Confused about recoil weight

[klaw]

I have an aeropro drive and just started my lead tape experimentation journey.

From what I read, my first step should be to try to maximise my swingweight to the maximum I can handle by adding tape to the 12 o’clock position. Then when it starts becoming unstable and twisting on impact, I should redistribute some weight from the 12 o’clock position to the sides. What I am confused about is the last step, about adjusting recoil weight by adding weight to the handle.

I am trying to add weight incrementally, 2g at a time. I read that as a general rule of thumb, when adding to the 12 o’clock position, I should counterbalance it by adding the same amount of weight to the handle. When I asked my coach, he told me to just add 2g to 12 o’clock, because otherwise all I’d be doing is making my racquet heavier. Yet I see players like Nadal counterbalance their racquet by adding 2.5g to the handle, far less than the 9.5g he puts at 12 o’clock.

What is the right way to experiment?
1) With each 2g increment at 12 o’clock, add 2g to handle
2) Just focus on adding weight to 12 o’clock for now. Wait until you’ve maxed your SW first
3) Add a disproportionate amount to the handle. E.g. 1g at handle for every 3g at 12 o’clock

I am quite confused as to what purpose counterbalancing serves. Is it purely from a comfort standpoint? Does it help prevent injuries? Does it help you maintain your pre-lead swing paths by allowing your racquet to be equally headlight as before?

 

[zalive]

Well you can have some general directions just like ones you created, and that's ok. However eventually if you stick to customizing enough, you'll realise there's no rule.
What is already on the racquets (in its stock form) matters, and it dictates how it will get along with what you do to it, and what you should do to make it better and meet your preferrences.

Also, what you may not yet realise is that racquets have this property, how they swing. It's not just balance. It's somehow connected with racquet as a pendulum and with some natural ability to gel with your swing in a way it's easy and natural, which makes you do with it what you want. Meaning, racquet's head must not lag or rush through the swing, it must swing just right and easy. When a racquet is set up this way, you will find you can play your best tennis with it, in terms of consistency, precision and preserving your energy. Even power since it allows you to take some full swings without fear of having it too much.

Now that's your goal. How to get there is less simple. But there is some knowledge which is helpful, even necessary. Yet there's no strict recipy: add this to there and you'll be fine. No such thing. It's different from racquet to racquet.

The essential tool is - you. Your observation and assessment of how good the result is for your tennis, acquired by hitting experience with your setup. The rest may be small steps and many iterations, but eventually, you'll get there.

What you need to know, to understand swing physics is that certain zones/spots are very influential when it comes to changing how racquet swings. While there are few spots which are as neutral as possible. And there are spots which would be somewhere in between those two extremes. Funny thing is, I can't tell you 'adding mass there slows down, or speeds up racquet through swing, because the result will be relative to what's already on your racquet, its present mass distribution. Doing the same thing on different racquets will get you similar or different results. One direction will be good, the other will be the wrong direction. The good in this: if one direction is wrong, the other should be right. Also important: it's all periodic. While adding mass to a certain spot would make it worse when it comes to swing, just keep adding and eventually it will get better.

Ok, here are the zones which are influential to change how a racquet will swing, if you add or remove mass. One is the upper hoop, with 12 o'clock (tip) being the most influential (in fact, there's no more influential spot on a racquet than the tip). The other is the upper portion of the handle all the way to 2/10 o'clock, with the most influential zone lying from the top of the handle (famous 7'' spot) through the throat. It's roughly stil half influential (and less) than the tip. But it works in opposite direction.

The two about neutral spots when it comes to swing are 3/9 o'clock and the butt. Adding mass there will have minimum impact on the swing (it will still have some impact as you will significantly increase rotational inertia, either SW (3/9) or RW (butt)).

How racquet swings is probably even more important than anything else, but into this you want to incorporate other features: twist weight, recoil weight (both represents stability but axis of rotation is different), swing weight, certain weight, certain balance. And to make it more complicated, you want your sweet spot to have a nice location and a size (personal, some are okay with a smallish sweet spot), and your string bed to have a nice predictability (no hot spots, sudden jumps in response etc.).

 

[zalive]

I can tell you my personal approach. I'm just an recreational player and an amateur customizer, so it's work in progress rather than a bible lol.
One thing I like is twist stability plus sweet spot width, which is achieved exactly through sufficient twist weight stability. By bouncing the ball I will decide how much lead I need at 3+9 o'clock. This is my starting point.
After that I decide how much SW I want, then add rest of the lead at the tip (11-1 o'clock zone).

