Using wrist on shots?

E

EddieBrock

Hall of Fame
I did a lesson with a pro while traveling and he said on my 1st serve to toss far into the court and snap my wrist. With slice serve he said to cut with my wrist. On low forehands he said to really focus on coming over the ball with my wrist with a short take back swing. He kept emphasizing rolling over the ball with my wrist and finishing forward with my wrist.

I always heard you don't want to force your wrist. What do you think?
 
What does "you don't want to force your wrist" mean to you and how does that differ from what the pro was telling you?
 
Lay back your wrist, keep it relaxed and then don’t think about it anymore in terms of any active movement with it. Focus now on the proper swing path for each serve/shot with the laidback, relaxed wrist and the racquet will move freely as you want it to. Also, maybe focus on having faster swing speed than you normally do just before contact - you will find it is easier to achieve that with a relaxed wrist than a stiff wrist.

A lot of coaches who used to be good players sometimes can’t explain biomechanically what to do and may even verbalize wrong things. Ask the coach to show you how he wants you to hit it and try to learn visually from his swing path what he wants you to do.
 
your wrist movement during serve should be at most to compensate for slight deviations of your throw. if the throw is too far back, you will have to compensate the angle of contact with a wrist snap. if the ball is thrown properly in front of you, you should be able to just plow through the racquet path, striking the ball.
 
PKorda said:
What does "you don't want to force your wrist" mean to you and how does that differ from what the pro was telling you?
Click to expand...
It means to me that you focus on your big muscles and swing and the wrist just kind of takes care of itself. On my groundstrokes I think about the swing path, but not using my wrist on it.
ballmachineguy said:
Make him demonstrate, next time you get what seems like contradictory advice, so there’s no confusion as to what is being said.
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I'm debating whether to do another lesson with him or not. In general though that's a good idea.

socallefty said:
Lay back your wrist, keep it relaxed and then don’t think about it anymore in terms of any active movement with it. Focus now on the proper swing path for each serve/shot with the laidback, relaxed wrist and the racquet will move freely as you want it to. Also, maybe focus on having faster swing speed than you normally do just before contact - you will find it is easier to achieve that with a relaxed wrist than a stiff wrist.

A lot of coaches who used to be good players sometimes can’t explain biomechanically what to do and may even verbalize wrong things. Ask the coach to show you how he wants you to hit it and try to learn visually from his swing path what he wants you to do.
Click to expand...
That's pretty much the way I've thought of the role of the wrist in tennis. It's possible I was tense since it was my first time playing in almost a month and I'd never played with him before. So maybe my wrist was locked.

He was an accomplished junior player, played in college and has been teaching for many years so I'd assume he'd know how to teach properly. Although he said most of his students are the 3.0 and lower level so he hasn't worked with many people like me. Another thing I wasn't sure about was to hit slice and not kick 2nd serves. He said the kick requires too much strength/flexibility/timing to be reliable and not attackable for a 2nd serve and my slice had enough on it that he liked it for a 2nd. The problem with my slice is I miss it way too much. I can put a ton of spin on it and make it curve like crazy, but will still miss it. He didn't even want to look at my kick, which annoyed me a bit.

tjanev said:
your wrist movement during serve should be at most to compensate for slight deviations of your throw. if the throw is too far back, you will have to compensate the angle of contact with a wrist snap. if the ball is thrown properly in front of you, you should be able to just plow through the racquet path, striking the ball.
Click to expand...
That's what I thought. He was saying I need to toss further out in front and then snap down with my wrist to keep the flat serve from sailing long
 
EddieBrock said:
It means to me that you focus on your big muscles and swing and the wrist just kind of takes care of itself. On my groundstrokes I think about the swing path, but not using my wrist on it.
Click to expand...
well ok, but telling you to think about your wrist doesn't mean you have to force anything, can still keep your wrist relaxed.
 
EddieBrock said:
I did a lesson with a pro while traveling and he said on my 1st serve to toss far into the court and snap my wrist. With slice serve he said to cut with my wrist. On low forehands he said to really focus on coming over the ball with my wrist with a short take back swing. He kept emphasizing rolling over the ball with my wrist and finishing forward with my wrist.

I always heard you don't want to force your wrist. What do you think?
Click to expand...
I absolutely hate most of this "wrist" advice... waaay to much emphasis of the role of the wrist. To my mind there is no "wrist snap" on the serve. At least, nothing that I would characterize as wrist snap. There are some moderate wrist actions incorporated but most of the so-called "snap" is quick rotations of the hand -- by forearm (pronation) and shoulder (ISR) actions.

