Best Instruction Videos

[fabiola]

What are the best 3 instructional videos available for sale?

[djbrown]

I'd start with Bolletieri's Sonic Serve.

[VashTheStampede]

I agree with djbrown. The Bollettieri tapes are great. I'd suggest you get either Sonic Serve or Killer Forehand. You can get them right here at tennis warehouse.

[drakulie]

Although they are both very good. Save your money and sign up with Easitennis.com. Best instructional site ever.

[paulfreda]

Sorry to disagree here, but I think Bollitierri tapes
are nearly useless. I hav seen 7 of them and of the
37 tapes I bought over the years, they are by far
the worst. Just Nick and his suntan.
Oh I guess there is a good 5 minutes here or there,
but al I can remember learning was from watching some
of his good players hit. Not a single word of insight from
him once, not once.

Vic Braden's tapes, on the other hand, are filled with insights,
tips, ideas and experiences from his teaching.

Tom Avery's tapes are excellent, especially his tape on
the backhand and his first one Consistent Tennis I.

The Vic Braden tape he did with Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith
is also excellent even tho a bit dated now.

Surprising to me is that I found Peter Burwash's elementary beginner tapes to be quite good. He covers some 40 points in each of two tapes with several ideas that I found very useful and counter to the prevailing current tennis teaching wisdom.

[Bungalo Bill]

Ask a million people which videos are the best and you get almost as many different responses.

Nick's videos are not useless or worthless. They have a lot of good instruction in them - if it is right for you. Not all instruction is right for a person. That is why some posters above like them and others don't.

When instruction comes from well known coaches or even coaches that perform a lot of research, their is nothing wrong with the instruction or methods. You have to find out what is right for you because there are several "approaches" to instruction.

Vic Braden does have good instructional tapes but they are very fundamental. Nothing wrong with that because you will beat 9 out of 10 club players just focusing on Vic's methods and principles!

I agree with drakulie, EASI does have good information for the club tennis player and it doesn't cost much to join. For example, here is an article I found:

Avoid Shearing the Ball: Principle One

A common occurrence is to feel the ball slide or shear as it contacts the racquet. Below, we illustrate the most common reason for this and how to avoid it.

http://www.easitenniscertification.com/members/Shearing1.gif

In the figure above, there are illustrated two examples of a racquet path as the racquet is brought into contact with the ball. On the left is the path that will produce the most efficient contact between the ball and racquet. This path differs from the one on the right in that the spot on the racquet where the ball will be struck never crosses the broken line which represents the path the ball would take if it were not struck. This is another one of the most common differences between the clean hitter and the not-so-clean hitter.

[Ryoma]

Since one pro's strokes are very different from another. I recommand you join www.tennisone.com and pick the prostrokes you want to model. Download the prostrokes video clips and use RAD video tool to export the video frame by frame and do your own analysis. Trust you eyes.

One thing that really bugs me is that the forehand instruction on easitennis.com doesn't even have follow through and the ppl doesn't seem to know how to play tennis :shock:

[Mahboob Khan]

Well, it all depends what you want. As BB said each player has different needs. A beginner would need tapes more on fundamental side, whereas an advance player will need tapes which are advance.

For tournament level players, the slow motion tapes, without commentary, of top players produced by John Yandell are excellent resource to have in your library. He has tapes on serve, return of serve, ground strokes, attack situations, and defence situations. He shows you as to how the modern game of tennis is played by the top ATP players.

www.procompare.net is a great website to learn tennis from.

[JohnThomas1]

It depends a lot on your level. If your strokes are reasonably advanced you would get excellent value out of the Sonic Serve video. The technique it forwards is very new to the point of being revolutionary even. An advanced player would have great fun incorporating it into his game, and just might get one heckuva boost on serve. For a lower level player however it would be of very little value due to it's lack of basics. The entire James Jenson range is great for beginners to intermediates. The Braden range BB mentions are excellent too. Sometimes a bit dated but with a few tweaks they are brilliant. I built my foundation on Braden principles 20 years ago and certainly don't regret it. I find the Avery tapes to be a direct ripoff of Vic's techniques to the point of plagerism lol. They are good tapes tho. Oscar Wegner's are a bit controversial but have some interesting concepts amongst the outrageous.

[paulfreda]

JohnThomas1 said ...
" I find the Avery tapes to be a direct ripoff of Vic's techniques to the point of plagerism lol."
---------
Would you care to back up your words with specifics ??

I have seen Vic's entire series of tapes as well as the Tom Avery series and there is nothing similar at all except maybe that you should hit the ball. Vic's tapes have copious views of many very average students ( a few advanced) playing and commenting on what is happening, whereas Tom has one very advanced student he is working with to overcome some specific errors. The methods, format and material are totally different in my opinion and complement each other nicely.

