You guys seem to be really interested in what equipment i'm using i get a lot of questions
about my rackets but the most frequent questions i get is about my strings hey nick what is that
orange string that you play with so in today's video i'm going to show you my entire string
history but not only that i'm also gonna give you recommendations what strings you should be using
at the recreational level all right so my string history when i first started out
just like any other junior i play with synthetic gut this is the cheapest string and let me try
to find one for you okay so here we have a babolat synthetic gut so this is a super inexpensive string
but it doesn't last very long and i was a big time string popper as a junior and one funny story was
actually it's an embarrassing story that my mom used to string my rackets and i was actually very
rude i would just hand over the rackets to her and say hey you got to get this done fast and this
went off for a while until i played a match where i was up 5-3 in the third i was up 40 love and i
behaved terribly i ended up losing that match and my dad did me a big favor that day he said your
mom is done stringing your rackets you got to do this yourself and in the very beginning when
i started stringing my rackets they were so bad they had maybe 10 to 15 pounds on them there was
tons of mistakes in the string job and they were barely playable but with time i got better and
i'm very thankful for that day because i learned a valuable skill and i've been stringing rackets now
for over 30 years alright guys here's the big reveal i'm gonna reveal the orange string that i
play with but first i got to give you a little bit of a history of what strings i used when i
got a little bit better so when i became a good junior i started playing with polyester string
and back in those days it was a hundred percent polyester monofilament string these strings
are not around anymore you won't be able to find them and i played with a string called kirschbaum
super smash honey this was a golden string it was from germany it was super popular all
the juniors were using it and i played with this string for a while until i came upon
a string called polystar you can see here i have a 400 meter roll so you can see how much i like
this string and this is also a hundred percent polyester monofilament string and i love this
particular string so much that i used it for 15 years so around the late 90s early 2000s all my
friends were high level tennis players switched to a string called luxilon big banger and this
was a big hit and back in those days everybody was switching to this string and i tried it of course
and i didn't really like it i never liked the feel of that string it was a little bit too
dead for me so i continued playing with this old-school polyester string what happened was when
i switched to the babolat pure drive plus racket this string really didn't fit that racquet quite
well and i tried a bunch of different strings i played with babolat rpm blast for a while i do
like this string i think it's a very good string but the best string that i have found i've been
playing with it now for over a year is kirschbaum super smash again this is quite different from the
original super smash this is the kirschbaum super smash orange and it's not a hundred percent
monofilament polyester it is actually a co polyester so it's not quite as stiff as the
original string but i can tell you that this string it gives me a lot of power and i do like it
a lot a recent video that i made titled testing old rackets was a really fun video for me to make
because i went through the history of the rackets to see how the racket technology had improved but
take a listen at how i finished this video so the real revolution in tennis didn't come about
with the racket technology over the last 20 years it happened because of the strings so the
revolution in tennis the way tennis is played today didn't happen because of the racket technology it
happened because of the string technology and i can tell you i experienced this personally so i
already told you that in the late 90s early 2000s a company called luxilon came out with a string
that revolutionized tennis so natural gut was the string of choice for all elite players
back in those days and polyester strings have actually been around for more than 30 years
but elite players didn't really like the feel of a string like this a hundred percent
monofilament polyester string it didn't give them enough control yes there was tons of power
but professional players of that caliber needed more control for their game and what happened
in the late 90s was that a company called luxilon put additional materials inside the polyester
to dampen and deaden the string and this truly revolutionized tennis because players who have
tried to play with polyester had to be somewhat careful with their shots they could easily overhit
the ball but once luxilon came on the market now players could hit the ball as hard as they wanted
to without sacrificing control and i read in the andre agassi book open that darren cahill for
fun put a set of luxulon and andre's racket at a tournament in rome and andre did not miss a ball
in practice for two hours and after practice he said this string has to be renamed to cheatalon
so this is exactly what happened now players could hit the ball as hard as they want without
sacrificing control and what this meant was the game was changing now it's all about the
unbelievable power from the baseline and you can see that serve and volley is almost extinct and the
main reason for that are the strings and pretty much every professional player switched to these
type of strings now there are some who will still play with natural gut as a hybrid combination so
for example novak djokovic andy murray and roger federer have a gut in their string bed
roger federer puts his gut interestingly in the mains and he puts the luxilon in the crosses and
andy murray and novak djokovic they do it the opposite way they put the gut in the crosses and
they put the luxilon in the mains but if you take the top hundred men you will see that luxilon is
used by the vast majority of the players now there are some other brands of course that make strings
that are very similar to luxilon but these type of strings these what they're called co polymer
strings that have different materials inside the polyester the deaden and soften the strings
is what everybody's using on the tour now let's transition to the important part
of this video which are my recommendations for the recreational level and copying what federer is
