Shadow Swings
Why this drill
Strokes are easiest to fix with no ball to chase. Shadow work — full dink, drop, and drive motions against a checklist, alone — lets you slow the swing down, feel the checkpoints, and burn in the version of the stroke you actually want.
Setup
Paddle, no ball. Ideally at a real kitchen line facing the net; workable anywhere with three steps of space. A phone propped up to record is the honest mirror, if you have one.
The drill
Three blocks of shadow reps, ten slow and five at speed each. Dinks: knees bent, paddle lifting from the shoulder, no wrist snap, finish pointing at the imaginary kitchen. Drops: from a baseline stance, low-to-high lift with a short finish, weight rolling forward. Drives: compact backswing no farther back than your hip, contact out front, finish across. Between blocks, walk two steps and split-step, so the feet stay in the picture. The slow reps are the drill — at half speed you can feel a hitch you'd never catch live. If you recorded it, watch once and pick exactly one thing to fix tomorrow.
One thought to take on court
Slow enough to feel the checkpoints — speed hides flaws, and this drill exists to un-hide them.