I am anxious to hear your defense of your slanderous remark.

[JohnThomas1]

Well for a start Vic was around making video's and forwarding his techniques way before Tom was. When i watched Avery's video on the backhand all thru i thought gosh he's like a Braden disciple, it's like he works under him. Then near the end of the tape Avery does the archway finish concept. At the time i thought well i haven't noticed Vic bandying that around, then blow me down if i didn't see Vic advise the EXACT same thing a week or so later. Good god if you asked Tom who's philosophies he liked or followed he would very likely nominate Vic. We all have to learn from someone right?


"I am anxious to hear your defense of your slanderous remark." - I don't have to defend ANYTHING Paul, i'll say what i like when i like thanks very much. I said the tapes were good. Even if he does rehash Vic strongly it's only good, Vic is one helluva teacher.

[JohnThomas1]

Ah ok you're the poster above who said at least 7 of Nick's tapes are nearly useless. They do get a bit advanced for some peeps i must admit.

[Bungalo Bill]

JohnThomas1 said ...
" I find the Avery tapes to be a direct ripoff of Vic's techniques to the point of plagerism lol."
---------
Would you care to back up your words with specifics ??

I have seen Vic's entire series of tapes as well as the Tom Avery series and there is nothing similar at all except maybe that you should hit the ball. Vic's tapes have copious views of many very average students ( a few advanced) playing and commenting on what is happening, whereas Tom has one very advanced student he is working with to overcome some specific errors. The methods, format and material are totally different in my opinion and complement each other nicely.

I am anxious to hear your defense of your slanderous remark.

Hopefully I can settle this before this argument gets out of hand.

Let me share a little information about Vic Broaden. VIc used to be a struggling tennis pro for years. There was nothing special about him compared to other coaches. However, he did have one characteristic that was worth gold.

He could make you laugh while you were learning. This gift separated him from a lot of coaches of his day. Also, Vic was an excellent researcher. He knew how to research information, dissect it, and provide conclusions that were difficult to argue against. There were a lot of tips surrounding tennis in his day (as they still are) and Vic was one of the pioneers to turn these tips into myths. Some of the tips he found to be myths were:

1. Wrist snap

2. The arm didn't pronate on the serve. (made famous with his argument with Arthur Ashe)

3. The high toss

4. Seeing the ball hit the strings

5. The illusion that the net is lower then it is at the baseline

6. Agassi had a floppy wrist or a wristy shot

He also was one of the first famous coaches to promote the use of topspin.

Vic became famous when he agreed to build his "dream" tennis facility at Coto de Caza. By doing this the real estate developers agreed to market this facility and him everywhere they could. Coto de Caza was one of the most state of the art tennis facilities ever made - even to this day. Vic is a very intelligent man. He also is a Doctor in Psychology. When the real estate developer sold the rights to Coto de Caza (I believe to Disney) the Vic Braden Tennis College began to see the writing on the wall. It was also about the same time that tennis was losing its market and popularity.

Vic has provided so much research to tennis coaches it does not surprise me that Avery would use some of his stuff or at least tweak it to how Avery wants to say it. The research provided by Vic is outstanding.

Even today with the new techniques, you still have to hit the ball a certain way to impart different spins. The fixed wrist, the wrist release, the pronating arm on the serve, the use of the legs in the shot were all researched and documented by Vic.

Getting back to his tennis college. If you have ever seen this facility, you would see a tennis facility way ahead of its time. Even the way ball hoppers were loaded was ingenious. Still to this day, I on occasion go out to Coto de Caza to reminisce the "old days" and have a couple beers sitting in the benches. I look at the court diagrams and the way things worked and just shake my head not only in sadness (it has really fallen apart) but also in awe. If I had the money, I would call vic right now and ask for the rights to his design.

Vic also catered to an audience that was eager to learn to play tennis. It does not mean he didn't teach advanced players. But the money to pay for the facilities was in the beginner and intermediate market. Something Vic had little control over since the real estate developer controlled how the marketing dollars were spent and the fact they were really the ones that made Vic famous.

So if Avery uses Vic's research and tailors his instruction around it with his own emphasis that is good. It shows that Avery does respect Vic's work and contribution to tennis.

[Bungalo Bill]

Since one pro's strokes are very different from another. I recommand you join www.tennisone.com and pick the prostrokes you want to model. Download the prostrokes video clips and use RAD video tool to export the video frame by frame and do your own analysis. Trust you eyes.

