Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast, your place for free, expert, tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Welcome to episode number 385 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Today we're going to talk about why you should stop trying to follow through. And it's just a critical key technical insight that I've just been coming up over and over and over again with my students, so I want to make sure to pass it on to you.
Tell me if any of these phrases sound familiar. Finish your follow through. Follow through higher. Finish up over your shoulder. Point the butt cap at your target. Check the time on your watch. These are all different ways that tennis coaches over the years have tried to get tennis players to follow through and it's just plain wrong. Going about it this
way. And I'm going to break down exactly why that is. And I'm going to kind of paint the full picture here so that you can understand it from the ground up why that's the opposite way you should be thinking about it. So first we need to talk about how the body is supposed to work athletically. The only way we can deliver energy efficiently is by initiating with the biggest, strongest parts of the body and having them lead the way. Stuff like the
legs, the hips, the torso and core, the shoulders. They should be leading and basically be the primary energy source for all of our swings, especially big powerful ones like ground strokes and serves and stuff like that. And then the second part is the smaller weaker parts of the body should follow behind the bigger parts of the body and ideally those
smaller weaker parts should be really loose and passive. And by smaller and weaker I mean stuff like the forearm, the shoulder, the wrist, the hand, those body parts should really primarily be a conduit or a delivery mechanism and not the actual power source. And this is how all high level tennis players create so much power and why they look so smooth
and relaxed and fluid is because they use their body in that order. And so everything is very efficient and they look like they're not trying very hard because in truth they're really kind of not. So again, two pieces, big parts of the body lead actively, small parts
of the body follow passively. A friend of mine that I used to work with used to say is the dog wagging the tail or is the tail wagging the dog meaning is like you know the big meaty parts doing the work and causing the smaller parts to move or is it the small you know flimsy part that's actually doing it on its own. So to do this really really well, lots of technique starts to fall into place automatically. When you do order these
things correctly. So in other words, when your body leads the big parts and the small parts follow, your contact point will naturally put that in air quotes like naturally meaning it's going to happen without you thinking about it. Not that it's necessarily natural for people to do because most tennis players do not do it air quotes naturally. It's not
normal for them to make contact out in front on like a forehand. But when your body turns early and the small parts of your body follow, you can't help but have the racket be out in front because your body has actually turned fully forwards and that gets the arm and the hand and the racket out there. Another thing that happens pretty automatically is the lag with the racket. It's been kind of a hot button like topic on the internet especially
over the last couple years is trying to lag the hand trying to lag the racket. And I've seen a lot of examples of tennis players trying to make that happen by like flipping or twisting the hand back on their forehand and trying to create like that position of the racket falling behind. And the third thing that happens pretty automatically when your
body leads and the small parts follow is you'll have a long high follow through. All of those things are oftentimes taught as like a primary movement contact out in front. Lack the racket or a long high follow through. But in reality, they should be a secondary movement. Meaning they should happen as the result of something else like a byproduct of something else happening not because you're trying to make it happen or force it happen
for force it to happen. So how do most tennis players swing? Most tennis players reverse the order that we just talked about and the tail wags the dog. Meaning most players prepare their body so that they could lead with the big parts if they wanted to like their hips and their their torso. They could drive with their legs and create that wave of power coming up from the ground and into the small parts of their body. And so they prepare
themselves pretty well. But it doesn't actually happen in the right order or it happens, but not until after the ball actually gets hit. So if the ball gets hit and the body hasn't turned yet, then what has done the work? What has actually accelerated the racket? And the thing is like I have such an insight look at this from just only doing video analysis with my students and student after student after student all across all different levels,
all different styles of player. I see again and again and again contact being made with very little or no activity of the body yet. And everybody knows they're supposed to you know turn forwards and are supposed to face face forwards and are supposed to finish the follow through and all that sort of thing. But a big detachment here with everyday players is that they don't understand the when of it. And so their body eventually does
turn, but it's not until it's too late. So when that happens, the arm has to take over. The arm becomes really active and tight and tense and rigid because it has to like the body hasn't done anything yet. And so the arm has to take over. And so the swing ends up being shorter and jerkier. And you know, there's no follow through to it because the arm is so rigid and tight and tense coaches see that rigid tight tense kind of short swing.
And they try to fix it by telling the student, well, you're swing is so tight and jerky and tense and like rigid like we got to finish that follow through. And so the focus is on the symptom. The symptom is the arm being tight and tense. The symptom is the racket not going through a long path. The symptom is the follow through being non-existent.
