if you'd like to play tennis more like Carlos alarz so you can win more matches then you've clicked on exactly the Right video you're about to learn the top three things that you can copy about his game the very next time you play Hey I'm Ian and over the last 15 years I've helped more than a million tennis players improve through my videos podcasts and top rated book on Amazon let's Dive Right In the first thing we're going to study and learn how to copy from Carlos is how he does such a great job neutralizing big serves and just getting the point started in a neutral exchange meaning we're taking away the control that the server is supposed to have in the point and just beginning each point on neutral ground neither player really has the upper hand you'll notice as he neutralizes these returns of serve he uses a wide range of different techniques which we're going to dive into in just a second sometimes he just blocks the ball other times he makes a bigger swing but notice the Direction all of these shots are going just right down the middle not all of them are hit very hard but all of them have great depth and they're just traveling down the middle third of the quartz which removes a lot of options from the serers list of choices that they can hit and does a good job of just starting things on even ground the first return technique we're going to learn from Carlos is just a simple block when you're playing against somebody that has a huge powerful delivery like Alexander does on the other side A lot of times you can use the energy and use the power that they're sending you and just redirect it as long as you place it purposefully you don't have to take a big swing and hit a huge powerful shot back in order to just get things neutral so his technique here that he's using is he's not turning his body nearly as much as he would for a typical forehand in fact only about half as far his shoulders aren't even getting to 90° to the Baseline and he's just putting his racket out behind the incoming ball so that he can accurately and precisely just hit a clean shot and then simply push forwards and guide the racket through very similar to just a forehand volley technique so the keys here are making a unit turn to the side preparing the hands with the shoulders he's not bringing the racket back any further than that he's leaving his hand in his racket there right behind the incoming ball then using all the force and the energy coming into his racket and turning his shoulders gently forwards to just redirect the ball in the other direction so he's using Z's power against him redirecting it and then having just the right amount of firmness in his hand to place the ball deep in the court right in the center which is basically just starting things out like a groundstroke point you know just feeding the ball down the middle and now all of the Power and the offense that his opponent has with the serve has been neutralized and they can start battling it out the next type of return that Carlos uses a lot and I recommend you practice we're going to call the half swing so this time Z hits that same serve on that same side and Carlos is going to use a swing here but it's not nearly as big as or powerful or dynamic as he typically would hit a forehand instead he he's again just turning his body about half as far as he typically would on a big fully loaded forand groundstroke swing the reason why is he's receiving a ton of pace already he doesn't need to add anymore and he's reaching in stretching so he doesn't have a lot of balance or leverage to be able to really unwind and hit this shot hard but unlike the block now he is starting with the racket face closed facing downwards because he is going to come upwards and guide the racket up past the back of the ball to give it some Top Spin and he's going to do that by turning his shoulders forwards he doesn't have the ability to unwind his entire kinetic chain and use his hips and transition into the ball because he's been put out on a stretch and so he's unable to fully use all of his athletic and acceleration because his opponent had the advantage of starting with the serve and has a big serve so this is not a full groundstroke swing with a full coil and and uncoil but it's about half of one that still gives him a little bit of forward rotation which allows him to hit the ball a little bit higher over the net which gives him that good depth right back down the middle again and just like the block they're starting off in neutral footing even ground and now they can go to work and Carlos can battle against his opponent if this video's already been helpful it would really mean a lot if you would click the like button thank you so much for supporting my videos the third style of return that carless uses is actually a full swing now this isn't as big or powerful or aggressive of a swing is if he was receiving a short kind of sitter right in the middle of the court and he had full ab ability to coil and uncoil using his entire kinetic chain but and in fact this is another 120 mph serve but this time it's within Striking Distance and is it's in his strike zone so he's able to make a bigger coil first of all so look at how now his shoulders are close to 90° now his hand is staying on his racket because he's not as stretched out he's not as off balance so he has the ability to use more of his kinetic chain and unwind into this shot but he's not taking as big of a turn he's not unwinding as fast he's more so using the energy coming into his