doing with his strings or djokovic really doesn't do you any good even on the wta tour you can see
that the women use different materials and then the man this is for a very specific reason
and before we get into what type of strings that you should be using let me explain to you the
different type of strings that exist on the market a natural gut is a fantastic string because the
combination of power and feel is something that's not really matched with any other string if you
play with natural gut you get a lot of pop on the ball but you also get a tremendous amount of feel
and therefore the string is very easy on the arm as well another string that's not really
used anymore is kevlar this was popular in the 90s but now you don't really see it it's a super
stiff string it's not very good for the arm and i highly recommend that if you still have kevlar
lying around and get rid of it this is not something that you should be using so i told you
that i played for 15 years with a hundred percent polyester monofilament string something that you
will not find anymore these strings are extinct and this string is really amazing when it comes
to power now when you string a racket with this type of string and you hit it against your hand
it makes that pinging sound so really the ball is catapulting off the racket it's almost like a
trampoline and the string is also very stiff so the power is amazing but the control is a problem
and i personally love these type of strings but unfortunately they're not easy to come by
and a multifilament synthetic gut string is pretty much the same thing as synthetic gut but there's
multiple fibers on the string and you can tell if you play with a multifilament synthetic gut string
that it starts to fray and this can be annoying sometimes because it'll keep fraying and fraying
and sometimes you'll have only one fiber left and the string just won't break but basically
it's very similar to synthetic gut and this is actually the string that gets recommended the most
when players have tennis elbow often they will be recommended to use a multifilament synthetic
gut string because of the softness of it you can see here that if i bend the multifilament
synthetic gut i can easily tie a knot and this is the overall very soft string to the touch
and when the ball hits this string it's going to have a very similar effect to the synthetic gut
okay so next we have the co polymer string so this is usually a polyester string that has other
materials inside to soften and deaden the strings and this is what's used on the atp tour and it is
not what you should be using on the recreational level so if you take a look at these strings it's
still somewhat soft so it's very bendable not as much as this synthetic gut of course but you can
see here that the string yes it's harder it's stiffer to the touch but it's still somewhat
bendable so what this means is when you hit a ball with these type of strings the ball will
get absorbed into this string and you will not get a lot of power this is a dead string you will have
to manufacture the power yourself and next we have a co-polyester monofilament string something that
professional players do use especially on the wta tour this is what i personally use and this is a
very stiff string so if you touch this string it's extremely stiff you can barely bend it it's very
hard to try to tie a knot it's just a super stiff string and logically people believe that with the
string that is this stiff this is supposed to be bad for your arm it makes sense so we have
a super soft string here like the synthetic gut it's super soft we have a super hard string here
so most people believe soft string good for the arm stiff string bad for the arm but in reality
it's the exact opposite if you think about how the ball behaves when it touches the string bed
this will make even more sense so let's take synthetic gut as an example so this string is
going to be super soft so the ball is going to hit the string bed and the string is really not going
to do anything the ball is going to get absorbed by the softness of the string and you will not get
any power from that you will have to generate all the power yourself and you'll have to exert more
energy into the ball more effort into the ball to make this power happen on the other hand the
stiffer string the co polyester monofilament string is a lot stiffer so when the ball
hits this string it will react a lot more compared to the synthetic gut so it will bounce off the
string much more and you will have to exert a lot less energy so when you exert less energy
less effort this is of course easier on the arm i can tell you personally my arm always
hurts if i have to play with synthetic gut if i get a demo that has synthetic gut in it
my arm always hurts afterwards for a very specific reason is because i'm exerting more energy i'm
trying to hit the ball harder i'm working my arm over time and this is causing pain now if you look
at the racket technology we'll see the exact same thing so let's take the senior tennis players for
as an example 65 years and plus and what do they play with they play with those big rackets with
the 115 120 square inch head and usually those rackets are very head heavy but most importantly
they are super stiff so why do the manufacturers make these rackets super stiff so that the seniors
can have easier access to power now if they made these rackets super soft it would be much more
difficult to generate this power the ball will get absorbed more in the frame and the player
would have to work harder so strings are very much like the racket the ball is going to react off a
stiff string much more than off a soft string and you will therefore exert less energy and it will
be easier on your arm so my recommendations for you are that first of all if you're playing with
a string and you have absolutely no arm pain and you like the way this string plays i'd say
don't even mess with it keep playing with it your body has probably gotten used to the particular
string and just stick with it so if you have arm pain i highly recommend that you give
a co polyester monofilament string a try you can look this up online just look underneath the
strings it will say co polyester monofilament there's a lot of companies that make these type
of strings now when you get the string get a 17 gauge when you string them do not go over
52 pounds string it a little bit looser and there's a good chance that if you play
with the strings you're going to exert less effort and it's going to be easier on your arm