hey guys in today's video i want to talk about the dangers of slow motion footage and not so
much when you record yourself and then watch your strokes in slow motion this can be quite useful
to see what you're doing but i'm specifically talking about slow motion footage of professional
players now let me explain to you what i mean by the dangers of slow motion footage so many
players will misinterpret certain parts of the professional players technique they will assume
that these are consciously executed actions of the stroke i'm just going to give you two examples but
there are many so one example is the wrist lag on the forehand something that is not visible in
real time in other words if you watch federer nadal or djokovic play on tv you don't see the wrist
lag because it's happening in milliseconds and it's happening way too fast for us to see
it with the naked eye however when we watch the stroke in slow motion footage or even better
in super slow motion footage we can see exactly what goes on with the human body at very specific
moments of the stroke and unfortunately this can be misinterpreted by some players so for example
the wrist lag on the forehand players are not aware that it's taking place and i'm going to
make an argument that most professional players do not even know what the term wrist lag means
because it's completely executed intuitively they're not realizing that the wrist is taking
this particular shape in the forward phase of the swing and why is this the case because the stroke
accelerates so fast in that part of the stroke it is simply too quick for us to be conscious of
so the danger of slow motion footage is that players will see the wrist lag in slow motion
and it will try to recreate this and the only way you can recreate that part of the stroke is
to slow it down so i've seen many players come to me for lessons and they're making
what i call a fake wrist lag they're slowing down or stopping the stroke right here to make
this particular shape of the wrist happen and as a result of that they have a major
hitch in their forehand and they're severely hurting their timing and the power
so this is the danger of misinterpreting a certain portion of the stroke because if you try to make
the wrist lag happen and slow your stroke down to get this angle of the wrist you're not only
hurting your power and your timing but you're also breaking all the momentum all the continuity and
the flow of the forehand and most likely you're going to commit a lot of errors because of that
now another danger of watching certain parts of the strokes in slow motion is pronation into the
contact and continuing pronation this is probably the one that's most popular at the recreational
level people will watch the pros like federer nadal or djokovic do the continuing pronation
after the ball has been struck and now they're trying to recreate this and just like the
forehand wrist lag pronation into the contact and continuing pronation
is a direct result of the correct fundamentals on the serve and serve acceleration
and just like the forehand if you try to make this movement of the racquet what everybody's
obsessed about the continuing pronation happen at a conscious level you will only be able to do so
if you slow your stroke severely down at the most crucial moment which is the contact so in order to
execute this you will have to slow down towards the contact and then make this movement of
the hand and not only will you interrupt the stroke you will also reduce the range of motion
and therefore abruptly end the stroke but also it's going to make the timing of this
pronation extremely difficult you got to realize that pronation into the contact and continuing
pronation is happening in milliseconds so it's absolutely impossible to time these movements
at a conscious level this can only happen intuitively and just like the forehand wrist
leg if you try to see with the naked eye pronation into the contact and continuing pronation if you
watch a match in real time you will not be able to see it and i'm going to make the argument again
that most players never think about pronation some don't even know what it means it's a completely
intuitive process on the serve and this is again a danger of watching slow motion footage
because you're trying to recreate something that happens in milliseconds and it's only visible when
the strokes are slowed down so what do you do instead don't worry about it and in this case
i don't even want you to obsess about it when you watch yourself serve in slow motion i have
seen many students who are obsessed on the pronation into the contact and the continuing
pronation they're watching themselves they're recording themselves and they're wasting a lot
of time because of that i want you to check in on this particular thing maybe once or twice a year
that's enough don't worry about it just like the forehand wrist lag pronation into
the contact and continuing pronation is a direct result of the correct fundamentals on the serve
and serve acceleration it's not something you should ever concern yourself with and besides
players misinterpreting certain technical elements of strokes when they're viewing them in slow
motion and then trying to recreate them in real time there are other problems with slow motion
and if you look at me from this way this is the most popular angle to record the elite players
in slow motion and one problem with this angle is that first of all you don't know the intention the
player has you also don't know whether the strokes that you're looking at are going in or out you
also have no idea at the directional control of the ball and the strokes are also out of context
you don't know if it's a practice session or if it's a point play situation so it's very difficult
to analyze the strokes because of those reasons so let me show you i'm going to hit a few forehands
you have absolutely no idea where i'm hitting these balls i could be hitting them inside in
inside out and i might just be warming up and kind of relaxed and just not moving my feet very much
and my stroke will therefore change so another danger of the slow motion footage is that it's
out of context and it's not necessarily the real technique that players are using in match play
and also the most popular angle to record the serve in slow motion is this footage as well
now when you see me serve from this angle you have absolutely no idea whether i'm doing a first or a
second serve you have absolutely no idea where i'm directing the serve and you also don't know if i'm
putting slice on it kick or if i'm hitting it flat so again just like the other strokes the serve is
out of context and if players try to copy certain technical elements there might be some mistakes in
their interpretation because of that but here's an example i'm not going to tell you what i'm doing
you try to identify my serve you have no idea whether i'm trying to spin the ball you have
no idea what i'm trying to slice it because you can't see the direction of the ball and there's
also limitations when viewing the serve from this angle when it comes to the toss and the swing path
now i'm going to give you some tips how you can identify the serve by looking at it from this
angle so you can simply look at the location of the toss whether it's way in front of the baseline
or it's just slightly in front of the baseline and also looking at the amount of torso rotation
a player is doing and by looking at those two things you can differentiate from flat and slice
and kick so you might not necessarily be able to differentiate between a flat serve and a slice serve
but a kick serve is very distinguishable because you can always see the sideways position of the
body and usually it's going to be accompanied by a toss that's only slightly in front of the baseline
and guys i think the solution is to get the slow motion footage from the big tournaments i've i've
seen some amazing slow-motion footage from the madrid open for example they have those amazing
high-speed cameras or even from the australian open and usually the slow motion was recorded from
behind and you can see the context of the game you can even know what score it is because that
also matters in how players are executing their strokes how they're playing their strokes under
certain score lines and we need to study that part of the players games when they're playing
their absolute best in those match situations unfortunately practice sessions the slow motion
footage in those instances is often misleading and it's not the real game of the players