Teaching a beginning student the loop?

[eeytennis]

i am pretty new to teaching tennis but i have played for years competitively (USTA, college, etc.). i have one student who is almost 10 and has a ton of potential, she loves the game and she's a very hard worker. One problem i am having though is on her forehand. i want her to have a loop when she hits, and the does fine with the loop, except when she makes contact she swings sort of down on the ball "slashing" it and hitting a ton of backspin.

i have tried to tell her to "loop, drop, and drive" but it's just not clicking...any words of advice??

[supineAnimation]

Originally Posted by eeytennis

i am pretty new to teaching tennis but i have played for years competitively (USTA, college, etc.). i have one student who is almost 10 and has a ton of potential, she loves the game and she's a very hard worker. One problem i am having though is on her forehand. i want her to have a loop when she hits, and the does fine with the loop, except when she makes contact she swings sort of down on the ball "slashing" it and hitting a ton of backspin.

i have tried to tell her to "loop, drop, and drive" but it's just not clicking...any words of advice??

I don't teach the loop. Not to kids or adults. I don't think it helps when teaching the modern (millennium) forehand and I teach the modern forehand to everyone because I believe it is the best technique to learn. I just teach them to keep the off-hand in contact with the throat and always keep the racquet-head in motion, to turn their shoulders until the off-shoulder meets the chin, keep the racquet-face pointing down or semi-down, keep the wrist and grip loose and the wrist neutral, load on the dominant foot and extend the off-arm out towards the dominant side perpendicular to the hitting line, push-off with the dominant leg to begin the swing, uncoil the hips, engage the core, throw the upper body forward, let the racquet-head drop by supinating the forearm (hopefully the loose wrist will produce at least some wrist extension preceding the arm swing (stretch-shortening cycle)), pronate the forearm and elbow, and finish on the other side of the body so that the dominant shoulder touches the chin.

[jmnk]

Originally Posted by supineAnimation

I don't teach the loop. Not to kids or adults. I don't think it helps when teaching the modern (millennium) forehand and I teach the modern forehand to everyone because I believe it is the best technique to learn. I just teach them to keep the off-hand in contact with the throat and always keep the racquet-head in motion, to turn their shoulders until the off-shoulder meets the chin, keep the racquet-face pointing down or semi-down, keep the wrist and grip loose and the wrist neutral, load on the dominant foot and extend the off-arm out towards the dominant side perpendicular to the hitting line, push-off with the dominant leg to begin the swing, uncoil the hips, engage the core, throw the upper body forward, let the racquet-head drop by supinating the forearm (hopefully the loose wrist will produce at least some wrist extension preceding the arm swing (stretch-shortening cycle)), pronate the forearm and elbow, and finish on the other side of the body so that the dominant shoulder touches the chin.

yah, seems easy enough. any 10 year old should get it......

[ManuGinobili]

Maybe teach her to know where the racket head is at all time? And feel it getting under the ball?
If she knows to finish above the shoulder then she should be able to complete the swing

I guess it depends on ones definition of a loop. In the venacular I'm accustomed to, a loop is any backswing where the racquet head tracks in an up/down/up manner on the verticle plane.(this movement can be quite subtle or substantial) As opposed to a straight down/back move to an arbitrary point (static) before the forward swing.

If this is the definition, than yes, some renditon of a loop should be learned.

[Nellie]

With a kid, try holding out your racquet next to her side. Have her practice a few shadow swings taking her racquet back over your raquet and then swinging under your racquet to hit the ball. Than do some drop feeds while keeping your racquet there.

Then have her move a couple of steps away and give her some more more drop feeds while you are holding your racquet in the same place so the kid has to move to get into the position and do the loop around your racquet.

I think having your racquet gives them a helpful visual cue.

[charliefedererer]

At about 5 minutes into this video, Pat Dougherty, "the serve docor" at the Bolletieri Acadamy, makes a very important teaching point:

"A student needs to be placed in a foreign environment to break a bad habit."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjXJG...eature=related

In this video, he brings his students with serve defects to the back fence and has them swing into the fence to relearn a proper stroke pattern.
The second stage is then to serve into the fence from about 15 feet away.

