 Hey everybody it's Ashley again from the Avenue Tennis and we are back for week two of our 30 minute follow along tennis sessions and in this week we're going to be working on our fearsome forehands. Now just like last week you can do all of these exercises in any space whether it's outdoors in a garden or indoors at home and you can use household items if you don't have a tennis racket or a tennis ball. So before we get into it I'm going to show you through some of the items that you're going to need. Don't worry though I'm going to give you a whole minute to hunt around the house to try and find some of these things. So the first thing you're going to need is a tennis racket or something that is flat and that you can hold comfortably in your hand. So I've got this okay this would be perfect it's flat you can hold it in your hand you can hit a tennis ball with it so something like this it could be a hard back book anything that you can find that you could comfortably hold and gently hit a tennis ball or something similar with it will be perfect. The second thing you're going to need is a ball okay I've got a tennis ball here if you don't have access to a ball at home then you can roll a pair of socks into a ball you see that I did that last week this can work really well if you can find something that bounces that will be better however this will equally be as fun. So a ball of socks or a ball as well as your racket or substitute racket. A different thing from last week that we're going to use is a hat okay so I've just got a normal baseball cap here any hat is good see if you can bring your hat along if you don't have a hat then you can use your hand instead and finally you're going to need three items to use as markers so last week I had a pair of trainers this week I've got a chocolate I don't know where I keep finding these I've got a frisbee and I'm going to use my drinks bottle as my third item to be a marker it'll be handy if you have a drinks bottle as well because you might get a bit sweaty in this session so that you could have a drink when you need it. So there are your items I'm going to give you one minute to see if you can go and find them so a quick reminder something to use as a racket something flat something hard that you can hit a ball with something to use as a tennis ball it could be a ball of any kind or a ball of socks a hat so if you've got a cap around the house if not don't worry you can use your hand for that one and three items to use as markers they could be things like I use they could be jumpers anything to put on the floor to mark a space in your room three two one go so you've got ten seconds left now don't worry if you haven't found everything you can use your imagination I'm sure you'll be able to use your hands five four three two one and stop there now just like last week don't forget to ask your grown-ups if you're allowed to use the equipment that you've chosen and make sure that you're setting it all up in a safe space so we don't want to be too close to any windows or any televisions or any lights above us try to find a safe space okay so the first items that you're going to use if you put all of your items into a little pile somewhere just out of the way the first items that we're going to need for our warm-up part of the session are our three markers okay so pick up your three markers and what you're going to do is you're going to create a space one of your markers is going to go in front of your space okay so make sure you can see your screen in front of you and you're going to have one marker just in front of your feet about one step in front of you you're going to use your other two markers to put them a couple of steps out to the side so I've got one out to this side and one out to this side so these are my three markers and you'll see that they've made a little triangle okay so once you've got your space hopefully you're able to see the screen and see your first marker in front of you and your other two to the side of your body now just like last week we're going to start off with a physical warm-up now physical warm-up in every sport is really really important to get all of your body and all of your muscles working but as well as that we're going to get our brain working too so that we can have a really good fun session so warm-up number one a little bit like last week we played remote control last week we're going to make sure that we're on our toes all of the time so your first position that you're going to stand in is your ready position so you can see me here my feet are nice and wide apart I've got my knees bent and I'm nice and low I look like I'm ready to pounce now this is your ready position I want you to number your three items one two and three the one in front of you is number one number two and number three now as soon as I shout a number you're going to see if you can run touch that item and get back to your ready position here let's have a little practice one ready position to ready position to ready position and rest okay so that was a little practice run so you can see here that doesn't matter which item I was touching I was always facing forwards we learned that last week didn't we when you're playing tennis it's really important that you're always facing towards your opponent okay we're going to up the speed now ready positions first three tap ready position three ready position one ready position one two two and rest okay good so hopefully you're starting to feel a bit warm I'm certainly starting to feel a bit out of breath but you'll