racket and then just simply smoothly unwinding and bringing his racket around to be able to hit a really strong clean shot back so this time he is going to face forwards with his hips and his shoulders he's fully Unwound with his upper body and his lower body here because he wasn't on so much of a stretch and so even though he is turning forwards it's not a huge you know gigantic swing but he is finishing it he's using the ENT all like the entire checklist TST that you should be using for all of your forehand ground strokes but the situation is a fast incoming ball so he's able to keep this really smooth and direct it again right back down the middle nice and deep and this neutralizes things really well so he's able to get right into the rest of the point here's my favorite drill to work on those skills I'm practicing here with Mark who notice is standing up around the service line and this does a couple things when your partner serves from all the way up here they don't have to work so hard to get you a pretty decent delivery it's also much easier to hit the ball in the box when you're standing up around the service line so from this position Mark is able to get me really repetitive practice it also get me a ball faster to my position then he would be able to from back behind the Baseline without trying so hard and kind of cranking out his arm so this is a great way to get a lot of reps and you can have your partner uh serve you faster shots to practice block like what I'm doing here and then a little bit slower shots to practice your neutral ones and then even slower ones again to practice actually transitioning forwards and attacking and being offensive off three turn of serve which normal tennis players like us have that opportunity fairly frequently the second skill we're going to copy and learn from Carlos is his ability to change the different depths of his shots most tennis players unfortunately just really focus in on hitting right and left meaning laterally forcing their opponent to run from forehand to backhand to forehand and backhand but the reality is we have a ton of space forward and backward that we can make them run too singles players tend to be very comfortable moving laterally right and left because it's a big chunk of what they practice they're doing kind of windshield wiper drills moving out to their right hitting forehands moving out to their left hitting backhands there's not a lot of normal everyday players like us that practice transitioning forwards that practice moving backwards for higher deeper shots and transitioning between all four is a skill that most players are not very comfortable with now Carlos is well known for his drop shot but notice that a lot of these shots aren't even drop shots they're just kind of awkward lower SP kind of Back Spin type of shots they're not drop shots but they are forcing his opponent to come forward and guess what his opponent's comfort zone and even at World Class level like most opponents Comfort Zone in singles is going to be back around the baseline or behind the Baseline it's forcing his opponent to leave that comfort zone and go someplace else that's outside of their wheelhouse that in and of itself is a super powerful tactic to force them to have to hit different types of shots on your terms and get them out of their comfort zone and get force them to get a little bit dirty up around the net here's Carlos in a practice session practicing his drop shot and what all of those short backspin shots have in common are two things all of them the racket is starting above the height of contact and coming down through contact that gives the ball backspin and that forces the ball shorter in the court forces your opponent to have to come more towards the net and the second critical thing is he's got an open racket face meaning his strings are angled upwards slightly at contact which is what gives the ball the upward trajectory allows him to hit it softly and short so that again it accentuates how far his opponent has to run and how far out of their comfort zone that they have to go in order to track down the ball here's my favorite training drill to work on that skill this particular drill is going to work on really soft touch shots but we're practicing the principles and the building blocks to be able to hit the same type of soft shot from anywhere on the court just like Carlos does notice right out of the gates watch this player in red how his racket is starting up coming down and notice how he's got an open racket face and the goal here is to hit your opponent's pyramid on the other side there's a pyramid on both sides about 3 or 4T away from the from the net or so and these two players are both hitting softly to try to knock over the other person's pyramid like to call this game Battleship like the you know like the old school game we're trying to syn the other person's Battleship and they're both using different amounts of open racket face different amounts of relaxed hand to try to find just the right amount of touch to drop the ball on the other person's battleship this is a lot of fun and you can put the Targets in all kinds of different places and practice hitting this same type of soft feel type of shot you should practice it off a fast incoming ball too but this is a great place to start to develop the feel in the touch I save the best for last the third thing that we can copy from Carlos and it's something all of us should be implementing in our games immediately is he just hustles and