Self-feeding ground stroke drill, why my shot lacks power?

[Pctopcool]

Greetings! I'm relatively new to tennis, having played for a year and a half. I always got great suggestions and tips from this board. Hope you can once again shed some light on my problems.

My hitting partner couldn't come to play this past weekend. So I did some self-feeding ground stroke drills, and recorded it. Looking at the video, the most noticeable problem (or symptom) seems to be lack of power and speed. The FH appears to be loopy with good net clearance, but lack penetration. The BH on the other hand, is flatter with less margin of error. But on both sides, my shot appears to lack pace and heavy spin. This can even be evidenced by the lack of pop sound when hitting the ball. Granted, power is not my strong suit. But I guess there must be some technical aspects that contributes to more power and speed. I'm hoping you can help me to identify few things, that I can work on to improve.

Thanks a lot!

 

[FiReFTW]

Because your swinging slowly and casualy.

 

[Bender]

Because your swinging slowly and casualy.

this

/thread

 

[S&V-not_dead_yet]

Greetings! I'm relatively new to tennis, having played for a year and a half. I always got great suggestions and tips from this board. Hope you can once again shed some light on my problems.

My hitting partner couldn't come to play this past weekend. So I did some self-feeding ground stroke drills, and recorded it. Looking at the video, the most noticeable problem (or symptom) seems to be lack of power and speed. The FH appears to be loopy with good net clearance, but lack penetration. The BH on the other hand, is flatter with less margin of error. But on both sides, my shot appears to lack pace and heavy spin. This can even be evidenced by the lack of pop sound when hitting the ball. Granted, power is not my strong suit. But I guess there must be some technical aspects that contributes to more power and speed. I'm hoping you can help me to identify few things, that I can work on to improve.

Thanks a lot!

During the prep phase of your FH, your stance is beyond open: your dominant foot is in front of your non-dominant. In an open stance, the two feet would be even. In a neutral stance, the non-dominant would be in directly in front. In a closed stance, the non-dominant would be past the dominant.

The way you're standing makes it very difficult to get the coil and uncoil: by having your dominant foot out in front, the tendency is to be unable to get substantial coil or to uncoil too soon. Your non-dominant leg seems to be working against you by wanting to move forward at the same time as your swing. Only at the end of the swing does the leg rotate in the same circular direction as your dominant arm.

Instead of this "beyond open" stance, try a neutral or semi-open one: the dominant foot should be behind the non-dominant one. Then you can push off of your dominant foot, something you can't do with your current stance.

Look at it this way: if you were trying to push a car, would you place your feet well behind your arms or in front? I'd put them as far behind my arms as possible so I could use my legs to drive forward. Your right foot is in front of your contact point.

I hope I'm making sense.

 

[tennishabit]

a wall could be better:?))) a inclined/tilted wall even much better:?))).............

2c form me. lack of:

1. legs drive:?))) u simply can't load/drive fh much at all if ur domi leg at front........vice versa for the bh.
2. coil/uncoil waist ie uni turn:?))
3. where there's a join, there'd be coil/uncoil. but the little 1s overdone called te/ge. use them passively w/ full initiative of legs n waist should be ok.............

also use gravity as much as u possibly can so never feel tired:
1. rkt head high loaded w/ potential energy ready to convert to velocity.
2. unbalance urself body weight centered forward so quite a few kg converted horizontal rush.
both need perfect timing

 

[Kobble]

For the forehands.

1. Racquet lag seems it is unwinding early. Almost like you are flexing, or stiffening the wrist once you start the turn through.

2. Too casual with the turn through. Not accelerating enough. You have to put some snap behind it.

I would try keeping the wrist and arm more loose at first. Try to get the racquet to unwind into the ball later. After that is being timed, then try to put more power from the ground up. Hips > shoulders> arm > wrist... in that order.

 

[Chas Tennis]

Greetings! I'm relatively new to tennis, having played for a year and a half. I always got great suggestions and tips from this board. Hope you can once again shed some light on my problems.