If the pro demonstrated exactly what he meant by all this ill-advised wrist advice, it might be ok --- assuming he corrected your implementation if you took him literally.
 
EddieBrock said:
He was an accomplished junior player, played in college and has been teaching for many years so I'd assume he'd know how to teach properly. Although he said most of his students are the 3.0 and lower level so he hasn't worked with many people like me. Another thing I wasn't sure about was to hit slice and not kick 2nd serves. He said the kick requires too much strength/flexibility/timing to be reliable and not attackable for a 2nd serve and my slice had enough on it that he liked it for a 2nd. The problem with my slice is I miss it way too much. I can put a ton of spin on it and make it curve like crazy, but will still miss it. He didn't even want to look at my kick, which annoyed me a bit.
Click to expand...
My coach was former ATP and is a 30-year old who says some things wrong from a biomechanical standpoint also - I’ve played and was coached for many decades and know this. But he is never wrong when he shows me the right way to do it. Often I ask him to show it rather than explain it. At this point he is a paid hitting partner for me more than anything else.

It is very difficult to teach adults a good kick serve that kicks over the opponent’s optimal contact height zone if they have been playing for many years without learning it and are not flexible/fit physically. Also most adults won’t go and practice enough between lessons to learn it right - serve practice also injures adults more than other drills as it uses the whole body. So most coaches will revert to improving a self-taught adult’s slice serve to use as a 2nd serve rather than teaching them a kick. With slice, you can hit a fast slice for 1st serves (in addition to flat) and a slower slice or top-slice with less side spin to use as a 2nd serve which is at a higher %.
EddieBrock said:
That's what I thought. He was saying I need to toss further out in front and then snap down with my wrist to keep the flat serve from sailing long
Click to expand...
Generally to increase pace on 1st serves, most rec players need to toss the ball more into the court and swing faster while moving their body forward more than they’re used to. So think of the changes you need to make more that way rather than snapping the wrist. Try to move your hip/shoulder/arm forward faster than you normally do to help you swing faster rather than snapping the wrist down quicker. Don’t forget to keep your toss hand up longer so that your body doesn’t get unbalanced too quickly and fall off to one side.
 
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Biomechanics expert expert, Brian Gordon, has studied the serve in considerable detail. He has indicated that wrist flexion can contribute some 30% at/ near contact. Forearm pronation is active during the upward swing but only contributes a small % at contact. The primary “snapping” contributor at/near contact is ISR.

Wrist snap on serve

I was wondering are you suppose to snap your wrist on a flat serve ? My tennis couch told me to snap my wrist if im not getting the ball down on my serve or what ever. But my pops said that I could hurt my wrist and arm doing that because I'm using so much power to hit the ball.
tt.tennis-warehouse.com tt.tennis-warehouse.com
 
SystemicAnomaly said:
I absolutely hate most of this "wrist" advice... waaay to much emphasis of the role of the wrist. To my mind there is no "wrist snap" on the serve. At least, nothing that I would characterize as wrist snap. There are some moderate wrist actions incorporated but most of the so-called "snap" is quick rotations of the hand -- by forearm (pronation) and shoulder (ISR) actions.

If the pro demonstrated exactly what he meant by all this ill-advised wrist advice, it might be ok --- assuming he corrected your implementation if you took him literally.
Click to expand...


even the goat is giving wrong advice - beginning minutes of the video about the wrist snap lol..... unfortunately the tennis coaching industry is extremely fragmented and the knowledge distribution is all over the place.. and partly due the extreme complexity of the game.

I'd say bar none tennis is THE most complicated sport. a lot of people think golf is hard, but the swing is only about as complex as the tennis serve.

for the OP - like I said the TT wisdom is likely better than any single coach you can buy. post video and get your game fixed..
 
10sbeast888 said:

even the goat is giving wrong advice - beginning minutes of the video about the wrist snap lol..... unfortunately the tennis coaching industry is extremely fragmented and the knowledge distribution is all over the place.. and partly due the extreme complexity of the game.

I'd say bar none tennis is THE most complicated sport. a lot of people think golf is hard, but the swing is only about as complex as the tennis serve.

for the OP - like I said the TT wisdom is likely better than any single coach you can buy. post video and get your game fixed..
Click to expand...
He doesn’t use the term snap but wrist action. That’s a technicality perhaps to some but what he’s saying is not wrong.
 
SystemicAnomaly said:
Biomechanics expert expert, Brian Gordon, has studied the serve in considerable detail. He has indicated that wrist flexion can contribute some 30% at/ near contact. Forearm pronation is active during the upward swing but only contributes a small % at contact. The primary “snapping” contributor at/near contact is ISR.

