Hi guys Nick here from intuitive tennis. In today's video I'm going to show you
the two most common problems on the volley at the recreational level and I'm
gonna give you a solution on how you can fix these problems.
So problem number one I see at the recreational level when it comes to the
volley is an excessive turning. So it's completely unnecessary to turn your body
like this on the volley. You do need a little bit of a turn just to accommodate
hitting the ball on the outside of the body but you do not need to turn your
body all the way on the forehand and even on the backhand it's unnecessary to
have a complete turn. It's something you would see on the ground strokes
And the reason why it's unnecessary to turn is that when we make a big turn it
puts our hand and our elbow too far behind the body and then from here we
end up making a swing with the entire arm and it's very difficult to control
the volley in this manner. The same issue we can see on the backhand volley. If you
make a turn that's too big it puts our hand too far behind the body and we
end up with a swing that's too large. So we have to keep the turning minimal on
the volleys. On the backhand it's going to be a little bit more than on the
forehand and we have to keep our hand in front. Now we can lag the racket behind a
little bit to get additional power. We have to keep our hand in front, keep the
elbow in front and then make a slight turn.
On the forehand volley we only need a minimal turn to about right here now we
have to keep our hand in front of the body on the forehand even here with the hand
in front, we can still lag the racket behind to get additional power, but we
must never turn all the way on the forehand volley you must keep the turn
at a minimal.
The second most common volley mistake at the rec level is when the elbows get
tucked in and the first thing you have to do in order to correct this problem
you have to have the proper ready position where you don't necessarily
need to bend your knees that much this will not solve the problem so you can
bend squat down you can still get the elbows tucked in. So you must have a
comfortable bend and then what's more important is that you put your upper
body slightly down and you get into what's called the sprinter stance. When
you're in this sprinter stance where the body is in a slight C shape. This
comfortably keeps the elbows in front and it's unlikely that you're going to
tuck them in. And what happens on the volley, when you tuck your elbow in, is
that the volley becomes very heavily dependent on forearm and wrist movements.
So when you are tucking the elbow in you almost are forced to swing with the
wrist and the forearm.
Now on the backhand on the other hand we don't have the problem of tucking in of
the elbow and this is why the majority of players actually has an easier time
hitting backhand volleys compared to forehand volleys. The forehand volley is a
more complex shot. So since we cannot tuck the elbow in on the backhand volley
naturally the backhand volley ends up being a little bit more solid on most players.
And a great way to prevent the elbow from tucking in on the forehand
volley is to get a broomstick and stick it underneath your elbows and now
obviously the elbow cannot go back. You can see it here that I can get a
beautiful angle of the wrist I can get my racket
parallel to the net very easily and this actually helps the backhand volley as
well. It keeps it more under control and now for five minutes you're gonna have
this broomstick underneath your elbows so you're gonna volley and you're gonna
see an immediate improvement in control. Your volleys are going to be much crisper
this way you are gonna make better contact. Now to get power you can start
lagging the racquet behind the broomstick and as you can see the hand
cannot go back and it's just the tip of the racket it's lagging and then from
here you can make contact you can actually, get more power this way as well.
This works on the backhand volley the same way. So we cannot get our hand back
because we have to hold the broomstick with the elbows we can lag the racket
behind and then go into the contact and therefore achieve more power.
Thanks guys for watching this video, if you have any questions please comment in
a section below, I'll be happy to respond, hit that like
button and subscribe if you haven't already. I'll see you next time.