My hitting partner couldn't come to play this past weekend. So I did some self-feeding ground stroke drills, and recorded it. Looking at the video, the most noticeable problem (or symptom) seems to be lack of power and speed. The FH appears to be loopy with good net clearance, but lack penetration. The BH on the other hand, is flatter with less margin of error. But on both sides, my shot appears to lack pace and heavy spin. This can even be evidenced by the lack of pop sound when hitting the ball. Granted, power is not my strong suit. But I guess there must be some technical aspects that contributes to more power and speed. I'm hoping you can help me to identify few things, that I can work on to improve.

Thanks a lot!

Backhand -

This post compares Mojo28's backhand to Gasquet's.
https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/ind...art-forward-swing.462997/page-3#post-11077026

Racket head speed depends initially on uppermost body rotation speed and the distance from the racket head to the axis of rotation. The axis of rotation is mostly the spine, look at Gasquet's neck. Gasquet keeps his arm angle higher than Mojo28's so he would have more racket head speed from uppermost body turn. As for Mojo28's backhand, your backhand might have your arm angled too far down so that your racket head is too close to your rotation axis and therefore the racket head speed would be less.

In the same long thread, I pointed out that Wawrinka, Justine Henin and Gasquet have model backhands using the same high level technique where the chest presses on the upper arm and thereby uppermost body turn provides initial arm & racket acceleration. See the details in the thread, especially from post #51 to end. I could not see the armpit area - chest pressing on upper arm - for your backhand and the video frame rate is slow. They also rotate the hitting arm down - doing internal shoulder rotation (ISR) - with the off hand on the racket as a means of controlling the height of the racket head and that helps keep the hitting arm at a higher angle across the body, = more racket head speed. Your racket stays parallel as you move it down, no ISR. That arm ISR rotation is discussed in the thread also (see geca posts). Little hip rotation in your backhand maybe because of your feed technique. ?

Forehand-

For some of your hits the racket face seems to close over the ball right after impact. Are you doing that deliberately? Or, this could be caused by low impacts below the racket face center line. ? The slow frame rate does not often catch the ball very close to impact so there are no observations of where impacts are located. Use high speed video.

Compare your strokes to high level players using high speed video and the same camera angles. Kinovea is an excellent video analysis program especially for comparing side-by-side videos of tennis strokes, as the Mojo28 comparison. Kinovea is free open source.

 

[Pctopcool]

During the prep phase of your FH, your stance is beyond open: your dominant foot is in front of your non-dominant. In an open stance, the two feet would be even. In a neutral stance, the non-dominant would be in directly in front. In a closed stance, the non-dominant would be past the dominant.

The way you're standing makes it very difficult to get the coil and uncoil: by having your dominant foot out in front, the tendency is to be unable to get substantial coil or to uncoil too soon. Your non-dominant leg seems to be working against you by wanting to move forward at the same time as your swing. Only at the end of the swing does the leg rotate in the same circular direction as your dominant arm.

Instead of this "beyond open" stance, try a neutral or semi-open one: the dominant foot should be behind the non-dominant one. Then you can push off of your dominant foot, something you can't do with your current stance.

Look at it this way: if you were trying to push a car, would you place your feet well behind your arms or in front? I'd put them as far behind my arms as possible so I could use my legs to drive forward. Your right foot is in front of your contact point.

I hope I'm making sense.

Thanks a ton! I haven't noticed this before. Your explanation makes perfect sense. Upon contacting the ball, do you think I should put the right foot a little back, or put the left foot more to the front, or both? I felt I step in the right foot in the last step, that makes the stance more than open.

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[ptuanminh]

Like @S&V-not_dead_yet mentioned, your FH side, you hit with this weird open stance. I think your footwork is a bit lazy. Learn to use neutral stance. For beginners, its great to learn to use your whole body in the shot.
In terms of penetration, i think you can get good penetration swinging relax and slow.

 

[ptuanminh]

Thanks a ton! I haven't noticed this before. Your explanation makes perfect sense. Upon contacting the ball, do you think I should put the right foot a little back, or put the left foot more to the front, or both? I felt I step in the right foot in the last step, that makes the stance more than open.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk

For righty, forehand: left leg in front, righ leg behind, backhand: right leg in front, left leg behind.

 

[heninfan99]

no racquet head speed

 

[Chas Tennis]

During the prep phase of your FH, your stance is beyond open: your dominant foot is in front of your non-dominant. In an open stance, the two feet would be even. In a neutral stance, the non-dominant would be in directly in front. In a closed stance, the non-dominant would be past the dominant.

