the dreaded continental grip anna
you have to serve with the continental yes yes i know you like don't like it on the serve i don't
like it i know i know remember the match i was seeing you were switching you were going to a forehand
okay it's double fault right all right 30 all it's no big deal shake it off
double faults are part of the game it is counterintuitive you're right about that
it is mo well because when you first start playing tennis you want to go like this you know why
because you have this relationship between the strings and the ball and you want the strings
to approach the ball and that's easiest done in a forehand grip that's why you want to go like this
when you're a beginner it doesn't make a lot of sense or like you said it's counterintuitive to go
like this in a continental grip with the edge towards the ball right this doesn't make any sense
exactly but what happens when you learn to go with the edge eventually not yet you're still going to
go like this interestingly because you still have a lot of muscle memory stored but eventually you
will approach the ball on edge and then what happens is you'll end up pronating into the
contact and that pronation to the contact is very important on the serve so that's why if you serve
with a forehand grip that part is going to be very difficult to accomplish the pronation because the
racket is going to come in here and then out this way it's not going to be on edge even if
you do everything else right the forehand grip is a big mistake on the serve now unfortunately the
longer you do it the more difficult it becomes to get rid of it so i know it's tough but
you got to just you know go through this period of time where it where it's uncomfortable
but you have to continue plugging away yeah that's right it doesn't feel right well you are
actually you were actually on eastern backhand anna now you're on forehand yeah there you go
i noticed one thing before you started you were doing something so funny i thought it was funny
yeah when you were playing when you're playing your match you're going like this you would go in
and then you would go like this you do like a little hop afterwards
kind of to kind of to propel the ball forward to make it go over the net
yes yes on one foot actually but uh we gotta get rid of that
okay just the tendency is to go fast on the bottom portion of your serve
even though the way i'm teaching you i'm getting rid of this i'm letting you go here right away
okay but you're going up a little too fast here okay a little too hectic take your time the bottom
portion of your toss motion the bottom portion of it this beginning motion can be done slowly
and you speed it up towards the top slow down here and then speed up towards the top watch slow fast
clean release anna we don't want to flick we don't want to flick the hand like this
we want a clean release look watch my hand see how clean that is watch my hand see
the palm of my hand is to the sky the back of my hand is to the ground clean release
it's either behind me there we go it's okay the serve is tricky we gotta
keep plugging away getting a continental grip okay no it's too low it's all right it's all right
here's what i want you to do i want you to hit the serve anyway if you continue to not hit the serve
the toss is actually going to get worse yeah what i experienced with other students is that you it
builds actually um less confidence into your toss the more attempts you make the less confidence
you have so go i told you this in the match do you remember you tossed you were tossing it way
too much you were losing confidence from there so i want you to make less attempts on the toss
and just hit them even if it's a bad now one thing that you're doing here you're not gripping
the ball the ball is rolling around your hand so grip the ball towards the bottom portion
of your fingers okay see this here grip it and then release it like that don't have it loose
you're going to release it when it which point okay when it passes
when it gets to the level of your chin that's when you let go
the real actual release point is going to be somewhere between your chin and your forehead
because it's kind of fast the release point so you can't really catch where exactly it's released
but in your mind you're going to imagine releasing it at your level of your chin see whether you're
letting go at that particular moment or not it's not important that's what you have to imagine
most likely you're going to let go a little bit past the chin it's usually around the forehead
that's the actual release point but i want you to imagine letting go at the chin that makes sense
it looks so easy when you do it well because i've done it
i've done it 10 million times so with practice it gets better
that was actually pretty good but you got a forehand grip anna yes it actually adjusted
in the air did you see this it did i didn't see it i had it and here it turned well a lot of players
will go up and then they'll go right before they drop the racket they'll go like this yeah let's
revisit that later we don't want to do too many things at once let's just now focus on the toss
beautiful serve anna you liked it i like it a lot still ended up like this but i think i
didn't see it though i it looked correct to me it might have ended up after after the contact
yeah but that was a nice looking toss nice looking serve keep going that way here we go anna you're
looking better see you start you're starting to click don't go up so fast we don't want to go
quickly here we want to be nice and smooth gradually accelerate okay going from slow to fast
it's all right
by the way i don't want you to get discouraged with the toss because the toss is the number
one problem at the recreational level it is such a big problem that even some pros have trouble
with it so the toss is something that you're going to have to have a lot of patience for
grip the ball on it don't let it loose and you don't let it sit loose in your hand here like this
