Forehand Help - Please

[Cullin Kin]

Hello,

So lately, I don't know what has happened. My forehand has basically taken a dump and my competition can see it... It's not hard for a 5.0 or 5.5 to pick out a lack of confidence and consistency in a stroke and exploit it, thus I have been on the defense a lot lately in matches.

I mean, my backhand, serve, volley, approach, are all fine so I have plenty of weapons, but it's pretty hard to avoid hitting a forehand when an opponent keeps dumping it in the deuce corner of the court because they know you're struggling and you're right handed.

Plus, you shouldn't be afraid to hit a forehand, it should be a weapon!

I've just lost all consistency on that one shot and I basically either dump it into the net, or spray it long every 3rd or 4th ball. I've attached some video's of me hitting with the ball machine... I've been hitting forehands for 3 days straight now and my hand is starting to get torn up (as indicated by the photo below). I realize some of the issues come from that, and some come from a lack of footwork (hitting off the back foot and not moving forward), but I would really appreciate some critiques on the mechanics of my forehand and where that might be causing issues.

Here is my torn up hand from practicing my forehand extensively the past few days:

Here are some videos:

Excuse my negativity at times, it's a combination of being tired and frustration.

Thank you for any help you might provide!

Cullin Kin

 

[dgold44]

Your hand looks like Nadal at a Grand slam.. ouch.. The one one your lower palm heel most really suck big time. You need to take about 10 days off to heal. It will not heal up if you keep on the machine.

First your feet are moving all over the place. You need to plant both feet on the ground and push off the back foot. That is how I was taught.
Second, you may want to drop the racket head more so that the head tip points a tad more down. This will enable you to roll the ball and get more spin.
Third, it does not appear you are extending your elbow enough on the shot. Looks like you are just whipping it around and not extending out then wrapping around.

I am no Pete Sampras but just my 2 cents.

By God lay off the tennis for about 10 days your hand looks bad.
Sure others will chime in soon.

 

[Cullin Kin]

Your hand looks like Nadal at a Grand slam.. ouch.. The one one your lower palm heel most really suck big time. You need to take about 10 days off to heal. It will not heal up if you keep on the machine.

First your feet are moving all over the place. You need to plant both feet on the ground and push off the back foot. That is how I was taught.
Second, you may want to drop the racket head more so that the head tip points a tad more down. This will enable you to roll the ball and get more spin.
Third, it does not appear you are extending your elbow enough on the shot. Looks like you are just whipping it around and not extending out then wrapping around.

I am no Pete Sampras but just my 2 cents.

By God lay off the tennis for about 10 days your hand looks bad.
Sure others will chime in soon.

Thanks for the reply! Ha ha, yeah it looks pretty bad huh? Luckily I'm going on a road trip for 4 days. Unfortunately though, team tryouts are next week at my school and I must reprise my roll as #1 singles.

I had a feeling a lot of it had to do with footwork. I must have just gotten lazy the past few days. What do you mean about the elbow?

A weird thing is that when I really go and attack the ball and hit an inside-out forehand DTL or CC, it's beautiful... But then I have the hardest time being consistent with normal balls in a rally. I mean I'll hit 10 gorgeous forehands exactly where I want them, then 11 flies 5ft long and 12 dumps into the net.

 

[Cowboyardee]

If any one thing jumps out at me, it's probably lazy footwork. If you don't set up well, you lose consistency - I'm sure you know this.

But it leaves me wondering if the ball machine might actually be counterproductive. Since it tends to feed you balls of roughly similar pace, depth, trajectory and placement all the time, it makes it a little too easy to skimp on your movement and preparation and just hit balls from where you stand. I would think hitting against a human partner or even against a wall might be a lot more productive towards getting back in the groove.

I'm also of the opinion that you're not doing yourself a whole lot of good by continuing to hit once you're too tired to maintain good form and preparation (assuming you're not playing a match). Judging from pics of your hand, it appear you may be doing just that. Arguably, that's just reinforcing bad habits. Work on your strokes while you still feel good and energetic and light on your feet. And if you insist on marathon practice sessions, use the later parts to work on cardio and conditioning exclusively.

 

[Chas Tennis]

Do you have a model for your forehand, an ATP player's forehand? How do your strokes compare to that player's?

The angle between a line between the two shoulders and a line between the two hips is called the separation angle. The shoulders turn back farther on the racket take back than the hips.

Djokovic uses a large energetic separation angle on his forehand when he wants to add pace. He uses too much trunk twist for me as I'm not young. In warming up, he often does not seem to use much separation angle.

The separation angle uses the stretch shorten cycles of trunk muscles to add pace.

It looked to me that your separation angle was not much or reproducible. ? But I have not looked at a model forehand for comparison or know stats for ATP forehands on how much and how often separation is used. Also, the separation angle seen in videos will depend on whether the player is warming up or trying to hit heavy pace. You can do stop-action single-frame using a DVR on TV broadcasts to see the separation angle used on forehands by ATP players.

If you hit too many balls too rapidly from your ball machine maybe you are leaving out some body motions from your practices because you get fatigued. ?

Technique Development for Tennis Stroke Production, Elliott, Reid, Crespo has descriptions of strokes with some biomechanics including the separation angle for the forehand. Available ITF Store or Kindle.

Same for the earlier book, Biomechanics of Advanced Tennis.

You say that your forehands are not consistent. To study that problem you need high speed video. To see why different impacts produce different ball trajectories requires locating the ball on the racket strings and maybe more. 30 fps, one frame every 33 milliseconds, is too slow for that racket head speed and steep upward path because the racket head moves too far between frames. 240 fps will catch the ball on the strings for nearly all impacts. You also need a fast shutter speed to adequately reduce the motion blur.

You want information like this for racket path at impact.
http://blog.tennisspeed.com/2011/05/roadmap-to-hall-of-fame-forehand-part-1.html

Djokovic video from Tennisspeed.

 

[Fxanimator1]

Your knees are practically straight throughout the entire shot. You're bringing your racquet back at shoulder height and swinging straight through, maybe try to lower your back-swing some before going forward into contact. Uncoil your shoulders sooner, right now throughout your stroke, you look all jammed up.

 

[jga111]

Literally just seen a few seconds - immediate observation;

Your unit turn looks half-baked and will affect your balance and consequently increase your chances on making an unforced error.

 

[Alien]

Knees dont flex as someone appointed above.

Also, I dont really like those drills, they seem the easiest in the world without movement at all. At least make the machine shot to the corner on your right, and oblige yourself to come back to the middle of the court before jumping to the ball. That will give you some more realistic footworking. Then of course you could program it to hit one to the right corner, one to the midleft (for you to hit inverted). And so on.

 

[Cullin Kin]

Thanks everyone. Lots of good advice coming through.

The reason the ball is being fed directly to me is because a friend made me believe that it was purely a matter of stroke mechanics. But it surely doesn't help when you don't have someone pointing out exactly where in the stroke you might be going wrong.

However, I'm starting to see it seems that I'm forcing a lot of the shot in these drills. I need to work on getting more sideways and getting my feet set. Agility ladder here we come.

I wish I had a better way of filming the whole court so you all could see exactly where these are landing. It's not really as bad as I make it sound but it's still frustrating enough and noticeable enough for opponents to pick on.

As for modeling after a pro, I've been playing for a long time and never really thought about modeling any strokes after a pro. I have no idea who I would pick.

I have an iPhone 6 so it does do some slow-mo filming. Im not sure how many fps.

 

[Cullin Kin]

Also, I almost never go behind the baseline to hit anything unless I'm really being stretched. Thus, a lot of the balls I hit are up near my shoulder and don't allow me to really bend my knees very much. Any recommendations?

 

[Alien]

That should be unrelated. Even if above shoulders we should flex, charge and then hit with your body exploding upwards. Concentrate on loading on your right leg when you do the takeback, feel the load on it (it will get tired soon) unless you assimilate it. A lot of power comes from the legs pushing.

 

[Cullin Kin]

That should be unrelated. Even if above shoulders we should flex, charge and then hit with your body exploding upwards. Concentrate on loading on your right leg when you do the takeback, feel the load on it (it will get tired soon) unless you assimilate it. A lot of power comes from the legs pushing.