The way you're standing makes it very difficult to get the coil and uncoil: by having your dominant foot out in front, the tendency is to be unable to get substantial coil or to uncoil too soon. Your non-dominant leg seems to be working against you by wanting to move forward at the same time as your swing. Only at the end of the swing does the leg rotate in the same circular direction as your dominant arm.

Instead of this "beyond open" stance, try a neutral or semi-open one: the dominant foot should be behind the non-dominant one. Then you can push off of your dominant foot, something you can't do with your current stance.

Look at it this way: if you were trying to push a car, would you place your feet well behind your arms or in front? I'd put them as far behind my arms as possible so I could use my legs to drive forward. Your right foot is in front of your contact point.

I hope I'm making sense.

Thanks a ton! I haven't noticed this before. Your explanation makes perfect sense. Upon contacting the ball, do you think I should put the right foot a little back, or put the left foot more to the front, or both? I felt I step in the right foot in the last step, that makes the stance more than open.
....

Circular Forehand VS Step Forward Weight Shift Forehand

The legs turns the pelvis. This can be done by the current circular technique or by the earlier step forward weight shift technique. Listen carefully to Dan Brown's comments. Above the pelvis the upper body twists and uses the stretch shorten cycle for abdominal muscles. The uppermost body turns the most and is a significant source of racket head speed. The line between the two shoulders and the line between the two hips form an angle as viewed from above. That angle is called separation angle. Your forehand separation angle looks OK.

Another factor is that if you are running and plant one foot that foot may slow or stop one hip and cause the pelvis to turn, and be useful or counterproductive if in the wrong direction. Your feed routine may be affecting your footwork. ?

Djokovic Forehand

 

[user92626]

You were too conscious about your forms and what not. You need a few sessions where you wack the beezesus out of the balls, never mind where they go. Your focus in these sessions should be to generate as much rackethead speed as possible.

 

[russellg]

I'm reminded of a group coaching session when someone asked the coach, " I want to be able to hit the ball harder", to which the coach with a deadpan face replied, " Well, hit the ball harder then ".

 

[Pctopcool]

Because your swinging slowly and casualy.

this

/thread

Or maybe I need to go to gym more often [emoji28]

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk

 

[Pctopcool]

a wall could be better:?))) a inclined/tilted wall even much better:?))).............

2c form me. lack of:

1. legs drive:?))) u simply can't load/drive fh much at all if ur domi leg at front........vice versa for the bh.
2. coil/uncoil waist ie uni turn:?))
3. where there's a join, there'd be coil/uncoil. but the little 1s overdone called te/ge. use them passively w/ full initiative of legs n waist should be ok.............

also use gravity as much as u possibly can so never feel tired:
1. rkt head high loaded w/ potential energy ready to convert to velocity.
2. unbalance urself body weight centered forward so quite a few kg converted horizontal rush.
both need perfect timing

Great points! Will keep in mind next time when I play. Thanks a lot!

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk

 

[Pctopcool]

For the forehands.

1. Racquet lag seems it is unwinding early. Almost like you are flexing, or stiffening the wrist once you start the turn through.

2. Too casual with the turn through. Not accelerating enough. You have to put some snap behind it.

I would try keeping the wrist and arm more loose at first. Try to get the racquet to unwind into the ball later. After that is being timed, then try to put more power from the ground up. Hips > shoulders> arm > wrist... in that order.

Thanks for the suggestion! I do feel my wrist can be more relaxed. I usually have more loose arm first, which involuntarily becomes more and more tense. Will keep that in mind.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk

 

[Pctopcool]

Backhand -

This post compares Mojo28's backhand to Gasquet's.
https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/ind...art-forward-swing.462997/page-3#post-11077026

Racket head speed depends initially on uppermost body rotation speed and the distance from the racket head to the axis of rotation. The axis of rotation is mostly the spine, look at Gasquet's neck. Gasquet keeps his arm angle higher than Mojo28's so he would have more racket head speed from uppermost body turn. As for Mojo28's backhand, your backhand might have your arm angled too far down so that your racket head is too close to your rotation axis and therefore the racket head speed would be less.