Wrist snap on serve

I was wondering are you suppose to snap your wrist on a flat serve ? My tennis couch told me to snap my wrist if im not getting the ball down on my serve or what ever. But my pops said that I could hurt my wrist and arm doing that because I'm using so much power to hit the ball.
tt.tennis-warehouse.com tt.tennis-warehouse.com
Click to expand...

I remember reading some papers of that sort...personally I'm not sure how much "wrist flexion happens and is 30% of the racquet motion near contact" implies "wrist flexion independently applies 30% of the force around contact".

I see the wrist flexion objectively happen in my own serves, but subjectively it feels nowhere near 30%. I suspect that on flat serves, the ulnar deviation means that the "whip cracks" in a way that gives wrist flexion the credit for the movement. Meanwhile, forearm pronation, which has been working really hard to transmit the force from ISR, gets no credit because it's not moving much independently from ISR.
 
zoingy said:
I remember reading some papers of that sort...personally I'm not sure how much "wrist flexion happens and is 30% of the racquet motion near contact" implies "wrist flexion independently applies 30% of the force around contact".

I see the wrist flexion objectively happen in my own serves, but subjectively it feels nowhere near 30%. I suspect that on flat serves, the ulnar deviation means that the "whip cracks" in a way that gives wrist flexion the credit for the movement. Meanwhile, forearm pronation, which has been working really hard to transmit the force from ISR, gets no credit because it's not moving much independently from ISR.
Click to expand...

well, nobody is wrong... the 30% maybe specific to a player or a specific group of players.

can you serve with 5%? sure, sampras sure looks like less than 30%... but for some people perhaps lacking flexibility around the shoulder area maybe more than 30% is needed to have enough mobility.

bottom line is still though - snapping the wrist is a pretty bad idea to teach, unless the coach can correctly interpret what it means for the student.

btw don't get me started on 'punching the volley out in front' lol... another garbage idea that has messed up countless people's volleys. tennis teaching really has too much garbage, passed down from 1 generation to the next...
 
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10sbeast888 said:
well, nobody is wrong... the 30% maybe specific to a player or a specific group of players.

can you serve with 5%? sure, sampras sure looks like less than 30%... but for some people perhaps lacking flexibility around the shoulder area maybe more than 30% is needed to have enough mobility.

bottom line is still though - snapping the wrist is a pretty bad idea to teach, unless the coach can correctly interpret what it means for the student.

btw don't get me started on 'punching the volley out in front' lol... another garbage idea that has messed up countless people's volleys. tennis teaching really has too much garbage, passed down from 1 generation to the next...
Click to expand...
What would you say to someone trying to learn proper volley technique? I was taught to punch the volley when I first started learning tennis.

Another phrase I remember was "head to head", which was to bring the head of the racket next to your head. That seems to be good advice.
 
EddieBrock said:
I did a lesson with a pro while traveling and he said on my 1st serve to toss far into the court and snap my wrist. With slice serve he said to cut with my wrist. On low forehands he said to really focus on coming over the ball with my wrist with a short take back swing. He kept emphasizing rolling over the ball with my wrist and finishing forward with my wrist.

I always heard you don't want to force your wrist. What do you think?
Click to expand...
Don't walk, run... away from that coach.
 
EddieBrock said:
What would you say to someone trying to learn proper volley technique? I was taught to punch the volley when I first started learning tennis.

Another phrase I remember was "head to head", which was to bring the head of the racket next to your head. That seems to be good advice.
Click to expand...

wait for the ball with a relaxed grip as if you are gonna catch it, then squeeze the handle on impact.

there is nothing like a punch in the volley... actually you can see many amateurs try to volley like a punches because this teaching is so wide spread, and these people usually have poor volleys.


here Oscar also explains away other stuff like volley with the feet etc... the head to head thing is likely wrong also, the ball doesn't care about where your head is. you want to be balanced, which we have learned as toddlers.. any excessive head movement will cause you to lose balance. you only have 1/4 to 1/3 of the time to deal with the ball compared to a baseline shot, get on with it asap lol.. let the hand be the guide and the rest of the body will follow.
 
Was the coach's name Patrick Mouratoglou?

From the description of the tips, I would get another coach. Good grips, good footwork, early prep, using core rotation and a solid swing path with a passive wrist is the way to hit good groundstrokes. If anything, I practice to keep wrist movement out of my contact area. My wrist does relax on my FH finish and ends up in a neutral position while it was laid back a bit at contact but the change in wrist angle occurs long after the ball is gone.