Pushing into the shot, like the Djokovic video above?

 

[watungga]

You are in the middle of competition season and for that matter, there's nothing wrong with your forehand if the other guy is that ball machine.
Now, if your ball machine is capable of giving random balls, it will really open up your FH weaknesses. Preferably sliced and low and randomly angled. You, yourself, will realized those fundamental pointers you've been missing.

As for now, practice and competition are too tight for a change to happen in your forehand. So give yourself a way to practice that forehand in competition mode. Either get a partner to feed you FH balls and hit it with an objective target. Target relative to the net cord, and target relative to corner lines. If you shank the ball too often, work on your impact technique. This impact technique I have is somewhat useful when I want to reset where I was shanking the ball. I referred to the ball spherical impact zone and virtually measure distance where to put the racquet's grip handle from it. And for the ball height, I make sure my grip is at the same height as the ball. Virtually measure, is the term I used, coz during the racquet swing and impact, its all blurry to see.

 

[boramiNYC]

A little lazy fh. More extension is needed. Without it the swing arc is small and the reliability can get erratic because you are not utilizing an important piece of the kinetic chain. Watch nadal practice and see how he extends his arm and make a big arc.

 

[Enga]

Yeah, I noticed that when the machine was feeding your backhand and forehand, on the backhand side you were preparing early and it seemed like a good hit. On the forehand side, you were preparing late.

Technique-wise, trying to prepare early will help you. I also think you're swinging too much from the shoulder, not enough from your legs. As others here have mentioned, try putting more of your body into the shots. This will be easier with early prep too. You might also try aiming a bit higher over the net. Your forehand has decent topspin, so it should dip down nicely.

 

[Jay2014]

Just my 2 cents but I would echo the footwork advice. You appear to have a Western or at least an extreme semi-Western grip is that right? If so, unless you are coming onto a short ball, this should be an open or at least semi-open stance. 80%+ of your forehands you are side on or stepping in with your left leg. Sure there is minimal knee bend and its a bit lazy but that is easy to fix when you're less tired! You should be hitting that shot by loading onto that back leg in an open position and then using the body turn and unleashing the core to produce the power. Stepping in is completely messing up your kinetic chain. The few times you do hit open, you are not set in position and you have a few catch up steps after youve made contact. Plant that back foot, load up on it and unleash that killer Western spin! Post another video and if it works, ill send you a bill ;-) Seriously though thanks for posting, we can all learn from seeing each other's videos.

 

[Fxanimator1]

I also noticed, your elbow is tucked into your body when you reach your "load" position, which is part of what I was writing before about being, "all bunched up".

 

[Vanhalen]

You have a MTM swing without going low to high. Looks like very little topspin is generated. Thus little room for error.

 

[Cullin Kin]

Once again, thanks for all of the great advice everyone!

Yeah, I noticed that when the machine was feeding your backhand and forehand, on the backhand side you were preparing early and it seemed like a good hit. On the forehand side, you were preparing late.

Technique-wise, trying to prepare early will help you. I also think you're swinging too much from the shoulder, not enough from your legs. As others here have mentioned, try putting more of your body into the shots. This will be easier with early prep too. You might also try aiming a bit higher over the net. Your forehand has decent topspin, so it should dip down nicely.

Yeah, my backhand feels great, solid and much more compact. I wish my forehand was the same but we all developer little quarks.

Just my 2 cents but I would echo the footwork advice. You appear to have a Western or at least an extreme semi-Western grip is that right? If so, unless you are coming onto a short ball, this should be an open or at least semi-open stance. 80%+ of your forehands you are side on or stepping in with your left leg. Sure there is minimal knee bend and its a bit lazy but that is easy to fix when you're less tired! You should be hitting that shot by loading onto that back leg in an open position and then using the body turn and unleashing the core to produce the power. Stepping in is completely messing up your kinetic chain. The few times you do hit open, you are not set in position and you have a few catch up steps after youve made contact. Plant that back foot, load up on it and unleash that killer Western spin! Post another video and if it works, ill send you a bill ;-) Seriously though thanks for posting, we can all learn from seeing each other's videos.