In the same long thread, I pointed out that Wawrinka, Justine Henin and Gasquet have model backhands using the same high level technique where the chest presses on the upper arm and thereby uppermost body turn provides initial arm & racket acceleration. See the details in the thread, especially from post #51 to end. I could not see the armpit area - chest pressing on upper arm - for your backhand and the video frame rate is slow. They also rotate the hitting arm down - doing internal shoulder rotation (ISR) - with the off hand on the racket as a means of controlling the height of the racket head and that helps keep the hitting arm at a higher angle across the body, = more racket head speed. Your racket stays parallel as you move it down, no ISR. That arm ISR rotation is discussed in the thread also (see geca posts). Little hip rotation in your backhand maybe because of your feed technique. ?

Forehand-

For some of your hits the racket face seems to close over the ball right after impact. Are you doing that deliberately? Or, this could be caused by low impacts below the racket face center line. ? The slow frame rate does not often catch the ball very close to impact so there are no observations of where impacts are located. Use high speed video.

Compare your strokes to high level players using high speed video and the same camera angles. Kinovea is an excellent video analysis program especially for comparing side-by-side videos of tennis strokes, as the Mojo28 comparison. Kinovea is free open source.

Thanks Chas for your once again great and detailed instructions! The post about BH is excellent read. As to the FH, I didn't notice the racquet angle upon contact until you pointed out. It was not intentional. Actually, I use most eastern grip, which is supposed to be vertical. I guess it could be off center contact as you mentioned, or maybe the follow through kick in too early. I'll definitely pay attention to it.

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[mad dog1]

Greetings! I'm relatively new to tennis, having played for a year and a half. I always got great suggestions and tips from this board. Hope you can once again shed some light on my problems.

My hitting partner couldn't come to play this past weekend. So I did some self-feeding ground stroke drills, and recorded it. Looking at the video, the most noticeable problem (or symptom) seems to be lack of power and speed. The FH appears to be loopy with good net clearance, but lack penetration. The BH on the other hand, is flatter with less margin of error. But on both sides, my shot appears to lack pace and heavy spin. This can even be evidenced by the lack of pop sound when hitting the ball. Granted, power is not my strong suit. But I guess there must be some technical aspects that contributes to more power and speed. I'm hoping you can help me to identify few things, that I can work on to improve.

Thanks a lot!

If you’re serious about improving, take some lessons from a good coach. Asking for advice from on a forum won’t help much.

 

[Pctopcool]

Like @S&V-not_dead_yet mentioned, your FH side, you hit with this weird open stance. I think your footwork is a bit lazy. Learn to use neutral stance. For beginners, its great to learn to use your whole body in the shot.
In terms of penetration, i think you can get good penetration swinging relax and slow.

Thanks for the comments! I guess my side to side movement is usually more troubling. It is really hard to get to the neutral or close stance if I need to move to get the ball. Maybe I should work also on the fitness.

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[Pctopcool]

You were too conscious about your forms and what not. You need a few sessions where you wack the beezesus out of the balls, never mind where they go. Your focus in these sessions should be to generate as much rackethead speed as possible.

Interesting idea! And I think it will work. Will give it a try.
Thanks [emoji4]

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[mad dog1]

Interesting idea! And I think it will work. Will give it a try.
Thanks [emoji4]

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Like I said, get some lessons from a good coach. Trying random interesting ideas is not the ticket to major improvement. I speak from experience.

 

[Kobble]

Thanks for the suggestion! I do feel my wrist can be more relaxed. I usually have more loose arm first, which involuntarily becomes more and more tense. Will keep that in mind.

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I am just getting back into the game after being away from it for more than 10 years, so I do alot of trying to refine my strokes again. Keeping the wrist more loose was the first and easiest thing I noticed would get me a noticeable jump in power. If my arm was loose, but my wrist wasn't, I got a drop in power.
Here is a video put out by Jeff Salzenstein and Essential Tennis about increasing forehand power. Watch the series from 3:51 onward. Compare the lag Jeff creates with yours and how he says a big thing for him is staying loose with the hand. He also creates a move abrupt and quick acceleration from the ground up. Someone commented on his video saying he wasn't looking really loose. Yet, watch his wrist. Very good lag.

Not sure if you know, but you can watch Youtube videos frame by frame by pausing the video, and then pushing the "," (comma) and "." (period) keys.

