Hi guys, I’m Clay Ballard with Top Speed Tennis, and I don’t know if you guys have
been watching Roger Federer playing some great tennis lately, but you may have noticed how
on his backhand, he’s getting great extension out in front of his body, and how he’s really
getting a lot of snap in those backhands.
A lot of speed, but he makes it look very effortless.
We’re going to talk about in this video how to get that great extension, how to add
some snap to your backhands, and start playing with more power and less effort, it’s very
simple to do.
So let’s go ahead and get started.
All right, so one of the most common mistakes I see with the backhand, or really with any
shot, is getting jammed up.
And what I mean by jammed up, we get too close to the tennis ball.
Let’s actually grab one out of the basket here.
Let’s imagine this ball is coming, and instead of getting great extension out away from our
body, we get this ball very close to our body, we get jammed up, and we get the racket very
close, and we’re trying to make room to hit this shot.
Now this is going to cause you to lose speed for two different reasons.
Now number one, in order to try to create some more room, instead of using the momentum
of our body to drive through the shot and to add to the speed we’re getting with our
racket and our arm, now we’re falling back to try to create more room and enable us to
hit these shots.
We’ve run up too close on the ball, we haven’t moved our feet quickly enough, and now we’re
falling back to try to create some more room.
Now our momentum is moving in the opposite direction than we’re wanting to hit the
ball, and it’s losing some speed.
So you may remember from the wrecking ball series we talked about getting the momentum
of the body to transfer into the ball, and you’re going to get those really heavy,
hard-hit shots that are going to penetrate deep into the other side of the court.
So that’s very crucial when hitting not only the backhand but the forehand also.
The second piece of this is you’re losing out on leverage.
So as I’m falling back, this ball’s too close, if you look at my lead arm it’s not
extended and I’m losing out on leverage from this arm.
So my elbow is a lever, and if I use this lever properly I’m going to extend that,
and it adds some snap to that forward motion.
So now let’s go ahead and talk about how to fix both of these issues, and I’m going
to lead you through a series of drills to help you incorporate that.
OK, to start out with this drill we’re going to lose the racket, we’re going to lose
the ball, and we’re going to start at the baseline here.
What I want you to do, is I want you to take two steps away from the baseline and put your
feet together.
Now your lead foot is about five to six feet away from the baseline.
We’re going to start here, and we’re going to work on transitioning our body weight into
the shot so that we’re adding some power and are getting that heavy hit on the ball.
So start with your feet close together, and now what I want you to do, is I want you to
take a step forward with just your foot.
Now we’re going to have an angle going away from the court now, this would be when I’m
loading up in the backhand position, and I’m coiling up to get ready to hit this shot.
But I’m just putting my foot forward and I’m keeping my upper body back.
Now from here, I’m going to get that U-type motion that we talked about in the forehand
also, and I’m going to transition that power into the ball.
The first step, five to six feet behind the baseline, one step forward and I’m going
to get a little bit of the U-type motion with my hips to transition my weight forward, and
then I’m going to simulate where I would be at contact.
So I’ll do that again in full speed for you.
I’m loading up, step forward, now my body weight is moving into the court.
So your hips are making that U-type motion, and they’re really transitioning that weight
into the opposing side of the court.
That’s going to add a lot of speed and really get that heavy hit behind the ball, which
is crucial in getting a lot of power in your backhand.
Now for the second part of this, we’re going to go ahead and add the racket.
So from here, again, five to six feet behind the baseline.
I’m going to take that step forward, this is when I’m loading up, so I don’t want
you to do this as you’re stepping forward and already be moving forward with the racket.
We’re still coiling up to stretch all this out in our mid-section and build that power,
and then as we’re stepping here now as you’re coming forward, that’s when the racket is
going to move forward all the way out here to contact.
Now you’ll see that I’m making contact a couple of feet in front of my body, or even
exaggerating a little bit for this drill, but we’re making contact well out in front
of our body, all the way over this baseline here.
So if you’re looking from the other angle, if I’m going this way, the same thing here
as I’m stepping forward I’m also making contact out in front of my body this way.
So I don’t want to make contact well out here, I want to have that racket extended
away from my body so I have plenty of space.
That’s actually going to cut down on my footwork too, I won’t have to run as close
to the ball, and I can extend out and hit that shot.
So once we’ve done that, we’re going to keep on doing that about 100 to 300 times.
Again, to recap, five or six feet behind, loading up, transferring that energy, and
then we’re going to pause in each one of these positions.
I’m going to pause here for two seconds, I’m going to here for two seconds, and really
ingrain what this feels like.
Once I’ve done this, now I’m going to make this into one fluid motion.
I’m coming back, all the way out into my full finish, now my chest is leading toward
the other side of the court, and my racket is all way coming through.
I’m going to do that about 100 to 300 times.
Now finally I’m going to incorporate the tennis ball, just by tossing the ball up.
So I basically want to toss this ball in front so that as I make contact it’s going to
be over that baseline.
It’s a little bit difficult to do, but you’ll get the right idea.
That one was a little too far back, let’s try another one.
There we go, now that got my momentum coming forward, they get me really extended as I’m
coming through here, and now I can get that effortless, easy, easy speed.
Do about 100 to 300 of these really nice and slow.
You’re not trying to get a lot of power into this, you’re trying to ingrain the
motion.
Once you’re comfortable with that, then you take it out to a match.
When you get really comfortable, then you can go ahead and get a lot of that snap in
there and start ripping those backhands.
All right, so I hope you guys really enjoyed this video.
As a bonus for you all, I have a great video on the lag and snap backhand motion.
I’m going to talk about the perfect motions, break it down into four pieces on how to move
the racket so you can add tons of snap coming through contact and start hitting the best
backhands of your life.
I’m going to attach a preview of that video, if you want to watch the entire video, click
the link that pops up in the screen or down below in the description, you’ll get to
watch that entire video absolutely free of charge.
So I look forward to seeing you guys much more in the future.
If you enjoyed this video click the like button below, post your comments if you have any
questions, and +1 this video on Google.
I’ll see you guys soon.
Hi guys, I’m Clay Ballard with Top Speed Tennis, and how would you all like to absolutely
rip your backhands?
That’s what we’re going to talk about in this video.
We’re going to talk about how to get the lag and snap wrist action that we all learned
in the forehand series.
We’re also going to talk about how to get triple-hinge, pendulum physics.
I know it sounds crazy complicated, but it’s really simple.
We’ve got four simple pieces that are going to allow you to maximize those levers and
get more speed on your backhand.
Let’s go ahead and get started.
All right, so the first thing we need to understand is that when we’re doing the lap and snap
technique, what we’re really talking about is creating some levers in our arm.
We’re creating a lever in our elbow, so we extend from this lever we can maximize
speed.
We’re also creating a lever in the wrist, so any time you create levers, you’re creating
leverage, and as you release this leverage, you’re creating speed.
So as we keep our arm bent, and we go to an extended arm, or as we have a bent wrist and
we go to an extended wrist, we’re creating speed and that’s where the lagging action
and the lagging of the wrist…