In today's video, i'm going to tell you the only thing that you should be copying from roger
federer now some of you guys are making me out to be the roger federer hater because i made a few
videos talking about roger federer's technique and why you shouldn't be copying it but this couldn't
be further from the truth i don't hate roger federer i like him very much take a look at my hat
take a look at my shirt i'm a fan of the guy okay i have nothing against roger federer however i
stand by my videos roger federer's technique is a little bit unorthodox and if you try to copy it
it's not going to work anyway i don't see a lot of roger federer's running around at the rec level
i've never seen anybody be able to successfully copy roger federer strokes and in today's video
i'm going to give you a quick overhaul why you shouldn't copy roger federer's strokes and
i'm going to go stroke by stroke the forehand is very unorthodox and the fact that he extends the
arm prior to going forward on the forehand this is something that's going to be difficult to
pull off for the simple reason that the vast majority of players play the forehand with a
bent arm but it's not only that roger federer also plays his forehand with an eastern grip
the grip that i teach for my players is a semi-western grip i don't necessarily have
anything against the eastern grip it becomes natural to a player i'm perfectly fine that
they continue to use it so the fact that roger federer has an eastern forehand grip makes a big
difference in the way his forehand looks so for you to adapt federer's forehand you would need to
have an eastern grip and you would need to have full arm extension on the racquet drop something
that most players struggle with and when i say struggle with there's absolutely nothing wrong if
you can't do it that just means that you're more comfortable playing the forehand with a bent arm
and it makes absolutely no sense to force these two technical elements if they don't come natural
to you now on to the next shot which is roger's one handed backhand and here's the reason why
you shouldn't copy roger federer's backhand is because he's extremely flexible he's able to go
all the way back with this racket like this and a lot of recreational players have a range of motion
limitations when it comes to the backhand finish many of them can't go past this point they can't
get the racket to whip backwards and have the butt cap point towards the other side if you're
able to do this continue doing it by all means it is a great finish however many players struggle
with it and it's not only that federer just like many other one-handed backhand players is able
to go very far back and have his hands go together sampras and shapovalop can actually touch the
hands behind the back this is how flexible they are and this is just something that's not very
realistic at the recreational level if players try to copy roger federer's one-handed backhand finish
they might hurt themselves also roger federer's one-handed backhand slice is something
that's going to be difficult to pull off because roger federer has a very
vertical slice that means that he starts very high and he also goes very low so you'll see his racket
go way down before it starts going across on the other side now when you do a slice like this
here's what's going to happen i guarantee that you're going to start dumping a lot of your slices
into the net many players are uncomfortable with this movement and it is a stroke that's very
difficult to pull off it's not wrong by any means but it's tough to pull off what's a lot easier is
the more common slice technique for example rafa nadal or novak djokovic who don't go down quite
as low as federer they will go slightly down after the contact and then pull the racket back up on this
side federers volleys are also not something that you should be messing with because federer takes
a large swing on the volley meaning that he lags the racquet behind quite far on his backhand volley
and his forehand volley and his swing is usually a more circular swing very similar to how he hits a
backhand slice so on the backhand volley federer will go very high he will go into the ball and
then continue going across the body like this very difficult technique to pull off it's not
wrong by any means but the much better option is to minimize the movement of the racket i don't
mind you lagging the racquet behind a little bit i don't mind you going across a little bit but these
movements should be minimized if recreational players tried to hit a volley like roger federer
and they took a big swing at it they would not be able to control the ball the same is true
for roger federer's forehand volley while the movements are a little bit more abbreviated on
Federer's forehand volley compared to his backhand they're still far too large for any recreational
player to be able to successfully pull off so again what you should be doing instead of the
volley is to have a small lag if the incoming ball doesn't have a lot of pace and then to control the
movement of the racket after contact would i teach the recreational level is to squeeze and freeze
the racket at contact to be able to have the maximum amount of stability that's required to get
the volley into the court consistently and cleanly the reason why you shouldn't copy federer's
serve for the simple fact that he's one of the only players who doesn't lean forward very much
you know he also throws the ball closer to the baseline what you will gain by throwing the ball
more in front and by leaning in is number one thowing the ball forward will give you a better chance to
get the serve in consistently and most importantly it will give you forward momentum something that's
very easy to do it's a very effortless way to generate power especially at the recreational
level so if you copy roger's serve unfortunately you're not going to be getting much for forward momentum
now he does get forward momentum don't get me wrong federer's serve is absolutely phenomenal but it
is a far more difficult way to get forward momentum the way he does it the simple thing to do is to just
throw the ball in front lean forward slightly and then let your body weight go into the shot however
players would like to copy roger federer serve and they will throw the ball further behind now
they will be loading exactly like federer bending like this and now the body is going to be more
straight up and down and from this position it's very difficult to go forward into the court so
what happens with a lot of players they end up landing on the baseline or in some cases
behind the baseline a big problem at the rec level is when players rush the bottom portion of the
service motion in other words they will toss the ball too fast and they will take the racket back too
fast it looks something like this they will just rush down here and now often they lose control of
the toss it's very difficult to get a consistent toss and also because they took the racket back
very fast here they are forced to stop somewhere else along the way a lot of times it's actually
in the racket drop area so unfortunately roger federer does this he has a very
fast tempo on the bottom portion of his serve if you watch federer serve you see that this part
of the serve is very fast and it kind of slows it down towards the trophy phase now while roger is
an incredible athlete he doesn't mind this style this is something that feels comfortable to him
and he's able to serve phenomenally well with this style however at the rec level this is
unfortunately something that's not going to suit you well it's a much better thing to do
is to go slow to fast to go very slowly on the bottom portion of your serve and then speed
the serve up as that racket gets towards the trophy phase what that will do to your serve
is going to make the toss more consistent and it's actually going to give you more power because your
movement is going to be more continuous and now you're not going to be forced to stop somewhere
along the way now you actually could copy federers overhead and backhand overhead they're pretty
conventional but i've promised you i was going to tell you the only thing that you can copy
from roger and those are his clothes roger federer always has the best clothes and for
example this hat is a uniqlo hat no i'm not sponsored by uniqlo but i wear this stuff because
it's comfortable and it looks good also the uniqlo shirts are really cool so if you're going to copy
roger federer copy his clothes not his shots now here's the thing that i want to make sure you
guys understand roger federer has all the correct fundamentals on the strokes that everybody else
has on tour and what you're most likely trying to copy are those stylistic elements so of course you
can copy roger's fundamentals i have absolutely no problem with that however the confusing thing is
going to be what are fundamentals in tennis a lot of you guys are confusing style with fundamentals
and i have a great series of videos titled style versus fundamentals and i'm going to link them
in the description below and i'm going to be adding to this series in the near future so
in other words you can copy federers fundamentals absolutely if you know what those are there's no
problem with that and i'm not by no means trying to single out a federer you can copy anyone's
fundamentals all high-level players have really sound fundamentals or they wouldn't be at the high
level now why am i always picking roger federer because all you guys are copying roger federer
he is the most popular tennis player of all time and i see it in person i teach a lot of players
online and in person and i see a lot of you guys that come to see me who are adapting roger
federer's technique and i'm not trying to be a roger federer hater i'm just giving you the facts
federer's style is unorthodox and it suits him incredibly well but it doesn't suit anybody else
and why am i saying this because there is no other roger federer especially at the recreational level