What is a split step in tennis?
Landing pre-stretches the leg muscles, and pushing off straight away returns that stretch as speed. On the return, expert players start the split around the server's contact and land about 133 ms after it.
Questions
When should you split step?
Start the hop as your opponent hits, and land just after, so you push off as soon as you've read the direction.
Sources
- Navia, Avilés, Miller-Dicks & Ruiz-Pérez (2022), Journal of Sports Sciences