10isfreak
Semi-Pro
Many of you might have encountered the tennisspeed blog. In there, we do not get served the usual beliefs we hear during all too many lessons... we are greated with hard science, with a big pile of evidence and repports that overviews some beliefs regarding tennis. The question is whether they are accurate in part, as a whole or if they are simply wrong.
I will just give you 3 key elements that he overviewed among others.
Your swing path prior contact mostly controls the ball's launching angle -- i.e., ceteris paribus, the more vertical your swing path, the higher the ball flies before starting to fall. As you can read, it's not the most determining factor in generating top spin.
The racket head is not perfectly vertical at contact, but is ideally tilted forward. Why? Because spin is about accelerating the edge of the ball and most of your energy is directed forward... so, trying to accelerate the upper edge of the ball should, in principle, capitalize on a lot of energy compared to trying to accelerate upward the edge that is behind the ball.
There is a direct relationship between spin production and how low the ball makes contact with the string bed. The racket is nearly horizontal during ground strokes, so low actually means near the side which is closest to the ground, not near the throat -- just to clear up the potential confusion. A low contact ensures the highest spin/pace ratio (that is, you get more spin, less pace this way).
Theoretical material and concepts are not purely useless, abstract things... If you actually know what pros do and how they do it, you're one step closer to doing it yourself: you just need to figure out how to incorporate these into your swing. From that point and on, you can go on the court knowing that you have a factually valid answer that is guaranteed to yield results. AND YOU GOT IT FOR FREE!
I will just give you 3 key elements that he overviewed among others.
Your swing path prior contact mostly controls the ball's launching angle -- i.e., ceteris paribus, the more vertical your swing path, the higher the ball flies before starting to fall. As you can read, it's not the most determining factor in generating top spin.
The racket head is not perfectly vertical at contact, but is ideally tilted forward. Why? Because spin is about accelerating the edge of the ball and most of your energy is directed forward... so, trying to accelerate the upper edge of the ball should, in principle, capitalize on a lot of energy compared to trying to accelerate upward the edge that is behind the ball.
There is a direct relationship between spin production and how low the ball makes contact with the string bed. The racket is nearly horizontal during ground strokes, so low actually means near the side which is closest to the ground, not near the throat -- just to clear up the potential confusion. A low contact ensures the highest spin/pace ratio (that is, you get more spin, less pace this way).
Theoretical material and concepts are not purely useless, abstract things... If you actually know what pros do and how they do it, you're one step closer to doing it yourself: you just need to figure out how to incorporate these into your swing. From that point and on, you can go on the court knowing that you have a factually valid answer that is guaranteed to yield results. AND YOU GOT IT FOR FREE!
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