Hey everyone Simon and Alex here with Top Tennis Training
in this video, we're going to try and fix my backhand. Now
i've always felt like my forehand was my main weapon like i could do a lot more
with my forehand and i always felt like i wanted to kind of run around my
backhand and hit more forehands so today i wanted
to work on my back and hopefully improve it,
look at some slow-motion footage to see what the causes
for me missing those balls for me having difficulty
in handling some balls and find out what we can do to fix it so hopefully get me
playing better tennis
now before we get into the video if you're serious about improving your game
make sure you click on that subscribe button and you turn on
the notification bell so alex what exactly do you feel
when you're struggling with your backhand so i find it really tough
to handle high balls first of all like i find it really difficult
i end up just slicing and i resort to my slice in matches as well
quite a lot uh just because i just don't feel confident enough to hit it
i also feel like i don't generate enough power like i don't
get as much as i could maybe out of that back and it just doesn't quite feel
solid enough and i always feel like i have to muscle it
too much and i know i shouldn't be but i just
i feel it and i it makes me lose confidence on it and i end up
not hitting it as much so today i want to work on creating a little bit more
power out of it maybe also being able to generate more
spin because i kind of end up hitting it quite flat
yep so i find my back ends quite flat so if i can get more top spin on it
get more power on it and be able to handle high balls then you know
we've done a great job let's have a go
so alex tends to take the racket down quite low and then get into that power
position and if we compare that to like a
walrinka who starts with a racket above the grip level he's already
creating that space to accelerate the racket
and he's creating that leverage in the hand and in the racket
so for me i always felt like i'm trying to drop my shoulder and then i when i
drop it it feels kind of unnatural for me to have my
my my arm up but i guess the way i need to be doing is get the arm up first
and then drop the shoulder second so like it's more this
and also notice when he gets to that back position he's lifting his elbow
and on the older style backhands he was hitting his elbows quite tucked into his
body
so now we're going to really work on this elbow coming up to around shoulder
level this will allow him that space he needs
to accelerate and this will give him that
ability to handle those higher balls with much more ease
and i guess for me it felt a little bit more like a comfort thing like
if the elbow's here i feel like everything's close i feel comfortable
whereas getting this it feels like everything's further away but if you
think about having a longer lever and being able to generate power
you need the length of lever to be able to let go and hit here and i think
that's maybe also why i'm i tend to hit the ball flatter is
because if i'm here i end up just doing this more whereas if
i'm from here i can actually drop and i can
i can get a little bit of topspin there as well so not only am i going to
hopefully get spin uh but also generate some power just by
getting that start here and getting that elbow up as simon said
and you know and seeing the the footage is actually quite uh
quite noticeable so in this first roll i'm simply going
to be having my racket underneath alex's elbow forcing him to lift up to
around shoulder height with that elbow this will help him have that higher take
back that bigger loop more space to accelerate the racket and
then i'm going to be dropping the ball and he's simply going to be accelerating
from that back position also if you think about me lifting the
elbow up here notice the space this way so when i when
i drop the elbow in when i take it back
the racket ends up going behind here whereas here i can actually
go a lot more further here without breaking this line
so i can get more of a deeper swing this way rather than a
compact swing this way so not being like tucked in but
being deeper here so this is what i'm trying
to get out of it and hopefully simon's gonna
keep my elbow up for me to try and do
that so after every shot we're reinforcing
that position of the elbow being high and away from
the body
so now that i've got my elbow back i start feeling pretty good on it i start
feeling like actually the racquet starts to fly a
little bit more and i'm actually a little bit looser as well because
the racket's away from me now i'm able to just let go and the the
racket does the work for me whereas before i had to start doing something
with my shoulder here and then perhaps that's where i was losing a little bit
of the control and which made me lose confidence on
that backhand so now the next thing i've something that i saw on my on my videos
is on the take back i'd also love to get that racket head a
little bit away from my body so not only am i getting my elbow up
but i'm also getting that racket head the racket face the playing area away
from me so this will hopefully give me a strong
contact so i'll have a lot of leverage so if someone pushes against me
here i've got quite a lot of strength whereas if i haven't quite achieved that
if i'm here then i'm not going to get the same power
on that ball so it actually helps me get a good contact point as well so in
this drill i'm simply going to be placing my hand
against alex's racket making sure it's now facing the left side of the
court and i'm going to be drop feeding him
a backhand
and you can see has really good space now between his racket
and the body which will allow him to accelerate that racket
without any hindrance so next few backhands alex let's try and get more
height more spin and see if you can really produce that
heavy topspin that you want
yes there we go
again
starting to look like walrinka's already one more
maureen can we have a match for you now but now it's all about that starting
position and seeing if he can get into that power position on his
own
now even though alex is getting into that power position it doesn't make much
sense for him to be starting in that kind of position here that ready
position and then having to lift the racket now if we look at a
wawrinka or dominic team even federer
they'll have the racket higher than the grip level when they're waiting
and as soon as they recognize the balls coming to the back end they already have
the racket head higher than the grip so that's what
we're going to focus on right now that makes sense here we go
so rack is higher and now it's easier for him to get into that back position
because the racket's already in that set position
one more
perfect that would be a thousand dollars please alex
and that did feel actually like i was saving a little bit of time
instead of doing all this i was simply doing this i was simply just turning so
racket's here i turn i get my elbow up i turn
get my elbow up so getting that feel for this
is quite important i think i'm going to try and groove it in now for when i play
hopefully make it autonomous hopefully improve my back end
and start winning more matches
and if you think about it when you have an opponent who gives you easier balls
you can cheat you can start down here and still reach that power position but
when you're playing the players that alex is playing
guys who are top 100 you don't have that time you have to go
from this position into that position as quickly as possible
buying yourself time
so we hope you enjoyed this video guys let us know what you think let us know
if that has helped your backhand i know it certainly has
helped mine we're going to release a few more videos like this hopefully working
on each other's games see if we can raise that bar from top
tennis training and hopefully help you out on the journey as well
now don't forget guys we have a free one-handed backhand guide you can
download that right away we'll leave the link below this video
all you have to do is click on that link it will take you to our website you
simply enter your email address and we'll send you that free pdf
straight away
you