hey guys in today's video I want to teach you how to hit a two-handed forehand wait a second
I actually don't want to teach you how to hit a two handed forehand the only two scenarios where
it would be okay for you to hit a two-handed forehand are the following ones let's say that
you've always hit the two-handed forehand it just came natural to you and you hit it incredibly well
in this case by all means continue hitting your two-handed forehand there's no problem with that
also if you are a recreational level player when you have some physical issues where you cannot
hit with one arm I do get some rare cases with students who switch to a two-handed forehand that
asked me to teach it to them which led me to do a tremendous amount of research on the two-handed
forehand which I will present in today's video but in any case these players had physical issues
and they're unable to hit the ball with one arm on the forehand side and naturally it's a good
idea to maybe use a two-handed forehand if you happen to have these physical issues but there's
absolutely no doubt in my mind that the one-handed forehand is far superior to a two-handed forehand
so if you have a one-handed forehand I do not want you to switch to a two-handed forehand
now that we got that out of the way let me tell you a story from my dad who also was a coach and
he used the coach back in the day it was called Yugoslavia and he was the captain of the National
Junior Team and Monica Seles was on this team and my dad told me the story about Monica when
she was young she was one of the best juniors in the history of tennis she was so good at the age
of 12 years old that she was winning all the 18s tournaments it was something that was incredible
to watch and as you probably know Monica has one of the best two-handed forehands in the
history of tennis and my dad told me that there were so many coaches who tried to get Monica
to hit with a one-handed forehand because they thought it would be the better shot but Monica's
coach was her dad Karolj and he did not allow any coach to touch Monica's forehand for a
good reason because the two-handed forehand just came natural to Monica and she indeed
had one of the best forehands in the world World despite the fact that it was hit with two hands
when I did the research on the two handed forehand it was instantly clear to me that the two-handed forehand
is one of the most complex shots in tennis because it can be hit in many different ways now before I
start explaining the two-handed forehand I want to tell you that this is the only shot that I
don't know how to hit I did try to demonstrate it then I hit maybe one or two decent ones but
the vast majority of them were terrible and I had some technical flaws on my two-handed forehands
so by no means should you try to copy my two-handed for him but let's get started with
the classic way of hitting a two-handed forehand so let's say you are a right-handed player and
you're going to put your right hand let's say in a semi-western grip there's gonna be some variations
within the players but generally most of them such as Monica Seles or Marion Bartoli had
their dominant hand in a semi-western grip and now the non-dominant hand goes in a continental grip
counting from the Lefty side and now basically there's not going to be a loop like you would
have on a one-handed forehand this was one of my mistakes when I was hitting the two handed forehands
I was looping the racket too much and I felt like I was late on every single one because of a
different sequencing of the Torso rotation very similar to a two-handed backhand we don't need
a big loop here we can take the racket straight back now we can't have the racket slightly above
the handle something that Monica did and in my opinion Monica has the best two-handed forehand
of all times the one that looks the cleanest to me technically speaking is Peng if you take a look
at peng's forehand it is so clean so crisp and technically it's very similar to Monica's forehand
the other difference is that Monica was Lefty and Marion Bartoli and Peng were right-handed so in
any case no loop we're going to take the racket back and now we're going to sequence the Torso
rotation very similar to two-handed backhand we're going to go forward and rotate at the same time
naturally we're going to make contact with our dominant shoulder behind this is going to be very
different from a one-handed forehand our chest is going to be positioned to the side when we made
contact and then naturally as we finish the racket it's going to go over the non-dominant shoulder
so technically speaking the two handed forehand is very similar to a two-handed backhand but there's
one aspect of it that makes it very uncomfortable for most players and that is the position of the
dominant wrist see on a two-handed backhand the wrists are positioned natural it feels
good to take the racket back but if you take the racket back by holding the racket with two hands
and you take it back to about right here you see how uncomfortably this wrist bends because
I can't take the racket further back because my non-dominant arm is holding the racket so I can
go to about right here and this angle of the wrist is very uncomfortable for most players
so again this is something you're going to have to get used to because it does feel quite awkward and
then from here once you let that racket go it is similar to a two-handed backhand we're just going
to rotate and go forward at the same time and then try to continue going until that racket goes above
our non-dominant shoulder so as I was doing the research on the two handed forehand I saw some crazy
techniques and I want to start off with Fabrice Santoro who was right-handed who would hit the
forehand with two hands but he would actually slice most of his two-handed forehands with a
continental grip with his dominant hand but every now and then it would do it very rarely he would
hit a Top Spin two-handed forehand and he would actually put his dominant hand in a Hawaiian grip
all the way past Western in his non-dominant hand would go on the Eastern backhand grip and this is
something that looks so uncomfortable but he would get a tremendous amount of spin with the two hands
his non-dominant hand would barely hold on to the Racket and because his dominant hand was so far
underneath the racket a vertical swing path was guaranteed and that ball would be spinning like
crazy now if you try the fabrice Santoro topspin two-handed forehand technique I guarantee you
that you're gonna have a hard time getting it over the net but I'm going to tell you another
player who had a crazy two-handed forehand on that Jan Michael gambill so he was also right-handed and
he would have this dominant hand in a semi-western grip and instead of putting the non-dominant hand
on top he would overlap his hands like this and he would hit the two handed forehand with both hands on top
of each other now if you think that's weird you should check out Pancho segura's two-handed forehand
because he was also right-handed he would put his dominant hand on top of the Racket and
then all of a sudden he would hit actually a left-handed two-handed like this why he did
this I'm not sure but he had a lot of success with it another player had a similar technique who was
also right-handed is and her forehand might be the weirdest one of them all so she hit a normal
two-handed backhand and then if you look closely what she would do is flip her hands he would
put her dominant hand on top like this and then she would hit a left-handed two-handed backhand
but check this out she would finish with one arm like this so she would do a hybrid a two-handed
lefty backhand and let go of the racket somewhere around here ending up with a regular forehand why
she did this I have no idea should you copy this absolutely not did this work for her it absolutely
did so again guys I made this video for a very small amount of viewers I don't want you to switch
from your one-handed forehand to a two-handed forehand because you're going to put yourself at
a disadvantage only use a two handed forehand if physical limitations or some injuries are preventing you
from hitting the ball with one arm or if your're like the pros and have always hit a two-handed forehand
from day one and those cases its perfectly fine to use a two-handed forehand