One thing that really bugs me is that the forehand instruction on easitennis.com doesn't even have follow through and the ppl doesn't seem to know how to play tennis :shock:

Trust your eyes? If you dont know what to look for how can you "trust your eyes"? lol

What about the followthrough do you want to know? I have studied tennis a lot and find the information valid.

I think to put up a website with the information they have provided shows they know a little something about tennis. Are you just frustrated with something or a part of your game? Remember there is no such thing as the holy grail to tennis instruction.

As you can see by the comments above, anyone can pick apart peoples efforts to provide tennis instruction to you.

If they dont know anything about tennis, then the article above would not be true. But in fact it is true!

[fabiola]

What about a more narrow topic?

What do you think would be the best TACTICS video for a strong high school tennis player?

Thanks for the comments so far. Outstanding discussion!

[djbrown]

What about a more narrow topic?

What do you think would be the best TACTICS video for a strong high school tennis player?

Thanks for the comments so far. Outstanding discussion!

It's not a video, but Pressure Tennis by Paul Wardlaw has excellent discussions and illustrations on applying the Wardlaw Directionals during a rally. I would consider an understanding of these a must for any serious player.

[Bungalo Bill]

What about a more narrow topic?

What do you think would be the best TACTICS video for a strong high school tennis player?

Thanks for the comments so far. Outstanding discussion!

It's not a video, but Pressure Tennis by Paul Wardlaw has excellent discussions and illustrations on applying the Wardlaw Directionals during a rally. I would consider an understanding of these a must for any serious player.

Actually they do have a video on this. I think it is called High performance Tennis and I would highly recommend it over the book. I wouldnt recommend Vic's strategy stuff.

[paulfreda]

Too bad Private Messaging (PM) is not enabled on this board so we could take this to another room.

BB; Thank you for the interesting history surrounding Vic and his teaching. Wasn't Vic's first college down outside of San Diego back in the early 70's ??

JohnThomas1

"Well for a start Vic was around making video's and forwarding his techniques way before Tom was."
So if party B also makes use of a well known technology he is a ripoff artist. Nice logic John !
I still have not heard anything to back up your slander (ripoff and plagarizer) of Tom.

"I am anxious to hear your defense of your slanderous remark." - I don't have to defend ANYTHING Paul, i'll say what i like when i like thanks very much."

Oh yes you do. Free speech ends at slander. In a court of law you would have to show your smear to be true or lose and then have to pay damages.

Maybe you are simply careless with your words and nothing more.
But you called Tom a thief (ripoff) and a plagarizer, so I decided to call you on it.

[JohnThomas1]

Whatever Paul, i have better things to do than waste time running around a website "defending" myself against a nitpicker. You obviously know it all anyways.

[Bungalo Bill]

Too bad Private Messaging (PM) is not enabled on this board so we could take this to another room.

BB; Thank you for the interesting history surrounding Vic and his teaching. Wasn't Vic's first college down outside of San Diego back in the early 70's ??

JohnThomas1

"Well for a start Vic was around making video's and forwarding his techniques way before Tom was."
So if party B also makes use of a well known technology he is a ripoff artist. Nice logic John !
I still have not heard anything to back up your slander (ripoff and plagarizer) of Tom.

"I am anxious to hear your defense of your slanderous remark." - I don't have to defend ANYTHING Paul, i'll say what i like when i like thanks very much."

Oh yes you do. Free speech ends at slander. In a court of law you would have to show your smear to be true or lose and then have to pay damages.

Maybe you are simply careless with your words and nothing more.
But you called Tom a thief (ripoff) and a plagarizer, so I decided to call you on it.

I would have to ask him but you might be right. A lot of coaches use Vic's research to build their instruction around. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that - in fact the basis of good tennis instruction is building it on good research. Sometimes it is not so much the content but the way the instructor presents the information and their ability to convey complex information in a simple to understand manner. I think Avery is talented in this respect even though some of the information he covers is not his own.

Avery didnt ripoff anyone off as much as I haven't ripped off anyone. If the research is there then this information is freely provided by various researchers (Braden) to help coaches and teaching organizations improve their tennis teaching.

So while I can undersand where JT comes from (the borrowing of Bradens information or the similarities of Bradens teaching), I can also understand where you are coming from in that Avery simply spins the information (if borrowed) to his own style and findings.

Hopefully you and JT can resolve this and understand each others points of view.

[papa]

MK wrote:

".......
www.procompare.net is a great website to learn tennis from......"

Tried to log into this site but a "warning" came up that said something to the effect that if might be unsafe to do so - got to the title page before it occurred. Anyone have any idea what that might be?

Another interesting thing was that it asked what language you wanted and had pictures of the Union Jack, Australian flag and the American flag - thought we all spoke the same one.