Problems with the Pat the Dog technique

[Manhattan]

Hi there,

I hope this is the right place to post this thread. I'm trying to change my forehand technique to what is known as the ATP forehand. My problem is that when I try to pat the dog during the backswing, I unconsciously start to suppinate my forearm a bit early and I think that's why my racquet never really faces down at the very last moment of the backswing. I also have difficulty getting enough lag on the forward swing and since everybody says it's a natural movement, I'm confused as to how I can develop a racquet lag. So I thought it'd be a good idea to post a video of me hitting a forehand here to seek your opinion on it, hopefully you can shed some light on it and help me develop my forehand.

And here is my forehand:

Many Thanks

 

[FiReFTW]

Ur hips barely move from back to contact, only after you hit the ball do they rotate forward, your kinetic chain is almost non existant and you use mostly ur arm.

 

[Dragy]

Ur hips barely move from back to contact, only after you hit the ball do they rotate forward, your kinetic chain is almost non existant and you use mostly ur arm.

B/S. He gets full unit turn in preparation and chest facing the net before contact. Possibly, it could be slightly more open, but depends on shot direction (in current video it’s good for I/O). Need to verify with different angle.

@Manhattan The stroke looks generally ok. I don’t see any bad opening you talk about. Would suggest practicing further on, getting smooth and relaxed feeling, loose wrist. Nothing fundamentally flawed.

 

[Dragy]

If you feel lack of lag/flip, consider how tight you grip the handle. Try fully relaxing index and middle fingers, hold it with just pinky and ring, let it flip back fully and catch up into contact - don’t grip and push it into contact with your hand.

 

[Dragy]

Ur hips barely move from back to contact, only after you hit the ball do they rotate forward, your kinetic chain is almost non existant and you use mostly ur arm.

Pardon, I can see what you're talking abiut. I agree he should involve legs and rotate hips to launch torso rotation. But it's not mostly arm - it's powered by shoulder rotation, which is already nice and far from arming of any kind.

 

[FiReFTW]

Pardon, I can see what you're talking abiut. I agree he should involve legs and rotate hips to launch torso rotation. But it's not mostly arm - it's powered by shoulder rotation, which is already nice and far from arming of any kind.

Yeah arming was probably not the right term, I just wanted to point out what I saw, that his legs and hips are not involved enough and the whole kinetic chain is not in sync, but didnt mean he is using only arm, bad terminology from me.

He is using his torso and upper body well but his lower body is barely involved and hips stay way behind almost feels like they are dragged forward after the contact.

 

[iChen]

The shoulders are there turning, hips slower.

 

[Manhattan]

Thanks for your comments. But some pros also don't hit with a lot of hip involvement, check this one out as an example:

 

[Tennisanity]

All arm.

 

[TennisCJC]

Manhattan,

You prep is good. Also, in the takeback, you lead back with a high elbow and the racket face is closed which is also good.

Here's how to get the "pat the dog".

1. forget every damn thing you have ever heard about pat the dog or the infamous flip.
2. just take a smooth take back and let the racket head drop very slightly below your expected contact point. then think of going forward to contact so you make contact with the racket face perpendicular to the ground or very slightly closed.
3. do steps 1 and 2 above with a smooth continuous swing. from the time you take your non-racket hand off the throat as you begin your take back, the entire swing should be smooth and continuous - no stops or pauses. I like to think of go slow during take bacl and to contact. then I think of speeding up right at contact. This helps me make good solid contact and as long as I accelerate, I get enough RHS to drive the ball with decent pace. The go slow to contact phase let you get a good feel for lining up the contact and then the acceleration gives you RHS. You do not have to jerk to speed up the racket, just a nice smooth acceleration.

the goal of pat the dog or flip is just to transition from take back to forward movement. When you come forward with your hand, you want the wrist to lay back so the racket face is pointing at your intended direction at contact. take a few shadow swings without a racket and think of your 4 fingers on the hitting hand as your racket strings. take a few shadow swings and lay the wrist back like you want it at contact and have your fingers (racket strings) pointed at the center of the imaginary opposing baseline. pat the dog/flip is basically going from your prep wrist angle to your hitting wrist angle. Some people prep and take back with neutral wrist angle and the pat the dog is just transitioning to laid back. I prefer that you think or envision how you want your 4 fingers or strings to be at contact and just let the transition (pat/flip) happen. Of course, you can take few shadow swings to get the feel of a smooth transition but I would NOT go down the road of trying to calculate degrees of supination or pronation as this is too much detail. Just prep with a leading elbow and closed racket face and then take a smooth loop that gets you to a good contact position.

