Guys and gals,
How would one train to increase racket speed? Is there a limit to one's strength and he should be happy with it? Or the more you train the better you get?
Thanks.
Guys and gals,
How would one train to increase racket speed? Is there a limit to one's strength and he should be happy with it? Or the more you train the better you get?
Thanks.
You want to know how I train it????????
Okay, this is my way of training it.
You will line up at center mark, then you will hit groundies crosscourt. Targets will be placed deep in the court.
You will use a control racquet and have to hit over a four foot rope across the net and land the ball deep - with topspin.
I will feed you balls and if you didnt hit hard enough or with enough spin I will tell you to hit it harder and faster.
You will hit many off balance at first and you will truly think you suck. You do, but you won't for long. You will learn to swing the racquet faster, keep the ball deep, stay in balance, and develop your conditioning all at the same time. Most important, you will be working on your technique at the same time. Little discoveries happen when you are pushed to do something. Trust me.
Of course, I would be looking to squeeze every bit of efficiency and effectiveness in your stroke as well.
In this case? I am definetly old school. The lighter the racquet and more "springy" it is, in general, the slower you swing to keep the ball in play. Or it doesn't promote a fast swing speed.
If you took my swing speed and gave me a tweener racquet? lol, the balls would go over the fence!
Relax your arm and your wrist. Hit a few balls against a wall as if you don't care. Imagine that you cannot feel or control the arm, that it is dead/paralyzed and just flies helplessly as a rope. Generate all momentum from the leg drive through the core muscles to the shoulder turn, let the arm be dragged and wrap over your body. See if the ball picks up any additional pop. The idea is not to exclude the arm muscles from your real strokes, but to "switch your arm off" temporarily to verify that the muscles come into play in the right order, the power originates in your feet first and channels further down the kinetic chain.
When you bring the arm back into play, make sure you are not muscling the ball, not punching/poking it with the racket but rather flexibly pulling your arm with the racket through the contact point.
Make sure you line your non-hitting arm parallel to the baseline before starting to swing forward. It helps achieve better upper shoulder rotation.
Check your grip and spin. If all your steam goes into topspin, fix it by going through the ball more.
Check the weight of your racket and the tension of your strings. Demo a few and see if your gear slows you down.
Re BB's post:
Why would you have the student hitting over the 4-foot rope?
Relaxation and trust in your technique... onceyou have the fundamentals of wich you will find a lot ofthreads here, what you should focus on is doing them as efficiently as possible, and wasting as little energy as possible.
its more important the direction of all the forces generated from the ground up in your kinetic chain than to try and generate more power... its surprising the first times that you make a clean completely relaxed swing and contact how the ball accelerates without much apparent effort.
knowledge is more important than brute power...
concentrate on the flying path ofthe ball and try to judge the ball as soon as it leaves the opponent's raquet, because the height, effect and pace will determine wich is the most efficient swing path.
balance is more important than raw strength
get to your position as fast as you can, WITHOUT loosing your balance, if you loose your balance, you loose efficiency, you loose power. keep your compusture, keep your verticalilty inside the base of your stance, that means to achieve awareness of how much you can lean into the shot, wich is not too much, and how low or high you must bend your knees.
hit in the "center of thestring bed"... the best place to hit it is not in the center itself but where the vibrations are distributed evenly at contact. to simplify, its the place on the strigbed in wich you feel the ball as being the less heavy and the less it distorts the raquetface.
if i think of anything else, ill write it right away... you have a lot of practice ahead and that shouldnt be scary, it can be exciting.... the journey is long
Increasing racket speed.
1.)technique. Use kenetic chain and develop in to it's highest potential for you. Modern technique gives you more racket head speed then the old closed stance linear technique (but its a more injury prone technique).
2.) Lift weights. Lift using both a little reps and a lot. More often work out with higher reps, you just need the (i'm losing my vocabulary today..) little reps to get some muscle (mainly to prevent injury), but the fast twitching muscles will need to be developed more. So basically train both, but fast twiching muscles more. Whole body workout for tennis specifically though.
Modern is not a more injury-prone technique if executed properly. This is a basic misconception about the modern game.
Guys and gals,
How would one train to increase racket speed? Is there a limit to one's strength and he should be happy with it? Or the more you train the better you get?
Thanks.
I use a more complete s-w grip and a APDC strung at 53lbs. The sweetspot of this puppy, I discovered, is the top-center part, ie an inch or two up from the crosshair.
