before we get into the how to hit an inside out forehand we'll get into why you should
be hitting it a lot more on the recreational level at least most players favor their forehand
because probably their backhand is a little weaker so if you're trying to move around your
back end you hit your stronger shot a lot more often with an inside out forehand you can open
the cord a whole lot more you create angles and you push your opponent around a lot more
heading inside out forehands also allows you to shrink your opponent's court because yeah you're
covering a lot more ground with your forehand and you taunt them to hit into smaller spaces
you can attack horror balls or defend higher balls a lot easier with your forehand rather
than your backhand with your inside out forehand you can actually hide an inside
in forehand a lot more you disguise it a lot better than a regular backhand down the line
most recreational players up to really high level are actually way more confident with
their forehand they can hit harder they can hit with more spin they probably commit less
errors than with their backhand so yeah let's use the forehand a little more often
where should you start looking for your forehand so if you're not Carlos alcaraz who is all the way
over here I would say anything to about a wide step from the hash mark If you were to draw a
line right here that allows you to step around and find your inside out forehand once you're getting
a little more comfortable with it a little more confident with it you can of course shrink that
space a little bit more but I would probably draw a line literally about here on the half from the
midline to the single sideline and you don't want to make the mistake to jam yourself or fall off to
the left I can open more angles and or I can push my opponent off the Baseline when do I choose what
option so to my mind when you're being pushed back a little bit and you can still find your forehand
here that is when I want to hit a high and heavy ball to push them off the Baseline because I
want a shorter ball that sits around here to use my phone either I'm going to go straight
back inside out or then later of course I can add the inside in now if I can move up a little bit
more then I want to hit a ball that actually bounces of course duh inside the singles cord
but passes the single sideline before it passes the Baseline because that really pushes them out
wide and then I have all of the deuce cord open if you cover all this area with your forehand
this is all your opponent has left and of course the faster you are you can shrink this area even
more so you're forcing your opponent to hit really precise shots all the time so that was one of the
issues with staffy Graf yes her slice wasn't as great but she basically lived on the add side
so for you to beat her into the Open Court you had to go over the higher part of the net into
the shorter part of the court and hit the line pretty much because otherwise she'd do this
she had all of the deuce cord wide open and so does everybody who's playing that pattern
moving around and back to get your forehand here is so much easier than hitting a ball
above your shoulder with the backhand and of course if you want to take the ball on the rise
to defend against a higher deeper ball or just deeper ball to my mind that's also easier on
the forehand and I have a whole video that teaches you how to deal with high forehand
footwork patterns targets everything and I'm going to put the link down in the description
so let's move on if you're getting into the habit of hitting more inside out forehands more
from the outside it becomes a lot easier to also disguise your change of Direction your inside in
because to my mind that's a lot harder to read than changing direction with a backhand okay
we got all the reasons why you should hit your inside out forehand more covered how do we hit it
the preparation is key upper body's same preparation as on a regular forehand you got your
unit turned but you got to create way more space and you do that with one of two footwork patterns
if you don't have as much ground to cover it's okay to shuffle and then drop into a semi-open
stance and you can really heavily load if you have to cover more space you want to use a drop step
because that grabs a lot more room right away on the first step now when you're creating space free
Inside Out forehand make sure that you're not just moving laterally because that tends to lead to
falling off the ball and unintentionally pulling the ball inside in so you actually want to move a
little bit more in a semi-circle and of course we're going to do drills with that in a minute
but here's how it goes whether you're using a drop step shuffles you want to make sure that you are
setting up so that you can transfer your body weight back into the direction of where you're
going okay really cool drill to help you find your proper distance to the ball is actually
use your left hand your offhand very actively so what you want to do is you have somebody
toss the balls to you or set the ball machine and you just want to catch the ball you're not
hitting the ball yet because that really forces you to come all the way around one of the key
points on the Inside Out forehand is that if I'm hitting an inside out forehand I want to
turn so much that my opponent from the other side is seeing my left shoulder blade and my
left hip and that's what you're working on in this drill and then you just throw it out and
I can start working on my different footwork patterns and then we're taking it up a notch
okay one more drill to make sure that you're also recovering properly because I do see that
a lot that people are going for a big either inside out or inside in forehand and they're
not recovering they're just admiring the shot so if you do go inside in remember that you are
gone with a lower percentage shot and you would also have to recover over to the deuce court side
but since it's an inside out video you're having to recover to your bisector of an angle to make
sure that I'm transferring my weight into the shot I want to make sure that I'm moving into
the court so that's why I have the cone there and then I'm coming back boom and I'm starting over
now if you're ready to go out on the court hold on a second make sure you watch this
video because you do need a lot of topspin especially when you're attacking shorter
balls because you need that rotation to keep the ball in play so check it out