my FH to analysis, please

i´ve videotaped myself two days ago.
the first intention was to send the video to jeff of hitechtennis.com
they are several forehands edited in one video.
i play since february2005. i didn´t played when i was a kid.
i take lessons 1 day per week and play 2/3 matches in a week (tournaments 60% friendly 40%)
i´ve already saw the errors thanks to the video. my FH changed on the last month thanks to de hitechtennis.com instruction. hope it get better!!!

thanks in advance!!!!!!

http://www.sendspace.com/file/9vh2hl

edited: i´ve uploaded it at youtube too. see details forward

you have pretty much all the fundamentals right

id like to see you rotate to contact rather then swing your arm to the ball and also try to avoid locking your elbow to your body post contact, try to move it up and away, you do it sometimes just not consistantly enough

thanks a lot solat.
i saw exactly what you said. i know got to work hard on my FH. the contact it´s late, i got to make a lot more torso/shoulder rotation. and the elbow close to my body i think it´s beacause i´m nearer to the ball that i should be.

i´ve uploaded it at youtube cause i figured out it´s easier to you all to watch it and thats what i need: your opinions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vok_KGZOd7w

Youtube doesn't work because you made it private.

I get the error:

This is a private video. If you have been sent this video, please make sure you accept the sender's friend request.

sorry, i thought that if i simply paste the link you could see it.
(and it doesn´t appear by searches)

now, i think it´s done well.

thanks!

Pretty good. Your wrist is breaking too early though and you seem to be late occassionally. In other words, your "arming" the ball - slinging the racquet from the arm and wrist. Try firming up your grip/wrist and swinging more from your shoulders. You will have more power if you don't break your wrist so early and that should help with your timing. You will have timing problems indefinitely if you don't change that, especially as the pace, spin, surface, etc vary. Fix the wrist, drive though with the hips/shoulders, and don't break the wrist until the racquet is in front of you. You are very close!

Adding: [wrist breaking] I don't have a video editor here, but if you will look closely as you make contact near 33 seconds (not the youtube link) you will see what I'm talking about. You begin correctly with the wrist laid back, but as you make contact, the angle of your forearm to the racquet opens up and the racquet gets way out in front. This will give you more power when you time it just right, but in the long run you will struggle to hit cleanly and drive the ball with consistent pace and depth. It will also cause you wrist problems if you don't already have them!

thanks a lot thomas!
i can see clearly what you mean.
its hard to me to continue with the racket face parallel to the net more time like described on hitechtennis.com
i think fixing it that way i could hit like you said.

I agree with what solat said about the rotation. Remember, it takes less energy to get pace via rotating then to get pace via muscling the ball.
Other than that, it looks really good.

the biggest thing I see is no shoulder rotation for power. You are rotating your shoulders right but not using them at all it seems. I like the closed stance although closed stance from baseline take away power in my opinion due to lack of hip rotation support. Try natural to open stance for more power if you can.

The biggest thing I see is your wrist is laid back on your take back. You should have that wrist straight and use it as a loose lever then whip the racket forward by pulling. Your pull should not be by your arm but rather by your shoulders and hips driving the butt cap towards the ball as a result. You are arming the ball right now in a way yes.

Take notice on your racket being very open on your take back (close the face down). By closing the face down you can now focus on low to high (which I see you don't have enough of) and really focus on the sweet spot of your racket. Have your wrist guide your stroke to the sweet spot of your racket. Your arm is the end result rather than the muscle driven event. Everything comes from inner to outer rotation especially from the hips.

Timing is everything and lots of practice (effectively) will help your timing and footwork.
I really seem to like how you move into the shot. Very effective and nicely done here.

Good Luck and I hope this helped you out.

He is swinging his arm so fast b/c his wrist is breaking. Otherwise, he would have very little power. Yes, like Solat said, let the elbow go high and forward through/after contact. Don't keep it attached to your waist. You do this just about right on the first shot in the non-youtube video. The very next shot you keep the elbow in. Fix the wrist and be sure to let the elbow go up and across your body naturally, instead of holding it in. Your forehand looks exactly like mine did about a year ago. I have a friend who's fixing the same problem as well. It takes a while to correct it (muscle memory), but your consistency will increase dramatically. Since you'll fix the wrist at the same time, you should see a huge difference in 2-6 months.

most people that do funny thing with their elbows seem to have a more western grip. Give them a low ball and they're in trouble. Those types of players are beat every time and tend to get injured more. Like Nadal will most likely get injuries coming up mark my words due to his grip and style of play which exerts much energy and puts lots of strain on his forearm muscles.

