Hi guys, I’m Clay Ballard and welcome back to Top Speed Tennis and your Topspin Forehand
Series.
In this series we've got an awesome video for you.
We’re going to talk about where the pros get a lot of their speed and a lot of their
topspin.
That’s that wrist Lag & Snap motion through contact.
It’s really going to help you to increase your speed and your topspin.
I can’t wait to share it with you!
For those of you joining us on YouTube, be sure to stick around at the end.
I’ve got some great bonuses for you.
All right, let’s go ahead and get into the technique.
There are three basic motions in the Lag & Snap wrist action we're talking about through contact.
It’s also commonly referred to as Windshield Wiper.
I’m going to go over how it’s a little bit different than the traditional idea of
Windshield Wiper, and some of the common mistakes you can make when trying to do the Windshield
Wiper move.
Let’s go ahead and pretend, if we’re going to the opposite side of the court, this is
12:00.
Let’s imagine a clock face here.
12:00, 3:00, 6:00 would be right back at the camera, and 9:00 over here.
We talked about, as we’re loading up for this forehand, how we need to go ahead and
make this L-type motion with our arms.
Then the racket needs to be pointed out at basically a 45° angle.
The racket’s going to be at a 45° and the tip of the racket, from the butt end, will
be pointing right over toward 3:00.
That’s the first motion that we want to get into.
As we’re loading up, the racket tip is going to be pointing out toward 3:00 and at about
a 45° angle.
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.
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 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.
Don’t mistake this with your hand pointing back toward 7:30.
I don’t want my arm to get all the way back here toward 7:30.
I want my hand to stay in front.
It’s my wrist and the angle of the racket that’s going to be pointing back toward
about 7:30.
That’s stretching out these muscles of the forearms and making it where they’re more
powerful.
Now as they snap back, we can get a lot more speed into it.
That’s Motion #2.
Motion #1, racket at a 45°, pointing toward 3:00.
Motion #2, my arm stays in front but now my wrist is going to turn out until that racket’s
pointing back to about 7:30.
Then as we come through, now we’re going to go ahead and turn the doorknob the other
way.
We turned it to the right, now we’re going to turn it back to the left.
That’s what’s going to get that snapping motion through the contact area.
Again, if you’re looking from face on, I’ll go this way.
Here’s Move #1, Move #2, and then I’m going to go ahead and let it snap all the
way on around for my final move.
Let’s go ahead and take a look at Roger Federer doing this exact motion.
We can see here, as he’s loading up, racket is pointing out to the right, toward 3:00
just like we were talking about, getting that general L-type shape.
Then as he’s dropping it in, now the racket’s going to come in.
Hand’s staying in front of the body, but the racket’s dropping in to where it’s
pointing at about 7:00 or 7:30.
Sometimes even 8:00 if you want to get a lot of wrist snap into that.
Then finally, he’s coming up toward contact and his hand is turning on over the other
way.
He’s turning the doorknob to the right, and then turning the doorknob back to the
left, creating that massive amount of snap and really creating a lot of speed and a lot
of topspin.
Now that we’ve gone over the general principles, let me talk about two things that I want you
to be aware of that make this a little bit different than the traditional Windshield
Wiper technique, and that you want to make sure that you avoid.
Number one with the Windshield Wiper technique, a lot of times people think of this as a strictly
up-and-down motion.
As the racket’s coming forward, it’s going to be moving up and down this way.
We talked about, in Video 1, how the racket actually needs to be moving at a 45° as we’re
coming through contact.
Be sure that you’re not trying to go straight up and down.
What will happen is, if I’m going straight up and down, now my strings are just going
to slide across this ball.
I may be able to hit it with a little bit of topspin, but it’s not going to have any
force behind it at all.
You see how high and soft that was?
It didn’t really have much on it.
I want to make sure that that ball penetrates into the other side of the court and really
has some more speed on that.
We want to make sure we get more of a 45° angle.
That way we’re not only getting topspin, we’re getting a little bit more of a penetrating
shot.
Even that one was kind of dinky there!
That’s the first thing.
Make sure it’s more at a 45° rather than vertical, which is what you think of naturally
when you’re envisioning a windshield wiper.
The second thing is, as we’re coming through contact we want to make sure that we’re
hitting this ball where the racket is moving vertically.
Just like this.
The racket head is moving up and down when it’s contacting the tennis ball.
That way, as this ball starts to spin it’s getting just topspin on it.
A lot of times when I see people try the Windshield Wiper technique their wrist is going this
way and they’re making contact here somewhere.
Now the strings are going at a 45° and that ball starts spinning sideways, and it’s
not going to dive down into the court.
That looks something like this, where I’m wiping across the ball.
