Almost 80% of the times a player goes into a corner he or she uses a lunge. With the right footwork technique a lunge will allow you to increase your reach and recover faster after your shot so it as absolutly curcial for a successful player!
Why lunges?
Lunges give you many advantages on court if they are done the right way. On one hand, they allow you a faster recovery after the shot because you minimize the distance back to the center of the court, on the other hand you maximize your reach with the racket if you use your dominant leg for the lunge. Usually lunges are needed in the front court, but can also be your best option on the sides or in the rearcourt when you are low and under pressure.
How to do the perfect lunge?
In my eyes there are 6 keypoints that are important for an effective and efficient lunge:
- The footposition
- The landing of your foot
- Kneeposition
- Upperbody position
- The non dominant arm
- The dominant leg
In the following video, I cover all six aspects and explain, how you can work on these aspects in your training:
There’s one more thing that can help you a lot to recover after a deep lunge that i don’t cover in the video: The so called recovery step. After the landing and the shot try to push out of the corner quickly but only take a little step back with your dominant leg first and don’t try to push all the way back with one step. That will help you to get back in better balance and after that small recovery step you will have a much better position to push back to the middle. Here you see a perfect example for a recovery step:
In the first parts of my footwork tutorial series i already showed you some exercises that can also be used to work on your lunge technique. The exercise “Fast to the net” is especially for footwork to the frontcourt, it can be used by any level of player so it could help you as well: https://youtu.be/h260zrDw6OQ
For experienced players i can recommend you the following exercise, that will challenge you in the front court and will help to improve your speed of recovery after hitting:
