Hey guys there's a weird trend on the two-handed backhand where players are setting the racket on
the outside of the body something that you would see on a forehand for example and i've seen this
type of setup at the junior level but even at the elite level and when i studied the greatest
two-handed backhands of all time players such as djokovic agassi or nalbandian the setup is quite
different the racket will go much further back in the preparation stage and i don't want you
to copy this setup because it will not help your backhand and in fact it might actually
harm it so what you should do on a two-handed backhand is prepare with a big shoulder turn so
what happens on a two-handed backhand is that we need to get our back turned towards the ball and
now naturally what will happen to the racket is if we dip the front shoulder the racket will go
up and this is going to have a great benefit once we accelerate the stroke so the lower
you go with your front shoulder the higher the racket tends to go and this is great because now
when we accelerate and we start straightening this position the racquet will naturally drop
so the head of the racquet will drop below the handle and now what
happens to the wrist is that the dominant wrist will often be bent in this position
now what will happen to your two-handed backhand if you don't set it up in the way
that i just showed you and if you for example place the racket on the outside like you would
on a forehand this will not work
and the reason why it will not work is because the forehand and the two-handed backhand are
completely different shots i'm sure you often heard that the two-handed backhand is like a
non-dominant forehand so if you're righty it's basically like hitting a lefty forehand and this
is not the case because take a look if i hit a left handed forehand this is what will
happen i can place the racket on the outside like this and now i'm going to initiate the
torso the rotation with my non-dominant side and now the racquet will lag back and i'm going to
make contact with the dominant shoulder in front this is going to be the contact on my forehand
now i cannot hit a backhand like this the dominant shoulder will always be ahead of the non-dominant
shoulder on the two-handed backhand we cannot hit the backhand like this this will be an over
rotation so the rotation is completely different on a two-handed backhand compared to a forehand
there's a delayed rotation so take a look if i rotate on the backhand if i would do it like
a forehand i would open up way too early and i would not be able to make contact properly
so what needs to happen is a delayed rotation where the dominant shoulder always stays ahead of the non-dominant shoulder
so the dominant side very much leads the way on the two-handed
backhand take another look you can see my dominant side is leading the way now
what happens to a lot of players that try to use the non-dominant side it collapses their
dominant side so take a look if i try to use my non-dominant side on the backhand you see how my
right elbow gets tucked in you see this very often at the recreational level and this is not what you
want to do because this will interrupt your stroke you'll have a lesser range of motion so what needs
to happen is that the right side needs to lead the way especially the right elbow you can see
here how the right elbow leads the way and when i'm done with the stroke my chest is going to be
positioned towards the side fence and my elbow is going to be positioned backwards like this
so there's a couple of reasons why this type of take back will not work on the two-handed
backhand and it does work on a forehand so if i place the racket on the outside
on my forehand i can lead the way with my rotation so the rotation is going to lead the way
and it's going to happen prior to the forward phase of the stroke
and when that happens the racquet can freely lag behind like this
so it's the rotation of the torso that makes the racket lag behind now what happens on a two-hander
or something completely different there is no lag like you would see on a forehand for example for
a couple of reasons reason number one is that we have two hands on the racket and the left
wrist will not lag far behind and also we cannot bend the dominant wrist backwards this feels very
uncomfortable so the wrist will bend down a little bit but it will not bend backwards
and the reason number two why we cannot take the racket back like this is because we have
a delayed rotation and the rotation doesn't lead the way so what happens with this delayed
rotation is that the racket will drop first and now we start rotating you see this is
the movement on the two-handed backhand it's not that we start rotating here and then the
racket goes into a lag we drop the racket first because we're also going to straighten the torso
and now we start rotating and as i explained earlier the non-dominant shoulder never gets
ahead of the dominant shoulder if you take a look at any high level two-handed backhand you
will see this position at contact the dominant shoulder will always be ahead
of the non-dominant shoulder and the reason for this is the delayed rotation of the torso
i'm going to give you one example of an elite player that does this type of take back sometimes
and that's nick kyrgios so if you see nick take his racket back like this on the back end
it always turns into a bunt because there's simply not enough range of motion and this type of take
back does not work now he doesn't do this all the time but he will do it quite frequently so
when you see him take the racket back like this you will also notice that his backhand
always turns into a bunt where he goes simply from here to here and on days where
he's striking his backhand really well he will take it back like djokovic and have more of a
regular take back and then interestingly when he finishes it he has full torso rotation
and gets to completely unload on his backhand so guys if we take a look at some of the
greatest backhands in the history of the game which in my opinion are novak djokovic andre
agassi and david nalbandian we're going to see one similarity and it is the higher position
of the racket head in relation to the handle so you will see all those guys have the tip of
the racket higher than the handle and that is the perfect setup for the two-handed backhand because
this will allow the momentum to take place where the racket will drop down this will guarantee
the drop this will not take place if you set the racket on the outside like you would on a forehand
in addition to that you will see those three guys that i mentioned take the racquet further back so
the tip of the racket will point straight towards the back fence it will not be pointing towards the
side fence so there needs to be a longer take back because there is a different type of rotation on
the two-hander so delayed rotation and there needs to be more range of motion for this stroke to work
so if you want to improve your two-handed backhand you need to
understand that your two-handed backhand is not like your non-dominant forehand
if you treat it as such you're going to develop some major technical flaws
the most important reason why a non-dominant forehand is not like your two-handed backhand
is the sequencing of the torso rotation and that is the reason why this type of
preparation will not work my recommendation is that you model your two-handed backhand after
the greatest two-handed backhands of all time and they all take their racket back like this