I love hockey. I played, quite poorly of course, for over 40 years but I could never seem to figure out how to stay on my feet. I could skate pretty well and handle the puck OK, but I couldn't do both at the same time. I could skate forwards and backward and sideways and slantways...but when someone managed to put a pass on my stick, I would immediately fall on my arse. I couldn't maintain balance.

Something similar plagued my tennis for at least as long. During a stroke, I always felt off balance. It seemed little more than an annoyance to me until I realized the awful truth: balance is an absolute requirement for control, consistency, and power in tennis. In fact, once you finish reading this page, you may agree with me that mastering balance is 80% of the game of tennis. Without it, you will certainly always fail. Understanding balance alone can carry your tennis to the next level.

Back to hockey. What I loved about hockey was the feeling of flight. There is a real sense, as you glide and bank around the ice on one razor-sharp edge of a thin blade of steel that you are one evolutionary step from sprouting wings. When I realized I had a balance problem in tennis I thought of the other "balance" sports I had (sort of) mastered; skiing, water skiing, and skating, and concluded that the most amazing part of each of these sports was banking.

Imagine a 200+ pound man on skates describing a 6-foot diameter arc, heeled over at an angle of 30 degrees on one foot balanced on one edge of one blade and so "on-balance" that he can take a full hit from another 200+ pound man and stay on his feet. That is balance! What keeps him up? I got that there is a balance between the gravity trying to pull his head to the ice and the centripetal force trying to flip him over the other way, but what makes this arrangement so stable?

It could only be that the Banking Angle is magical - that given the radius of the circle and the speed of the skater he would naturally "snap" into a certain angle and would resist any attempt to pull him or knock him out of it. I did a mechanical analysis looking for some balance equation that was "self regulating", i.e., a small deviation from the "Magic Angle" would tend to create a force pushing the skater back into that banking angle. How wrong I was! The banking angle is quite precarious. The only thing keeping him up is a precise balance between the net force pushing down through the skate blade and an opposing force by the ice against the blade (see diagram right). The net force can be controlled by one thing and one alone - tension in the quadriceps muscles (the extensor muscles in the front of the thigh). If the skater pushes a little harder, he will tend to stand up straighter (be less heeled over). A little softer and he heels over toward the ice. The point is that the brain is put in complete control of the attitude of the body as it flies around the ice. Without the quads, there is no control, no stability, and no balance. Meanwhile, the net force pushing against the ice helps the player resist any attempt to knock him over and provides a solid anchor to the ice allowing him to push off powerfully and generate speed. Without the centripetal acceleration that results from skating in a curved path, there is no battle between centripetal force and gravity and hence no net force and no balance. Also if the control leg goes straight the knee locks, quadriceps loses control over the net force, and the player goes down; a locked knee prevents the quadriceps from responding to small changes and exercising fine control of the net force. If the player puts any significant weight on the non-control foot, he goes down. If the player straightens out - stops accelerating around the curve - he goes down. This is dynamic balance.

Dynamic Balance in Tennis

So how does a hockey player skate in a straight line towards the puck? He doesn't. If you watch hockey skaters skate, they always skate in little circles, their weight shifting side to side from one foot to the other. This continual weight transfer from one foot to the other causes discrete accelerations that result in dynamic balance.

Tennis players rarely run in circles on the court, but they can produce the same kind of acceleration by shifting weight from one foot to the other - side to side, front to back, crossover - whatever. When you stop moving your feet, you destroy dynamic balance. When you straighten your knees even for only a moment, you lose dynamic balance. Even momentarily standing on both feet converts dynamic balance instantly to static balance. My first misunderstanding of balance in tennis was that you had to keep your center of gravity between your feet and both feet on the ground. That is static balance, and it has nothing to do with sport. There is too much movement in sport. Static balance doesn't even work in golf - or the serve.

So the keys to maintaining dynamic balance are; your body weight on one foot at a time, knees forever bent and, oh yes, feet close together. The later seems a bit strange since it is the opposite of what one does in static balance, but it is important. Think about skiing - feet close together. How about dancing, skating, and surfing: feet close together. A wide stance predisposes to static balance.

This is all especially important in the serve wherein a subtle rocking motion forward and back starts the stroke to establish dynamic balance without which the toss and the stroke will be erratic. The last portion of the serve illustrates a particular flavor of dynamic balance; jumping. When both feet are off the ground, you are always in dynamic balance.

Making Your Brain Happy

Any time you have to move your feet and simultaneously perform some complex action with your upper body (such as a tennis stroke) you need to be in dynamic balance. A large and important chunk of your brain is dedicated to keeping your head from smashing into the ground. Your brain considers this a priority even when your ego believes there are more important considerations (like winning the club championship).