He is swinging his arm so fast b/c his wrist is breaking.

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His wrist is breaking because he's using his arm more rather than proper rotation and pull to the ball with the body.

let the elbow go high and forward through/after contact. Don't keep it attached to your waist.

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Don't focus on what your elbow is doing nor style of the stroke.
Focus on the basic fundamentals.

I looked at your video again... don't worry too much about the take back. Your take back has too much information.

Stress more on closing that racket face and going from low to high. Notice your wrist is laid back before your take back. Focus on keeping it in natural form kinda straight but loose. When you keep yourself really loose like fed in the above video, you will pull to the ball nicely. Rotate your shoulders into the shot, step in (you're doing this very effectively y the way) and drive the pull. Focus on hitting the sweetspot every time. Keep yourself loose bud. Thanks for sharing.

I don't think I'm dling anything from that site as it looks extremely sketchy.

Hmm. You have an odd backswing, a little too wristy. You move you legs to much while following through. Mty coach tought me to treat that as a bad habit. And your strokes are a little slow, but otherwise their great!

thanks all for your time & your comments.
i got to work hard on hit "with my shoulders" instead w/my arm. and the elbow thing.
bigbubba, thanks too. it´s all bad, but it´s great??? heheh, thanks.
ten_is: what do u mean about the take back? do you think it´s ok?
i think i must put the racket face facing more the back fence

Solat said:

you have pretty much all the fundamentals right

id like to see you rotate to contact rather then swing your arm to the ball and also try to avoid locking your elbow to your body post contact, try to move it up and away, you do it sometimes just not consistantly enough

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solat. i´ve just seen your video on this forum. i appreciate so much your time to see mine and your comments, much more after watch your video: you have great tennis skills!!!! thanks. good job.

There a a few things, but one glaring thing I see almost on every shot is a late contact point. The ball is almost at your body at contact point. This causes a lot of other issues with the stroke.

When you are that late, your structure has to, of neccessity, collapse in places to make up, since you can't stretch out your structure fully. Sometimes you compensate in the elbows, the shoulders, the wrist, so it is always a little inconsitent stroke after stroke.

As others noticed, you are moving your feet at contact and followthrough a lot, and not staying down with the ball, but rather, allowing a lot of body and leg motion to occur. And these extra motions, are not the same stroke after stroke.

You have a lot of good things going for you here, you just need to start to become aware of that contact point and your balance while hitting. That alone, will likey fix many of the things others have mentioned.

thank smoothtennis.
i sent my video to jeff (hitechtennis) for his analysis too.
and the first thing he said is that: late contact point

any tips to fix it???

Beware !

my firewall warns of the linked site which sends a spy program !

polea said:

thank smoothtennis.
i sent my video to jeff (hitechtennis) for his analysis too.
and the first thing he said is that: late contact point

any tips to fix it???

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Hey cool, good to get a double confirmation on something like that, we all see different things.

How to fix a late contact point....ok, I won't kid you, that is hard work. You are so used to seeing it that way that your brain fires late, and it seems quite natural to hit late now.

I hit late on my forehand for years, and it has taken me personally, more than six months to get my contact point on my forehand out to where it needs to be.

I am not the best person to coach you on how to fix this *particular* issue. I see tecnique well in others, and can point out many things by watching, but fixing those things can be tricky for me.

How I worked on mine was trying as hard as I could to hit out front in slow practice with my partner, working specifically on this. I had him feed be balls up close, and watch me hit them over the net, and he would tell me what he saw each stroke. So you need someone that can watch you too, and know what they are looking for as well, LOL.

The best thing that helped me, was to get to a wall, and learn to hit out so that at contact with the ball, there was not muscle tightness at all. This was a 'feeling' and it took a while, but I started feeling how out front and relaxed my frame was, and how the ball would really sping off my strings with power. Then after I could do this a while consitently, I would hit late on purpose to see what that was like again.

Hitting late, caused muscle tension number one. If your joints are not lined up for optimum structure, your muscles and joints must take more of the load, hense, muscle involvement/tightness.

Hitting late caused my physcial body structure, to have to collapse somewhere because my frame was less than optimally stretched out.

In my case, I was trying to hit with too much emphasis on topspin, also causing me to not go forward as much, so I began to minimise topspin for a while. I changed my grip to Eastern for more drive through the ball with less topspin, and then slowly added semi-western grip back in, in the proper contact zone. What a HUGE difference!

