so Karla I want to share with my audience something really interesting that
happened on your technique when we were working together we worked
together for how long five i think five years and we started when
you were 15 and you were a complete beginner
and on your forehand without any instruction of mine you developed
a straight arm forehand it is sometimes completely straight sometimes you have a
mini bed but this is nothing i ever instructed you to do
it came completely natural to you
and the interesting thing about this type of forehand the straight arm
forehand is that maybe the two greatest forehands of all
time federer and nadal both play with a straight arm so logically a
lot of people try to copy this now the big problem is
that if you try to adapt a straight arm forehand it doesn't come natural to you
and you're going to develop big problems so what i want to do now with you is do
it the exact opposite i want to have you hit with a bent arm and we'll see what
happens okay so basically you try to when you make contact have the arm more
of a bend and not as straight uh as you normally do okay so go right there on
the baseline okay Karla so try to hit with a bent arm
forehand and see what happens
okay so the fascinating thing about this straight arm
bent arm dilemma on the forehand is that i guarantee you even
you are trying to bend the arm here it was still straightening out and this
is exactly my point with having a straight arm versus a bent arm that it
happens when the stroke accelerates to its fastest and it's very hard to
control the arm structure there so the genetic
predispositions take over in that part of the forehand and even though you're
trying to have a bend time you still end up with more of a straight arm contact
and the interesting thing is that it works
the same way in the other order so somebody has a bent arm forehand and they try
to straighten it and many people try to do this because of
mainly Federer and Rafa which is understandable and so they will try to
straighten the arm in the take back and what happens is
because players are not really aware what takes place around the contact
because this part of the stroke is over in a few milliseconds they think they're
straight because they're straightening back here
and they'll still end up going into a bend the same way you
when you're trying to bend the arm of contact you weren't really aware of the
contact that much and naturally your arm had more of a
tendency to straighten out so how do the top
wta pros hit the forehead that's a really good question and your forehand
is kind of rare so most female players and
even some of the greatest wta forehands of all time all have a
tendency to be to be more bent at contact and some are even
severely bent where the elbow is very close to the body the players such
as serena williams simona halep azarenka sharapova osaka like really
really good forehands sloane stevens as well
and they have more of a tendency to be bent and in my opinion it's
due to genetic prepositions because the vast majority of females
plays that way it appears that this part of the forehand comes more natural to
them to play it with a bent arm. are there any guys that
play with the bent arm? most guys play with a bent arm too i
did the research on this and it's a couple years old now this
research but at that time this was 2018 there were only five guys in the top 100
who played with a completely straight arm like rafa
or or federer and there were some that play with a
mini band so overall i think there was like 13 or 14 guys
in the top 100 that plays with a more straight arm the vast majority
of even the male players also plays the forehand
with a bent arm see what happens is that naturally we're a little bit more
comfortable playing the ball closer to the body we
feel more strength there see what happens is the further away
from the body you are with the arm the less
strength you feel you feel a little bit more strength here so i think this is
the primary reason why the vast majority of male and female
players have more of a genetic predisposition to play with a bent arm and
Carla there are some advantages to having a straight arm of course you have a
longer lever and there's a little bit more
spacing with a straight arm but unfortunately
even though there might be some advantages uh to hitting the forehand
like this it cannot be forced and it's only
possible if it's there from day one like you
because you never forced the straight arm forehand in fact you
never even realized that you played with such a forehand
yeah see this is the funny thing that people need to understand is that the
contact on the forehand happens so fast that players are not
even aware whether they're they're bent or straight
so Karla let's finish off this video you show off some of those great straight
on forehands okay All right Karla it let it rip nice
nice shot
and just to confirm like you have any idea what's going on at contact can you
feel the difference whether you're you're straight or bent i'm just trying
to hit it hard you're just trying to hit you're not really thinking about
anything the the arm just kind of naturally
gets into the proper position you do a couple more
and match point let this one rip wow nice forehand carla all right let's do a
racket tap nice job