Jeff Salzenstein has a good youtube video on leading back and up with the elbow. You might want to take a look at that.

 

[SystemicAnomaly]

Hi there,

I hope this is the right place to post this thread. I'm trying to change my forehand technique to what is known as the ATP forehand. My problem is that when I try to pat the dog during the backswing, I unconsciously start to suppinate my forearm a bit early and I think that's why my racquet never really faces down at the very last moment of the backswing. I also have difficulty getting enough lag on the forward swing and since everybody says it's a natural movement, I'm confused as to how I can develop a racquet lag. So I thought it'd be a good idea to post a video of me hitting a forehand here to seek your opinion on it, hopefully you can shed some light on it and help me develop my forehand.

And here is my forehand:

Note that quite Roger often does not perform a PTD and yet he gets considerable lag on his FHs. The lag comes from a substantial uncoiling of the body prior to the start of his forward swing. As his hips and then torso uncoils, he pulls the butt of his racket forward. This allows his wrist to lay back and his racket head to lag. This wrist extension (and resulting racket head lag) is largely a passive motion cause by his uncoiling and the pulling forward of the racket handle.

 

[997turbo]

I feel that if you stepped into the ball more with your left foot, with weight fully on the front foot (left foot), the hips will fire into your forehand as a natural consequence.

Go back to the basic fundamentals. It is useless trying to "pat the dog" if you do not have the natural mechanics of the forehand in the first place.

 

[997turbo]

Thanks for your comments. But some pros also don't hit with a lot of hip involvement, check this one out as an example:

This is him warming up, trying to get the feel of the ball. He isn't trying to execute a complete forehand.

 

[997turbo]

The shoulders are there turning, hips slower.

The hips should fire before the shoulders. That's the "kinetic" chain.

 

[Manhattan]

Note that quite Roger often does not perform a PTD and yet he gets considerable lag on his FHs. The lag comes from a substantial uncoiling of the body prior to the start of his forward swing. As his hips and then torso uncoils, he pulls the butt of his racket forward. This allows his wrist to lay back and his racket head to lag. This wrist extension (and resulting racket head lag) is largely a passive motion cause by his uncoiling and the pulling forward of the racket handle.

It's quite interesting that Roger didn't pat the dog in this clip. But I think he now does that more often, right?

As to coiling and uncoiling prior to the forward swing which is more or less what other guys also pointed out, I'll try my best to do it on the court and record another video to see if I'm getting better at it.

Thanks all for your help

 

[Raul_SJ]

Hi there,

I hope this is the right place to post this thread. I'm trying to change my forehand technique to what is known as the ATP forehand. My problem is that when I try to pat the dog during the backswing, I unconsciously start to suppinate my forearm a bit early and I think that's why my racquet never really faces down at the very last moment of the backswing.

Check the recent "Is Pat the Dog a Myth?" thread. The consensus was that the important checkpoint was "Tap The Dog". Federer often does not achieve the Pat position but almost always Taps The Dog.

If you reach that Tap position, Pat The Dog and flip should happen naturally.

 

[SystemicAnomaly]

It's quite interesting that Roger didn't pat the dog in this clip. But I think he now does that more often, right?

As to coiling and uncoiling prior to the forward swing which is more or less what other guys also pointed out, I'll try my best to do it on the court and record another video to see if I'm getting better at it.

\

No, not really. Roger seems to perform at true PTD (racket face down) only on really low shots. Yandell very recently published this finding on his TP.net site. There was also a thread in this forum on this a week or 2 ago.

https://www.tennisplayer.net/public/avancedtennis/john_yandell/the_myth/the_myth_of_the_dog/

 

[Chas Tennis]

Thanks for your comments. But some pros also don't hit with a lot of hip involvement, check this one out as an example:

A problem with using warm up and practice videos is that you don't know if the player just stepped on the court and is slowly warming up or is using their full, higher paced stroke technique, or where in between.

When hitting out Djokovic uses hip and upper body turns with 'separations' that don't look like that warm up or practice forehand. His energetic forehands may not be a good model for many players because he uses a lot of trunk flexibility and separation - too stressful for some? Find match footage.