remember from last week that you guys are much fitter than I am so this is where we start to test your brain and your memory so I'm gonna shout out more than one number now if I shout one two go your job is to touch number one ready position number two ready position if I shout three two go you're going to go to number three ready position number two and ready position so you only go once I shout go are you ready let's try one three go one ready position three ready position well done did you do it faster than me let's try again here we go two three go two ready position three ready position awesome speed right you guys are far too good at this let's test your memory even further I'm gonna shout three numbers you got to see if you can remember all three numbers and in the right order so we'll do a test run first we're going to try three one two ready go three ready position one ready position two ready position well done really really good should we try four let's give it a go let's try one three one two ready position ready position one ready position two ready position amazing right final round then we're gonna try five and I'm not going to join in this time so this is going to be a real test to see if you can do all five of the correct numbers in the right order without my help are we ready we're going to try three two one two three go make sure you're doing your ready positions after each one good stuff always facing forward so lots of side steps and shuffling well done so if you remembered three two one two three you smashed it awesome job grab yourselves a quick drink perfect and don't forget if you're using your drink as one of your markers make sure you put it back in the same spot okay so we're now ready to introduce our ball okay so remember if you've got a ball pick that up now if you don't have a ball and you're using socks pick that up instead and we're going to head back to our little marked out zone so things we learned in that warm-up we learnt the ready position okay that's something new we learned the ready position in the ready position we have our feet apart and our knees bent we're ready to bounce this position is so important in tennis and you'll see professional tennis players do this after every single shot so that they're ready for the ball the second thing we learned which we actually learned last week as well is make sure when you play tennis you're always facing forwards if you turn your back to the court or your opponent then the ball is going to with past you and you're going to miss it so it's really really important that everywhere you move if you're moving sideways you're facing this direction if you're moving backwards you need to still face this direction wherever you go always facing towards your screen okay so this exercise we're going to do a little practice and then we're going to have a competition to see how many you can score in one minute so the practice round your job is to see if you can stand behind marker number three you're going to throw your ball up catch it and then do your ready position then you're going to go to number two up catch ready position then you're going to go to number one choose each side of your marker up catch ready position and we're going to do the same again so we're going to go three catch sidestep two up catch sidestep one catch and back to your ready position each time so have a little practice at that one first remember socks are fine if you've got a ball you can do it with a ball as well so get practicing so three catch ready two catch ready one excellent one more round to practice okay so we are now ready for the competition so I'm going to set my stopwatch to one minute and your job is to count how many catches you can make in that time now if you go and you drop the ball doesn't matter you just don't score a point for that one you go back to the middle and you carry on and then when you get another one you add that to your score so this would be one point two points dropped it so I'm still on two points three points four points you get the drift okay so your one minute challenge starts now see if you can count your score out loud remember that ready position up 20 seconds got keep it up don't worry if you drop it add your score on the next one 20 seconds to go make sure your eyes are watching the ball all of the time that way you're going to get more points stop there wow now if you managed to score anything around five points if you managed to get five catches excellent work if you got more than that shout it at the screen now how many did you get wow incredible I wish I was as good as you at your age now that was our body and ball warm up so now that we've practiced our movement in our proper warm up we've now introduced a ball which like last week means that our hand-eye coordination is getting better and getting us ready to use the racket which we're going to move on to now remember from last week as well your racket or your item is it a book something flat that you can hit a ball with we're going to use for sandwich catches now last week we practice sandwich catches it was the game where we had to use our racket and our hand as slices of bread and we used our ball as the filling and we had to see if we can make a sandwich like so if you had a sock instead of a ball then you were to throw your socks up and make your sandwich because socks aren't very good at bouncing okay so we're going to reintroduce the sandwich catches but with our new footwork and our new ready position so starting in the middle just like we did