here we go come on keep striking that forehand looking very clean as always don't do it
here we go what happens right away i know you're like not missing anything these days
oh no okay here we go jinxed you you know what happened uh the last time i played go ahead the
balls were going far shooting yeah okay it's not convenient for the opponent to have long shots
they were going out or in out they were going out not out but very at the edge of it like you know
well i've known you not to rally with people i understand that
pleasant company of course but i've known you now for a while yeah and i'm
able to uh uh understand what happens on your forehand especially so here's what i think happens
when you go long you start going like this you start doing the old slap the old anna slap meeting
no it's actually not that that see that's the whole complex problem with your forehand because
to prevent that from happening being too loose in here and kind of slapping the ball like that
what you were doing then you were hyper extending your wrist and locking it in remember yes that was
one of our latest lessons we talked about how i don't want you to do that because that's not good
either we have to find the middle ground we don't want to be slappy slap happy here in the front we
can't control the ball it's going to shoot like crazy so you want to have a wrist that's in place
stable where the racquet goes over like this now you'd also want to be too locked in too
tight that's not good either that makes sense yeah so you just like when you play and start
missing you got to just start remembering okay we worked on this many times what i have to do i have
to set my racket here neutral position and then just go through my stroke hold the racket nice
and firm not too tight not too loose and then it's going to work see it works it works nice
very nice okay anna look i'm gonna put you on the run but to activate your feet
more i'm gonna put a cone here i'm going to make you run around the cone okay all right
forehand do you call it front hand okay you're still getting used to the tennis
terms here we go come on i have my own language here we go anna go around the cone
okay not bad come again
okay a little bit jammed on that one come again
anna look here's a problem that you have on your forehand we talked about this a while ago
and i do we think we need to address it again and that is the fact that you seem to be holding your
breath when you play often and that's very common at the recreational level a lot of players hold
their breath and they don't exhale when they hit so you i'm sure you've seen professional
players when they play their grunt yes yeah and this is actually a very useful thing it might
sound a little bit annoying but it's very useful because when you grunt you're obviously exhaling
and it's helping it's helping your technique tremendously it's a tremendous help and i do
it too when i play i grunt now here's the crazy thing i don't do it like intentionally i don't
fake the grunt so to say like it just comes out these noises come out of me when i play and it's
not very pleasant to listen to exactly how you sound yeah you heard you heard me play it's
really it's horrible to listen to but what can i do that's just the noises that come out of me but
it's better i did that then not do that and hold my breath because what happens when you hold your
breath it feels like you can't unload your shot properly yeah just like you're tight and tense
of course yeah because i try so hard sometimes yes i hold my breath yes yeah so it's super important
to exhale so let's exhale i don't necessarily teach people to grunt because i don't want it
ever to be fake some coaches actually teach fake grunts and it's very annoying because especially
in the junior level kids will do a fake grunt and you can you can distinguish between somebody's
grunting fake versus real okay so all i want you to focus on is just exhaling now if noises
happen to come out when you do so it's okay don't worry about it we'll just see what happens okay
but just make sure you exhale here we go come
okay i still look like you're holding your breath though comon exhale good and again
okay that's a little bit fake anna here we go just exhale so fake this is so fake this is so fake
okay look there's another method there's a tennis player from back in the day who was top 10 in
the world aaron krikstein he actually lives around here he's a pro at st andrews in boca in any case
he um did an exhale method where he blew up his cheeks like this he would blow up his cheeks
and then he would let go so that's another method that's actually quite useful
actually just remember it a couple of times
i don't mind that exhale yeah yeah yes
exhale that is the key whether noises come out or not that's not so important here we go come on
okay here's one one other thing that is important to understand is the following for example when
i play there are certain circumstances that will make me grunt louder for example when the score is
like super tense and i'm kind of anxious and tight i will grunt more it's very natural even at the
pro level you know who rafael nadal is the spanish guy you'll see when he starts a match first
first game or second game almost no grunting but as this set gets a little bit tighter all of a
sudden the grunts start coming out so your grunt will naturally increase with tension in the match
also if you get tired if you get exhausted then um it's almost like you're making sounds
of agony uh you're gonna ground louder when you get a little tired yeah okay but in any
case whatever happens remember to exhale okay well in dancing we also like when things get
yeah you know we're like oh yeah just say things oh that's right yeah that's actually a dance thing
i recognize that that's kind of like a grunt that's kind of like a dance
grunt i guess it's the same thing here that's so funny how do you do it again
do another one that was perfect the one you did yes so funny here we go forehand rip anna good
anna now we're doing it this is it you're exhaling come on there it is come on
okay i'm trying to pin i'm gonna pinpoint this grunt that you have
it reminds me of someone on tour i can't pinpoint who it is exactly
and maybe it's like a version of azarenka you know azarenka no okay another one come
and exhale come on wow see it's like almost like you're freeing yourself by exhaling you're freeing
yourself you're able to accelerate fully and unleash your entire body into the shot very good
very good very good still some reservations i feel bad and this is probably exhalation
you mean like you have reservations of letting out noises yeah yeah that's so funny you bring that up
because a lot of people are embarrassed when they make noises on the tennis court don't be i know
