping across this way. Can I rotate? I cannot. So it really limits your ability to hit a solid ball. Now are there times where you're just trying to get the ball back and you're not going to be able to rotate? Yes, but when you do have the opportunity to rotate and get over there, you want to be able to rotate.

 So let's go through it now. Now I'm going to split outside leg one two, I'm to the ball and all I'm going to do is rotate my hips. We've talked about how to use your body, and it's so important that in your footwork, we use our body because it now sets me up to guess what? Walk all the way back and then splits up. 

And really, if you think about this whole situation of moving out to the ball, it's like shaking your best friend's hand and then coming back to where you were. So if I was just shaking a hand boom, I'm going to shake the hand, then I'm going to turn back and walk back. 

Really simple now with a racquet boom, run over, shake the hand and then come back and then be ready. You can see how this is so simple, but it can be made to be so complicated. Now you might be wondering, like Kevin, you're not covering a lot of court.

Well, what would you do if you had to cover more court? My steps would increase. So if I start all the way over here and go outside leg, I could cover more court by stepping bigger and then stepping back. Or if I don't have to cover that much court, I might honestly just take one step over and then hit. 

But either way, I'm starting with my outside leg to make sure that I have those options. Now there are situations where let's say if the ball's coming right to me, I might just go here in my open stance and not even worry about it. But when you're talking about covering the court. 

This is the most efficient way to do it again, let's go over a couple more things as they go outside leg just like this and I get to the ball and I'm about to hit as I hit and recover. Look where my toes are pointing their toe, pointing back to my recovery position so I can make sure I get back in position now. 

From here, I'm going to make sure I get into this ready position by the time my opponents are making contact again. So how this would all look together is split outside, leg hit, come back split and then you're ready to go in the other direction. 

So if you want to do the backhand boom outside leg open and split, and if you're wondering, Kevin, what if I want to step into the ball? I can't do that with this.

Well, I've got a split outside leg step with my outside inside hit and then I run back to where I started. Either way, it's all the same and it's really simple. 

Now, why is this so much better than taking all these little steps where you can probably tell if you're going to take a ton of little steps by the end of the match, you're going to be worn out, you're going to you're going to be running all over the court, taking all these little steps and just completely wearing yourself out. 

The thing we're doing here is measuring the ball, meaning that we want to take enough steps to get to the ball. Now are there situations where you might have to take a couple of stutter steps? Yes, but the point is making sure you take those stutter steps when you get to the ball. 

Too many players are when they're moving or taking all these little steps, and they're not even to the ball yet, and it slows them down compared to making sure that when I move, if I have to take steps, it's because I'm already at the ball.

 And that's the difference of when you measure your steps versus taking too many steps, or if you're going to take those steps, those extra steps to fine tune your footwork, making sure you take it at the end when you're closer to the ball.

Now it's time to take some action steps to work on your footwork. The biggest thing for footwork is understanding that you already know how to do it, and that's probably the biggest thing for most players to overcome.

They have this idea in their head about what tennis footwork should be like, and they don't understand that every day you walk out to the court and walk back to your car. It's, you know, exactly how to move, and that's the way you're going to move on a tennis court. 

So we're going to start off with is just starting out in a ready position. And the first move we're going to make is split step. And they're going to pretend like we're going to sprint to the right side, which is my forehand side. So we're going to split, step and turn. Ok, split, step and turn get really good at this action, whether you're hitting a forehand or backhand, if I would split step and turn or split step and turn. 

You can see that my outside leg, once I split step is going to come down and you need to practice this because it needs to be a habit. Then when you see your opponent making contact with the ball and your landing, that your first reaction is to turn from here. You just have to think about walking or running. 

However, you want to think about it. So we're going to split step turn and they're going to walk and arrive on an outside leg from right here.

Now I know I'm not covering that much ground, but if I wanted to cover more ground, I take bigger steps. You're going to see that in a second. Once I'm here in that position, I'm going to turn back towards the direction I came from. 

So this turn represents me hitting the ball and then coming back and split, stepping again to get ready for that next shot. So how you would work on this is simply walking it all out. Split step, turn one to hit and back and ready. Ok? Same thing on the backhand side splits up turn one,two hit and ready. Ok, so I want you to do this, and I know you might be thinking, Kevin, hey, you didn't open stance.

 I don't want to do an open stance. I want to step in. Start off with the open stance. The reason being is that for any stroke, you want to arrive in the open and then if you want to choose, you can step forward and do more of a neutral type stroke. But we want to start here. So do this at least eight to 10 times consistently over and over. 

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Until you feel really comfortable with this, you can go split and it's just like a normal deal. You don't have to think about it. Boom, I'm coming back. Split. Ok, boom. If you're one handed split open stand still, boom. Ok, once you do this, the next level of this is stepping into the shot, so I'd go split one two three step forward hit pulling that leg around and then I cross over back.

Ok, so you can really see how the only difference on either side split one two three step swing, boom and then back. And this is the footwork patterns you want to use now. The last four pattern is if you need to step back or move back to hit the ball, it's the exact same thing. 

When I split up, I take my first step back hitting the ball, coming back and then right back to the centre space. Now it's really just three directions you need to move. You're either moving back along the baseline or for a short ball.

 All the footwork are exactly the same. I had a short ball. I split this direction. I'm moving. I'm going to go one two three hit and then come back, and so I want you to train these things over and over again. 

Walk through it over and over into it feels second nature. I really recommend and I did this before going off to train in Spain. I would come out to a court by myself with my racket and just go through the footwear patterns slow until I got it, and I would slowly speed it up until I really, really had it down as a habit. 

So if you do these exact things, same things, you're going to have great footwork.

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