ballmachineguy
Hall of Fame
If your weight is moving forward while the racquet is moving to contact, the ball will go slower.
Mouratoglou: straight arm is the ideal position for the FH
- Thread starter Jonesy
- Start date
Then it's really funny, but not the way you'd like
travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
No. that’s not how physics works. If your weight is moving forward in the court frame of reference, and the racquet is moving forward in your body frame of reference, then the racquet will be moving faster, and it will have more forward momentum, and so more momentum will be transferred into the ball, and the ball will go faster. It’s why Sam Groth jumps forward into the court faster than anyone else on his serve, so that he can hit 163mph.
Curious
G.O.A.T.
And he weighs quite a bit.
I agree weight transfer seems to help on the serve. Have doubts the same applies to groundstrokes though. Rotation at a stationary axis seems to work perfectly well there.
Look at the GOAT. He doesn’t seem to weight transfer even with his neutral/closed stance groundstrokes. It’s a different story when he crushes short balls or hits approach shots.
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Dragy
Legend
It’s actually body alignment, setting up in a way to orient leg drive in a proper direction. If Sam had to serve from twice as far from the net and send the ball more horizontal or slightly upward, he wouldn’t lean over the line so much. Now from where he serves, being a big guy with solid lift and high contact point, there’s optimal geometry to the swing (release of ESR stretch into ISR to blast the ball and make it go as intended).
ballmachineguy
Hall of Fame
It is how physics with a forehand works. If you stand relaxed with your arms out to the side and lunge forward, your arms go backward. Who wants a force that slows the racquet to contact? Plus, the rotation aspect already mentioned.
In addition, it would add one more variable to creating clean contact.
onehandbh
G.O.A.T.
If The Rock was a good tennis player, returning his serve would feel like hitting a boulder.
optic yellow
Legend
que?
I was just suggesting you fill in the blanks for all the ignorant people since it is low effort to explain simple things when they are well understood.
travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
Standing relaxed with arms out to the side and lunging forward is not the recommended technique. Trust me, from my personal experience it doesn’t work well.
optic yellow
Legend
The arm doesn't go backwards any more than you want it to if the chest muscles engage to hold it and they can engage to hold it while still satisfying the overall condition of relaxation.
Does anyone hit forehands with a relaxed arm? Weight transfer is a terrible term. Just one thing, what happens if you try to swing a forehand regular speed stading with your knees on a revolving office chair (no ground up at all)?
If there are blanks it is because it is not simple or low effort to teach. At least for those people.
ballmachineguy
Hall of Fame
I'm just making the point that if your body weight is moving forward through the stroke it makes it harder to bring the racquet to contact. The velocity of the ball will be less.
Now, if you were trying to hit the ball with your chest, you’d want your body to be moving forward.
ballmachineguy
Hall of Fame
Idk. Maybe get fired for goofing around at work.
I do not know where that assumption comes from.
I understand your point that if I try to move my body forward with the a relaxed arm this one lags behind, but in a swing it won't be relaxed. And if it was, it is to start pulling after being stretched and lagging behind the body. BTW I remember that fast fibres work better when stretched (might be mistaken here). But this is meaningless. You can generate a maximum acceleration (muscle power is somewhat constant) of the arm with the hand. If part of that acceleration is produced from the legs, core... then the arm would not reach the same acceleration, but it adds from the one generated from the other parts of the body.
Power does not come from the legs. The ability to generate power (more accurately, reliable power) comes from a good support from the legs that ensures stability and balance to perform the swing.
That'd be fun. You already know if you do that experiment, you will spin around your body axis, and the RHS generated will be minimum. That is angular momentum conservation, and to counteract it you need your legs pushing ground up. The so-called "weight transfer" is about pushing with the hitting side leg towards non-hitting side leg. There is no visible movement there needed, 'cause that "push" is invested in supporting the swing. The linear and angular momentum of the swing is transferred to the ground. Or, explained the other way around, the legs take some angular momentum from the ground to support the action of the swing and keep balance along.
It's a simple,forehand straight arm gives more power and clean shot,but forehand bend arm gives more control and less errors.
I think that ideal postion for forehand it doesn't exist because if I want to hit flat ball is better will be straight arm,but if I want to hit top spin ball is better will be bend arm.
