For those that are unfamiliar with the term COD, it stands for change-of-direction.
In the tennis world, things can get confusing as players and coaches often use the term ‘change direction’ when referring to hitting drills or on-court tactics. In other words, changing the direction of the ball (from a crosscourt exchange to a down-the-line switch, for instance). But that’s NOT what we’re talking about here.
I’ve spoken about COD in the past (you can check out THIS article for an extensive review). But in layman terms, it’s basically the instant when you move / orient your body from one direction, to another.
More specifically, it includes various moments of acceleration and deceleration (along with the transition phase between the two). It can also include changing modes of travel - like going from a sprint to a side shuffle or a backpedal, for example.
You might be thinking - “isn’t that called ‘agility’”? Well, not really. And this is perhaps the biggest distinguishing feature between agility and COD movements - the perceptual side of the equation.
Changing direction is typically defined as being a ‘preplanned’ movement, whereas agility, which includes a change-of-direction action - is ‘unplanned’ and involves reacting to some sort of stimulus.
For example, reacting + moving to return your opponent’s serve would be an agility action as a whole - i.e. you perform a split-step, decide which way you’ll move (while you’re in the air), and then move in that direction as you attempt to return the ball.
On the flip side, the recovery movement after you’ve hit your shot, would be considered a COD task only - in other words, you’ve made the conscious decision to get back into a better position to retrieve the next shot, with (hopefully) some speed in the process!
Grey zones do exist here - but it’s not the point of this article to dive deeper into those nuanced situations. This was simply a quick review of the topic.
The main discussion point of this article is the following - how do we integrate COD training if we’re new to this form of training? More precisely, in part 1 we’ll tackle specific COD drilling, while in part 2, we’ll dive into some of the contributing qualities that will improve this quality.
COD Training for the Novice
One thing I want to stress here is that COD abilities are influenced by several factors:
Technique - this could include your body lean / posture, foot placement (including pressure) and how you’re adjusting your strides as you enter + exit the COD.
Straight sprinting speed - every movement in tennis has unique differences; some include distances that are longer (think about running down a drop shot, for example), while others are shorter (i.e. moving a step or 2 to hit a groundstroke); while the latter is more prevalent in tennis, being ‘fast’ in terms of running in a straight line (as I’ve argued previously), is a quality that’s increasingly more important.
Strength, power and reactiveness - these are ‘underlying’ qualities that are actually very important (and highly correlated) with high level COD abilities; this is where your plyometric and weight training will heavily influence COD ability.
Then there are actual COD drills. Typically, drills that are specific to each sport will transfer best (to some degree). We don’t want ‘full-out’ mimicry because we might as well just play the sport itself. But looking at distances, angles, muscle actions that are ‘specific’, will likely lead to a positive transfer to movements players perform on the tennis court.
One small caveat, there are many coaches who sit on one end of the spectrum, versus the other. You’ll have a group who ONLY trains the underlying qualities - speed, strength power - and don’t tackle any of the COD-specific drills. While the opposite group will ONLY tackle the drills and forego the underlying qualities.
From my perspective, you need both. The underlying qualities will have a large influence on outputs - how much force we can put into the ground to both decelerate AND propel us back into position. Or the speed at which we enter a COD moment.
But specific COD movement drills can allow us to ‘ease into’ this form of training, be more precise with our foot placements, develop better awareness of how we should push off during the transition phase of a COD and so on.
Here are a couple examples of lower level COD tasks that can be worked in during very early stages:
The interplay between variety and intensity
COD drills can be trained in many ways and we actually want a lot of variety (at almost all times), but especially when first starting out. Because tennis is an unpredictable sport with countless movement problems that are constantly being presented to the player, variety will better prepare players for those varied movement tasks.
But some forms of COD training can be more intense compared to others. The biggest feature that’ll contribute to intensity is entry velocity. Entry what? Stick with me.
Remember that every time you move towards a shot, you’re both accelerating (initially) AND decelerating (as you approach the ball). The faster the velocity, the more force you’ll have to impart into the ground to ‘put on the brakes’. And oftentimes, the brakes have to be slammed hard.
As a novice, your joints - and specifically, your ankles - are likely not prepared to handle these higher braking forces. Not to mention that when you brake, the ankle will move into various positions (some degree of eversion or inversion will predominate - depending on the movement).
This is where injuries could creep in. Your joints don’t have the capacity to handle the loads imposed on them during these higher intensity change-of-direction movements.
As you can imagine, if you play tennis, you might be doing these movements nonetheless! Because your goals on the court are task-oriented - you want to track down shots, get the ball over the net and ultimately, win points! But this DOES NOT mean you’re prepared to handle said movements.
So Where Should We Start When Training Change-of-Direction?
Where does this leave us, practically speaking?
From my experiences, novice players need to do shorter COD drills because the entry velocities aren’t as high. In essence, there’s less force going through lower limb joints, specifically the ankle (which we said will take the brunt of the work early on). This is one way to scale intensity.
Another option would be to perform COD drills at submax intensities. This is also a nice starting point - or regression. Incorporating both could be a sound strategy - submax to ‘get the hang of the movements + slowly prep the joints and tissues to those forces - AND at higher intensities but across shorter distances - which would inherently decrease the force demands.
And again, varying the movements will be a part of the equation. Not just because tennis is variable, but because when you perform a movement that has more complexity, it usually won’t be as intense - look at the 2 examples below. If I ask the player to change modes of travel multiple times (drill 1), they won’t reach very high speeds. Versus if I ask them to change direction in straight lines (drill 2).
Drill 1 - Sprint Shuffle Backpedal
Drill 2 - 10-0-5
What Have We Established So Far?
Training COD (and agility) off the court is important because we’ll encounter many of these changes of direction / modes of travel while playing:
We spoke specifically about COD but agility (the combination of perceptual AND physical) should also be trained without the tennis racquet. This could include tracking down a ball, calling out numbers or colours and even playing evasion games (ex: tag).
Variety is a good thing - because tennis is diverse, chaotic and unpredictable:
Our joints will go through different angles, at varying degrees, and speeds, and amplitudes etc; we need to do what we can to prepare for all those unknowns.
Intensity needs to be scaled early on to mitigate training-related injuries:
I’ve just seen this so many times (and experienced it myself) - players go ‘all-in’ with movement drills that they are simply not prepared for. Shorter distances, submax intensities, predictable movements, more variety - this is the starting point.
Note that these recommendations may also be useful for players who are coming back from a long layoff (injury or a break) OR for players who (while are considered ‘advanced’ from a tennis standpoint), haven’t developed these skills to a high level previously.
Lastly, remember that there are other forms of training that you should be doing to prep for COD / agility tasks (and more accurately, performing them in conjunction with COD drills). If you’ve read the entire post, you’ll probably have a good idea of what those qualities are - weights, speed training and plyometrics!
In part 2 of this post, we’ll talk more about those training forms - specifically, how they relate to successful COD performance. Until then, start slow but get your COD on!