Most players warm up by walking to the baseline and hitting as hard as they can. That isn't a warm-up, it's an early start to the match — and it's why so many players are still spraying balls twenty minutes in. In this lesson Coach Tim Brielmaier plays short court with an assistant to show what a warm-up is actually for: finding your spacing and your contact point before you ask for any power.
What Coach Tim covers
- Why short court. Inside the service boxes there is no room to muscle the ball, so the only things left to work on are contact and spacing — which are exactly the things that decide how you play once you move back.
- Contact before shoulders. Early on he isn't turning his shoulders much at all. He is just meeting the ball cleanly. The bigger swing comes after the contact point is reliable, not before.
- The same spacing on every ball. High or low, the distance between his body and the ball stays identical. This is the habit the whole drill is built around.
- Both spins, both wings. Topspin is low to high; slice is high to low. He works both on the forehand and the backhand, and points out that the high-to-low slice is your approach shot when you want to get to the net.
- Feet moving, ball in play. No reaching, no hitting hard, no trying to give your partner difficult balls.
- Switching to volleys. When his partner's balls start running long and wild, he doesn't stop — he moves to volleys and keeps the same spacing. Then back to strokes when the rally settles.
The real point: always have a reply
Near the end Coach Tim calls each ball live — volley, stroke, stroke, volley — to show the thing the whole warm-up has been building. You will often warm up with someone who isn't consistent yet, and you can't control what they send you. What you can control is being in a good enough position that whatever they do, you have an answer. That is the flexibility a warm-up is supposed to give you, and it is what carries into a match.
Where to go next
Short court rewards the fundamentals you have already built. If your spacing is the part that keeps slipping, start with weight control and spacing. For the two spins he switches between here, see topspin and underspin, and for the volleys he falls back on, read how to volley.
Get a lesson to build on it
A warm-up only grooves what you already do, so it is worth having a coach check the fundamentals it is reinforcing. Coach Tim is a mobile coach across Florida's Space Coast and Treasure Coast and comes to your court. See lessons and pricing, or read what to expect in your first lesson.