before we're going to go three two and one but every time we get to our marker we've got to throw and make a sandwich let's have a practice so we're going to go behind marker number three ready position behind marker number two ready position up to marker number one remember do you get to marker number one you want your shoes each side of the marker back to your ready position here we go good yes excellent keep practicing do another 10 seconds of practice facing forwards all of the time lots of side steps ready position after each go awesome stuff okay let's make it into a challenge again so we're going to go for 30 seconds this time so we've got a lot less time we've only got half of the amount of time so your score will be a lot lower than before because not only do we have less time it's actually going to be a lot more challenging for you but like I said last week we like a challenge so let's see if you can get three catches okay we're going to set the timer for 30 seconds three two one go good job we're halfway and stop there amazing work give yourselves a big pat on the back so hand-eye coordination we've taken it to the next level we're now using our racket or our item so have yourselves a very quick drinks break we're going to have about 20 seconds to have a swig of water and to catch our breath so while you're having your drink I'm going to quickly talk you through the forehand now if you listen back at the start today's session is all about fearsome forehand now the forehand is the shot that you hit using your favorite hand with an underarm swing so this is my favorite hand I'll be holding the racket like this and my underarm swing would start down low and it would finish up high so you can see that I'm hitting upwards which would allow me to hit the tennis ball over the tennis net and that's what we want isn't it so our forehand is where we swing from low to high when we finish our swing we want to see if we can get our elbow to be right out in front of our nose I like to call it the big nose finish so when you hit your forehand we're looking for this pointy elbow at the end now in tennis we are allowed one bounce so the ball would bounce on the floor and then we would hit it over the net in wheelchair tennis you're allowed two bounces so if you're in a chair the ball could bounce twice before you hit it you can use one bounce but you're allowed to use two bounces so for our next task we are going to use our ball or our ball of socks if we don't have a ball and we're going to pick up our baseball cap to practice our full forehand swings because what we don't want is to use our tennis racket and to smash the windows and to smash the TVs using our hat will be a lot lot safer so pick up your hat and your ball and head back over to your zone so for this one we're going to start off trying to practice our forehand without movement and then we're going to introduce movement afterwards so if you have a tennis ball you're going to drop it on the floor in front of you and your job is to see if you can catch your ball in your hat and finish over your shoulder like this okay we want to see if we can get our elbow to finish pointing towards the screen so we're going to try again we're going to drop the ball swing and catch with our elbow up if you have a ball you can get started and get practicing that now if you don't have a ball and you're using socks do the same thing but we know that the socks aren't going to bounce very high so we're going to see if we can catch it before it touches the floor like so and again drop catch like so so let's keep practicing drop and catch making sure that we're getting our elbow pointing to the screen at the end of the swing or drop that one don't worry if you do drop it you're going to run pick it up see if you can go again now you'll notice that my body is facing towards my marker at the side so instead of facing forwards I'm going to be facing sideways now towards my favorite side if this is your favorite side you're going to face this way if this is your favorite side you're going to face this way so let's carry on practicing drop and catch finishing right over your shoulder drop and catch we'll do a few more I'll do some on the other side to show you this side too drop and catch pick that one up good so just like me you might drop a few that doesn't matter it's all about practicing drop and catch it's not easy is it okay so we're going to make it into a challenge now we are going to do 30 seconds to see how many catches we can do but it's not going to be easy because I want you to use both hands so this is what it's going to look like you're going to drop towards number three then you're going to turn your body change hands drop towards number two switch hands again hold your hat in your favorite hand drop and catch and to the other side drop and catch I want you to see if you can get three catches in 30 seconds are you ready your time starts now off we go I've got one point so far see if you can beat my score good keep going everybody seven seconds to go see if we can get one more point drop and catch stop well done that was a lot trickier than I thought it would be I managed to get two points I dropped quite a few there did you manage to beat my score shout your score out now amazing really really good so that was your forehand because we were using one hand mostly on our favorite side but I decided to make it tricky for you to see if you can use your weaker hand as well which is going to help you in all of the sports that you play because it's good to be able to use