Sliding on Hard Court
Q: This is sort of a dumb question, but anyway:
So I have started wondering how do you slide/glide on a concrete tennis court? Like I have seen tennis moments where the player slides to the ball and I’m wondering how you do that without completely falling down. Do you sort of just baseball slide or do you need some kind of special shoes?
Not a dumb question. It helps to think of sliding from different surfaces and spectrums. Imagine you were on a complete icy surface. It’s really slippery and if you move just a little you will begin to slide. It’s easy to fall when this happens but if you pay attention to your posture you can align your body so that you slide while maintaining balance so you don’t fall.
Clay sliding is very similar but has a bit more friction to work with. You use the same mechanics. You need a bit more speed this time than if you were on ice, but it’s still relatively easy to get enough speed for a slide.
Finally at the other end of the spectrum you have hard courts. There’s a significant amount of friction now, so you need a lot more speed to slide- and even when you do slide you won’t go as far as the other surfaces.
So if you were to learn how to slide you always start from the most slippery surface usually clay. The best home work assignments for students is a hardwood floor and socks. Sliding and maintaining balance in this surface would be the best practice for them. Once they have a feeling it’s no different on clay. It’s just converting it to relevant situations. Once you know how to slide on clay then it’s just same thing on hard court but a bigger threshold of momentum needed . So all in all it’s just baby steps. One step at a time.