Hi guys, I'm Clay Ballard with Top Speed Tennis, and today we're going to talk about one of
the most important aspects to the game. We all know about it, we've all heard about
it, and it's creating massive amounts of topspin. I'll bet you've probably watched some of the
top pros in the world. Rafael Nadal comes to mind.
Their ball is clearing the net by almost four or five feet over the net.
They're hitting this ball extremely hard, and then it's turning down into the court
for a winner. Very hard hit shots are diving down.
In today's video we're going to talk about why we even need all that topspin.
We know that slider shots actually produce a little bit more power, so why even bother
hitting it so far over the net. Then the second part of the video is to get
everybody, even if you're an absolute beginner, you've not played a lot of tennis, I want
you to experience what a lot of topspin feels like.
I have a series of drills that I'm going to walk you through that will allow you to do
that. Let's go ahead and get started.
So the first thing we'll talk about is why we even need topspin, what is the real advantage
of topspin. Let's go over what happens when we hit topspin.
As we're making contact, let's imagine that I'm back at the camera, back at the baseline,
and I'm making a swing. As I'm making contact with the ball, my racket
is going to be around waist high somewhere. That's about the same height as the net, it's
going to be in that general ball park, obviously it's going to matter where the ball is hit.
As we're clearing the net though, as I mentioned with Nadal, his ball can be up to four or
five feet above this net and hit very, very hard, and it's still going turn down into
the court. Now with the topspin is what allows that ball
to curve down in the court since the ball is spinning end over end in this direction,
but there's more friction on the top of the ball than there is on the bottom of the ball
against the air. The felt catches that friction and makes it
dive down into the court. Now if we took a beginning player, maybe someone
that's never ever touched a racket before, and they still swung at that same speed that
Nadal was doing. Now remember his ball was starting out at
about waist high and clearing the net by about four or five feet, so that means his ball
took off from his racket at about an angle like this.
If we took a beginning player with no topspin at all, no experience with how to create topspin,
and they and swung with the same speed as Nadal, hit that ball and it took off at that
same angle with the same speed, it would clear the net by the same four or five feet.
But it would hit the top of the fence past the court, and it would probably land with
that same amount of speed, probably somewhere in the ballpark of 40 or 50 feet past the
baseline, so way too far out of the court. That's why you'll see a lot of beginning players
do that, they'll hit these really crazy shots that fly way past the court, because they
haven't learned that topspin yet. What happens is, as we're a beginning player,
let's say we're ripping these shots and we know that if we hit one up here, it goes 50
feet long, at the top of the fence. As we start to go lower, maybe this is 30
feet long, 20 feet long, 10 feet long, as we even hit a shot that clears the net by
just an inch if we're hitting it with that kind of speed and no topspin, it's still going
to clear long. There's no way we can hit with that amount
of speed and still get the ball to go in the court.
We have to then slow down our swing, take a lot of power off of it, and then we start
to hit it a little bit higher over the next without spin, and it starts to fly in the
court. So now maybe we only have a margin for error
of six or eight inches, as a beginning player, whereas Nadal has a margin of error of five
feet. What it's really about is creating a huge
amount of margin for error, and being able to swing hard and still have it go into the
court. That's the reason that we want topspin.
Now let's go over a series of drill that are going to allow you to do this, so you can
start getting this massive margin for error and be able to swing harder and still hit
winners.
OK, so to create this topspin, there's two things that have to happen from a scientific
that have to happen, two things that have to happen.
I have to create a difference in the direction my face is pointing and the direction that
my racket is moving. So here if I'm making contact square, and
for all intents and purposes when we make contact with the ball we want our racket just
barely turned down a little bit, probably pointing to the bottom of the net.
If I were to draw a laser line from the center of my racket, shooting out from the strings,
it would hit roughly at the bottom of the net.
Now if my racket is moving in the same direction, I'm not creating any topspin.
My racket now has to be moving in an upward direction, so if my racket overall is moving
upward in an angle like this, and my strings are pointed downward, that's creating a separation,
and that separation is going to cause that ball to have topspin on it.
We're going to focus on three individual areas that are going to help us to improve that
topspin. The first one is as my arm swings, to get
that upward angle, I want my arm to be moving upward as I'm making contact with the ball.
So the overall path of my arm needs to be up. You can imagine my arm is swinging as
a circle. As my arm moves farther and farther forward,
now my hand is naturally going to move farther forward.
I want to make sure that I'm making contact as my arm is moving up as I'm doing this.
The second piece in order to be able to do that, if I'm making contact late, where's
my arm going to be? It's going to be at the bottom of its arc.
