So what are tennis technique addicts? these are recreational level tennis players who spend a
lot of times looking at footage of themselves and sometimes looking at footage of professional level
players and by doing so they are harming their game now to some extent it's okay to look at slow
motion footage of yourself and of the professional players but these tennis technique addicts take
it to another level and there's two main types of tennis addicts that i've been able to identify the
first one is the recreational player who obsesses on copying a specific professional player in most
cases it happens to be roger federer and guys i know i've said this before but i don't mind
repeating it as much as you try to play like roger federer you won't be able to in fact there's no
other player apart from grigor dimitrov that plays anything like roger just go to your local club
and take a look at the recreational level players there do you see any roger federers out there
no way and why is this because roger federer's technique only works for him and it will not
fit any other player see what i want you to copy from the professional players are the fundamentals
this is what all high level players have in common what you are most likely copying are stylistic
individual characteristics of these certain players and they are not going to fit your body
because like i said these are individual stylistic characteristics that only suit
that specific player and trust me i understand why you're trying to copy some of these professional
players their strokes look stylistic they look elegant they look absolutely beautiful and you
want to look the same way but unfortunately it doesn't work that way in tennis if you try to copy
someone and that stroke is going to look different on you than it's going to look on the professional
player so my advice is that you develop your own style and you'll learn the fundamentals of
the game and the second type of tennis technique addict is the recreational player who obsesses on
trying to learn intuitive elements of the tennis strokes and there are many of them but i'm going
to give you two examples the forehand wrist lag and the pronation into the contact and continuing
pronation on the serve this is something that a lot of recreational players are obsessed with but
i can tell you high-level players do not spend one second thinking about those things and i guarantee
you that some of the players do not even know what those terms mean and what are intuitive elements
basically it's things that are going to happen naturally if you possess the correct fundamentals
and if you have a lot of acceleration in your stroke for example on the serve if you have all
the fundamentals down if you accelerate the serve properly naturally the racket will be on edge as
it comes out of the drop and there's no other way but to pronate into the contact now what happens
past this point is what a lot of recreational players are obsessed with and it is continuing
pronation so continuing pronation will sometimes take place and sometimes it will not take place
even at the elite level and if you're interested in finding out what will happen to your serve
if you try to force the continuing pronation something that a lot of recreational players are
obsessed with and check out my video titled fake pronation and the other example of an intuitive
element that you should never worry about is the wrist lag on the forehand this will naturally happen
if you possess the right sequencing of the torso rotation so here is how the wrist lag works for
example if we stay completely sideways we will not get a wrist lag you see the racquet will just
basically go from here to here however if we start opening up our chest early before the forward
phase of the racket now naturally as we accelerate in this direction and once that racket starts to
go forward the wrist will naturally lag behind the acceleration will make the wrist lag behind
this is not something you have to manufacture at the conscious level this will naturally happen
if you execute your forehand with the correct fundamentals and one tip that i can give you when
it comes to the intuitive parts of your strokes is that if you can see something with a naked eye
this is most likely something that you can work on however if you cannot see it if it's only visible
in slow motion this means that this is going to be accelerating very fast therefore it's most likely
an intuitive process and tennis technique addicts can also sometimes harm a perfectly good stroke so
they're always trying to improve it they're always trying to add something they're always trying to
tinker with it and one tip that i can give you is that if a stroke is working do not touch it
just leave it alone you already mastered it the stroke is most likely automated do not spend
one second thinking about technique because what's going to happen once you start tinkering with it
you start thinking about the stroke you might ruin it at the high level players do not spend
one second thinking about technique if they're thinking something technical is in general terms
it is more tactical strategic they're not thinking about these small intricate details of the stroke
all this stuff it's automated they know maybe even at the subconscious level if they start
messing with their backswing or their wrist lag or their contact point that something might go wrong
one example i can give you is serena williams when she was playing the u.s open a few years
back on arthur ashe stadium after the match to ask her if she can give a serve tip to the
audience and serena said when i'm serving i think of nothing now of course this is not a great tip
because you do need to develop fundamentals so that's not a tip that you can give to a player
expecting them to get better but i know what serena means she really doesn't think of anything
and that's what she said in this interview if i start thinking about stuff i start serving
worse so i think of nothing this is the best tip that i can give you so what you should take from
serena's statement is what i said before if your strokes are working leave them alone however many
of you do have technical deficiencies on your strokes so if your strokes are inconsistent you
don't get any power you do have to make some changes and learn the fundamentals there's
no doubt about that so if you are a tennis technique addict this is what you have to do
if your strokes are working okay i want you to stop obsessing on them or trying to improve
them further they're fine if you have technical problems focus on the fundamentals and yes it's
okay to record yourself just don't go overboard don't make it a thing where you're stopping your
practice every few minutes and looking at your phone and this disrupts the practice it takes away
from your repetition so the more you're doing this with your phone the less repetitions you're gonna
get remember tennis is all about reps you have to hit as many balls as possible to build that
muscle memory and learn those correct fundamentals so my suggestion is the following yes it's okay to
record yourself and identify something that you're doing wrong but then once you've identified it
and don't keep recording yourself you're not gonna fix whatever this thing is that you need to fix
in one day or even one week give yourself some time maybe two or three months of really hard work
a lot of repetitions you're gonna try to play as much as possible and then record yourself
again and see if this thing that you're doing wrong has disappeared this way you're gonna
keep your reps at a maximum and you're not gonna be wasting any of your valuable time