Volleys 🎾
Volleys 🎾
🎯 🎾 Volleys – Tennis Tots/Titans Teaching Guide
Volleys are less important at the Tots/Titans stage, but it's good to introduce them early in tennis. The idea of a volley is to finish the point off at the net. The technique is very different from normal forehands and backhands.
Demonstrate: Children will learn from watching the coaches, so please demonstrate a forehand at every level
Technique: As players approach the net, they do not have time for big swings, so the technique involves keeping the racket head up, creating a V shape, and hitting from high to low. The same grip is used on both volleys (chopper grip), and the hand is turned for backhand. Footwork is crucial in volleying, enabling the body to turn for both forehand and backhand shots, and to attempt to impact the ball at shoulder height whenever possible. For a right-hander, when performing a forehand volley, the left foot wants to move towards the ball and turn the shoulders in the process; for a backhand volley, the right foot steps across. https://youtu.be/b2mHhUeeSvc?si=QIqHEoFzY2GAcfzu
🧸 Volley progressions
· High fives: pair the children up with parents/ other kids; put drop-down lines in front of the child to give them a starting point and get them to step forward and high-five. Encourage back-of-hand high-fives
· Cone hands. Use round cones (one of each colour) and put two fingers through the middle and hold the thumb on the outside. Get parents to have matching coloured cones, and the child matches the colour and high-fives parents' cones like cymbals. Encourage children to step forward across the body by holding the corresponding colour for the child to step across and tag the parent's cone.
· Lollipop volleys: Get children close to the net and to hold the racket up like a lollipop. Feed the ball a bit short so the child has to reach forward and hit down.
· Progress to kids standing further back by putting down lines for the child to recover to, then stepping forward with the correct leg and punching high to low down into the court
· Progress to hitting a groundstroke first, then moving forward and hitting a volley.
· Split step: introduce the idea of split step before volleying for balance
· Smashes: always good to throw in some smashes, which are essentially serves without the ball toss.