Warm-up Drills to Develop the Power of Attention

Key Points

• Drill 1: Place your attention on how the ball sounds, looks and feels, noticing when your attention drifts off and then work to bring it back to the ball
• Drill 2: Pay attention to the rhythm of your feet
• Drill 3: Call out ‘steep’ or ‘flat’ after each shot to describe the path of the racquet
• Drill 4: Watch what shot your opponent hits and call out ‘forehand’ or ‘backhand’, followed by ‘short’, ‘deep’, ‘wide’, ‘net’ and ‘long’
• Drill 5: Call out ‘slow’, ‘medium’ or ‘fast’ as the ball comes off the court
• When we place our attention on something, we usually do it quite well
• Working on placing your attention on the speed of the ball can give you more time to react and prepare for the shot
• Young players can have difficulty noticing different conditions including court speed and wind etc., so working on different variations of these drills can greatly improve it
• Bringing attention to noticing your opponent’s weaker side in practice can help with recognising it in matches
• Placing your attention on the ball, the racket, your opponent or the environment can give valuable information to the brain, but they also improve your attention