off court Racquet speed drills
 

Any suggestions for off court drills to improve your racquet speed? especially for your forehand.

Thanks

Buy an etch swing. Its been a great addition to my coaching arsenal.

Medicine ball. You can throw a medicine using the exact same mechanics as your forehand and it helps tremendously with racquet head speed. Resistance bands work nicely as well. But make sure your arm and hand are loose when you're hitting your forehand and make sure you're using the stretch-shortening cycle to get free racquet head speed.

You can try this one along with some bands or tubing:

http://www.fwonline.com/spthnd.htm

Shadow swing, shadow or mirror.

Good ideas already, but I'll throw a different thought out here.

Think of this - if you can take a big practice swing without hitting a ball and that swing is as fast as you need it to be when you're on the courts, mission accomplished. What you need to also focus on is better movement and earlier preparation. That will set you up to start your bigger swing early enough to hit the ball on time.

Lots of players who want to hit harder assume that they only need to swing faster, but it's often an issue of swinging earlier. Some cars take longer than others to accelerate to 60 mph, but most all of them can do it, right?

Lifting is a good idea for helping to swing faster, but developing that strength is also especially good for holding your body parts together. Anyone can swing hard once, but lifting and getting a bit more muscle together will also help you to swing hard over and over without breaking down.

Geez, and all this time, I thought swinging a racket fast is just fast twitch muscles that are in good shape due to repetition.
Can HulkHogan swing fast? Can BigShow? Can MarkArnold swing fast?

I practice my shadow strokes and then practice "real time" shots.

You can use an old racket, put lots of lead on it and practice swinging in sets of 10's or however many you want. Don't stop in middle of set. After a while, swinging a lighter racket and in fewer times would feel like a walk in a park.

Put a plastic bag around the face of the racquet. Tape it around the perimeter, I guess. I've seen this around, but never had a change to try it out myself. Want to do it for me?

Join a gym and use the weight machines that what ive been told.

I dont think going to the gym will help at all.. you can develop core strength simply by playing the game..

good technique / machanics and practice will inevitably allow you to swing at good pace.. good timing/execution and positioning are more important

Thank goodness someone has a little common sense on this thread. I see 8 year old girls who can hit the ball with way more pace than 200 lb. athletic men. Hmmmm....maybe something about superb timing and loading the core and utilizing the kinetic chain properly?

Another winner, nice post.

Weight training and resistance bands and medicine balls are all about injury prevention and building stamina....they have little to do with hitting the ball better or harder.

LeeD says to shadow swing in front of a mirror, which is fine, except for the fact that most mirrors are in houses and playing with this can lead to a lot of things being broken and destroyed. How many mirrors have you broken Lee? I now practice outdoors.:)

One of the traditional methods is to swing a racket without string as fast as you possibly can.

Despite the advice given by many people, you won't learn to swing fast by doing a lot of repetitions. In fact, too many repetitions, especially with a weighted racket, will probably train you to swing slower. Speed training is about becoming more explosive, and fast-twitch muscles tire quickly.

The optimal way to train speed is by keeping the repetitions low and the quality high. This is the way sprinters train. Use maximal effort and give yourself plenty of rest between sets. Remember to warm up fully before trying maximal effort to minimize injuries.

Yeah, because medicine ball and resistance band exercises will turn you into Conan. Throwing medicine balls using the same mechanics you use to swing your forehand will improve your ability to use the kinetic sequence of legs-hips-core and will strengthen those muscle groups in an exactly the way you use them in your swing.

Never understood the fear of lifting when people want to swing faster or improve racket head speed. I don't think most people understand that a lifting routine is not going to automatically turn you into a bodybuilder, it actually takes a lot more effort to do that.

Most recreational players are for lack of a better word, soft. So incorporating a good lifting program to strengthen up core muscles, and legs (in other words strengthening the parts of the kinetic chain) will help give you racket head speed if you make sure that you're doing it right.

Never ever underestimate flexibility, even if you're doing a very mildly intensive program, always do plenty of stretching so that you retain your current flexibility and possibly improve it, otherwise despite your added strength your swing might slow down.

Absolutely. And the nice thing about resistance bands is that they can be used for a stretching regimen as well.

For indoor mirror practice, always best to use a real baseball, in a china shop, without a credit card, at Tiffany's.
Your practice partner should be a minatour, or at least a 2,500 lbs bull with his balls tied tight, not fed in 3 days.
Need strings to simulate resistance and sound.

Quote:
Originally Posted by aimr75
I dont think going to the gym will help at all.. you can develop core strength simply by playing the game..

good technique / machanics and practice will inevitably allow you to swing at good pace.. good timing/execution and positioning are more important


TennisCoachFLA:
Another winner, nice post.

Weight training and resistance bands and medicine balls are all about injury prevention and building stamina....they have little to do with hitting the ball better or harder.

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As usual you guys have the tendency to go off topic, posting irrelevant stuffs. The question is "off court Racquet speed drills", your answer: good timing/execution and positioning. That !!!!! How are you gonna drill "good timing and positioning" outside a court and for the purpose of increasing racket speed? Comphrehension skill of a third grader!!!

It's like to the question