You can hit all kinds of crazy shots that are very inconsistent, doing that.
It doesn’t get a lot of topspin on it, and a lot of times it’s not going to do much
of anything.
It’s just going to kind of float to the right as you’re doing that.
Make sure as you’re coming through you’re getting this topspin and the racket is moving
vertically as you’re coming through the strike zone.
There we go.
We can see that that ball dove straight down into the court.
That’s a good thing to keep an eye on.
Now let’s go ahead and walk through a series of progressions to get used to this so we
can start to take this into our game.
I recommend you take it slow and get your reps in before you take it out there to the
court and take it into a match.
As you know, with Top Speed Tennis we always do some kind of progression.
We start out slow, with very simple pieces, then we build upon that.
We’re going to start out by losing the racket, losing the tennis balls.
We’re just going to do the motion with our hands, get very comfortable, then we’ll
add those pieces back in there.
Let’s go ahead and start out making this L-type shape.
We’re going to pretend that my fingertips are representing the racket face.
As I’m coming back, now my racket is pointing out to the right, 3:00.
It’s up at about a 45° angle, like we went over.
As I’m extending this down, now my hand is going to turn inward until my fingertips
are pointing down and back at about 7:30, or maybe even 8:00 if I really want to get
that to lag.
As I’m coming through here, I want to make sure that my hand is straight up and down,
or the strings would be straight up and down as I’m getting contact with the ball.
That way we’re getting topspin on this.
If I do this type of motion, now my hand’s at a 45°.
I’m going to be kind of wiping across the ball and I’m going to get that sidespin
that we don’t want to do.
We can get all kinds of crazy shots with that.
We’re going back, fingers up, letting them turn in, making contact right here with strings
up and down.
Then coming on through to a good, full finish.
Once you’ve done about 100 of these, gotten very comfortable with it, let’s go ahead
and add the racket and do the exact same thing.
We’re going to pause in these three positions again.
Position #1, racket out, #2, racket drops in.
Make sure that hand’s staying in front of your body.
I don’t want my hand to drop back in here.
That’s going to get really difficult to time that forward momentum.
Position #2...Position #3.
My strings are up and down, to where now as I’m making contact, that’s going to be
just topspin.
Then if you’ve done this, go ahead and come on through to a good, full finish.
Get very, very comfortable with that, and then make it into one fluid motion.
I come back and I’m letting that racket snap.
I should be feeling, right as I’m coming through contact, that my racket is snapping
and I’m getting that 45° upward angle.
Now, once you’re comfortable with that, let’s go ahead and try to hit a couple shots
doing this.
Just nice and easy, tossing the ball.
You don’t need to take it out to a match play or anything like that yet.
You’re just going to go ahead and practice this on your own.
I got that one a little low.
There we go, that got a little bit more topspin on it.
You’re not trying to really do anything special with these.
You’re just making sure that you’re getting used to that motion.
Getting that hand to turn back in and then create that topspin.
They’re not going to be really pretty at first.
You don’t have to do anything fancy.
You’re not trying to hit them 100 miles an hour.
You’re just getting really comfortable with that stroke.
Then you can build upon that to where you can go out in a match or playing a partner.
You’re going to be comfortable enough with it to be able to take it to when it matters
in a tournament, and it still hold up.
Good luck to you guys!
I hope you guys enjoyed this video, and I’ll see you all very soon.
For those of you joining us on YouTube, I hope you guys enjoyed this video.
If you did like this video, be sure to click the Like button down below.
That helps us out, helps me to grow this channel and to bring you guys some more free videos.
If you have any questions on anything we’ve covered in this video, be sure to post your
comment below and I’ll answer that personally.
I have a great bonus for you guys!
This is one video out of a series of videos on how to create more topspin, a whole progression.
We go over racket setup, we go over grip, we go over all the technique.
I’m going to play a preview from another video in this series.
If you want to watch that entire video, plus the entire series, absolutely free -- it’s
never going to cost you anything.
Just click the link that pops up on your screen, or down below in the description.
That’s going to take you to the place where you can put in your email and we’ll send
the whole thing to you, free of charge.
I really look forward to working with you guys much more in the future.
Good luck with that topspin, and I’ll see you soon!
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 creates topspin, 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, at 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 create some speed.
We’ll go over speed first, then we’ll talk about the topspin.
If you can imagine my right shoulder here as being a pivot point, then my right arm
is going to swing on this pivot.
I have a full 360° range of motion, or roughly 360°.
As I let my arm swing, I’m just going to let it swing with gravity here.
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.
If I bend my right arm and shorten this lever and my hand is much closer to my pivot point
here on my shoulder...
Now as I let that swing, my hand is going to be moving much slower.
As 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...