Placing oneself to the right distance to the ball is a huge challenge for young kids. It requires good eye-hand, eye-foot coordination, and smooth ball tracking. Information like in what time will the ball arrive, where will the ball bounce and how high will it bounce have to be noticed in fractions of time and the brain must calculate the right moves to place the body into a well-balanced position with a proper distance to the ball. What is this proper distance? It depends on the different body height and the length of the arms on one side but also on the biomechanics of a groundstroke on the other side. The modern forehand, for example, requires an elbow away from the body on the unit turn and a directly following racket drop into „lag drive“ so the wrist can travel from the inside to the outside facing the ball with the end of the grip. You can see that position in the following picture.

The racket head itself accelerates towards the ball (from the near body to diagonal far from the body) so the optimum contact point is about 45 degrees in front of the body with a nearly stretched arm (depending on grip). It is important to understand that the upper arm stretches first on the way diagonal forward and then the forearm follows (that requires an elbow away from the body). Too many players have the elbow too near to the body what is the result of a too extreme grip or a late contact because of a too-long backswing. Then the opposite happens. The forearm bends too early and the racquet head swings from away from the body to near body and finally crossing the body too early. The result is less spin, less depth, and less precision.

Here is how you can practice the right distance to the ball with young kids:

Position of cone when having the right distance

Place a cone onto a plastic gymnastic wheel. You can use tape to fix it. Your student has to hold the wheel on hip height with both hands near the hips so the cone is right in front of the player when standing in the ready position facing the net. Now the coach is feeding balls onto the forehand and into the backhand. The player has to run towards the estimated ground contact point while doing the unit turn with the wheel fixed with the hands-on hip height. With a good working eye-hand and body coordination, the player places himself exactly into the right position to catch the ball in the right distance diagonal in front of him. We did this today with running into the forehand corner and with navigating oneself into the well-balanced position of a forehand inside outshot. Try it out, it is quite hard to manage.

You should alternate the exercise with the cone by letting the player shadow the strokes with the right position on the contact point and also with feeding balls. When doing so you will see that the distance calculation of the brain gets better and better. Also, implement rallies after a block of feeding.

That‘s it for this time. All the best Coach Dimi