Your agility on the court means you can instantaneously change your body’s position in the most efficient manner possible, which leads to a chance to respond to your opponent’s shots easily. It’s one of the key factors that sets good tennis players apart from great tennis players, but fortunately, even if you’re not very agile on the court at the moment, you don’t have to stay stuck in that space forever. Instead, you can easily improve your agility with these three simple drills. 

1.  Baseline Ball Pickup: Getting back and forth on the court is absolutely essential to developing your own agility, and this drill will have you more agile than you can ever imagine. Place four balls at different spaces on the sideline. Put one at the service line, one by the net, and two at various points between. Beginning at the baseline, sprint as quickly as you can toward the first one. Pick it up, sprint back, put it on the baseline, then head for the next one. You’ll be working on several skills related to agility with this drill: fast footwork, directional shifts, and speeding up.

2.  Cone Run: Put 12 – 14 cones along your baseline. Starting at one end, and facing the cones, weave back and forth between them using the smallest adjustments steps possible. When you reach the end, do it all again backward.

3.  Toss and Return: Have a partner toss you the ball, then return it. When you swing, though, your partner should toss you another ball. The goal here is to be in motion continually throughout, as you never quite know where your partner will toss you the next ball. 

To be the best possible player on the court, you must be constantly in motion, and better agility can make that possible.