Hi guys Nick here from Intuitive Tennis. Today I want to teach you how to hit
the perfect forehand. So what is the perfect forehand? Well it's a forehand
where you're gonna have feel, control, and power. In other words the ball is gonna
feel great coming off your strings, it's gonna go right towards the intended
target and you're gonna be able to hit it hard. So there are three sequences of
movements that need to take place in order for you to have the perfect
forehand. Let's find out what they are.
So the first sequence of the forehand is watch and turn and it's something like
this. I'm in my ready position and I'm watching the opponent and as soon as I
recognize, okay this ball is coming to my forehand, I'm gonna make a turn like this.
I'm gonna continue watching the ball and my body is gonna make a turn and
now it's gonna allow me to set it up appropriately and what I don't want to
do is stay open like this and move this way, or I also don't want to go into what
some people call the unit turn right away.
It's way too early I don't want to go like this and get my hand across the
body because now my movements are gonna be very mechanical and robotic when I
move. So I don't go into that yet, that comes much later in the swing, I
simply just from a ready position, I turn towards my forehand side and now I'm
ready to set up. So the second part of the forehand is the set up phase and
this is a very important phase if we want to hit a good forehand and we need
to be set up perfectly. So we already know it's a forehand we've turned this
way and now we start setting it up. It can go basically in 4 different directions
then go this way on the run, we can go forward to the ball like this, we can go
backwards if we get pushed back like this in a turned position, or even if we
decide we want to hit a forehand from the backhand side
I do the same progressions we turn a little bit and now we can move this way to the forehand.
So now step number 3, we're gonna actually hit the ball so
we've already turned we've set it up perfectly and we're gonna be in a
position something like this, ok and this is what looks like a unit turn and
now remember this happened much later in the stroke, this is not the first thing we
do so this happens much later and now we're ready to separate the non-dominant
arm from the dominant arm we're ready to go into our back swing and when should
this happen? You should start separating when the ball has bounced
on your side of the court or maybe if that rushes you a little bit too much
you can do it when the ball is about to balance if that feels like it gives
you a little bit more time and you ask yourself why I should do it this
way why not take the racket back early? Well if you take the racket back too
soon if you separate too soon then you develop a hitch in your backswing and
you have to pause at the wrong time. Remember by waiting this long
and this stroke is going to be continuous and fluid without any
interruptions and also because our focus is solely on the ball and it's going to
be very intuitive. We're not going to think about the backswing that much.
We're only going to be focused on the contact.
So now let's talk about the actual backswing. So we've started to separate, now we're going to go into our
backswing here. So if we just look at the maybe the four best players of the last
ten years and take a look at how to take the racket back. They all do it differently.
So Federer will take a racquet like
this and he'll drop it down here, you take a Nadal, he takes it back like this
and then he drops it in here and like this, you take a Djokovic he takes the
racket back all the way and with the strings are facing to the back fence
like this and you take a Andy Murray who takes it back up high and then has the
wrist kind of hang down like this something like this. So you can see that
they all have great forehands they all do it a little bit different.
You take the top hundred, they all have a different backswing
and the reason why is is that the backswing is intuitive. Everybody has a
different backswing and because you're not focused on the backswing as a player
and you do it completely intuitively. We already talked about the focus being on
the ball and what the racket does back here it's gonna do on its own, it's gonna
lag on its own if we do the correct movements and the racket is going to go
down on its own towards the ball and depending on the height of the ball and
so you do not have to worry about your backswing. So we do not have to worry
about the backswing the backswing is completely intuitive and it's gonna be
the same every time you start playing at whatever age and
you hit tens of thousands of forehands and the backswing always looks the same.
But how is that possible? Because it's basically muscle memory. You're
unconsciously doing it and it's always going to stay the same.
One thing like teaching about the backswing is the starting point. So we have a starting
point that's higher and then the racquet will drop back here from a
higher point that is really the only thing I would like you to look at.
Is to start from the ready position like this and turning and maintaining
this high position of the racquet. Of course it works the other way too. You
have somebody like a Pete Sampras, who had one of the best forehands ever.
Ivan Lendl great forehand who had kind of a lower separation point and they kind
of led the way with their with their elbow like this, but I feel like the
modern forehand most of the players these days they have a high starting
point with the racquet.
Okay so now we've covered the backswing and now something
happens actually at the same time as the racquet is going back and that is the
rotation of the left side of your body on the right-handers. So basically we have
to get our our left hand out of the way when we start hitting the ball this
happens very early. So we start getting the left hand out of the way and we
start the rotation like this we start going forward and the ultimate goal
being making contact in front where the right shoulder is in front of the left
shoulder and this is something that all good players have in common, whether it's
a good junior, whether it's a good college player, or all the pros they all hit the
ball in front on the majority of their shots. Maybe sometimes they're in a
defensive position they hit the ball a little bit more behind, but let's say on
99 percent of their shots they are in front and this is absolutely
necessary to have a top level forehand.
So now we're in the contact point here
and what happens next is very important so we don't want to hit forward on the
ball and we don't want to hit in other words hit through the ball we want to
hit across the ball like this this is about all the pros do. Even WTA or ATP
they're both hit across the body and if you look at what we the prior steps we
took on the forehand and we started separating here and then we started
rotating early right and now the rotation is going this way and now once
I make contact in front like this. Well now if I go forward I'll break my
rotation and I actually disconnect the ball from my body I lose the ball this
way. You can sometimes see players when they're too far away from the ball
and they hit forward like this and they lose all their power. So in order to keep
our power and connect that ball to our core we must hit across the body in a up
across and back fashion like this and we get a
lot more strength on the ball that way.
So why must we hit across on the
forehand? Well the reason is multiple. It's for feel, it's for control
and it's for power. Let me break it down one by one. So why is there more
feel going across? It's because we're keeping the ball longer on our strings
so we're feeling the ball a little bit longer
we're not letting it come off the strings to fast, so there's definitely
more feel in coming across and we know this on a slice backhand for example
which is kind of a finesse shot that we hit across and we can feel the ball in
the strings longer and it's a very desired thing in tennis. Another reason
why we want to hit across is control. So the control in tennis comes from keeping
the strings positioned towards the target as long as possible and so if you
break this position and we lose control pretty fast, if we keep this position as
long as possible something like this and then we have ultimate control over the ball.
And now thirdly we also get more power by hitting across. Now let me
explain. By going, we already started you know rotating here, we've already started
rotating, and now we're going to hit the ball in front as we already covered and
now by hitting across we are actually connecting the ball to our body.
See we are much stronger pulling the racket across this way then we would be
if we went forward on the ball like this. This is true in a closed stance
forehand as well. If we connect the ball this way and we are much stronger on the
ball then if we went forward on the ball this way, because we go forward we
disconnect the ball from our body. So in any case, whether it's closed stance or
open stance we are always much stronger hitting across and I want to make a
separate video where we cover this issue with lots of slow-mo footage and so on
and we're going to talk about how we must hit across on all shots topspin and flat.
Thank you so much guys for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed it. Please
don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you next time.