 

[ByeByePoly]

@Pctopcool ... year and a half? Congrats ... way ahead of schedule, strokes look good. I wouldn't worry about pace, particularly hitting drop feeds. Pace comes easier hitting against opponent ball. I really like how you are hitting drop feeds with movement and rhythm ... imo good tennis is all about rhythm and timing.

 

[S&V-not_dead_yet]

Thanks a ton! I haven't noticed this before. Your explanation makes perfect sense. Upon contacting the ball, do you think I should put the right foot a little back, or put the left foot more to the front, or both? I felt I step in the right foot in the last step, that makes the stance more than open.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk

If you look from above, your non-dominant foot should be at noon and your dominant foot around 5; that would be a typical neutral stance. You're more like 7 and 1, which is not only open but uber open.

Imagine trying to throw a ball for distance: which way would you line up?

When starting, eliminate the movement: toss so you don't have to move so you can focus on the stance and kinetic chain, not running towards the ball that you tossed 10' away from you.

 

[blai212]

its hard to self feed forehands/backhands to yourself because the ball literally has no pace so it’s impossible to simulate real tennis. U could go hit against a wall/use a ball machine so that you can work on hitting balls that are coming towards you with some pace. You dont see baseball hitters practicing their swing on self fed balls, tennis is the same way. If you purely want to work on your strokes you could do just that...without a ball. Tennis is difficult to play solo but if your goal is to improve your game, then do so. You don’t need to hit a ball to improve your stroke/footwork. Just takes practice


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[Chas Tennis]

................. As to the FH, I didn't notice the racquet angle upon contact until you pointed out. It was not intentional. Actually, I use most eastern grip, which is supposed to be vertical. .........................................

I don't agree with "vertical" racket face.

Federer is the model. He uses an Eastern Forehand grip and closed racket face with his straight elbow forehand technique. Forehand is unlike Djokovic's, he has a bent elbow forehand. Racket face closed for all forehand top spin drives I believe.

This Tennisspeed series of articles has excellent illustrations of the racket face angle at impact, toward the later part of this article are pictures like the above.
https://tennisspeedresearch.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-roadmap-to-hall-of-fame-forehand-part.html

I think the closed racket face before impact allows more racket head speed also. After impact the racket face may do extreme things. High speed video is needed to observe the racket face at impact.

For the question of where the speed comes from look at the shoulder turns of ATP and WTA player's forehands on TV. I don't know %.

These forehand techniques involve trunk twisting that may be too stressful for the backs of some players.

 

[dominikk1985]

You don't accelerate through contact and you are spinning through contact. Trunk rotation speed should peak like 2 frames before contact and then you need to stabilize the left side and just finish with the arm and racket.

 

[tennishabit]

Great points! Will keep in mind next time when I play. Thanks a lot!

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u'r welcome n hope u can work out the kinetic chain soon but don't rush as anything could go wrong if rush.....n even worse repeat the wrong stuff n get muscle memo done.........sososo hard for most of those to get out of the vicious cycle once dat's done n end up te/ge etcetc.........goners in terms of tennis. 50% 'tennis' population (lololol man, the wkly rec oncer/twicer) basically put a end re. improvement of their tennis once dat happens, according to the statistics of itf website....................n(n+1)

 

[Bender]

Or maybe I need to go to gym more often [emoji28]

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Going to the gym won't make your swing automatically fast for the same amount of effort; you actually have to swing faster

 

[FiReFTW]

Going to the gym won't make your swing automatically fast for the same amount of effort; you actually have to swing faster

Yes, leg, hip, core etc... muscles help make a more explosive swing.
But if your swinging correctly with ur whole body and a kinetic chain it feels like ur not putting any effort into swinging to hit a really powerful shot.
It feels smooth and effortless, the racwuet speed is extremely fast and the shot is very hard but ur not really swinging hard.

 

[NLBwell]

As LeeD used to say:
Swing Hard!

Actually, for you, you need to correct a lot of issues before you swing hard.

 

[NLBwell]

On the one-handed backhand, keep your shoulders perpendicular to the net. You are turning your upper body (which is expending your energy and pulling you away from the line you want the racket to be traveling.
The backhand should be like doing flys in weightlifting; your shoulder blades should come together. Your front shoulder should not rotate away from its initial position.

