Will Hamilton: The ready position is the foundation for most of your foot work, when you're playing tennis. How you move around the court in one way or another is going to relate back to this position. And more generally the ready position is an athletic stance, it's an athletic position. My feet here are about shoulder with the part maybe a little bit more knee slight bent, weights on the balls of my feet, I've got the tennis racquet out in front of my body, my arms are relaxed, I had tennis racquet angled up and I'm watching the tennis ball. Now more typically, what you're looking for is to be about a foot shorter than your normal height, that's an ideal athletic height. It centers your weight and allows you to move explosively in any direction around the tennis court, which is what you're looking for, you need to be able to go left, right, forward, and back. Finally, this stance in a lot of ways is similar to athletic stances and other sports, for example, in basket ball, your stance when you play defense is very similar to the ready position here.
Here is a great shot of Tommy Haas and his ready position. We'll start by looking at his feet, we're going to zoom in and he has got the weight equally distributed on each foot, he has got his -- the weight on the balls in his feet, so his heals are up, his knees are slightly bent. Now we'll move up to his upper body, his arms are out in front of his body, he has got the racket ahead angled up, and he is holding the tennis racquet handle with his right hand because he has got his left hand on the throw and you'll typically see that with players will have an one-handed backhand like Tommy Haas here.
If you have a two-handed backhand, you're more or likely have both hands on the handle, but again it's not a huge concern as long, you can hold like it Haas if you have a two-handed backhand as long as you get your both hands down on the handle when you go to hit a backhand. Let's pull it back out, from this position, again the ready position is going to allow him to move in any direction around the court as fast as possible, it'll be just as easy for him to go to a forehand as it is to go to a backhand. This is the starting point that he is going to be in, when he is waiting for his opponent to hit him the tennis ball.
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