exactly two cameras running at me i've heard this anna from people at the recreational level they're
like uh you know they're just embarrassed when sounds come out when they play and to prevent
sounds from coming out they hold their breath so who cares i told you i grunt like a maniac
i don't care i don't care it's all about me it's all about me making the shot it's all about me
making you know winning the match so don't be embarrassed about letting the noises out
don't feel any inhibitions just let it come out naturally i'm in my
infancy you are very very much so in there good ana good anna there it is
so clean that forehead look at you this is amazing anna you're on fire right now
and four more come on one good and again two it does sound a little bit like karate
you're in a last one give me a blast right here awesome very nice job all
right anna very nice of course it helps it helps listen i wouldn't be telling you to
exhale if it wasn't important you know exhaling exhaling is really important you got to do it
now here's on the on the pros everybody exhales
there's no doubt about it but some will do it silently like like for example roger federer
99 of his shots uh they're silent on the other hand somebody else like you remember sharapova
or sharapova uh she was like very loud 99% of her shots were like loud so it's just uh
i don't think at that level they're they're faking it i do think those are all intuitive grunts
i do see some fake grunts on the men's side that i've seen some guys
for example like let me give you one example this is what's super annoying where where
players this is more on the atp thing they prolong the grunt they will go
ah so they grunt like well after the ball has made it over the net and they're almost like grunting
into the other person's shot that's obviously fake that's obviously prolonged that's not right
for sure um so having said that again like as long as it's real whether the sound comes out
or not not so important but the most important thing is that you exhale you've got to do that
i like it good anna and again good i know these forehands are looking fantastic
good here we go it sounds kind of like an owl when you grunt oh yeah yeah i like it
here we go it's very subtle i like it it's not annoying at all here we go come again three more
good two more come on on a rip oh that was a different sound and one more time exhale
there you go there's two different grunts that i'm noticing with you number one grunt is the owl
the number two is the karate chop i can't even do it
you know there's two different styles okay are they real
anna these are real correct i think so you're not faking these sounds no okay good very nice
all right let's pick these up and then we'll do more okay anna let's let's hit some backhands
and let's see what happens as far as your exhaling techniques on the backhand side okay
all right make sure you finish you hit yourself in the back go all the way around the cone all the
way around the cone so we activate your movements here we go oh very nice and again come on
okay make sure you finish all the way come again come on
and it's a fabulous backhand nice anna and finish it strong come again hit yourself in the back
very good good anna that was karate there was more karate oh that was fake anna that
was fake oh yeah there was a fake grunt i heard it here we go come on keep it natural
ana more acceleration come on trust your backhand it's good you can hit that thing
more acceleration anna come very good shot and fabulous backhand good work on anna nice
very good job you know what the funny thing is on my game
is that when i do ground strokes the grunt is different than when i do serves
when i do serves it's a really weird sound that comes out of me
yeah i thought it looks kind of like sounds like djokovic
because he makes a similar sound but then people tell me i sound more like murray
but the sound that will come out of your body when you're serving well at maximum effort if
you just standing there and tapping it nothing's going to come out you know
but the sound the grunting sound on the server is different from the sound on the ground strokes
so let's see what happens on your serve okay
probably nothing but you still but having but having said that you still want to exhale you
don't hold your breath you don't like be tight exhale same thing same advantage as you get on
your ground strokes you get under serve as well when it comes to your breathing international grip
and you want to lag here we go that's right continental grip okay good right
i have my language you have your own terms as long as we agree as long as
we understand each other it doesn't matter what we call this stuff okay yeah here we go
anna you're abbreviating your your take back too much i'll remember the way we learned was
to go to go here here here watch from this side i don't know how you're going to see me though
you can see yeah you can see through me huh you see him through me okay one two three four right
okay but don't copy that was a terrible serve but I like you to lag first and then toss
rather than taking everything together then you're gonna rush anna this is killer that
serve did you exhale yeah no see okay then something is missing you have to exhale okay
excuse this excuse me yes the tennis elbow probably prevented you from serving for six months
i would say because you took what four months off you said then the first two months we came back
we didn't serve because you felt a little bit of pain then we started serving again you felt
okay about it but i still been kind of cautious you know with your arm so
even today let's not serve too much just do a couple more and really
let's just see what happens when you exhale whether it's going to help your serve this
serve you hit right there was a killer okay so we we're actually doing well on the serve
anna it was not bad you're on the right track all right you exhaled yeah i did
very nice blowing on my teeth you did you sure yes okay all right good all right listen
today's lesson was one of our most important lessons okay breathing well it's one of the
most common things that recreational players mess up they hold their breath and they don't get to
hit their shots at full capacity they don't get to unload the right way so today it was
actually a really really important step that we took and we discovered this by complete accident
i might have mentioned that you're supposed to breathe before but then
remember last time we played you made that like accidental grunt oh because you were
drilling me you're so bad what yes the drills were so hard oh they were hard
i didn't say you were oh you meant like i was so bad with the drills yes i meant you said
that i told you you were so bad i would never be like an animal here i would never say that
to you but yeah i do drill you hard really hard all right anna good good work today