Practice › Tennis
Tennis Shadow Practice With a Live Form Coach
A tennis stroke is built in the swings you take when nobody is feeding you balls. Shadow practice is those swings, and Formanti is the coach standing next to you for them: it watches each swing through your phone camera and tells you out loud what to fix.
The pose tracking runs on your phone, so your video stays on it. Wherever your position is off, the correct one is drawn in green over your own skeleton. Choose a stroke below to see what it checks and the drills it gives you.
No equipment needed. Practise at home. Just do the swing properly in front of your phone. No court, ball or shuttle is needed, and a racket is optional: the coach judges your movement, so a shadow swing at home in a hallway or garden is enough.
What you get after a session
When you finish, you get a report like this one.
- How many swings were in range, out of how many.
- The one thing to work on next, then the next, each with a drill.
- Every swing as a picture with your skeleton on it: ticked, or flagged with what was off.
How to practise tennis on your own
- Place your phone 2 to 3 metres away, with your whole body in view and ideally side-on to your hitting side.
- Work on one stroke at a time: 10 to 15 swings, then look at what the coach kept repeating.
- Freeze at contact on some swings. Where your hand is at that moment decides most of the shot.
- Use the end-of-session report to pick the single thing to take to a wall or a court.
What to work on first
Fix contact before power. Meeting the ball out in front of your body, at a repeatable height, matters more than how hard you swing. Then the serve: a consistent toss is half the stroke. Then the ready position and the split step, which decide whether you arrive at the ball balanced.
Tennis shots you can practise
- Forehand: A cleaner tennis forehand: early turn, contact out in front, finish over the shoulder.
- Backhand: A steadier two-handed backhand: turn early, contact in front, quiet head.
- Serve: A smoother tennis serve: toss, reach high, elbow leads, pronate.
- Volley: Crisper tennis volleys: short punch, racket in front, firm wrist.
- Overhead smash: A confident tennis overhead: turn side-on early, point, then reach up.
- Slice backhand: A better slice backhand: high to low, firm wrist, finish out through the ball.
- Lob: A defensive tennis lob that lands deep: open face, low to high, finish high.
- Drop shot: Disguised tennis drop shots: same preparation, soft hands, backspin.
Frequently asked questions
Can I improve my tennis technique without a court?
A lot of it, yes. Contact point, preparation, the serve motion and the footwork can all be trained shadowing in a hallway or garden.
Is it accurate for a serve?
The serve is judged on how high you reach and the elbow leading before the throw. It cannot see the ball, spin or where it lands.