grip it come on there you go don't flick see that's why i'm hesitant if i grip it i'm not
sure if i'm gonna flick it if i keep it open the problem with keeping it open is gonna roll out of
your hand so if you keep it open you go up this up movement will roll the ball off your fingers
and now the ball is gonna have a lot of spin on it as you're tossing there's a lot of spin that's not
good it's going to lead to inconsistencies often the ball will also the fingers are a little bit
curled it'll roll backwards yeah so you don't want it loose in your hand you grip the ball and then
upon the release you let go like this and then the ball is going to be more flat in the air that's
what i call a flat release watch see my ball see how it's not even spinning see how it's flat
yeah now watch if i have a loose loose ball in my hand and i just do the same thing
see it's spinning a lot more watch so it's spinning a lot more yeah it's not optimal
anna not bad at all yeah yep do it again
best serve you hit today fantastic job keep going we need 10 of those okay
i'm going to keep track that's number one question why do they do this a lot of them
they do things like this before they serve yeah so what does it provide
for people is it something mental and i did ever tell you you asked excellent questions
really good question let me explain to you why here hold on your questions are amazing
so nice yeah basketball i can't even do this they do something like that well the reason why most
people don't like doing stuff handling uh tennis balls with their left hand or if they happen to
be right-handed so that's something that you get used to as a tennis player but you see this right
bouncing the ball so basically what that is it's the rhythm of the serve okay and this is something
that you're going to do later i don't want to throw too many things at you at once but there's a
rhythm to the serve that we already kind of tapped into with the one two and three remember that
but basically here slide back so you can see it a little better see i want you to be able to look
at my feet because the bouncing of the ball is unimportant what happens to my feet is important
so when i bounce the ball inside the court you see how the weight is on my front foot yeah so now
as i connect my racket and i start going back the weight shifts onto the back foot right so
the bouncing of the ball can contribute to the shifting the weight forward right which will
then go backward and then forward again that's the serve rhythm so it's like a rocking motion
so it's look it's forward forward backward and then back to forward
does that make sense that's why they bounce the ball inside the court okay but you'd have to do
that now because i don't want you to think about the rocking motion yet we do that later we first
have to get the fundamentals right and it starts with the toss so do a couple more tosses so this
is kind of emphasize the body weight on the front foot yeah but remember right now you're serving stationery right i'm not
having you lean we did that a couple times but then you took a long break from serving
you didn't serve at all like three months or so i seriously didn't even put any energy into service
yeah so we a little bit re so we regressed on the serve so we have to build it back up yeah
anna but it was inside it's not bad at all that one
you have to have patience otherwise i wouldn't be fun to be around and it would be a lot more
pressure on you you wouldn't have fun and then most likely you quit tennis no i wouldn't be
able to if i say anna come on what's with your toss me right now i would not be not you better
get this toss right what's wrong with you i know that's not bad at all that's maybe the
slightly i'm glad you can feel that too but that was a pretty good serve
by the way that previous serve I'm counting that is number two remember we need ten good serves
that was number two what was it but it wasn't the other side no it was in not that one that was bad
i'm talking about the previous one that was your second good one anna i'm proud of you beautiful
toss all right that was number three okay let's keep going we need ten we need ten of these
number four
five
that's not bad at all you know what even though it was a little bit wide i'm gonna still give
it to you because i like the toss all right that's number six here we go here we go come on
anna one thing that's important that i saw now in the last couple of tosses your arm
is kind of bending this way yeah the left one the toss arm it's kind of bending you have to
keep the toss arm straight okay you don't want to bend the arm ana you understand what i'm saying
yeah the arm is slightly bent your toss arm so we want to keep it as straight as possible
as you're tossing up keep it as straight as possible it looks more elegant that way anyway
no seriously i'm all about elegance that's what i mean that's why i said it
way too wild the toss it was fast the entire way see that's interesting what's happening
now i think a lot of people the reason why they bend the arm because they have a lot
more control when the arm is bent generally it's because the ball is closer to them the closer the
ball is to you the more you feel the ball when you get a further away you have less control so
now as soon as you started straightening the arm the ball is going a lot faster
and really straight it's going very high but it's going too high now it's too high it's a
little bit too speedy it toss has too much pace on it yes so just slow it down like 40% okay
i love that toss and that's actually an ace it was right on the line there
that's number seven that felt good right here we go three more
yeah would you made that serve but i didn't like the toss
anna maybe the best serve of your life the tempo of it
absolutely phenomenal okay good keep going that's number eight here we go and i love the control
of that toss very nice that's number nine here we go match point one more good toss bent right yeah
