250 Series: Skills & Drills Lab
Ground Strokes & Transitioning
Takeaways & Training Tasks
Keep the momentum rolling with these quick steps:
- Refresh your memory with the 2 skills, 2 drills, and training video.
- Knock out the drills 2–3x before we meet again.
- Each time you play, pick one skill and make it your mission to use it often and on purpose.
Ground Strokes
- Contact Point: Approx 12-15” in front of front foot.
- Weight Transfer: Load and Rotate. Extending forward through the ball.
- Hands: Reach out with non paddle hand on forehands.
- Swing: Short Backswing- paddle butt to back hip. Swing plane to the side
to initiate kinetic chain- not pendulum swing.
Self Feed Forehands
- Place a pile of cones deep in each service box.
- Players set up on the baseline opposite the target cones in 2 lines with a ball
basket in the middle of the baseline. - Players take 2 balls and hit a self fed forehand to each cone pile - 1 cross
court and 1 down the line. - Alternate which side you hit on odd/even with each 2 hit rotation.
Ground Strokes Hit Call
- Set up players in transition zone straight on from each other or at baseline - depends on ability to control the ball.
- Controlled groundstroke rally back and forth.
- Players must say “HIT” when their opponent is contacting the ball.
- Promotes watching ball off opponents paddle.
- Can also be played doubles rally.
Stay Alive: Ground Stokes
- Players compete as a foursome standing mid court
- Players start a groundstroke rally and see how many groundstrokes they can hit and keep it in bounds and over the net
- 3x 1 min rounds - rotate players each round
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