I need to make contact with that ball early well out in front of my body so my arm is
naturally moving up and I don't have to try to create so much topspin.
If you're making contact late here, now your arm isn't moving up naturally, and you're
going to have to feel like you're doing all this stuff with your shoulder and your wrist
to make up for that. So piece number one, arm naturally coming
up by letting it swing from the shoulder socket, down and up.
Piece number two, making contact out in front so it's going to be coming up all on its own,
it's naturally going to happen. The third piece is my wrist. If you imagine
my hand here, as I'm making contact. If I take my fingertips and point them down
to the ground, and then I want to flick those wrist upward like this.
So as I'm coming into contact, I want to have my wrist flick up, where that's called the
windshield wiper. It looks something like this when you're making
the contact with the racket, it's going to naturally slip on over.
It's the same way you'd turn a doorknob to the left, same motion there.
Imagine this is a doorknob I have a hold of, and I'm going to turn that to the left.
That's extreme, we're talking about getting a lot of topspin on that ball, but that's
how you're going to do it, to get that to really kick up.
So those three pieces, arm coming up, contact out in front, and then we're going to have
that wrist flick up to add that last little bit.
Now let's go ahead and go over a several-part drill that's going to help you to feel this.
Now I have you a four-part drill that's going to help you to do this motion.
It may take a little bit of time for those of you who are beginnings.
But I really want you to work through these drills, make sure you do them correctly, so
you can experience in a short period of time, what all that topspin is really going to feel
like. From there, you can go onto my topspin forehand
series which is really going to teach you these moves in much more detail.
So we're going to kind of fake it, we're going to cheat to get a little bit more topspin
on there. Just so you can feel it today, then you're
going to go to that series and watch that so that you can learn how to do it correctly,
and learn how to do those motions properly. To start out we're going to use a continental
grip. You can imagine that as if I were going to
grab this racket, and I was going to hit this racket and I was going to hit this like a
hammer, straight down into the ground, that would be my continental grip.
Also my index finger knuckle, my bottom knuckle on my index finger here, is going to be on
the second bevel. Bevel number one is going to be the top bevel
if my racket is up and down. The next bevel over to the right is bevel
number two, and my index finger is going to be on that.
That's your hammer grip, your continental grip.
From here, this is a very difficult grip to create spin.
I want to make sure I'm using this grip so I'm making as tough as possible, and I have
to manufacture the spin my using my arm correctly, and using my wrist correctly.
So again, I'm going to make a couple practice swings here, and I'm going to feel like I'm
letting this racket come back high, and I'm letting it loop down under, and I'm making
contact out in front when my racket hand is moving up.
As I'm coming back, my hands are high. Watch my right hand, it turns under, and then
I'm making contact as it's coming back up. If I add the racket, it's going to look something
like this. Coming back high, looping down, so I'm making
a loop, and then I'm coming back up to contact. Now we're not getting really detailed on the
biomechanics, I get much more into that in the topspin forehand series.
But here we're just going over the general idea. So hand goes down and then back up.
Check that grip, make sure you have that correct, and now I'm going to do that same thing, where
I'm letting it loop back up. That ball just kind of floated on me, didn't
have a lot of topspin. Now I really want to focus on getting that
racket to kick up with the wrist, and that's going to add that second little boost of topspin
on there, so that that racket is really moving upward as the face is still pointing downward.
We're really trying to get a lot of topspin on here by doing so.
I'm going to stand four, five feet behind the baseline, toss a couple balls up, focus
on those three keys to try and manufacture as much topspin as I can on there.
Now one that I want you to keep in mind, is make sure that you keep this continental grip.
The second thing I want you to keep in mind is this is very difficult to create topspin
this way. Very, very difficult drill.
The reason that we're doing this to start out is because I want to make it as difficult
as possible for you to create topspin so that you have to use the arm moving up, and you
have to use the wrist kicking up, and we don't simply just turn the grip right away, and
start to try to manufacture it, or cheat into it.
We're going to get into a little bit of that later.
The first thing I want to do, is I want to make sure I make it as difficult as possible,
so that I have to use the arm and the wrist to try to force myself to create that topspin.
I'll go ahead and hit a couple more here, and again, as I mentioned, I'm going to even
mess up on these, because I'm not used to having this grip at all.
But you're going to try to create as much topspin as you can.
So I didn't really create a ton on those, you probably won't either because of that
grip, but I want to try to get as much as I can as I'm starting out.
Now the second piece to this, I'm going to turn it one bevel to the right.
