Every elite player has elite footwork. Every elite stroke is preceded by elite footwork, and each non-elite stroke almost always demonstrates equally non-elite footwork. Ergo, footwork causes good ball-striking, right?
Not quite.
When A and B are tightly correlated, there exist three options for causality, not one:
- A causes B
- B causes A
- some third factor, Z, causes both A and B
Even when observing a very tight correlation, we don’t know which way the causality flows without further evidence. In tennis, we observe a very tight correlation between elite footwork and elite ball-striking, which means that one of the following is true:
- Elite footwork causes elite ball-striking.
- Elite ball-striking causes elite footwork.
- Some third factor causes both elite footwork and elite ball-striking.
Most assume it’s #1, but the truth is closer to #2 – elite ball-striking causes elite footwork. The players with the best understanding of their striking action demonstrate the best footwork, because intent to strike the ball is what organizes the feet.
Don’t Believe Me? Watch This.
Roger Federer’s footwork for the first 2 minutes of this practice session is “awful” by any objective metric. He’s essentially walking, moves in a high stance instead of low and wide, and he routinely hits with his feet together. He barely recovers after he hits, barely gets set before his opponent hits, then takes a half-hearted split-step and walks to the ball again.
And yet he never misses a shot.
The above video is a refutation that clean ball-striking requires elite footwork. It does not. As seen above, quality striking is possible while, quite literally, walking around the court. Each of Roger Federer’s strikes during these 2 minutes was essentially perfect, despite the “bad” footwork. They were centered, well-timed, and trivially in.
We will explain footwork’s role in faster-paced tennis later, but before we get there, we need to explain exactly how the footwork-striking causality is flipped from what’s usually understood. For now, really internalize the surprising nature of the video above. If it were, in fact, the elastic hopping, quick adjustment steps, and lateral cuts that caused great ball-striking, the above performance would be impossible.
Physical Reality vs Your Motor Plan
In physical reality, footwork is causally upstream of contact. If your feet don’t get you into the right place, the swing that comes after suffers, and your contact will usually fail.
Physically, your footwork causes your contact.
Each individual forehand swing itself, though, doesn’t really matter. Your forehand isn’t a swing, but rather a function – a neurological pattern that takes in sensory input, and outputs a set of motor commands. In your forehand function, footwork is causally downstream of contact. Your plan to create a certain kind of contact causes your plan for a certain kind of movement. The neurological causal chain runs in the opposite direction as the physical causal chain.
Mentally, your desired contact causes your footwork.
Prerequisites for Footwork
The job of your feet is to space the ball, to orient your body so that the ball is in the perfect spot for you to strike it. This means that, at minimum, there are two skills you must have before footwork is even a coherent concept.
First, you have to know what perfect spacing is. You need to understand your hand, wrist, arm, shoulder – your entire personal kinetic chain – well enough that you actually know, visually, what perfect spacing looks like. If you don’t know what you’re trying to set up, how are the feet going to set it up for you?
Second, you have to be able to track the ball. The feet never work by themselves – they are always intricately connected to the eyes. You never take a step that isn’t caused by what you’re looking at. If you’re not following the ball, not attentively tracking it from your opponent’s racket, through the ground, and onto yours, then any movement by your feet is purposeless.
To Fix Your Feet, Fix Your Striking Program
Many forehand misses that are physically caused by poor footwork are not best fixed by addressing the feet. Usually, it’s one of the two above skills that’s deficient – contact planning or visual tracking. That deficiency caused the feet to move incorrectly, and the swing broke. If a player doesn’t know what spacing they’re trying to create, their feet obviously aren’t going to create it, and if they aren’t seeing the ball, the feet’s movements, whatever their goal, are essentially random.
This is why I put “awful” in quotes when describing Federer’s footwork above. Even though he was basically walking, each of those walking steps was intentional, connected to his eyes, and together they successfully set up the strikes he was trying to create. The “footwork” skill demonstrated had nothing to do with the lower body itself – anyone can walk. It was Roger Federer’s elite ball-striking program that commanded a few casual walking steps in perfect service to his strikes.
What Elite Footwork Actually Enables
Elastic split-steps, quick balanced adjustment steps, and explosive lateral cuts enable proper spacing against higher quality balls. They do not create good ball-striking themselves, they maintain good ball-striking as conditions get more and more difficult. Not only that, but the harder you want to swing, the more perfect your spacing needs to be. If you’re a little off, but trying to hit slowly, you can just lean, or adjust with your arm. If you want to crack the ball, though – if you want to use your entire kinetic chain for racket-head speed, rather than adjustment – then spacing has to be perfect, and you’ll need more than walking steps to set that up.
Roger Federer’s deep, visceral, automatic understanding of contact is what commands his body to hop, step, and move, and as a result, the moment he decides to hit harder, his footwork pattern changes. The legs get wider, the body lower, the steps quicker. Command your forehand to produce a higher-quality ball, under more time pressure, and it’ll quickly figure out that balance and foot speed are necessary ingredients.