The cause, the root cause is the lack of activity from the body until it's too late. But unfortunately, like on surface level, if you're 80 feet away as the coach on the other side of the court, like feeding balls and you're seeing these tight rigid, you know, tense swings with no follow through, the most obvious thing to say is we got to finish the follow through. But it's a bandaid solution. So what should hopefully that just before I get to kind of
wrapping it up and kind of putting a bow on it, hopefully this all makes sense. And this is why I'm not one to to dump on coaches that are just out there day in and day out teaching normal lessons. I've this isn't me versus them kind of kind of thing at all. But if that is the environment that you're used to teaching from the other side of the court without video, without slowing things down, the thing is I've had so many students that do turn and they
do eventually finish, but the order is wrong. The order is off. The order of operations is reversed. And so it's critical to see in my opinion, it's critical to see these things
very slow a lot of times before you can understand the cause and effect relationship. And if you don't slow things way down and you don't start to see the little details and the different orders and different ways that players kind of shuffle things around to try to make it work without the big strong parts doing their job, it's so difficult to really pinpoint what the core problem is. So what should you do in order to fix this problem? How do we avoid
this issue? And what should you focus on instead? If you shouldn't focus on trying to follow through, then what should you do? Well, you should stop trying to follow through and instead focus on turning the big parts of your body early enough. So that means driving with your legs, that means turning your hips, that means allowing your core, your torso to start to rotate all before the racket actually starts coming forwards towards the ball. And so
a great drill, you can go do this right now. In fact, you don't even need to be on a tennis court. You can do this in your living room or in your office right now. A great drill to practice this is this segment. Let's say your forehand into several parts segment it into the take back number one part number one. So you don't even need a racket to do this. You can just stand up right now turn to the side and pretend just with your hand
that you're taking your racket back, turning your body to the side. You definitely already do that. If you're following tennis instruction, you've taken lessons, you've been listening to podcasts or watching videos, you've taken one lesson, you know, you're supposed to turn to the side. Then drop your hand, drop the racket down and before allowing your racket to go forwards, turn your body and stretch. Meaning turn your hips, turn your torso,
turn your shoulders, but leave your hand back. Don't let your hand in your racket start moving forwards yet. First, feel a stretch. You'll probably feel that stretch either in your dominant shoulder or maybe you'll feel it in kind of your oblique or kind of side
of your torso or your core. Maybe your hip, your dominant hip, your dominant side hip, like if you're right handed, probably you're right hip, different players feel it in different places, but feel for a stretch and just sit on that stretch for a couple of seconds before you allow your hand in your racket to go forwards and finish the rest of the swing. So again, one piece at a time, segment it. Piece number one, prepare. Piece number two, drop your
hand down, drop your racket down and then stretch. Leave your hand and racket there, turn to the big parts of your body forwards and just feel a stretch and then let the racket go and slowly, smoothly finish the rest of the swing. So that's exercise number one, exercise number two. Do slow, smooth, continuous shadow swings where you feel that stretch, but
you keep things moving. So instead of segmenting it and going, okay, there's position one, here's position two, here's position three, go through the whole motion smoothly and slowly and continuously, but keep feeling for that stretch. If you don't feel the stretch, then leave the hand and racket back a little longer and let the big parts of the body lead
a little more aggressively. And then finally, so now obviously we'd have to actually be on a court or you could do this in your living room or basement with a foam ball or your backyard or your driveway or whatever. You don't have to be on a tennis court, but it'd probably be nice. So now, after doing the first two exercises, drop up, just use your non-dominant hand, your opposite hand, drop a ball in front of yourself and practice making that same
swing. Continue to feel for the stretch, continue focusing on leading with your body and keeping your arm and your hand back behind. So you feel that stretch. And now, we're starting to train the correct order. We're ordering the big, powerful, strong, stable parts of the body first and allowing the small weaker parts of the body to be passive. And now because
they're passive and they're following, they're able to stay relaxed. And now because they're relaxed, they're able to actually complete a long, smooth finish with the racket and all kinds of other stuff like that lag we were talking about before is automatically going to happen when you do this really well. Making contact out in front is going to automatically happen when you do this really well. And kind of the final piece of the puzzle here is timing.
And in my experience teaching this to players, this is where people really get tripped up the most is they totally get it and they're able to do the field exercises and like the shadow swings that we talked about before. But when I start tossing a ball, now they have to figure out the when. When do my hips need to start to turn so that I actually allow them to lead long enough and full enough that my arm can be relaxed because this is really
critical. Listen carefully, the key differentiator, the key sticking point for so many players is they've they've been turning their body, but it's not until it's way too late. Meaning they are turning their hips, they are turning their shoulders, but it's not until the balls
already off the racket. And so a big part of learning how to do this correctly is simply learning how to initiate the big parts of the body soon enough that they have enough time to go through a full enough long enough path that the arm can follow and it can be relaxed. And so if you wait too long, you could you technically could do this kind of
right. But the longer you wait with your body, the more the arm has to be like, all right, well, it's time to get going because the balls, you know, just about here is something's got to move the racket. And that's when the arm takes over and now you have an inefficient unathletic weak swing that is just never going to give you the results you're looking for.
So how do you know if you're going at the right time? Well, I highly recommend that you record yourself from a side angle, meaning 90 degrees to your right if you're writing, 90 degrees to your left if you're lefty. And on your forehand, when you slow things down at contact, ideally, when you're comfortable and like relaxed and not challenged or stretched out, you know, to the side, ideally, when the ball touches the strings, we want the hips
and the shoulders already parallel to the baseline or parallel to the net. And if they're not parallel yet, then your hips and your shoulders didn't start turning until too late. So that's the kind of the benchmark, like ideal position that I like to see players get to when they hit a quality forehand that allows their arm to be relaxed and transfers a lot of power and a lot of force for the big parts of the body. That's how you can
start to hit your best possible shots. And the same principle applies to every other shot in tennis. That that not the angle exactly like that that's going to be different from shot to shot to hand it back hands different, you know, always are different serve is different. But on the forehand specifically, we're looking for the hips and the shoulders to get 90 degrees to the baseline by the time the ball gets to the racket. So this is why you should
not try to follow through the follow through should be a byproduct. It should be the result of the big parts of your body leading. It should be the result of your arm being relaxed and that smooth, powerful, passive swing of the arm is what will eventually lead to a really satisfying effortless long swing and follow through. Follow these steps, follow that drill and I know you'll see better results. You're going to feel better shots and you're going to play better tennis.
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