(I actually sometimes have an issue with this after hitting a lot of two-handers while teaching - I really have to concentrate on keeping the front shoulder lined up to the net on the one-hander.)

Similarly, on the forehand, much of your energy is spent rotating your body away from the line of the ball, so there is little energy left to go into the ball.

On the forehand, you can use the rotation of your body for power, but you need to learn a good neutral stance forehand first to correct your issues and get the feeling of hitting a solid forehand. Then, you can likely move to a more rotational forehand without introducing the spinning which is your major problem. The rotational power in advanced open-stance forehands is due to the twisting (torque) of the body (counter-rotation in skiing), not spinning around.

Dimitrov Backhand - kind of over-emphasized, but keeps front shoulder still while puling shoulder blades together.

 

[Pctopcool]

I am just getting back into the game after being away from it for more than 10 years, so I do alot of trying to refine my strokes again. Keeping the wrist more loose was the first and easiest thing I noticed would get me a noticeable jump in power. If my arm was loose, but my wrist wasn't, I got a drop in power.
Here is a video put out by Jeff Salzenstein and Essential Tennis about increasing forehand power. Watch the series from 3:51 onward. Compare the lag Jeff creates with yours and how he says a big thing for him is staying loose with the hand. He also creates a move abrupt and quick acceleration from the ground up. Someone commented on his video saying he wasn't looking really loose. Yet, watch his wrist. Very good lag.

Not sure if you know, but you can watch Youtube videos frame by frame by pausing the video, and then pushing the "," (comma) and "." (period) keys.

Thanks for the tips and awesome video! And I didn't know the frame by frame hotkey for Youtube!

 

[Pctopcool]

@Pctopcool ... year and a half? Congrats ... way ahead of schedule, strokes look good. I wouldn't worry about pace, particularly hitting drop feeds. Pace comes easier hitting against opponent ball. I really like how you are hitting drop feeds with movement and rhythm ... imo good tennis is all about rhythm and timing.

Thanks for the encouragement! Will keep practicing.

 

[Pctopcool]

I don't agree with "vertical" racket face.

Federer is the model. He uses an Eastern Forehand grip and closed racket face with his straight elbow forehand technique. Forehand is unlike Djokovic's, he has a bent elbow forehand. Racket face closed for all forehand top spin drives I believe.

This Tennisspeed series of articles has excellent illustrations of the racket face angle at impact, toward the later part of this article are pictures like the above.
https://tennisspeedresearch.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-roadmap-to-hall-of-fame-forehand-part.html

I think the closed racket face before impact allows more racket head speed also. After impact the racket face may do extreme things. High speed video is needed to observe the racket face at impact.

For the question of where the speed comes from look at the shoulder turns of ATP and WTA player's forehands on TV. I don't know %.

These forehand techniques involve trunk twisting that may be too stressful for the backs of some players.

That's very interesting read. I looked some slow motion from other players. They indeed close the racquet face upon impact.

 

[FiReFTW]

As LeeD used to say:
Swing Hard!

Actually, for you, you need to correct a lot of issues before you swing hard.

No you should not swing hard at all, you should swing fast but not hard, it should be effortless.

 

[Chas Tennis]

.............. You are turning your upper body (which is expending your energy and pulling you away from the line you want the racket to be traveling.
.................... Your front shoulder should not rotate away from its initial position.
..............................................................................................
Dimitrov Backhand - kind of over-emphasized, but keeps front shoulder still while puling shoulder blades together.

To do stop action single frame on Youtube use the "." and "," keys.

1) For the first backhand is he turning his uppermost body to accelerate the hitting arm and racket forward? ~2 sec on

2) Is his shoulder moving forward and toward the camera from its initial position? 2 sec. What affect does that have on the arm? Not well shown here.

3) When his shoulder mass does not move as much, is his shoulder joint then moving the upper arm forward? 2 sec

4) Impact. Still 2 sec. How many degrees did the line between his shoulders turn to impact? Is that staying sideways?

5) How long after impact do his shoulders pinch together? At ~4 sec? Is that the late follow through, even by definition, the end of the follow through because the shoulders are pinched together?

I think that 1) and 2) could have been longer, more chest press............