Hitting late, also caused me to 'explode' my stroke or jerk it at the last minute.

Hitting late caused me have many balls fly long, because when I hit late, I never got the right spin into the ball.

So, many factors there as you can see. I hope you see how, a late contact zone can cause so many different problems, that trying to fix each of those problems without fixing the hitting zone, is futile, not to mention, very discouraging!

What we are really talking about here is 'timing'.

I wish you the best of luck. Go get a pro to help you work on this, it is SOOOO worth it.

awesome post smoothtennis!!!!!!

i got a lot work to do, but its a great objective.

the "hitting late" is worst in my tournaments matches. the video is in a lesson with my coach, where i feel much more relaxed, so imagine!!!!
in tournaments i hit late and with lesser power 60% of the time
so i got to WORK!!!!

thanks

polea said:

awesome post smoothtennis!!!!!!

i got a lot work to do, but its a great objective.

the "hitting late" is worst in my tournaments matches. the video is in a lesson with my coach, where i feel much more relaxed, so imagine!!!!
in tournaments i hit late and with lesser power 60% of the time
so i got to WORK!!!!

thanks

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A very good observation!

Think about it in light of what we have discussed. Hitting late involves more muscle than hitting out front. In a tournament, where nerves are usually higher, what gets tight? Muscles! So they don't accelerate or flow as smoothly, and it becomes a cycle, where you get tighter, and hit even later, involving yet MORE MUSCLE, which cause more technical breakdown.

Yes, you have to find that relaxed easy contact point in practice under no stress, so you learn well what it *feels* like, until you can feel when it goes south in a match. Start simplifying your strokes (less take back, less loop), so that you can concentrate on that perfect comfortable contact point. Essentially, you want to focus as much attention as you can onto that ball, and off your technique during a match. This is hard to do, but a neccessity to get better.

Hey, I tightened up so bad in a recent tourney, that is was gross. But I love it, because I am learning from that. I have another tourney this weekend, and I can't wait to get there, and see if I feel tight, and respond with some better focus on the ball, and not the opponent. We are all growing here I hope....

Hmmm... that looks almost like my forehand.

thanks again smoothtenis!!!
good luck in your next match.

i just arrived from a tournament match. i won, but i felt that my FH and my strokes are far away in the match of the technique i conquered in this 2 years, hahaha. always happen to me.
i got to concentrate much more on the ball. when i was up in the score i began to hit better and focus on the shoulder rotation. obviously it worked fine!!!
i got to make it work all the time.

mrHan: a positive thing: you can use all the great advice in this post!!!

polea, i agree with everyone else that your hitting late. by the way this is also causing you to arm the ball and messing up your footwork patterns as well...you could see that you are stepping across the shot and throwing that right foot forward too much to compensate for the contact

Crowding home plate too much.

Jay27 said:

Crowding home plate too much.

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excuse me. what do you mean?
my english is not brilliant but i understood all other posts.
thanks.

ten_is: what do u mean about the take back? do you think it´s ok?
i think i must put the racket face facing more the back fence

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What I mean is you have your wrist at 90 degrees waaaay to early. Even before the take back. What you want to do is keep it in a neutral position at the beginning, and pull to the ball. When you're pulling, that's when your wrist moves into 90 degrees and your butt cap is facing the net.

True about your hitting zone. You're hitting too late except the first few. And your legs are moving around too much as well, good points.

Oh yeah, Polea one other important thing bro. Get back off that baseline!

You need to be back further and make sure the ball is in your striking 'hight' zone as well, this will help. The ball is all over you when you are on the baseline, and it is playing you, rather than you playing it.

It will help, believe me.

Watch your vid again, and see how shot after shot, you creep closer and closer, even into no mans land on some shots, and you are taking them above your waist. You can make it a lot easier on yourself.

If he hits you a short ball, move your hiney up fast and hit it, and close to net, or get back, don't stay there. If you are scared of the net, get over it, because you need it if you want to improve year after year. (just a side note...)

Rock-N-Roll!

Some things mentioned before. The lateness and no shoulder turn. One other thing is the excessive topspin motion for a beginner. Those 3 things combined give you lack of power and short balls. Is that the case?

You need to flatten out your stroke, and extend thru the contact zone. You should still have enough margin for error. Once you fix these things, then you can keep your swing speed the same, and add more topspin.

Saw this on youtube. Interesting.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8uWe31Vuqi8&mode=related&search=