For one, a bent arm is perfect, for another, a straight arm is best.
I saw Medvedev and his bent arm, and I think he couldn't play with a straight hand, because that's more in his head.
Every athlete is different, and imposing one forehand style on them misses the point.
The ideal position is one in which the player feels comfortable,if you like to hide the racquet close to the neck like Medvedev, or like Nadal to hide it high above the head, do it if it suits you.
The most important thing is to keep the body as healthy as possible and not to harm yourself, and the ideal position is usually verified by the match!!!.
optic yellow
Legend
How does this account for jumping forehands? To be clear I am not doubting anything you are saying, because I knew intuitively why you brought up the swivel chair experiment even before I tried it, just curious if you can explain because I am struggling myself.
So you mean to say that if enough people swing a tennis racquet enough times in the right direction we can change the rotation of the Earth
optic yellow
Legend
I haven't worked this logically but intuition suggests it is also dependent on individual body geometry.
Curious
G.O.A.T.
I meant that the shots often come from the character and personality of the players, one prefers to play aggressive top spins with a bent elbow on the end line, and one is more suited to hard shots from a straight arm.
You will force someone to play with a straight arm, and he will still play with a bent arm.
You could train it for a long time and it would do it automatically.
When it comes to body geometry, it's probably a straight arm if someone has a short reach, and a bent elbow if someone has a long reach.
But this is also contractual, and it depends on what suits you more!.
optic yellow
Legend
Let's go with individual geometry of the mind
zill
Legend
Look at her legs though....it's all in there.
And she gets little spacing too. Iga's FH debunks some teachings.
Curious
G.O.A.T.
Clearly shows there’s no single best/ideal way to hit a tennis ball.
ballmachineguy
Hall of Fame
Well not what Rafa has been teaching opponents for well over a decade.
ballmachineguy
Hall of Fame
Nope. The force is there whether you see it go backwards or not. It is counterproductive to getting the racquet to the ball in a hurry. Don’t you think you’d see evidence of the highest level players moving forward while hitting, if there were something be gained?
Just one of several instructions that gets thrown out there constantly that will inhibit hitting correctly.
optic yellow
Legend
As @travlerajm insinuated, no one gives instruction to take a linear lunge step when hitting a standard forehand?
travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
Of course there is video evidence.
Carlos starts his inside-out forehand with neutral stance, left foot several feet in front of right. He jumps upward and rotates, landing with both feet about even (open stance) at same distance from net where his left foot started. This means his center of gravity has moved forward by about 1.5 feet during his jump.
5263
G.O.A.T.
Well in certain cases, more bend helps you to catch up to the speed of the ball, but other than that just a med-slight bend is likely good.
ballmachineguy
Hall of Fame
We see what we want to see. I’ll let others judge for themselves.
How does this account for jumping forehands? To be clear I am not doubting anything you are saying, because I knew intuitively why you brought up the swivel chair experiment even before I tried it, just curious if you can explain because I am struggling myself.
So you mean to say that if enough people swing a tennis racquet enough times in the right direction we can change the rotation of the Earth
I was against jumping forehands while I was doing them without even knowing. Jumping is the result of a much more abrupt, powerful and sudden push from the legs (actually hitting side leg), but instead of shifting the weight from the hitting side leg towards the non hitting one, that acts as pivot point, the body gets airborne. As a result, the left (non-hitting side) leg moves backwards as there is not weight in it to serve as a pivot point.
The point is, you can "push" forward with only your weight to an extent. Further from there you would slide. To push harder (pushing is to support the acceleration in the racquet swing) forward you need to push down too.
One should not think too much about this. One just needs to think of not losing balance as a result of swinging, and the brain does everything uncounciously (or at least should). But correct positioning, timing, and stroke path and overall motion is not as intuitive.
If they do so in the same angular direction, at the same time, and they are enough*, yes, lol. (but not really, all that kinetic energy remains in the system)So you mean to say that if enough people swing a tennis racquet enough times in the right direction we can change the rotation of the Earth
enough* = quantity to be calculated lmao.
