How to Approach Your Practice?

The best way to have a good practice is to have something specific to work on while you are out there on the court. If you've booked a court for an hour and a half this is how you could break down the time. Bring a hitting partner and make it simple: forehands for 15 minutes, backhands for 15 minutes, volleys and overheads for 15 minutes, serving for 15 minutes, and then playing points for the last 30 minutes. By breaking down a practice in this way you have a better chance of staying focused throughout. It can help reduce any frustrations because you are focusing and working on different areas of your game. It also gives you good breaks when you switch between different strokes, making your practice more fun.

Positive energy: When it comes to approaching practice you must start with great positive energy. It helps if you bring good physical energy to the court. When you are able to move around the court showing good positive body language this will carry over into having positive results. The amount of effort you put out for every point in practice will benefit you greatly when you are actually in competitive play.

Warm up quickly: Getting physically warmed up greatly increases your chances of having a better practice. If you are cold your muscles react at a much slower rate making it difficult to execute your strokes. In the first part of any practice just work on getting warm as quickly as possible. This could be done before you walk onto the court by running on a treadmill, biking, or jumping rope. If you are on a court you could run some laps on the court. If that's not for you then you need to start moving right from the beginning - split step before each shot, taking lots of little steps while you hit at a slow pace to get yourself up to speed. Once you arrive at that happy point then you can start to increase the intensity of your practice.

Intensity: Intensity is a very important component to a good practice; if you are lackluster then things invariably won't be good. Being too intense can result in injury if you are not fully warmed up so finding that happy medium is the key to success. At this point you are able to move quickly and smoothly into position to make the desired strokes. The time between points is not too long so you are able to sustain the appropriate rhythm and achieve the results you desire.

Breaks & re-fueling: Taking breaks and re-hydrating will allow you to maintain a high level of practice. If your results start to drop, your focus will be lost, and frustration can replace all the positive production up until that point. This is where breaks help prevent this from occurring. Be careful not to take too long of a break because you don't lose the good rhythm that you've worked hard to create.

Competitive: Keeping a practice competitive is important if you want to push yourself to new levels. What this means is that you try making every ball and run down balls that are even close to being in. By doing this you are making yourself mentally tough to handle any situation that might occur in a real match. It can help you stay sharp and it makes it easier for you to practice with different levels of opponents.

Practice is a joint effort where by both players are working to improve their games. If you don't have that mindset then your overall practice is going to fall very short of what you want to achieve. So to get the best out of practice choose someone you can push yourself against and work hard together to achieve the desired results together. Some people love to practice on a ball machine because they are in control of what they are going to get out of practice and that is also a good option. In the end, if you have a focused approach to your practices, you'll see good results more quickly.