Servie is a little trickier because there is some wrist action there but coming up on edge and using ISR and pronation to open the strings at contact drive the wrist action. It certainly isn't going from laid back position to flex-ed forward position unless you are hitting a waiter's try serve with a E FH grip. I admit I do think snap on my serve but it is really a result of keeping the wrist relaxed and using pronation to present the strings to the ball. I would also advise that you think hit or snap up on the serve and not snap down on it. Patrick Dougherty talks about hitting up on even first serves to get them to curve down into the court. The ball trajectory will be downwards off the strings but the trajectory of the strings and the hand can be slightly upwards.

My advice is you probably want a new coach.
 
10sbeast888 said:
wait for the ball with a relaxed grip as if you are gonna catch it, then squeeze the handle on impact.

there is nothing like a punch in the volley... actually you can see many amateurs try to volley like a punches because this teaching is so wide spread, and these people usually have poor volleys.


here Oscar also explains away other stuff like volley with the feet etc... the head to head thing is likely wrong also, the ball doesn't care about where your head is. you want to be balanced, which we have learned as toddlers.. any excessive head movement will cause you to lose balance. you only have 1/4 to 1/3 of the time to deal with the ball compared to a baseline shot, get on with it asap lol.. let the hand be the guide and the rest of the body will follow.
Click to expand...
The squeeze should happen just prior to impact. (At least 30-50 ms prior to impact according to some studies).

On fast incoming balls, a simple squeeze “into contact” should suffice. On slow / moderate incoming balls, I would often create a bit of a gap between the handle and the heel pad as I lined the racket up to volley. Just prior to impact, I would perform a very deliberate squeeze, primarily with the last three fingers of the hand, in such a manner to accelerate the racket head forward as the heel pad gap was closed. By accelerating the racket head in this manner, I could generate a great deal of RHS with a relatively short stroke.

I learned this fairly uncommon technique from a college team tennis coach back in the late 1980s. I believe he picked up this fairly simple technique from stick (sword) fighting — or some other martial art.

Somewhat later, about 30 years ago, I came across a Korean badminton coach who talked about employing “finger power” to accelerate the racket head on net kill shots. His English wasn’t very good back then but, after studying his video for a while, I realized that this badminton “finger power” was pretty much the same as the finger squeeze volley technique that I had learned previously from the college team tennis coach.
 
Note that the “finger power” squeeze technique I mentioned above does result in some wrist action. But it is not a forced / deliberate wrist snap. It is more of a passive wrist action that is initiated by squeezing the fingers shortly prior to contact.

Note that a similar action can be employed on serve or overhead just prior to impact.
 
SystemicAnomaly said:
Biomechanics expert expert, Brian Gordon, has studied the serve in considerable detail. He has indicated that wrist flexion can contribute some 30% at/ near contact. Forearm pronation is active during the upward swing but only contributes a small % at contact. The primary “snapping” contributor at/near contact is ISR.

Wrist snap on serve

I was wondering are you suppose to snap your wrist on a flat serve ? My tennis couch told me to snap my wrist if im not getting the ball down on my serve or what ever. But my pops said that I could hurt my wrist and arm doing that because I'm using so much power to hit the ball.
tt.tennis-warehouse.com tt.tennis-warehouse.com
Click to expand...
He actually had an account and posted here? Wow
 
not sure how anyone can say get a new coach from a one sentence statement that provides no context of how his instructions were explained.
 
10sbeast888 said:
well, nobody is wrong... the 30% maybe specific to a player or a specific group of players.

can you serve with 5%? sure, sampras sure looks like less than 30%... but for some people perhaps lacking flexibility around the shoulder area maybe more than 30% is needed to have enough mobility.

bottom line is still though - snapping the wrist is a pretty bad idea to teach, unless the coach can correctly interpret what it means for the student.

btw don't get me started on 'punching the volley out in front' lol... another garbage idea that has messed up countless people's volleys. tennis teaching really has too much garbage, passed down from 1 generation to the next...
Click to expand...

dat's why more & more got pickled:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D.............
 
zoingy said:
I remember reading some papers of that sort...personally I'm not sure how much "wrist flexion happens and is 30% of the racquet motion near contact" implies "wrist flexion independently applies 30% of the force around contact".