Because your ego can be stubborn and unreasonable, your brain doesn't bother to discuss this issue with it. Instead, it simply overrides any ego-driven activity that it thinks is likely to result in smash-head. If you try to address a ball in a way that makes your brain feel that it is losing attitude control, it will do anything necessary and use any part of your body it needs to regain control. If you are in a state of static balance and you don't keep your center of gravity between your feet your brain will take action, contorting your upper body to prevent a fall. It will trash your loveliest stroke to preserve your head. If you always stay in dynamic balance, your brain will always be satisfied and will not take over your upper body to maintain balance. The brain knows that as long as it is in dynamic balance and controls the quadriceps muscles, you will not fall.

Floating on Air

Imagine you can float a few inches over the surface of the court and at any time you can reach your feet down and push off with perfect traction in any direction you please. You could gather energy and momentum from the earth with all of the strength in your legs, and your upper body could use that energy to hit the ball but would be otherwise completely independent of what the legs are doing. That is dynamic balance. It is illustrated in the video below. The pros move their feet so much and with such incredible purchase on the court that the interplay of shoe rubber and asphalt sounds like a flock of birds. This sound is the "chirping" that many pros have associated with the "adjustment steps" that all pros make on an approach of a target ball. Actually, the chirping goes on all the time; during adjustment, running, approach, service, even sometimes waiting for the ball. The chirping is multi-use but primarily indicates rapid weight-shifting from one foot to the other. It is the sound of dynamic balance, and if you don't hear chirping when you play, you probably are not in it. If this looks exhausting, you are very perceptive. Flying is tiring. It is a lot less effort to clomp around like Frankenstein executing complex dance steps like "plant your back foot, rotate and load your right hip, assume an open stance, step across the ball, recover...". Nick Bollettieri has taught footwork patterns to pros like Sharapova; kick step, cross behind, shuffle footwork, etc. I am way too stupid to remember all of that - I couldn't even learn the two-step in dance class. Clearly, without dynamic balance, all of these complex steps are impossible to execute and conversely I have found that once you are in true dynamic balance, that alone is sufficient to grant access to all of the power, mobility, and consistency that you could want. The unnatural part of sports movement is dynamic balance; the rest is pretty much natural; running, pushing off, catching your weight, changing direction; those things become very easy once you get yourself and keep yourself in dynamic balance.

Another key advantage to dynamic balance is the ability to generate force. At the beginning of a stroke, you set your feet to push against the ground to generate the power that your upper body will use to accelerate the ball and controls its direction. A wave of force is generated in the legs and travels up the body through the kinetic aether to the forearm and then to the racket. To transfer motion to the ball, you first have to push off on something (like pushing a stalled car). You have to set at least one foot and push the earth in the direction opposite to the desired direction of the ball. The tighter your foot is "glued" to the ground, the more friction and thus more force you can generate. To propagate a proper wave, you need the pushing foot set tight into the court. The more your quadriceps is pushing down into the court - i.e., the more "dynamic" your balance, the more friction you generate and the more force you can produce. You can feel this "sticky feet" when you hit the ball while in dynamic balance, and you can hear it in the squeak of shoe rubber on asphalt. Your feet feel glued to the court with each small step.

Taking Flight

Sometimes you generate so much force against the court you jump up into the air. Now both feet are off the court, and you are flying. Do not panic! Paradoxically your brain is quite happy with this situation and doesn't try to contort your body to control your attitude. (Unlike cats, people do not always land on their feet.) Feet-off-the court is an important type of dynamic balance and is often used to resolve the dual role of the quadriceps as "Balancer in Chief" and as a prime source of energy for the stroke.

So...

The bottom line is one must always be in dynamic balance. From a few seconds before the stroke, throughout the entire stroke and the recovery. There are several forms of dynamic balance and several tricks to get into it as outlined below.

Forms of Dynamic Balance

• Running
  • You are always in dynamic balance while running. The old adage "Don't run through the stroke!" is just plain wrong.
• Dancing
  • Throwing your weight from one foot to the other like a dance step: left-right, forward-back, both together, both apart.
    • Start this before a stroke, waiting to return a serve, between strokes and especially while executing the stroke.
• Leaping
  • Propelling oneself off of the court surface.
• Rocking
• A very important move especially in the preparation and toss portions of the serve,  the overhead and waiting to return a serve.
• Sliding
  • Sliding one foot assures that all the weight is being transferred to the other foot: it is slow motion dynamic balance very useful in the cocking phase of the serve.

