How to Practise Alone: Wall, Basket and Shadow Work

Solo practice has a poor reputation because most people do it badly: hitting a ball against a wall at random until they get bored.

Structured properly, an hour alone can produce more useful repetitions than an hour with a partner, because there is no waiting and no negotiation.

The wall

A practice wall returns the ball faster than a person, which is both its main drawback and its main benefit. It will not teach you match rhythm, but it will teach you preparation speed and consistency.

1. Continuous forehands, count them. Stand far enough back that the ball comes at rally height. Target twenty, then thirty, then fifty. The count is the training tool.
2. Alternating wings. Forehand, backhand, forehand. Trains grip changes and recovery under time pressure.
3. Target work. Chalk or tape a rectangle on the wall. Twenty balls, count how many hit it. Record the number weekly.
4. Volley blocks. Stand three metres from the wall and volley continuously. Nothing else builds hand speed and racquet control this quickly.
5. Serve targets. Where permitted, mark a service box outline on the wall and serve into it. The rebound is chaotic, so serve, catch, reset.

Basket feeding yourself

A basket of balls, a court, and a target lets you work on the shots that break down in matches.

• Serve blocks. Fifty serves with a defined target and a score. The single most valuable solo practice in tennis, because serving is the only stroke that requires no opponent.
• Drop feed groundstrokes. Drop the ball, hit to a cone target. Slow, and excellent for grooving a technical change because you control the ball perfectly.
• Approach and volley shadow. Drop feed, approach, then shadow a volley and an overhead. Trains the movement pattern.
• Overheads. Throw the ball up yourself against a fence net or into a target. Almost nobody practises overheads and almost everybody misses them.

Shadow work

Twenty minutes of shadow swinging, with no ball, is the most efficient way to change technique. The ball adds pressure and rushes you; without it you can move slowly enough to actually control what you are doing.

Do this in front of a mirror or with your phone recording from the side and behind.

1. Slow-motion repetitions, ten, focusing on one specific change only.
2. Half-speed, ten.
3. Full speed, five.
4. Film. Compare with what you intended. Adjust.

The rule is one change at a time. Trying to fix the grip, the takeback and the follow-through simultaneously produces no change at all.

Fitness that transfers

If you have court time but no balls, the following are specific to tennis movement.

• Spider run: from the centre mark, sprint to five points on the court and back, timed. Repeat five times, record the times.
• Split step and push-off, thirty repetitions each direction.
• Lateral shuffles the width of the court, ten lengths.
• Deceleration drills: sprint four metres, stop under control on one leg. The stopping is the injury-prevention part.

A sample solo hour

15 minutes wall work with counts. 20 minutes serve block with scoring. 10 minutes shadow work, filmed. 10 minutes overheads and drop-feed approach. 5 minutes movement work. Write down every number before you leave.