 Hey guys and welcome back to another classroom tennis lesson. In this video I'm going to help you to become smarter on the match court and in particular I'm going to talk you through when you should be attacking, rallying and defending according to where you're stood on the court. As I mentioned I'm going to be talking through how your court positioning affects what opportunities you have during the point and in particular when you should be attacking, rallying and defending. So first of all I'm going to split the court into some different areas. Now in any point you're going to be stood in one of these zones. If you are stood in the red zone at the back of the court your priority should be to defend. Now any time you're this far back on the court it's going to be incredibly difficult for you to put your opponent under any pressure. It's going to be tough for you to keep them back behind the baseline, it's going to be tough for you to create angles. So your priority when you're this far back is to defend and to get yourself back into the yellow zone which we are going to call neutral. Now when you are in this zone you're just behind the baseline. In this zone you don't have the opportunity to attack but you shouldn't be defending either because you're in a good position to be able to apply some pressure to your opponent. Another way we could describe this zone is as the rally zone. Your job is to keep the ball in play to a good length keeping your opponent back giving yourself another opportunity to step even closer into the attack zone. Any time you're in this green zone in the court your priority should be to apply pressure to your opponent. Now the pressure that you apply could be done through hitting the ball harder, it could be done by taking the ball earlier or you can create angles as you're closer into the court. If you hit your attacking shot well you'll either win the point from that shot or give yourself an opportunity in the final zone which is the blue zone which we call the finishing zone. Now the reason this is the finishing zone is if you hit a shot in this zone and you don't finish the point you're going to be fairly vulnerable. Your opponent will have the opportunity to hit a passing shot that will be able to log you or you're going to have to retreat and you'll find yourself somewhere in no man's land. So your aim when you're in this zone is to finish the point within that next ball. Now this can be done through power, it can be done through drop shots and angles, anywhere you can your priority is to end the point when you're in this blue zone. Equally important when we talk about no man's land is if you're in this green attacking zone you don't want to hang around in this zone for too long. If you do you're going to have lots of balls landing at your feet and putting you into an awkward position and therefore having to move backwards again. So when you get yourself into the green and the blue zone you don't want the point to go on much longer. When you think of these zones at your opponent's end you can see how by hitting the ball nice and deep you're going to force your opponent back into their red zone to defend. The more often you can keep them in their red zone you can move forwards into your neutral attack and finishing zones. However on the flip side of this if you give your opponent too many opportunities with lots of short balls they're going to find themselves moving forwards into the green zone and the blue zone pushing you back making it much tougher for you to win the point. With all of that being said it's important to remember that these coloured zones are just a guide and they may differ from player to player according to your game style. It may be that if you're a more attacking player that your green zone might be slightly larger it might creep back into this neutral zone and you may be more aggressive when you're behind the baseline. If you're less of an attacking player it may be that your neutral zone is slightly larger which may creep into your green zone. Another thing to consider is there are always exceptions to the rule. There may be situations where you're stood in the green zone and your opponent has a very fast shot right at your feet you're naturally going to have to defend give the ball a bit more height so you've got time to recover back into your neutral zone. There may be a situation where you're stood in your neutral zone but that ball is coming in a lot slower and it sits up nicely for you then yes in that situation you are able to attack. Another way that you can think about these different zones is rather than looking at different zones on the court as I've laid them out here you can actually look at them in a slightly different way. If you think of yourself in this position here in the centre of the court of the baseline your attacking zone may look a little bit more like this something within your comfort zone. Your neutral zone may be here where you're stretched slightly out of your comfort zone so your priority is to keep the ball in play and keep your opponent under some pressure and your defend zone may look a little bit more like this. So anytime you're stretched outside of your comfort zone you may be stretched out wide you may be pushed backwards you may be pushed in for a really short ball that you're struggling to pick up. This may cause you to defend or hit a more defensive shot. That's just another way of thinking about it obviously if you're a professional tennis player your green zone and your yellow zone may be slightly larger if you're a beginner or somebody newer to tennis then your comfort zone may be a lot smaller and you may find that you have to defend from a position inside of the court because you're out of position more often. The amount of space that you need to cover leading up to the shot can impact whether you need to defend or whether you're able to rally or attack. So the further away from you the ball is the more likely it is that you're going to have to defend. The same goes for how much time you have. If you have lots of time on the ball then you're more likely to be able to hit an attacking shot or a rally ball but if you have a lot less time you're probably going to have to defend. So time and space also come into this when thinking about when you can attack, rally and defend. So there you go thanks again for watching I hope you enjoyed the video. I've done a few more classroom lessons which I'll put in the playlist on the end of this video. If you enjoyed it and found it useful let me know in the comments below and feel free to subscribe to the channel if you'd like to see more. Take care guys, see you soon.