Hi guys, I’m Clay Ballard and welcome back to Top Speed Tennis and the Topspin Forehand
Series.
Hopefully you guys have watched a couple of the first videos.
We talked about what makes topspin, and what’s the perfect grip, and what’s the perfect
racket setup.
Now today we’re going to get to the real fun stuff, in my opinion.
We’re going to start talking about technique and how you can use this right arm to not
only create more speed, but to do it by using physics instead of power, and also how you
can use this right arm with the exact same motion to get more topspin.
Be sure to stick around to the end, I have some great drills for you guys.
Let’s go ahead and get started.
As I mentioned, we want to use this right arm in the correct way to get some speed.
We’ll go over speed first, then we’ll talk about the topspin.
But if you could imagine my right shoulder here as being a pivot point, and my right
arm is going to swing on this pivot.
I have a full 360 degrees range of motion, or roughly 360.
As I let my arm swing, I’m just going to let it swing with gravity here and you’ll
see that my fingertips are actually moving with some pretty good speed without very much
muscular effort.
That’s because I have a pretty long lever here, my right arm is extended and creating
a long lever.
Now if I bend my right arm, and shorten this lever, then my hand is much closer to my pivot
point here in my shoulder.
Now as I let that swing, my hand is going to be moving much slower.
If I let that extend out, it’s going to move much faster.
That’s what we want to do in the forehand also, is create a longer lever by keeping
this right arm pretty straight all the way through the hitting zone.
That’s what you’re going to see with some of the best players like Roger Federer, Rafael
Nadal, and really all the top pros are going to do something pretty similar to that.
That’s the first reason we want to do that, we want to create speed with the right arm
by using physics and keeping it nice and long to create this big arc and more speed.
Now the second part is going to be some topspin.
As we’re coming in, let’s imagine this ball is coming in, I’m about to make contact
with this ball out in front of my body.
It’s coming in basically right in my strike zone, just above waist high.
Now for those of you who have a bent right arm, it’s going to be difficult for your
arm to get low enough to where you’re racket can be moving upward very easily.
If I put my arm all the way down, you’ll see it’s about the same height as the ball.
Watch what happens when I extend my arm, I can get a lot lower.
Now my arm is getting below the ball and it’s going to be coming upward as I’m doing that.
A lot of beginning players, a lot of intermediate players will try to keep the right arm very
bent, and use a lot of power from their body, and they’re not letting the racket drop
low enough.
You may have also seen players do this where they’ll keep a fairly bent right arm, and
then you’ll see them do something like this, where they really tilt their body a lot.
What they’re trying to do is get that racket underneath the ball so they can hit it on
an upward motion.
We don’t have to do that, we can keep our body nice and level, get rid of all that extra
movement and all that extra tilt by just letting the racket drop.
So we’re going to create more speed, we’re going to create more consistency with more
topspin.
I’m going to go over a series of drills that are going to help you to incorporate
this into your own game.
Let’s go ahead and get started with that now.
The first thing I want you to do is go ahead and lose the racket.
They say it’s about to start to rain here, hopefully we can get this done before the
rain kicks in.
But lose the racket, lose the ball, we’re just going to try this motion with our arm
first.
I want you to make an L-type shape as you’re coming back.
This is going to be the type of forehand motion that you do.
You’re going to make an L between your lead arm going straight out and your racket arm
going back.
As I’m going in this shot, I’m going to step forward and make this L-type motion.
Now as I’m going forward I want to keep my right arm pretty straight all the way through
contact, and I’m going to make that circular motion.
It won’t be necessarily straight up and down, so it won’t necessarily be this way
when you’re actually playing tennis.
That’s how we’re going to first feel this though, it’s going to be a little bit more
out most of the time.
But I want you to do the same thing, and just go straight down here first.
I’m going to make this L motion, let my right arm drop straight arm and make that
arc.
I can go ahead and pull my left arm back out of the way as I’m going forward, and then
I want you to pause here at impact with that right arm straight.