Then I counterbalance some at the butt (not necessarily too much), lead by how racquet feels in my hand after I've done the hoop.
After then I try shadow swings and decide how much I need to put lead at 7'', if any, to get the racquet to swing nice.

And then it's time to hit the court and see how it turned out. The rest is based on hitting experience and it's iterations. Sometimes it's fine tuning, adding or removing few grams here and there, sometimes you realize you need a whole different approach (redistributing lead at the hoop). More or less iterations until I'm finally satisfied.

 

[klaw]

Thanks guys! I’m still a bit confused in particular about the recoil weight and why we counterbalance.

Zalive, you mention that it’s specific to my racquet and my swing. I liked the way my APD swung before I added weight. Does that mean instead of automatically adding the same amount of weight to the 12 o’clock and 7” from the bottom, I should just add the weight proportionally until the swing feels the same than before I added lead? Can I test this out with just shadow swings?

 

[klaw]

Is the purpose of counterweighting to maintain the desired level of headlightness in a racquet?

 

[TennisCJC]

Is the purpose of counterweighting to maintain the desired level of headlightness in a racquet?

Yes, 335SW with even balance vs 335SW with 8HL balance will feel quite different to swing. I tend to like 4 to 6 HL range. Also, adding handle weight will increase recoil weight which will make the handle feel more stable at impact.

 

[zalive]

Thanks guys! I’m still a bit confused in particular about the recoil weight and why we counterbalance.

Is the purpose of counterweighting to maintain the desired level of headlightness in a racquet?

Zalive, you mention that it’s specific to my racquet and my swing. I liked the way my APD swung before I added weight. Does that mean instead of automatically adding the same amount of weight to the 12 o’clock and 7” from the bottom, I should just add the weight proportionally until the swing feels the same than before I added lead? Can I test this out with just shadow swings?

If that's your goal is, then yes. But again no strict rule, from my personal point of view. You can counterweight more than you put on the hoop, you can counterweight less, if you want a different balance than original stock. Or if you want a much higher recoil weight (better stability at hits, power on volleys and returns). Or if you want a better static moment (racquet feeling lighter in your hand when held in static conditions). In certain cases you'll feel for minor tweaks you don't even need counterweight, if there's no strict reason why.

To maintain swing neutrality (if you judge it swings fine and you want to keep it), when you put lead at 3+9 o'clock, best to counterweight at another neutral spot, at the butt cap. To maintain balance too, you couterweight with half grams you added to 3+9 o'clock. If you want to counterweight lead put at 12 o'clock (or 11-1 o'clock), to compensate both the influence on the swing and the balance, you counterweight it with twice that mass at the top of the handle. It's not a completely full swing compensation, calculations say you need more (7 grams at 7'' from the butt to compensate the swing for 2 grams of lead placed at 12 o'clock). For 10+2 o'clock you can counterbalance at the butt, but you'll need a gram or so at 7'' to compensate the swing.

You can study MgR/I threads. If you're interested pm me your mail address, and I'll send you my excel with formulas inside for various calculations, I use it as a help when customizing. MgR/I tells about the influence on the swing.

 

[klaw]

Thanks TennisCJC, exactly what I was after

Thanks Zalive, I’ll see what I can find on MGR/I, heard about it in a video but it was still confusing! The spreadsheet would be great, thanks. I’ll send you a PM.

Should I give myself time to adjust to the new weight? I added 4g to 12o’clock and counterbalanced it with an over grip. My groundstrokes feel amazing, so much effortless power. However, my flick forehands (on the run) go into the net and my flat serves are all over the place. How do I know when it’s is just a matter of me needing to adjust compared to when the SW is too much?

 

[zalive]

I've sent you the excel. When you enter data for 4 grams at 12 o'clock (length entered is distance from the butt of the centre of the entered mass; it's approximative calculation as if mass is whole in that one point, which is not true, but it's quite good enough for shorter segments), you'll have the picture how much MgR/I has changed, and how much you need to add as a counterbalance to return MgR/I to stock value (which may be more or less fine, that I don't know). Take into account that 0.3-0-35 is the whole MgR/I cycle - so if stock spot was fine, decreasing MgR/I by 0.15-0.20 should mean it's pretty much messed up now. Impact of 12 o'clock lead is huge when it comes to swing (MgR/I), calculations will reveal that.