works he takes a page right out of the Nadal Playbook and just never quits no matter how far away the ball is he's always hustling he's always running he's always trying to get one more ball back in play that puts our opponents under a tremendous amount of pressure and believe it or not in terms of mental toughness in terms of actually psyching out your opponent there's a core kind of lesson behind this that is really important to understand there's four key messages we're sending to our opponent each and every time we hustle really hard towards the ball the first one is just simply we are telling them with our body language and with the energy and the intensity that we're putting out I will not stop running that adds a lot of kind of intimidation factor a lot of stress to our opponents because they realize they're in for a battle on this particular match second thing is we're sending them the message you have to hit one more ball and just by making them hit one more shot we significantly increase our likelihood of success cuz most points end with an error and so if we make them hit one more shot consistently we're going to rack up more points and have a better chance of winning the match we're also sending the message to our opponent that hitting one great shot isn't enough they're going to have to follow it up with another great shot which adds a lot of pressure adds a lot of stress and a lot of kind of doubt can start to seep into the minds of our opponent as they ask themselves man how many more shots am I going to have to hit how many great shots that I thought was going to be a winner am I going to have to hit in order to beat this person and finally we're sending them the message you have to make it better if they want to hit a winner they're going to have to aim closer to the lines they're going to have to aim lower over the Nets and now they're again going to start making more mistakes which tips things in our favor so there's two different techniques to being good at hustling and just getting more balls and the first one is the skill of guessing check out this point scenario where Zev stretches out alcarez right off of the first shot kind of an emergency situation alarz sits up a short sitter and at this point right here Z could easily put the ball away in either direction he could hit this shot inside out or he could hit it crosscourt and hit a winner either way Carlos if he just stands here in the center could easily get beat in either direction he understands this so right as Alexander starts to make his forward swing look at Carlos just start to run physically he is committing in this direction and he might be wrong it's important to to make note of that like this is not about being right every time and always winning the points this is about the psychological warfare of forcing your opponent to possibly have to hit one more shot but even if he guesses rights and he loses the point right out of the gates it still pays dividends down the road cuz the next time that your opponent is in this situation and they're setting up for that what they think is probably going to be a winner in the back of their mind they're thinking oh man last time I went this direction and somehow he just showed up in the right place so I better try to kind of mix it up and be tricky here and go the other way and they start thinking through things and over complicating it and before you know it they'll start to make some mistakes or try to aim closer to the lines to try to hit a winner and they'll make more mistakes so Carlos is starting to run before the ball gets hit which means he might be wrong but in this particular point he was right puts himself right in the right spot and guess what he forces ver to have to hit another shot and it's not an easy one he's hitting a volley from down below the height of the Nets and look at what Carlos is doing on the other side now zov could hit this down the line and try to go behind him because he knows that Carlos is a big hustle player likes to run after the ball but he does go crosscourt and Carlos is just telling him listen I am willing to keep running now he doesn't get to this one but this is still sending a message that he gets on a full Sprint and and this is delivering to his opponent the feeling of I got to make it better I got to hit one more that adds pressure and will win you extra points the second part of this skill is just making the decision you will run after the ball my college coach used to say there's no subjective decisions meaning it doesn't matter if you think your opponent's ball is going out or you think it's going to bounce twice before you get there you're just going to run as long as the ball hasn't landed out yet yet and it hasn't bounced twice yet you will run you're not going to make some kind of judgment call and then decide later on oh shoot I guess I should have run for that no just run like the whole point of the the game is to run after the ball so let's set a habit let's set a commitment to just running after the ball let me know in the comments down below will you commit to just running after every ball you will get some more shots more than you probably ever dreamed was possible you will put more pressure on your opponent and you will win more matches thanks for watching today if you'd like to learn how to drop shot like Carlos alcarez check out the lesson that's on the screen right now if you've enjoyed this one do me a favor and click that like button thank you so much talk to you again soon