So bevel number two is the first one to the right, the second one which is on the flat
side, bevel number three, I'm now going to put my index finger knuckle on bevel number
three. Essentially what I'm doing is turning down
the face a little bit. Now it's easier for me to swing up and get
that level face, and the difference between that angle and my racket is moving the angle
that the face is pointing. It's going to be a lot easier to create spin.
This is your stock forehand grip. I'm going to focus on those same three things.
Another 20, 25 shots, getting more topspin, you can see those are diving down a little
bit more as I'm starting to hit with those. Again, I want to make sure that I make contact
in front of my body out here, really extend out in front so that my arm is naturally going
to move up. After we've done about 20, 25 of those, you're
really trying to create as much spin as you can.
Now we're going to move it even farther over to bevel number four.
Now we move it over to bevel number four, that's going to be called a semi-western grip,
so really turning this racket face down. Now I can really hit up on this thing very
easily, and create a lot of topspin. You'll see Nadal using a semi-western a lot
of times. I'm going to do the same 20 to 25 swings,
trying to get as much topspin as I can and really get comfortable with that curving down.
I'm going to swing hard, I'm going to try to really get this ball to turn down, and
you'll see it's much easier. I'm just tossing these balls, I'm not worrying
about hitting them with a partner or any of that kind of stuff yet.
Focusing on arm moving up, contact in front, making that wrist really turn up.
The final piece here, and this is where I think everybody's going to feel the topspin,
we're going to go all the way over to bevel number five which is at the bottom of the
racket, way down here. Your hand is going to turn completely underneath
the racket, and now the knuckle of your index finger is going to be no other choice with
this grip but to swing up on the ball. Because if you swing level at all, what's
going to happen if I swing level, that ball is going to go right down into the ground
because I've closed this space so much. So I'm going to have to really swing up on
this ball a lot, and this is kind of a cheater's way of getting topspin.
The disadvantage with this long-term is you're not going to be able to create enough speed
doing this, so it's going to be very difficult to create speed.
You're going to have to swing extremely hard to get any pace on the ball.
But for now, to feel this topspin, we're going to try this out, and we're going to see again
this is very hard, that ball turned down a lot!
But it is very hard for me not playing with an eastern most of the time, very hard to
get a feel for how to do that. But you can see that that ball is definitely
turning down a lot, and almost no way to swing without getting a lot of topspin.
So 25 good shots creating as much topspin as you can, first starting out with a continental
and then going stronger, and stronger, and stronger.
I guarantee you by the time you get to a full western grip at the bottom, not what I would
recommend for regular play, but you will feel the topspin today and you'll start to get
that feel of getting that ball to turn down. So good luck to you guys, and good luck with
that topspin forehand. All right, so now that we've experienced how
to get this ball to really turn down, we've cheated it a little bit by getting the hand
way underneath the racket. You started to feel that topspin, now it's
time to go ahead and learn how to do it the correct way, with the correct technique.
I have a bonus with you guys, here in a second a video is going to pop up from the topspin
forehand series. It's going to be a preview of the full video.
If you want to see the entire video plus the entire series free of charge.
It's going to talk about how to use the legs, how to use the proper arm motion in much more
detail. It's going to go into detail of three different
positions of how to get that snapping motion through contact.
You're going to learn a lot of great information for that.
That's going to pop up here in a second, just click the link in the bottom of your screen
or down below in the description if you're on a mobile device.
You'll be able to see that entire video, entire series free of charge.
Also if you liked this video, be sure to click the like button below, that really helps me
to grow the channel. If you have any question post them in the
comments, and also remember to subscribe so you'll see our latest content.
Good luck to you guys, good luck with that topspin, I look forward to hearing from you
soon.
Top spin with your forehand. In this video we're going to talk about how
to use the lower body correctly to get some leverage from the ground, really create a
lot of power so that you start ripping some of those forehands not only with topspin,
with a lot of speed. So let's go ahead and get started.
This video is about the lower body as I mentioned, and we're going to talk about how to leverage
the ground for some power. It's a motion that I call the "Power U."
Basically your hips and your body are going to be making this U-type shape as we're hitting
the shot. It's going to help you to really transfer
energy from the ground through your body, and out to the ball, and it will result in
a lot more speed.
Let's go ahead and get started on the basic motion first.
As you're waiting for the ball to come, you're going to be standing fairly tall, and then
as you begin your forward momentum, you always want to be moving forward through the ball
as we're coming into contact if at all possible. As we start our forward momentum we're going
to let our hips drop down. You can imagine my hips are starting to go
down and they're making the first half of this U-type shape.
Now as I begin the forward swing with my racket, now my lower body's going to be driving upward.