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 400 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Today we're going to talk about why your forehand feels weak. I had a three-five-level student come and work with me recently in Milwaukee and that was her
comment coming in. We have a little form, everybody fills out, incoming survey, we're asking people what their goals are, what their frustrations are, what they'd like to improve. She said her forehand was her weakest shot, but when I looked at my initial evaluation video, I was like, how is that possible? Because when I looked at her contact point, her body and her contact point looked super strong. There's kind of a unique situation that's going
on here. I want to tell you the story about it. I also tell you the drills that I went through with her to help her hit a much stronger shot with much less effort so that you can
copy them. By the way, this applies to tennis, like all tennis shots, but we're about to talk about just so happens to be within the context of this student's forehand, but what we're about to talk about are principles about biomechanics and the kinetic chain and athleticism and energy transfer using the body, whatever you want to call it that are
universal. Hopefully this will help you if and when, no, if, okay, let's say if, I'm sorry, when, wrong word, when, when you record yourself hitting a forehand or a backhand or your serve, when you record yourself, let's go ahead and assume that you're going to record yourself because that's how you're going to learn the most about what you're doing. That's how you're going to be able to pinpoint the exact things that are most
important for you to work on to make the biggest improvements. So when you record yourself, what I saw on her original forehand was at the moment her strings touched the ball. Her hips were facing forwards, meaning parallel to the baseline parallel to the net and her shoulders were also facing forwards parallel to the baseline parallel to the net, which
is totally weird for a three five level player when I, which is what she is, when I normally look at a three five player hitting a forehand, the moment that the ball touches their strings, their shoulders are like maybe 45 degrees to the baseline, meaning kind of halfway between a sideways position and facing forwards. And what that means is that in order to hit the
ball from that position, the arm has to do a lot more work. Smaller parts of the body, the arm, the hand, the wrist have to jump out in front of the body and provide a lot of energy, a lot of acceleration, or else the ball is just not really going to go anywhere. And occasionally, even from three five players, which let's just call it three five like intermediate, like you've played for, you can't be a beginner and be a three five player. You've almost certainly
taken a bunch of lessons, played a whole bunch of matches and played on a league. That's sort of thing. Before you're a three five player, it's not uncommon for me to see a three five player hit a forehand where their body is still almost completely sideways. And so the arm has to basically do everything. And so turning to the side, I don't want to say was pointless, but the whole point of turning to the side is to then be able to use that stored energy
with the body to rotate forwards. But frequently three five players don't even really do any of that. And instead, their arm just kind of propels the racket completely. So this player was facing fully forwards. And so I was like, what in the world? Because if you look at professional level swings, if they're in balance, you know, they're not like stressed in a defensive position where they're reaching and not able to use their body, you'll see
their hips facing forwards and their shoulders facing forwards. So I initially, I was perplexed as a what is happening here. And when I backed up the video a little bit, I saw the answer. What was happening was she was turning to the side, preparing her body well. But then the first thing that moved was her elbow and her hand in her arm were pushing forwards before her body did anything. And so she was setting up well. But the first mover in
the motion were small parts of the body. They really started the energy of the racket forwards. But then what's unusual about what she was doing was her body was actually catching up in the end. So you might say, well, what is it matter? You know, like as long as she arrives in a good position, ultimately, like, isn't that what matters? The thing is once you propel the racket and initiate the racket's movement with smaller, weaker
parts of the body, that's you've kind of chosen your primary engine for the swing. And when the elbow is initiating, the hand is initiating, the arm is initiating, even if the body catches up in the end, the body wasn't the thing that set the racket in motion. And so because there's like a, because there's a disconnect there and because the arm and the hand are cutting in line and doing the body's job initially, they're the primary movers
of the racket in the motion. This is why it's called the kinetic chain and, you know, air quotes, the word chain. There's a sequence. There's an order. There's a chain of events that is meant to happen in a certain order. And that order is not to have smaller weaker parts of the body be the primary mover. And when the smaller weaker parts of the body
start the racket in motion, they're the primary mover. So this is why this player's forehand felt weak and felt like she, like what she told me was, man, it just feels like I'm swinging so hard. But I'm just not hitting with nearly as much power as other players on the court. Why is that? And this was the reason why. So let me take you through the
drills that I did with her. You can copy these and, and upgrade your own forehand. And again, these are principles here and ideas that I've used in a lot of different swings. And it's pretty universally applicable. You might not want to do this on the serve. Like I'm just kind of imagining. So let me tell you the drills. So drill number one, I've
used a lot really successfully over the years. I had her, had her stand in the middle of the service line and slowly go through like a 5% speed forehand swing without a ball. And when she got to the part of her swing where her racket would drop and she was getting ready to swing forwards, I was standing back behind her. And I would just grab her racket with my thumb and index finger and just hold on to it gently. And my instruction to her
was, okay, I'm going to hold your racket for a second. And I want you to slowly, smoothly turn your hips and your shoulders forwards. And I'm going to hold the racket so that we create a stretch together. That stretch is created by me holding her racket back while her hips and her shoulders and her torso gently turn forwards before I let go of the racket. Now, keyword here, gently. So I do not want her to like crank against me holding
the racket. I could definitely potentially lead to injury. I was very clear up front. Like this should be smooth. This should be like low intensity, low energy, feel for that stretch. And then after a split second of that stretch, I'm going to let go of the racket. And then I just want you to smoothly continue to use your body. And as the coach here, you know, facilitating, I'm trying to make this as seamless as possible. I don't want to
hold on to it for five seconds and make her kind of like struggle against it. I'm just trying to create a, what's the word, a sensation of just just feeling that stretch before I let go so that she can start to feel the opposite motion in play. I like to refer to her original forehand as a push. Her hand and her racket are pushing, I'm sorry, her hand in her arm are pushing the racket forwards before her body starts to turn. And what I'm
having her experience through this stretch drill is a pull. When I'm holding her racket back in her hips and her torso and her shoulders turn first, what she's doing is starting to pull her arm around with her body. And she's pulling her racket around. And her arm just ends up being like a conduit for the energy of her body. As opposed to her original forehand, her arm was the energy. Like her arm was what was being the engine or the force behind
her swing, which is why it felt so weak. So in the five or 10 minutes, I had her feel this kind of just experience or sensation of stretching. I'm rewiring and reversing the order of operations or the chain that she was used to moving through and just getting her to feel what it would be like to pull her arm and pull her racket around her body using her body as the initiator, using her body as the engine, as the primary energy
source in the swing. So, oh, and by the way, like in slow motion, like if you look at this and freeze time during that stretch, this is an exaggerated position just to be really clear. So what I'm doing, and I was up front with her about this, as I'm holding the racket and having her stretch, I'm not at all trying to tell her that this is what should actually literally happen in real life. I'm just telling her this is a feel exercise.
