The Trainable Issue Costing You Matches

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:09]There is a hierarchy of skills in tennis and your eyes and your attention are at the top. So, we talk a lot about in the channel like things like the scap and how to swing better. But one of the things that can happen is if they then detract from your visual tracking and attention pattern, then they actually cause more harm than good. We're trying to integrate those things with that feeling of following the ball with your eyes, being connected to the ball with your eyes and feet, and specifically early when your opponent's hitting and late when you're hitting. So, this is one of the best drills to train that late tracking process cuz I could tell you watch the ball at contact and you can try to like verbally think that, but even then, instead of watching the ball, you're thinking the words, watch the ball. That's not really what we want. We want to practice that activity. And this is a great drill. The easiest way is close on one hop. So that's like this.

[00:01:05]And your goal is always to get three in a row cuz that's going to add a little bit of that pressure element that happens in matches. Now, this is a little bit harder than it looks. Um, one of the one of the keys here, it's going to help you a lot with this is you are going to have most success when you are catching the ball close to eye level. So, if I'm trying to catch this very far away from eye level, I can still do it if I'm very careful, but it's much much more difficult to judge the depth and the timing versus at eye level, I'm much much more connected to everything that's going on. This applies in tennis as much as you can. It especially applies on volies. Now, you want to make this hard for yourself, you can catch it out of the air. This is significantly harder, but it's the same principle. What you want to do with this drill, first of all, work it into your practice. Second of all, pay attention to how it feels.

[00:02:10]Like the same way that I'm like, oh, you know, we're we're practicing, you know, using the scap and the chest, and we want to pay attention to how that feels.

[00:02:16]It was the same thing here is like if you find yourself on the match court and you're spraying balls and like you're like, "What's going on? Like, why am I so disengaged?" Well, this is a great drill where, you know, we might do a shadow swing drill, we're isolating the scap feeling here, we are isolating that connected tracking attention pattern.

[00:02:34]And so, just like we we we isolate the scap or we do hit with the hand to isolate the hand, we can isolate the most important part of tennis, which is the eyes and the brain with a drill like this. And so, all I'm doing, you know, relax and just focus on this drill. My goal is to get three in a row. I have no other goal.

[00:02:55]And that's it. And then that that that that program that my brain is running, I want that to become habit. So just like I want do with the hand to become habit, just like I want to do with the scalp to become habit, I want what I am doing with my hand and my hand with my eyes and my brain and my attention there to become habit. Now next on the hierarchy is your hand. And the reason is your hand is what connects the racket to your nervous system. So your basic hand eye coordination and your attention following what's happened is number one.

[00:03:24]And then connecting to the handle with your hand is number two. And so now we have some similar drills that'll integrate them together. I have an X on the wall here. You know, I am trying to have the same receiving pattern into my string bed that I just did with the three ball drill, but now I'm connecting to my hand here. I have to try to tap the ball using this tool.

[00:03:51]And I'm just trying to get it as close to the red as I can.

[00:03:55]Again, just like last time, if I play these at eye level, I'm going to do a lot better than if I try to scoop them up from way far away from my eyes.

[00:04:12]Now, there's two ways that this can go wrong. One is overfocusing on the hand.

[00:04:16]So, you know, obviously if let's say you're new to tennis and you're like, "Oh, what is this thing in my hand?" Or if you know, just something feels off or you're working on something, uh, this might be novel. And so, you might need to focus on a little and you might find yourself kind of like, "Oh, whoops."

[00:04:29]Like, I was focusing on my handle so much I kind of forgot the attention pattern. And so, you can always regress the drill as you're doing this. You can always regress, hold on, let me do some with the cup again. Or just kind of tell yourself, hold on, get in that mode. get in that mode where like I'm connected to this with my eyes even though even though obviously now I have a second task here which is going to demand at least some of my attention.

[00:04:54]Now you can also do this with a partner uh on court. Instead of hitting it to the red X, you can hit it back to them.

[00:04:58]That's pretty fun.

[00:05:01]Just like the other one, we can also do this out of the air. Makes it harder.

[00:05:04]That one was a mess cuz I was talking.

[00:05:08]That one I just missed.

[00:05:12]That one I also just missed.

[00:05:14]There we go.

[00:05:17]There we go.

[00:05:20]Ah, not bad. There's one more visual trick which is peripheral vision. So I I recommend you do something high contrast here like red on white because you are going to find there's one more trick to aiming without losing your attention on the ball and it's you want to watch here and then see the target in peripheral vision. What can happen is you know it can be very easy to like kind of be too your attention like too anchored on the red X like I'm focusing on the red X too much and so like the moment of contact I'm not really processing. Instead, I just want to see the red X out of the corner of my eye.

[00:05:58]And then my attention, where I'm like actually paying attention is on contact here.

[00:06:06]So, I'm aiming at the red X and I can see the red X in my field of vision.

[00:06:11]It's just not in focus. It's in peripheral vision. But if I completely ignore it, it does get a lot harder.

[00:06:18]Okay, that was an exaggeration. But if I completely ignore my peripheral vision, it does get a lot harder to aim. Now, if all that sounds like a lot, that's the point of the drill is that I I don't want you thinking about these things.

[00:06:29]I'm just explaining them so you kind of know how it works. The point of the drill is we'll go back here just to summarize here. So, the point of this drill is I want to get three in a row in the thing. That's it. And that's going to train you for that eyele late tracking pattern where you're actually paying attention all the way into contact.

[00:06:52]And then this is the same idea, but it's also going to help you control the racket, the tool in your hand with your hand. And you're going to have to see that target in peripheral vision in order to really get a good percentage on this.

[00:07:08]That one was terrible.

[00:07:12]Last thing I want to say is you do want to go to your forehand grip at some point instead of continental because you will need to be able to fully control the racket with your forehand grip as well. Um, obviously the forehand is designed to be more elastic. So, it is a little bit challenging to hit this slow with the forehand grip, but you can do this drill on a wall that's farther away when you do it with your forehand instead of doing an inch right here.

[00:07:36]Like, I'm I'm going to hit this. I'm going to hit the target on this one, but I'm a little nervous because I know I'm pretty close. So, do it a little bit farther away when you do it with your forehand grip that it's because obviously it's hard to not hit at all.

[00:07:46]Uh but yeah, there you go.