At 5 minutes into the tape he explains why it is so important to have them practice serving into the fence to work on their mechanics before proceeding to the court.
He states that if he takes them to the court right away, and has them stand in the usual place on the baseline to serve that they inevitably revert immediately back to the wrong technique. It's as if our brain takes out the serving technique "program" once placed back into the same environment in which we were using the usual, but wrong technique.

Now I know you are asking about a correction of a forehand flaw, but I would invite you to be clever enough to use this "away from the court" approach for other problems your students are having.

Stealing "The Roll Model" technique from Doug King on tennisone.com may help your student experience the feeling of hitting a proper topspin forehand by atually feeling the tactile sensation in her hand of what it feels like, and visually seeing how it works. He uses one of those 3 feet in diameter exercise balls, and has his student slowly hit up and over the ball, first contacting it near the midpoint of the back of the ball, and rolling the ball forward by brushing the the racquet up and over the top of the ball. (If you have access to this website, I would modify the technique of rolling the ball to doing it exactly like you should be hitting a topsin forehand.)

Now using the Dougherty dictum of not proceeding directly to the tennis court, I would as a second step suggest having your student "roll" some tennis balls at the fence from just a dropped ball rather than a feed. She needs to get the feel of rolling that ball by continuing to bring her racquet up. Next you may try feeding her some balls to hit into the fence.
Only then, could you venture onto the court and feed her balls and not expect her to immediately go back to her former tendency to slice the ball.

But as Pat says, often it will take several trips back to the fence to engrain the new technique enough that the player will start to use it on the court.

I hope this helps.

[Oldracquet27]

Originally Posted by supineAnimation

I don't teach the loop. Not to kids or adults. I don't think it helps when teaching the modern (millennium) forehand and I teach the modern forehand to everyone because I believe it is the best technique to learn. I just teach them to keep the off-hand in contact with the throat and always keep the racquet-head in motion, to turn their shoulders until the off-shoulder meets the chin, keep the racquet-face pointing down or semi-down, keep the wrist and grip loose and the wrist neutral, load on the dominant foot and extend the off-arm out towards the dominant side perpendicular to the hitting line, push-off with the dominant leg to begin the swing, uncoil the hips, engage the core, throw the upper body forward, let the racquet-head drop by supinating the forearm (hopefully the loose wrist will produce at least some wrist extension preceding the arm swing (stretch-shortening cycle)), pronate the forearm and elbow, and finish on the other side of the body so that the dominant shoulder touches the chin.

It looks so easy and interesting that i could not even finish reading the whole post!!!!!!! I think the beauty of teaching is find a simple way to make people understand or get what you intend, is like a magical thing,.

[Bungalo Bill]

Originally Posted by eeytennis

i am pretty new to teaching tennis but i have played for years competitively (USTA, college, etc.). i have one student who is almost 10 and has a ton of potential, she loves the game and she's a very hard worker. One problem i am having though is on her forehand. i want her to have a loop when she hits, and the does fine with the loop, except when she makes contact she swings sort of down on the ball "slashing" it and hitting a ton of backspin.

i have tried to tell her to "loop, drop, and drive" but it's just not clicking...any words of advice??

Hey, welcome to the tennis teaching world. A great way to teach students the forehand is to follow what I use in teaching the forehand. It is real simple and it will help them develop that forehand shot used today and it is easy to manage for yourself.

I call it the "pat-the-dog-on-the-head: technique. I also teach the onehander and twohander smile pattern which you can also find on this site through a search.

Dont worry, I didnt make it up, I used to teach at Vic Bradens tennis college and a few of us once it closed at Coto moved on in the S. Cal area to improve on his methods while incorporating other methods. We took the best of the best and simply used it. Over time, as we learned more and more, we honed in the technique till one day one of the coaches who was teaching a student said "just pretend you are patting a dog on the head" and the kid instantly got it and the words stuck.