i say you're repositioning the ball in your hand get comfortable with the ball yes yeah not don't
don't the tip of the fingers here bottom of the fingers let go you can still go on top here
yeah like that okay and here there you go because i do it here that's a little too grippy so it's
right at the bottom of the hand not completely on the bottom not here but more like you see this
here you see where it's at okay there all right it's not here anna not here
not here okay okay this is somewhere in the middle exactly i love it number 10. that felt good right
awesome job all right now i'm going to get the rid of your forehand grip that's changing somewhere
throughout your serve with a little trick okay give me one second okay okay so the way you are
changing your grip you start off in a continental grip and then somewhere around here you stay there
you can see it somewhere around here you are turning and changing but look if i put a piece
of paper underneath my index finger right here and now if i try to change my grip you see the paper
it's not going to come off my racket because it's sticking to the grip hold on anna look now in
a continental grip i'm gonna put a piece of paper right here all right underneath my index finger
and now if i raise my finger in order to change the grip the paper is gonna come flying watch this
i don't know what my grip is ready anna wait a second yeah my trick is not working you know what
it is i got a tacky grip let me have yours yours a little bit older it is also hot weather so it
could be sweating it's a little bit of sweat yeah and it's lotion on my finger sun lotion
all right so look on a continental grip just put a piece of paper right here and now if i
let go of this piece of paper it comes what is this like super glue paper hold on let me get a
piece of the paper this is ridic it's just it's sticking to your grip hold on here oh now we got
a paper towel okay this works too paper towel let's see if this works i changed my grip and oh
you came flying anna you saw that yeah now if i want to keep my continental grip i'm going to
have to hold this grip i'm going to hold all fingers on the grip in order to not change it
so especially the index finger so this is a great way to control what the hand is doing if i let go
and try to change my grip watch it goes flying okay it works perfectly all right try it out
anna wait a second it didn't look like you changed your grip though
oh you did all right try it again try it again i'm not sure when it's happening it doesn't it
doesn't actually matter but doesn't matter if it's happening at the very end well that would be
the best the best possible way to for it to happen because it's happening after contact okay but even
then i'm not a big fan of it okay of course it's a lot worse if it's happening prior to the contact
no doubt about it but let's get rid of that thing anyway regardless of where it's happening okay
ana it didn't move you know why i know very uncomfortable well the reason why i know
it actually this might have been the first serve today you hit with a continental grip
you know why because the ball went like this it went to the it went to the left
because you know what happens when you start with a continental grip you already have muscle memory
for the forehand grip which is this and now the grip is turned you have that same muscle memory
at contact look at the strings they're pointing towards the side and now everything is going to
be a slice so this is super important that you train your hand the muscle memory to change so
that you're turning the hand slightly into the contact this will happen naturally as
you attempt to get the ball into the box you're not going to be comfortable with serving like
this the whole time so eventually you're gonna start getting that ball more towards the box
and then naturally intuitively that hand is gonna start turning into the contact here
try a couple more and by the way this is not something that it takes time to change this
okay yeah don't don't try to look don't worry about this area of the serve do you just keep
doing what you're doing and try to make contact don't try to don't try to get any ideas of
what is happening here consciously okay do it again you move my wrist of the on the contact
with this grip so i understand where no just serve i'm telling you it works this way don't
over complicate it just take a serve so it should be straight don't over complicate it just serve
just hold a piece of paper that's your job right now that's all you got to do here we go
ana did it change it worked let me check let me examine the grip yeah you are on maybe a
little bit well no you were actually still on on continental you were slightly over towards
the australian grip but that was an example of where you didn't change your grip and look
piece of paper is still there and you had a good toss and the ball went in all right this is what
we got to do we got to do the paper trick until we get rid of that forehand grip okay good work
even this is not comfortable to do with this grip it's funny you bring that up
yeah it's counterintuitive to go towards the ball like this yeah so you want to go to the ball like
this and the easiest way to go towards the ball with the strings is to hold the racquet like this
right so when we do the racket tap from now on let's do it in a continental grip racket taps in
a continental grip so tap my racket continental there it is working the wrist is going to be
different no doubt about it but the reason why i don't want you obsessed about the wrist because
that part of your serve is over in milliseconds you're not aware of what the wrist is doing anyway
so to obsess on it and to try to figure out what the wrist is positioned like at the moment of contact
it's useless yeah but the wrist is going to be in a completely different position yes that's true
but don't worry about it good work today anna let me see the continental grip tap nice