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optic yellow
Legend
Yeah this makes sense. Nick Kyrgios jumping forehands really illustrate how the bracing effect of the ground is lost. He generates good power from them, assumably because it can still serve as a "stable" base when he is expecting it, but it is funny to watch his legs behave exactly as you describe:
I agree completely with your last point. Footwork is supposed to be something understood intuitively and done without cognition. It is only when there are issues with it, such as stemming from injury, when that attention need be applied. In those cases I think it can be helpful to figure out what is being done incorrectly since that can point at sticking points in the physical recovery or unhealthy compensatory behaviors that must be unlearned.
It dissipates into space as heat energy from the exertion!
That jumping forehand is not what I wanted to ilustrate, but the regular forehand groundstroke hit from the baseline to get power. In that shots Kyrgios is jumping before supporting the swing with the legs, while in the regular "go-for-power" forehand where one gets airborne it's done as a result from the leg support. In the case of Kyrgios jumping forehand, the leg dynamics are similar as you point out. The rotation of the upper body is to some extent compensated from the rotation of the lower body in the opposite direction, so total angular is about zero.
True. Entropy always raising.
optic yellow
Legend
Oh right it's basically just pushing more strongly/emphatically to brace than a standard shot where you stay on the ground. Yeah that is what I thought, there is no issue there because he knows beforehand he is highpointing for a swing so his upper body moves expecting the stability to come from the counterrotation of the legs. I had before identified this as distinct from the "jumping into" forehand (which you see from Federer a lot) but I feel like I have now leveled up my understanding of what is going on so I am glad we have had this conversation.
Hmmm OK ... almost. But I am not sure if Mouratoglou would call it straight by his standard...
I noticed that Federer, playing with a straight hand, closes his bent elbow very quickly, and it looks as if he is pushing his elbow forward.
Sampras, on the other hand, puts a lot of emphasis on the bent arm, and tries to aggressively close the bent elbow.
And comparing both players, Sampras will not serve with a straight arm, and Federer with a bent arm, all the time.
You have to understand that each person will be different, and I think that players should be taught two ways so that they can judge what suits them better.
And it is known that in practice it is often the coach who determines the way of forehand development,
although it is not immediately certain that the player will be with such a hit.
Players who have achieved a lot, on the other hand, usually have their original forehand.
Once they also tried to teach me how to bend the elbow, but I felt bad, and I couldn't hit like that, and today I play with a straight arm.
The key thing in forehand is how much speed/spin we give to the ball, and how well we can close the ball with it so that it enters the court.
Anyway, we amateurs get too tense when hitting, and we should rather focus on a loose grip and a generally loose hand.
Fluidity, looseness and purity of strokes are even more important than whether we have a straight or bent arm!!!.
Sampras, on the other hand, puts a lot of emphasis on the bent arm, and tries to aggressively close the bent elbow.
And comparing both players, Sampras will not serve with a straight arm, and Federer with a bent arm, all the time.
You have to understand that each person will be different, and I think that players should be taught two ways so that they can judge what suits them better.
And it is known that in practice it is often the coach who determines the way of forehand development,
although it is not immediately certain that the player will be with such a hit.
Players who have achieved a lot, on the other hand, usually have their original forehand.
Once they also tried to teach me how to bend the elbow, but I felt bad, and I couldn't hit like that, and today I play with a straight arm.
The key thing in forehand is how much speed/spin we give to the ball, and how well we can close the ball with it so that it enters the court.
Anyway, we amateurs get too tense when hitting, and we should rather focus on a loose grip and a generally loose hand.
Fluidity, looseness and purity of strokes are even more important than whether we have a straight or bent arm!!!.
When Novak is practicing is like THE TENNIS TEXTBOOK.
That said, the video talks about weight, or force instead of inertia. I'm dissapointed.
Sometimes I get caught late or too close to ball And have to hit with a bent arm.
When I do it feels like a different motion almost like I m throwing a discus. Obviously not a recommended shot just brown trousers time. From the feelI must be using torso lean and shoulder rotation to power the shot. I can produce an OK shot that way But it does take extra effort and feels quite jarring when you hit the ball.
When I do it feels like a different motion almost like I m throwing a discus. Obviously not a recommended shot just brown trousers time. From the feelI must be using torso lean and shoulder rotation to power the shot. I can produce an OK shot that way But it does take extra effort and feels quite jarring when you hit the ball.
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