both sides of your body right grab yourselves one more quick drinks break and then we're going to play our game excellent you're all working really really hard and you're learning some new skills today that we didn't know last week so that is superb we're going to learn even more next week but before that we are now going to play our game now last week's game was tennis golf we had to see how many shots it took us to hit our target this week we are going to play goals okay so you can see here that I've set up two goalposts using two of my markers now you can choose how far apart your goals are if you've got a tiny goal it's going to be really really difficult if you've got a really big goal it's going to be super easy so try to set yourself a challenge set your goalposts at a distance that's going to make it a bit tricky for you okay so you can see my two goalposts here now my job is using my tennis racket or substitute tennis racket I've got to see if I can roll my ball or my sock ball through the goalposts so you'll see here using my favourite hand because we're practicing forehand I'm going to roll the ball between the goalposts if you score a goal you score a point now as soon as you've hit your ball your job is to chase after it and you're going to splat it using your lid or your racket so it's going to look like this so we're going to roll the ball we're going to run and we're going to splat and then that's one point because we scored the goal we're going to try another one roll run splat so you've got to be super super speedy now if you hit the ball really far or really hard it's going to be really tough for you to chase after it and you're going to be miles away from your target so you're not going to be able to score points very easily so I suggest on this one playing with control so let's watch another little practice one we're going to roll run that was a nice controlled one now I've got an easy goal on this one to run splat three run and splat we're going to see how many goals you can score in 30 seconds remember use your favorite hand if the ball goes on to your non-favorite side you're going to have to move your feet so that you can splat it on your favorite side okay are you ready for the challenge if you haven't set up your goals set those up now get yourself ready with your racket and ball by the way if you're using socks it's going to be so tricky because they're not going to roll very far on this one but give it a go we love a challenge okay how many can you do your time starts now splat keep going you might be able to hear the sea goals there must be some fish and chips around keep it up we're halfway let's see if you can get two or three more goals splat and then turn to face the goals five seconds to go and stop there well done everybody give yourselves a little clap using your racket and ball amazing work tell me what score did you get fantastic really really good that's not easy and if you found it easy maybe your goalposts were too far apart so next time you try it see if you can make them super super small if it was too tricky and you only got one or two points maybe you set the challenge too hard so next time make it a little bit bigger and what I suggest you try and do is if you've got anybody else in the house it might be a brother or a sister or one of your grown-ups it might be mum or dad see if you can get them to challenge your score okay and hopefully you'll beat theirs okay so that is the end of our physical session so you all did amazingly well so today we learn all about the forehand and what I want you to do just before we switch off I want you to have a little thing so you're going to use your brain for this bit one thing that you learned during this session okay so have a thing one thing that you learn now if you can think of that thing easily try to think of two things or maybe even three things I'm going to give you 20 seconds to have think about it okay so have a think one or two things that you learned today and after these 20 seconds I'm going to tell you some of the things and I want you to put your thumb up in the air if you were thinking of the same thing that I was thinking of okay so the first thing that we learned today was our ready position now our ready position is where our feet are apart and our knees are bent so we're nice and low ready to pounce so well done if you were thinking of your ready position we also learned that in tennis we always have to move facing forwards wherever we go we always need to be facing forwards we actually learned that thing last week we learned the name of a shot we learned about forehands forehands are the shots that we use our favorite hand on did you get that was that what you were thinking of forehands how many bounces are we allowed as tennis players that's right we're allowed one bounce or that's right two bounces if you are a wheelchair tennis player excellent finally where does our racket finish when we do our forehand swing finishes right over our shoulder because we're doing a low to high swing so actually in that short space of time we learned a lot about forehands and about tennis so amazing work again next week we're going to be practicing our back hands okay which is similar to the forehand but with two hands and I'm going to try and come up with some really fun games and some really challenging games so that you can get better and even better you can challenge your family members too well done everybody I hope to see you back in our next lesson for session 3 I look forward to seeing you there take care