On a good day... Semi-western. On a bad day... Western lol. Thanks for the positive post! I've always been nervous to try open stance because I was taught by a traditional coach who hated open-stance. However, it seems that almost all players are doing it now, so there must be something to it.

 

[Mack-2]

A little lazy fh. More extension is needed. Without it the swing arc is small and the reliability can get erratic because you are not utilizing an important piece of the kinetic chain. Watch nadal practice and see how he extends his arm and make a big arc.

Just trying to understand what you mean by 'extension'. Do you mean extending his arm in the backswing after he turns his shoulders or extending outwards AFTER he makes contact with the ball?

 

[LeeD]

OP has a good forehand, not very powerful, so he might be pushing to add power using his technique of extremely bent elbows, not quite 135 degrees.
Loss of leverage is the first problem, leading to lack of power. Inconsistency might slip in, as sharply bent elbows might vary in angle on different occasions.
Not saying a straight armed forehand is the cure, but straightER arm would lead to more power, more easy power, and more consistency.

 

[ho]

OP has a good forehand, not very powerful, .

Mr Lee, are you sure you know anything about forehand ?

 

[LeeD]

Sure? NO, but neither can anyone else claim they are the expert.
Simple fact. Longer levels provide more power, right?
Simple fact, a more bent elbow on the forehand, or any stroke, can lead to changes in elbow angle, right?
Now you will cite thousands of cases of WTA forehand hit with extremely bent elbows, right?
And a few ATP forehands also.
Few are nearly as bent as OP's elbows.
The more bent the elbow, not only insuring less leverage for less power, but also adding the complication of not being able to duplicate the same elbow bend on every forehand!
Think about it.

 

[user92626]

Djokovic video from Tennisspeed.

Whatever you guys say, one thing for sure that pros do but the recreationals don't is a very large back swing extension. This video shows that.

The OP lacks this.

Question for you guys. Would a racket on the heavy side be better for a large back swing? or a light side racket?

 

[boramiNYC]

Just trying to understand what you mean by 'extension'. Do you mean extending his arm in the backswing after he turns his shoulders or extending outwards AFTER he makes contact with the ball?

You can do extension way early like djokovic and maintain it or make it more snappy like nadal or fed. For OP, who likes to swing pretty flat across, djokovic would be a great model.

Extension after the hit would be useless.

 

[ho]

Think about it.

The more I read you the more I think you should retire, Mr Lee
The boy have made any mistakes possible that a novice can make. His forehand defy any law of physic, common senses. There are so many fundamental that he forgot when he just pick up the racket (that probably why his hand is so mess up). It's so fundamental that there is no way that he can recover even after 6 months of repractice. Bad habit have get into his system. Even a good tennis instructor on his side will have problem correct him in a short period of time.

 

[LeeD]

Interesting post, Mr. Ho, of 619 posts.
Do you hit your forehand much better than he does? He's 4.0, or slightly better. Are you?
Yes, his wrist lags and then needs to catch up. Yes, his elbow is waaay bent. Yes, he flicks his racket at the ball.
So, you can criticize, but you come with with absolutely nothing positive? He's probably a better player than you and I.

 

[LeeD]

We might criticize his extremely short backswing, but Matt Lin posted a vid of a 5.0 level player with exactly that same short backswing, little power, but much more consistency. Matt's example was of an older, bigger player.

 

[ho]

Interesting post, Mr. Ho, of 619 posts.
Do you hit your forehand much better than he does? He's 4.0, or slightly better. Are you?
Yes, his wrist lags and then needs to catch up. Yes, his elbow is waaay bent. Yes, he flicks his racket at the ball.
So, you can criticize, but you come with with absolutely nothing positive? He's probably a better player than you and I.

This is the definition of a 4.0 forehand:" hit 10 times a forehand consistently in with moderate speed. "
It show that you really need to retire. he is 5.0 in his world.
a college player may reach to 5.0 if he is about 5.5 he can start joining the tour.

 

[Mack-2]

You can do extension way early like djokovic and maintain it or make it more snappy like nadal or fed. For OP, who likes to swing pretty flat across, djokovic would be a great model.