Checklist for Maintaining Dynamic Balance

1. Keep your feet moving!
   • Shifting weight from one foot to the other creates accelerations that generate dynamic balance.
   • Develop your own dance routines.
2. Keep your knees bent!
   • When you lock your knees you are in static balance. The brain cannot control your body's attitude (and altitude) it would have in dynamic balance through its control over quadriceps tension. I call this Frankenfeet because you look, feel and sound like Frankenstein's monster clomping around.
3. Keep your knees sufficiently bent!
   • You must never let your knees straighten even for a moment, so the average knee bend must be deep to avoid hitting the "static band".
4. When in doubt - feel free to fly!
   • if you feel your feet getting twisted up into knots don't hesitate to "leave the surly bonds of earth". Jumping is routine in the explosive portion of the serve and frequent in topspin groundstrokes and overheads.
5. Conflate court coverage and stroke production!
   • The pros don't waste movement. When covering a wide ball to the forehand, Federer's last footfall serves to stop his lateral momentum, provide energy for the stroke and push him off towards the center of the court for the recovery. B and C players stop, turn, step in and hit, turn and run back to the middle continually transitioning between static and dynamic balance. Pros stay in dynamic balance at all times and float above the fray.
6. Weight on balls!
   • Try to stand still, weight on both feet with your weight on the balls of your feet. You can't. It is automatic in dynamic balance, Checking that your weight is on the balls of your feet is a fantastic way to confirm dynamic balance or remind yourself to get your feet moving.
7. Feel the thrill of flight!
   • In dynamic balance the upper body floats and flows weightlessly while the lower body feels strong and stuck securely to the court.
8. Listen for the chirps!

Dynamic Balance in the Serve

Dynamic balance must be established before the toss begins or the toss - and therefore the serve - will be erratic. This is because in addition to the little ball, lots of bodyweight are being thrown up into the air during the service toss. To keep this weight movement from disrupting the toss itself dynamic balance must be established before the tossing hand reaches the release point (at nose level).

Rock gently into the service motion!

1. Entry into the serve
   • Rock slightly forward onto the front foot. The foot can be flat and the knees locked. Stepping forward starts the rocking motion but does not create dynamic balance! This first step should feel free and relaxed.
   • omit this step if you start with weight on the front foot.
2. Down phase
   • Rock back onto the back foot and pause there as the both hands come down in front of the hips. This is preparation for the toss and is not yet dynamic but it establishes the first real weight transfer so it should feel significant.
     • The rear foot can be flat and the rear knee locked.
3. Up Phase
   • FIRST, begin the tossing motion. THEN, begin to shift weight forward onto the front foot. The knees should break and bend. The hitting arm goes back. As the weight comes off the back foot, you can either drag it up next to the front foot ("Pinpoint Stance" ala Sharapova) or leave it where it is (Federer). During this phase, you are in true dynamic balance.
     • Lean back from the knees until the spine is at a 30 degree angle from upright.
     • This phase ends in the trophy position.
4. Drop Phase
   • Falling forward.
   • Allow the racket. to fall behind head and back (pendulum).
   • Drag back foot forward next to front foot (optional).
   • Weight begins to move back towards back foot.
5. Hit Phase
   • Explode with both legs upward which loads the falling hitting arm.
     • Many players jump 6-8" above the court surface.

What to Look For

I apologize for the rather voluminous list of symptoms of disordered balance. Lennart Bergelin, Bjorn Borg's primary coach, was once asked by a reporter to reveal Borg's secret weapon, hoping to get some insight into Borg's unerring consistency. Bergelin smiled and just said "Tennis is all about the (pointing to his head) and this (slapping his thigh). Stroking is important, but footwork is everything. Great hands always seem to be connected to great feet. Bad things happen when you lose your balance. The list that follows hits the low points, but everything good in tennis starts with getting yourself into dynamic balance, whether you are on the full run or standing at the net trying to handle a shoulder high sitter.

Symptoms of Disordered Balance

• Clompy feet.
  • Feet should chirp not clomp.
• Generalized unconscionable errors.
  • Missing the shoulder-high volley.
  • Forehands into the back wall or base of net.
  • Erratic ball toss on the serve.
  • Indecision.
    • Theory: Appropriate footwork and preparation are triggers needed by the thalamus to execute the stroke.
• Feeling off balance.
• Inability to get to balls.
• Slow recovery.
• Inconsistent ball toss on the serve.
• Double faults.
• Frankenfeet.
• Premonition of error.
• Inability to develop power
• Erratic ball placement.
• Increasing errors as the match progresses.