The shoulder mass and the shoulder joint are separate things. The shoulder mass is something that we see prominently moving forward first and the shoulder joint moves the upper arm a little later for this one hand backhand technique.

 

[fuzz nation]

Greetings! I'm relatively new to tennis, having played for a year and a half. I always got great suggestions and tips from this board. Hope you can once again shed some light on my problems.

My hitting partner couldn't come to play this past weekend. So I did some self-feeding ground stroke drills, and recorded it. Looking at the video, the most noticeable problem (or symptom) seems to be lack of power and speed. The FH appears to be loopy with good net clearance, but lack penetration. The BH on the other hand, is flatter with less margin of error. But on both sides, my shot appears to lack pace and heavy spin. This can even be evidenced by the lack of pop sound when hitting the ball. Granted, power is not my strong suit. But I guess there must be some technical aspects that contributes to more power and speed. I'm hoping you can help me to identify few things, that I can work on to improve.

Thanks a lot!

I tried to skim through the replies to check, but I didn't spot anything along the lines of my suspicions.

It sounds like you were having trouble with getting good zip on your shots when self-feeding, but it sounded like you were comparing those shots with what you do when hitting with your pal. I think that's the fundamental difference - you weren't redirecting the pace of an incoming ball.

Your "self feeds" demand that you put all the energy into the ball. An incoming ball already has some energy - you only need to add a little oomph with your strokes to hit the ball rather big.

 

[user92626]

OP,

you inspire me to think about training to play with my offhand (which is my right hand). I have it until the weekend to learn and be able to hit halfway decent like you so I can play against some elder men!



I wonder how long other veterans take to learn to play with their offhand. With all the instructions tattooed in their mind but the muscles are 100% un-developed for the actions.

 

[pencilcheck]

Lack footwork intensity

 

[tennishabit]

I tried to skim through the replies to check, but I didn't spot anything along the lines of my suspicions.

It sounds like you were having trouble with getting good zip on your shots when self-feeding, but it sounded like you were comparing those shots with what you do when hitting with your pal. I think that's the fundamental difference - you weren't redirecting the pace of an incoming ball.

Your "self feeds" demand that you put all the energy into the ball. An incoming ball already has some energy - you only need to add a little oomph with your strokes to hit the ball rather big.

never do dis silly 'self feeds' as the ball'll bounce away which'll never ever happen in real hitting.....unless ur opponent did a <1/1000 chance really really good backspin drop shot actually most likely a miss hit/framed shot on the net so the ball's bouncing back to the 'producer'...............

a tilted/inclined wall's mil times better for me personally. i got my 'tennis' as bi-products when i do my daily dosage of >1200 fh/bh topspins. 6 mths ago >600 hits will do me but gradually need more n more up to >1500 hits a while then realized it cost me ~2 hrs so i tried reducing until ~1200 hit just right for my 'addiction'.........lolololol n finishing it <1.5hrs......all good for time being.

aft tested all, basically my preference:
1. tilted/inclined wall
pro: perfectly simulating 1/2 court n force u to generate ur own pace. mirror imaging ur own landing spots.
con: none
2. upright wall
pro: good for fix up the dosage.
con: can't simulate real 'pushers' return n felt hitting in 'no mens land' n some1 return u a volley on the net.
3. ntrp 4.5 or higher opponent
Pro: great on court experience n good to verify the angles/rangers on my 'simulator'.
con: take >twice as much time to fix up my dosage.
4. ball machine
pro: similar to above.
con: the returns weird as not coming back from where ur shot landed so can't really work on positioning.
5. so called 'tennis player'
Pro: control angle/range/pace/spin etc in order to prolong the rally as longer as possible.
con: too much time wasted pkup balls but i don't mind as long as can return my shot by all means n need more than 3 if te/ge-ers or the guys got tired easily as i need to hit 5 or 6 hrs to reach 1200 shots w/ them.

 

[ubercat]

Geeze do you count or is there a Fitbit for that

 

[tennishabit]

Geeze do you count or is there a Fitbit for that

easy, hits/min, then x50 ............

same way to stopwatch the 'tennis players' on courts, on/off or up/down or hit/pkup+etc. 70-80% off/down. ie they'r hiring a court for let's say 2 hrs, less than 30min hitting balls. for ball boys/girls ok, to hire a court practicing fast ball pkup for ao2020............................