Extension after the hit would be useless.

I agree. So you're saying he needs to drop the racket lower (extend) after the shoulder turn? Or as Rick Macci would say, 'tap the dog'?

 

[Chas Tennis]

If a high speed video shows exactly what is going on and its timing, why translate it back into words and risk getting it wrong?

 

[boramiNYC]

I agree. So you're saying he needs to drop the racket lower (extend) after the shoulder turn? Or as Rick Macci would say, 'tap the dog'?

If he can extend his arm more by pressing his heelpad away from the shoulder it'd be an improvement. But not necessarily drop esp for someone who swings very flat.

 

[Cullin Kin]

We might criticize his extremely short backswing, but Matt Lin posted a vid of a 5.0 level player with exactly that same short backswing, little power, but much more consistency. Matt's example was of an older, bigger player.

Thanks Lee, I appreciate the posts. Keep in mind in these videos I'm coming off of 15 hours of tennis in 3 days, and I recently changed grip sizes down from 4.5 to 4.375 (thus the blisters). Fatigue and pain were rampant.

I play 5.0 tennis and regularly play open level tournaments (lost the last one in the final) :/. Since then it just seems my forehand has been getting progressively worse.

But wait, there's even more to the story. I was playing around with weighting my racquet, and put a full 1 ¼ oz in the racquet after the tournament because I wanted more power. Low and behold, that started destroying my arm (cause the weights weren't fully secure?). So the videos are actually my first day after removing the weights once again.

I know, a lot of changes in one week... And they definitely account for a bunch of the mechanical errors, but not all of them.

 

[Cullin Kin]

Can anyone tell me how to edit your own posts? I don't see the option anywhere...

 

[LeeD]

I can tell you are advanced, or more advanced than most of the guys critizising your forehand.
Don't take my "4.0+" rating too much. I'm a low 4.0 now, but used to play A/Opens and mostly went more than 2 rounds, so the strokes are easy 4.5, the movement, my movement, barely 3.0.

 

[Cullin Kin]

I can tell you are advanced, or more advanced than most of the guys critizising your forehand.
Don't take my "4.0+" rating too much. I'm a low 4.0 now, but used to play A/Opens and mostly went more than 2 rounds, so the strokes are easy 4.5, the movement, my movement, barely 3.0.

Well I appreciate the kind words as I can tell you are a big presence on this forum and definitely know your stuff. So thank you for taking the time to comment.

Yeah, I expected there to be a slew of criticism, but as always with forums... Have to sort through the bad and find the good.

There's a lot of advice in here that I had no idea I would even receive, which I am grateful for as it will give me plenty to practice for the off season.

I have tryouts next week, the Ned Cooney Open next weekend, then the real prep begins... The Colorado State Open is September 18-27 and is always a blast. I need to have my forehand worked out by then.

 

[Chas Tennis]

Can anyone tell me how to edit your own posts? I don't see the option anywhere...

In the old forum software - changed over about a month or two ago - a new poster could not edit until after they had posted 50 posts. After 50 posts 'edit' would appear automatically.

You have 80 posts, New forum issue ??

Contact Admin.....

 

[Mack-2]

If he can extend his arm more by pressing his heelpad away from the shoulder it'd be an improvement. But not necessarily drop esp for someone who swings very flat.

Ahh! I get what you're saying now! Makes a lot of sense.

 

[Cullin Kin]

In the old forum software - changed over about a month or two ago - a new poster could not edit until after they had posted 50 posts. After 50 posts 'edit' would appear automatically.

You have 80 posts, New forum issue ??

Contact Admin.....

Thank you. Yeah, I'm on another forum that uses the same software and the edit link is right near the quote and like links.

 

[Chas Tennis]

Thank you. Yeah, I'm on another forum that uses the same software and the edit link is right near the quote and like links.

'Edit' appears on top, just to left of "Report"

The thread number on the bottom of the post seems out of place to me.

Overall, the new system seems much better, especially the videos showing a frame.

I'm not sure yet about the number of finds it produces when you search, maybe less than the other software. ?