This is just a drill we're using so that you can feel what it would be like to pull instead of push just to be really clear on that. I want to I want to hate mail about how it is. It's exaggerated. And a lot of times exaggeration is the best learning tool to feel something that's the opposite. So the student can settle somewhere halfway in between. I talk a lot about that in my book on Amazon. If you want to learn more about how to get
better at tennis, it's called essential tennis. So drill two was I didn't put myself in the middle of the swing and I just had her replicate that feeling on her own. So without holding and stretching the racket, I was like, okay, now you do it. I'm not going to hold the racket, but let me see you create all a little bit of stretch in there on your own and demonstrate to me that you can lead with your body and pull with your body while
keeping your arm and your hand really passive and loose and relaxed. She did a great job of that. That's drill two drill three was I had her sandwich, some slow shadow swings where she was focusing on pulling with her body. And then I did a couple slow on her hand tosses. Again, she's still on the service line and had her hit a couple balls and we checked in. That's drill number three. And occasionally her elbow would kind of sneak out in front
again because that's her old habit. She's played a long time doing it that way. And so I showed her a couple of those just reinforced. Okay, here's the good ones is what it should feel like. That's drill number three. Drill number four was I had her go back to No Man's Land, continue to underhand toss and continue to have her sandwich or kind of do a sequence if I remember correctly, it was two shadow swings just to remind her body. This is the
order I want you to move in without worrying about hitting the ball. And then I underhand toss four balls in a row after she reminded herself with the shadow swings. Checked in with video a couple of times her elbow was going to little antsy again and kind of jumping out on the lead. But in general, she was managing it really well. And the results here, the
symptoms, the bottom line was things started looking way smoother way more efficient. By the way, if you want to see video of this, you can go to the YouTube channel, Essential Tennis YouTube channel and check out the video called craziest forehand I've ever seen. And you'll see the video, the actual like real life video of this student in the before
and after. So you can kind of see the difference in smoothness that I'm talking about. But she started to hit really calm, smooth, efficient forehands that had a good amount of pace and force behind them without trying hard at all. And so when she showed that she could do that, manage it well from no man's land. I had her go back to the baseline. I started feeding balls to her off my racket. And we continued the same sequence of two shadow
swings followed by four hits. And she continued with the smoothness, continued with the efficiency. And the shots that she was hitting at this point were moving just as fast. But with half the effort and half the intensity as her original evaluation swings before, you know, we ever talked together before I showed her any of her forehands where she was just kind of warming
up hitting with the ball machine. She was trying twice as hard, but getting the same result in terms of speed of shot as these practice ones where she was putting in half the effort. And now hitting really solid quality shots. And it's because we took out that break in her kinetic chain, had her start to pull the racket around and move in the right order. So again, this same principle, the same idea works on all tennis shots, even volleys.
It's not by volley. I mean, like up close to the net, you know, traditional, you know, volley, you know, net shot, taking the ball out of the air, a backspin variety, not even the big swing, you know, topspin variety. It's not quite the same thing. I wouldn't want to lag or stretch on volley. Well, actually, sometimes we do, but most of the time, we're not doing that. But the body should still be the primary engine. The body should still
be the primary mover. So that's how arm in the hand can be relaxed and they can be passive. Just where control and precision and efficiency can really come into play. But this for sure works. This idea definitely applies to back hands, to all four hands. It applies to serves. I wouldn't necessarily recommend holding the racket and creating a stretch on the serve because the shoulder is in a much more sensitive position on the serve. But the same idea
of the stretch and pulling and leading with the body, 100% applies. So think about this experiment with it. Try to apply it. I just gave you the drills that I did with this student, especially if you have a forehand that feels weak, I can like with 98% certainty tell you that following these progressions is going to help you, especially if you combine it with the video and you see how you're doing and how well you're executing it. I bet it's
going to make a huge difference. So give it a try. Thanks for listening. I hope this was helpful. And I'll talk to you in the next episode of the podcast. If you appreciate it, do me a favor. Go to my friends over at dietingsports.com and buy some balls or some grips or a racket bag or I just just yesterday actually I just play tested their whole line of Nova rackets, which is kind of their power racket control rackets more like a pro staff.
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