BB's post as usual is great. What he describes is what I've been unawarely doing for months. I go to the courts a lot lately and there are always a few people there willing to drill-rally extensively. Since there's not much going on, it's a good time to swing all out, build FH/BH strength, and like BB said, you can discover a lot by doing. One of my focus is to get the ball zip thru the air as fast as possible and eventually push the guy in the other court back a few feet behind the baseline. Your opponent's position tells you a lot about your shot, right? (In game everyone struggles to hit a shot from way back.)
Strength training (gym), and medicine ball throws will definitely help you to impart more racket-head speed. You also want to try the following:
Drill:
-- Remove strings from your racket. Yes, that's correct, you need a strings-less frame.
-- Have a partner to feed you balls from a ball basket.
-- Time it correctly, and swing faster with proper technique. If done correctly, the ball will go through your racket-head without hitting the frame. Obviously, with bad timing the ball will hit the frame.
-- Hit a basket of balls like this.
A basket like this once a week, will improve your racket-head speed.
Increasing racket speed.
1.)technique. Use kenetic chain and develop in to it's highest potential for you. Modern technique gives you more racket head speed then the old closed stance linear technique (but its a more injury prone technique).
2.) Lift weights. Lift using both a little reps and a lot. More often work out with higher reps, you just need the (i'm losing my vocabulary today..) little reps to get some muscle (mainly to prevent injury), but the fast twitching muscles will need to be developed more. So basically train both, but fast twiching muscles more. Whole body workout for tennis specifically though.
If I had one hour a week to work on racket speed, I'd spend 15 minutes a day, after warming up, 4 days a week on shadow swinging in front of a mirror, in a room big enough to accomodate me and my racketfriend.
Like any performer, you need room to practice. You need mirrors so you know what you're doing! And just for you coaches out there, you need a coach around to tell you what to do.
But.... there are limits. Skinny weaklings like myself cannot hit like Nadal or serve like Roddick!
But tons of repetitive practice might allow us to get close to the best of our abilities, which is better than a kick in the butt.
It's mostly a technique issue, but really it's a footwork issue. If they don't have a concept of the step-out, then their kinetic chain may be all wrong.
Usually I try to see whether a person is swiveling around their hips in order to produce the groundstroke. The test is easy. Shadow your normal swing and note the location of your optimal contact point. Then execute that same thing with virtually no takeback. That contact point should be the same. If it's not, then you're swiveling. And that is the case for the majority of people.
If you only have 1 hour of time per week to workout with weights and machines, what would you do ?
If you already know what you want to do, why ask in an internet site?
Go get stronger, bigger, and you'll play tennis like ArnoldSwartz......
Sure, Hewitt's shots don't have weight, neither do Gonzalez's (thos he's more like 170), or Federer's, or DJ's.... they need to bulk up to WWE Wresteling specs.
Bigger guys, like the BIG SHOW (490lbs) and that sumo guy are great tennis players, because they can put weight on their shots ....
Little tykes, you'd tear apart, like Oudin, Henin, Austin, Coetzer, hitting puff balls you would just eat up.
No no. What I mean is to shadow your swing and observe what would be your contact point with a full takeback and with almost no takeback. If they are significantly different, then there's a significant issue with your overall technique and probably your feet. Also means that your kinetic chain is not set up correctly, which means that you're not correctly generating power.The same contact point? So you basically just let the ball hit your optimal contact point just to see if you arm the ball or don't use your hips? That doesn't make any sense!
Re BB's post:
Why would you have the student hitting over the 4-foot rope?
It is so true that a clean completely relaxed swing and contact produces acceleration without much apparent effort when you use the large muscles (biceps and pectorals, not the shoulder girdle).
Wait as long as possible to judge the ball; deciding too early will force you to commit then have to adjust to what the ball actually does and this cuts your efficiency and timing.
Don't hit in the center of the string bed, hit below the sweet spot.
Tennis is about losing your balance not maintaining it; trying to maintain balance will stiffen your muscles and prevent you from responding naturally to the ball. You will find your balance naturally, not by thinking about it.
Knee bend to find the ball and load the legs but be sure to lift up and don't stay down. Lifting up generates a great deal of power which will add to the speed of your stroke.
Hitting over a rope strung 3 feet over the net will help you develop the ability to hit heavy topspin with depth, which will challenge your opponent.