 Hey everyone and welcome to another video. When it comes to playing on a clay court, one of the toughest elements is movement. However, if you can learn to slide, clay courts could become your new favorite surface. So in this video, I'm gonna talk about sliding and I'm gonna give you five simple tips that can help to take your sliding to the next level. Let's get into it. Welcome back. If you're new to the channel, my name is Ashley Neves and I run the tennis mentor YouTube and Instagram accounts providing tennis content for players, coaches and parents to get more out of the sport. Whether you're new to playing on clay courts and you want to learn how to slide or if you're a regular clay court player just wanting to take your sliding to the next level, then this video is for you. I grew up playing all of my tennis on indoor hard courts. I did play clay court tournaments but it wasn't my favorite surface as I was slightly uncomfortable sliding. It was only about four years ago when I joined this tennis club that I played on clay every single day. And although I didn't really practice it, I got really, really comfortable sliding. Now it's my favorite surface. Although these courts aren't actually real clay, they're artificial clay. They play in a very similar way. Sliding is exactly the same. The ball travels slower and it bounces up higher. So now that I can move on clay more effectively, I absolutely love it. And hopefully after this video, you will too. Anyway, before we get into the tips, let's talk about why sliding is important on clay. If you've played on a hard court or a grippy surface before, you'll know that change of direction is much easier than it is on a clay court. When your feet are able to grip onto the surface, you're able to move much more explosively, plant your feet, hit with balance and push off comfortably. However, when playing clay court tennis, it's slightly different. Because the surface moves under your feet, it's not as easy to make a very quick stop when you're on the move. What sliding can do is slow you down so that when you hit the shot, you're more balanced. If you don't slide on a clay court, you're gonna have to be very careful with your footwork and it's probably going to take you a lot longer to change direction from shot to shot. The first tip is that you should always aim to slide before you hit the ball, rather than afterwards. There are two main problems with sliding after you hit the shot. Number one is you're going to be moving pretty quickly as you strike the ball, meaning that it's gonna be much tougher to get your spacing and your timing right. The second problem with sliding after hitting the shot is it's actually gonna put you further away from where you need to be next. Sliding before hitting the shot allows you to stop and hit with a nice balanced and stable base, but also it allows you to recover much quicker as soon as you've hit the ball. The earlier you can start moving to the ball, the more time you have to slide into your shot. The only time you'll see professional tennis players sliding after their shot is if they have no time to slide into it. They may be racing for a really tough wide ball or even a drop shot. And in this scenario, you're gonna have to prioritize hitting the ball first before making your slide to slow yourself down and recover to the next ball. But as I mentioned before, this is not ideal as it's gonna take you extra time after your shot, which is gonna be precious for you in your recovery. Tip number two is to make sure that when sliding, you've always got a wide base. Having your feet wide apart is going to allow you to be far more balanced and stable when you're sliding, but it's also going to allow you to transfer your body weight which we'll talk about in the next tip. As well as being wide, the lower you get, the better. This will improve your balance by keeping your center of gravity more in the middle. You'll notice that when the pro slide, they get super low. Sometimes they even drag their back foot laces across the floor. Generally, players have a favored foot to slide on. For me, I'm very right foot dominant. So this means that when I'm sliding out to my forehand, I'm far better at sliding with an open stance. However, on my backhand side, I tend to slide more into a closed or neutral stance. Ideally, you want to learn how to slide on both feet. So for me, I need to start to develop more sliding on my left side. So next time you're practicing your sliding, make sure you've got a nice wide base. This will keep you balanced and more in control of your slide. Now, I've already mentioned weight transfer. And tip number three, I'm going to be talking about which foot you should be putting your weight onto. And I've actually seen quite a few videos with different opinions on this. So I will share my opinion with you, but let me know what you think in the comments below. In my opinion, when sliding, you should try to get your weight more onto your front foot. This is going to give you a lot more control over the length of your slide. Sometimes there will be a need for you to have a long slide if you're further from the ball. However, if you need a slightly more abrupt stop, you're going to want the slide to be short and sharp. To control the length of the slide, the more body weight you put onto your front foot, the more quickly you will stop. However, if you take a little bit of weight off of your front foot, you'll be able to slide for much longer. Remember, the whole point of sliding is to slow yourself down. So having your weight on your front foot is going to be the most effective way to do that. If you lean back onto your back foot when you slide, you're probably going to feel quite off balance. Although weight needs to be applied to your front foot in order for you to slow down on your slide, as mentioned before, you should aim to keep your center of gravity in between your feet. This is really important for preventing injury. If you lean too far forwards and your center of gravity goes over your front foot, this will stunt your slide and could result in ankle injury. So although you should try to get your body weight onto your front foot, think about how much. If you're going for a short slide, lean more into it. If you're going for a slightly longer slide, put slightly less body weight onto your front foot. This is probably one of the toughest areas of sliding, so it's definitely worth practicing and thinking about. Tip number four is vital, and it's to be confident when sliding. You need to fully commit to your slide as if you don't, it just won't happen. To slide effectively, you need to be moving at speed. This will give you enough force for your slide to happen. Most people avoid sliding because they're afraid of it. The problem with this is if you go into a slide being afraid of it, you're not going to be able to slide. And if you back out of the slide, you're probably going to fall over or feel very off balanced. If sliding is an area that you really, really struggle with, then you're not going to feel confident doing it in matches. This is where tip number five comes in. My fifth and final tip is to practice. Now, it sounds obvious, but I'm going to give you a few tips for your sliding practice. As I mentioned, to feel confident with sliding, you're going to need to do it in a zero pressure environment. So book a clay court, you don't even need tennis balls with you. Just get comfortable with sliding. Do a couple of sprints, finishing with a slide, practice sliding on your right foot, your left foot, practice long slides and short slides. Make sure you've got a wide base on all of them so that you can play around with transferring your body weight more or less onto your front foot. Practice sliding moving forwards, but also practice sliding laterally, which can be more difficult. For me, sliding on my left foot is definitely an area that I need to practice. And as you can see here, there are quite a few ways that you can practice your slide. If you've got somebody else with you, you can get them throwing you balls and moving you into different directions. Or if you've got a slinger bag, you can do it like this. A really good way to practice sliding is wearing socks on a slick surface, like in the kitchen, or as you can see here, I'm on a squash court. This can help you to develop the feel of sliding, but also to play around with your center of gravity and transferring your body weight onto your front foot. You can practice sliding longer distances and shorter distances too. So next time you play on a clay court, think about these tips. Try to work on one thing at a time as you're going to get a lot more out of your practice that way. Thanks as always for watching. If you enjoyed it, consider subscribing. Hit that like button and let me know what you thought in the comments below. I look forward to seeing you in next week's video. Take care.