That’s the exact same position you’re going to see in some of the game’s greats
like Roger Federer in, is they’re getting that great extension and making contact out
in front of their bodies where they can get a lot of speed.
Let’s go ahead and do that a few more times.
Get that right arm in front of your body, and then after you’ve come to impact, now
you can go ahead and let that fold up.
I want you to do that about a hundred times, and really get comfortable with that right
arm staying straight all the way to the contact point.
That way it gets a little bit more familiar before you add the racket.
Now when we add the racket it’s going to get a little bit more difficult, because now
we’re thinking where we want the ball to do.
Let’s go ahead and pick it up, no ball right now.
We’re going to do the exact same thing.
Take the racket back, make that L, and as you’re coming up, you want your racket strings
facing the opposing side of the court.
So if I’m you here, you’re going to see that my strings are going right towards the
camera.
I’m going to do that same thing again.
Again, pausing at contact first with this right arm nice and straight.
I’m going to do that a few more times.
Then I’m going to go ahead and let that right arm bend up and come to a nice full
finish, so it’s one fluid motion.
Again, after contact the right arm can go ahead and bend.
I’d recommend doing that a couple hundred times too, so you get really comfortable.
You can do those drills in your living room, it’s going to be really easy.
You can really perform those anywhere.
Once we’re comfortable with this, then we can go ahead and start to do this.
Toss some balls, do the exact same motion.
Our arm is going back, then I’m swinging forward.
Those were a little bit low, caught a little bit of net on that last one.
So I’m going back, there we go, much better.
Creating that L, really making sure that I get contact well in front of my body, and
then my right arm stays nice and straight, creating that big arc all the way through
contact.
I’m going to go ahead and hit a couple more of those.
There we go, good.
Not trying to get anything on these really yet, just making sure my arm stays nice and
straight.
I’m going to go ahead and do one more.
There we go, really far out in front of me.
I’m concentrating on my arm making that arc, and I’m concentrating on my contact
being out in front of my body, then my arm can go ahead and fold up.
Do a few hundred of those, really ingrain that motion, and then you’ll be ready to
take it out there with a playing partner on the ball machine, and get it to where it’s
completely natural.
So good luck to you guys, and I’ll see you all soon.
All right, so hope you guys enjoyed this video.
If you did like this video, be sure to click the like button below.
Post your comments if you have any questions at all.
I’ll try and answer each and every one of those for you personally.
As a bonus for you guys, I’m going to play you a short clip from the next video in this
series, which is going to be the wrist action, the lag and snap wrist action which is going
to really create a lot of speed.
The circular arm motion gets a lot of natural speed.
You pair that up with that snapping action of the wrist, and you’re really going to
turn that up to be able to create a ton of topspin and take your game to the next level.
I’m excited to share that with you guys.
If you want to see the entire video after this preview, just click the link that pops
up in the screen, or down below in the description.
I look forward to seeing you guys very soon.
…and make this L-type motion with our arms.
Then the racket needs to be pointed out at basically a 45° angle.
The racket is going to be at a 45°, and the tip of the racket from the butt end, will
be pointing right over towards 3:00.
That’s the first motion we want to get into.
As we’re loading up the racket tip is going to be pointing out towards 3:00 and at about
a 45° angle.
Now the second move is where really the magic starts to happen, and that’s the loading
of the forearms.
This is called a stretch-shortening cycle.
Any time you’re going to have a lot of power and fire your muscles with good speed and
good power, we need to first stretch those muscles and then fire them.
So what’s going to happen here from this first move, we’re now going to make a motion
which will be very similar to turning a doorknob to the right with your wrist.
As we’re doing the first motion, first piece here, racket’s out to the right.
Now as I’m coming back I want to go ahead and turn my hand to the right as though it’s
a doorknob.
I’m going to do this until the tip of my racket now instead of pointing at 3:00 is
all the way back to about 7:30.
Now don’t mistake this with your…