Separation. Imagine a line drawn between the two shoulders and another line between the two hips and imagine the angle that those lines form if viewed from above. Takeback 'separation' is more turn back of the shoulders than the hips. Separation varies during both the backward and forward motions. The trunk is between these lines and its muscles can be stretched for use in the forward motion. How is your trunk involved? In addition to the trunk, the hips can also be turned by the legs and that turns the entire body above the hips. Look for the positions and timing of the hips line, shoulders line and arm motion in high level forehands and compare to your forehand. Lag comes from the arm lagging behind the shoulder because the shoulder is accelerated forward by upper body turn. That does not look right in your forehand. The word description above is simplified - look at high speed videos of high level forehands for each point mentioned.

You need to put the spring thing into your body turn to get the lag.....

Google: separation tennis Chas

https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/ind...der-separation-tilt-by-gabe-jaramillo.594951/

See especially page 6 on and Hewitt forehand picture.
http://www.itftennis.com/media/114014/114014.pdf

 

[jga111]

B/S. He gets full unit turn in preparation and chest facing the net before contact. Possibly, it could be slightly more open, but depends on shot direction (in current video it’s good for I/O). Need to verify with different angle.

@Manhattan The stroke looks generally ok. I don’t see any bad opening you talk about. Would suggest practicing further on, getting smooth and relaxed feeling, loose wrist. Nothing fundamentally flawed.

It's clear - his hips are not moving through. Arming initial phase

 

[jga111]

\

No, not really. Roger seems to perform at true PTD (racket face down) only on really low shots. Yandell very recently published this finding on his TP.net site. There was also a thread in this forum on this a week or 2 ago.

https://www.tennisplayer.net/public/avancedtennis/john_yandell/the_myth/the_myth_of_the_dog/

That's right - PTD actually is generally performed by players more often than not with S/W + grips. As the swing path fulls more naturally into. (e.g Murray, Djokovic).

Federer's is more Eastern and his PTD requires more wrist work. But let's get one thing straight here, we are not trying to achieve PTD - and it's not to say Federer does not have as much topspin as those who do have PTD. Why? RHS. Simple as, his forehand is one of the most relaxed on tour, and that combined with his RHS and general swing path, allows him to hit with more top spin in general than most players.

 

[Dragy]

It's clear - his hips are not moving through. Arming initial phase

His shoulders do move through and pull the arm. Arming is swinging with shoulder muscles with torso still or moving significantly slower than the arm.

 

[jga111]

His shoulders do move through and pull the arm. Arming is swinging with shoulder muscles with torso still or moving significantly slower than the arm.

But not his hips....on contact, his hips are lagging behind. It is clear as rain

 

[Deleted member 23235]

Ur hips barely move from back to contact, only after you hit the ball do they rotate forward, your kinetic chain is almost non existant and you use mostly ur arm.

+1
try doing a bunch of reps where you're basically throwing your entire body into the ball.
hit the back fence about 20x, then try to control the ball with the same rhs but adding more spin

 

[Dragy]

But not his hips....on contact, his hips are lagging behind. It is clear as rain

It's clear, all agreed. But it's not called "arming". It's "not using his legs".

 

[Dragy]

When a coach works with a student on the court for several outings, he can be imprecise with what he says, or even give cues which should make his student get to the proper result, even though being straight wrong in terms of actual physics of tennis stroke. He has advantage of observing development and options to guide his student with various or multiple approches.

Here, on the message board, where we need a consensus, and where we give an advice that a student has to implement by himself, we should be precise in terms and descriptions. We cannot call just any kinetically sub-optimal shot "all arm".

 

[heninfan99]

Sometimes The Dog pats itself

 

[jga111]

When a coach works with a student on the court for several outings, he can be imprecise with what he says, or even give cues which should make his student get to the proper result, even though being straight wrong in terms of actual physics of tennis stroke. He has advantage of observing development and options to guide his student with various or multiple approches.

Here, on the message board, where we need a consensus, and where we give an advice that a student has to implement by himself, we should be precise in terms and descriptions. We cannot call just any kinetically sub-optimal shot "all arm".

Potato PotAtoe - that is as close to an arming a ball as you're gonna see.

 

[FiReFTW]

It's quite interesting that Roger didn't pat the dog in this clip. But I think he now does that more often, right?

As to coiling and uncoiling prior to the forward swing which is more or less what other guys also pointed out, I'll try my best to do it on the court and record another video to see if I'm getting better at it.

Thanks all for your help

Because he isn't thinking about doing pat the dog, he does what is appropriate for the type of shot incoming and the type of shot he wants to hit.