I see the wrist flexion objectively happen in my own serves, but subjectively it feels nowhere near 30%. I suspect that on flat serves, the ulnar deviation means that the "whip cracks" in a way that gives wrist flexion the credit for the movement. Meanwhile, forearm pronation, which has been working really hard to transmit the force from ISR, gets no credit because it's not moving much independently from ISR.
Click to expand...
watwat:?)) 30%:?)) f=ma n quite easy to figure out a top pro day in/out >180km/h serves even if w/ nearly perfect technique like >70% efficiency/effectiveness from the force n energy generated to accelerate the ball, well.............boyboy dat wrist gonna be rebuilt w/ titanic to last. no wonder so many ppl got wrist injuries lololololol:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D........
 
tennishabit said:
dat's why more & more got pickled:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D.............
Click to expand...

tennis is just way too hard.

whoever invented pickle is genius... it's basically foam ball for the adults, but it's really loud so the players feel they are doing some macho shyt lol.

obviously there are some court space conflicts, but I don't buy the theory that pickle is killing tennis.... quite the opposite, I think people can gateway thru pickle, and many will want to try a real racket sport like tennis lol.
 
EddieBrock said:
I did a lesson with a pro while traveling and he said on my 1st serve to toss far into the court and snap my wrist. With slice serve he said to cut with my wrist. On low forehands he said to really focus on coming over the ball with my wrist with a short take back swing. He kept emphasizing rolling over the ball with my wrist and finishing forward with my wrist.

I always heard you don't want to force your wrist. What do you think?
Click to expand...
On your serves, it should be a combined effort with body, shoulder, arm, and wrist working together. The wrist will play its part but it's not taking any undue burden.

With regard to the forehand, I teach my players not to involve the wrist too soon. If you do, you risk losing track of the racquet face which affects contact and there also tends to be a bad habit of flapping the racquet forward rather than swinging fully. The wrist may become more active on low shots to help get the upward motion to the contact point and generate lift, but again, it should be working with the other parts of your body on the swing.

I have always been a huge proponent of limiting wrist movement at the beginning and focusing more on the kinet chain and use of the whole body to coordinate the swing.
 
10sbeast888 said:

even the goat is giving wrong advice - beginning minutes of the video about the wrist snap lol..... unfortunately the tennis coaching industry is extremely fragmented and the knowledge distribution is all over the place.. and partly due the extreme complexity of the game.

I'd say bar none tennis is THE most complicated sport. a lot of people think golf is hard, but the swing is only about as complex as the tennis serve.

for the OP - like I said the TT wisdom is likely better than any single coach you can buy. post video and get your game fixed..
Click to expand...
Lmao
 
SystemicAnomaly said:
The squeeze should happen just prior to impact. (At least 30-50 ms prior to impact according to some studies).

On fast incoming balls, a simple squeeze “into contact” should suffice. On slow / moderate incoming balls, I would often create a bit of a gap between the handle and the heel pad as I lined the racket up to volley. Just prior to impact, I would perform a very deliberate squeeze, primarily with the last three fingers of the hand, in such a manner to accelerate the racket head forward as the heel pad gap was closed. By accelerating the racket head in this manner, I could generate a great deal of RHS with a relatively short stroke.

I learned this fairly uncommon technique from a college team tennis coach back in the late 1980s. I believe he picked up this fairly simple technique from stick (sword) fighting — or some other martial art.

Somewhat later, about 30 years ago, I came across a Korean badminton coach who talked about employing “finger power” to accelerate the racket head on net kill shots. His English wasn’t very good back then but, after studying his video for a while, I realized that this badminton “finger power” was pretty much the same as the finger squeeze volley technique that I had learned previously from the college team tennis coach.
Click to expand...
:giggle:Thanks for correcting wrong advice
 
10sbeast888 said:
btw don't get me started on 'punching the volley out in front' lol... another garbage idea that has messed up countless people's volleys. tennis teaching really has too much garbage, passed down from 1 generation to the next...
Click to expand...
It does, this is why no one knows how to use sidespin and everyone thinks forehand slicing is only for defense.
 
EddieBrock said:
I did a lesson with a pro while traveling and he said on my 1st serve to toss far into the court and snap my wrist. With slice serve he said to cut with my wrist. On low forehands he said to really focus on coming over the ball with my wrist with a short take back swing. He kept emphasizing rolling over the ball with my wrist and finishing forward with my wrist.

I always heard you don't want to force your wrist. What do you think?
Click to expand...
my $.02 mental model
i want the racquet overtaking hand for max rhs (aka wrist snap, whip, throw, etc...)...
i want to safely dissipate energy after contact (pronation, elbow snap, sampras finish, dirty diaper, etc...)

if i'm not doing the sampras finish, and just dissipating energy by letting my straight arm follow through... my serves tend to be pushy, not alot of spin, etc...
 
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