Hi guys, I’m Clay Ballard with Top Speed Tennis, and today we’re going to talk about
the differences between the eastern and the semi-western grip, and which one’s right
for you.
Now before we get started I will mention that about 70 to 80 percent of the ATP players,
the top pros in the world, are using a semi-western.
But I believe that we should all start out with an eastern grip, and I’m going to go
over why in this video.
Let’s go ahead and get started.
All right, so to get started let’s going ahead and talk about what is the eastern grip
so that those of you who aren’t familiar will know, and what is the semi-western grip,
and how do we create spin with these grips.
First off, when I’m talking about a grip I wanted to assign these numbers due to the
bevels on the racket.
The top bevel here is bevel number one.
As you go the next bevel clock-wise, bevel number two is at a 45° angle, bevel number
three is on the side, and then four, five, six, seven, eight, all the way around the
racket.
Now when we’re talking about an eastern grip, we want the index finger, the bottom
knuckle of the index finger, to be on bevel number three.
So that’s the bevel on the side of the racket.
If we talk about a semi-western grip, we’re going to be all the way underneath to bevel
number four.
So we’re turning the hand with an eastern a little bit to the right, and with a semi-western
more to the right.
If we start out, the reason this creates spin, let’s go ahead and start out here with a
continental grip, which instead of being on three with an eastern, or four with a SemiWestern,
a continental, or your serve grip, is going to be on bevel number two.
It’s the exact same way if you’re just going to grab this racket like you were going
to hammer it down into the ground, that would be a continental grip.
The index finger on bevel number two.
Now if I was going to hit a shot with a continental grip, the natural way to do this would be…let
me grab a tennis ball here.
I’m going to have the racket face vertical, and to come in kind of horizontal with the
ground.
This is going to create actually the most power, the most energy transfer, because all
the energy from my racket, my racket face is pointing directly forward, and my racket
head is moving directly forward.
So any energy I have in the racket is going to be directly transferred into this ball.
If I hit a shot doing this, the only disadvantage is it didn’t have any topspin, so it’s
really easy to fly way too far over the court like that one did, or to go too short.
So that’s not going to work for a forehand.
We need to have topspin to pull that ball down into the court, and that’s why we use
a semi-western, or an eastern or a semi-western grip.
So with an eastern grip, here’s my continental.
What I’m doing when I turn my knuckle over to bevel number three, look what that does
to the racket face.
It shuts the racket about 45° closed.
Now if I was to make the same horizontal swing, I would hit this ball directly down into the
court.
So I’ll go ahead and do the same thing here, and the ball’s going to go right down in
the court.
Naturally, instinctively, I’m not going to do that too many times.
I’m going to start to adjust, and our body naturally does that.
So if you get an eastern grip, you’re naturally going to start to come up into the ball and
your racket is going to move upward.
And now look how that’s going to square up the racket face so that now it’s facing
forward, because my racket is moving up to kind of adjust for that.
And if I had a nice easy shot here with an eastern grip, you’ll see how that starts
to dive down into the court.
Let me hit one a little harder so you can see the spin.
So it dives down into the court, makes it much more forgiving when I do that.
That’s an eastern grip, and that’s closing that face.
Now if I do a semi-western grip, over to bevel number four, I’m going to close this even
more.
And now I’m really going to have to swing up into this ball to make sure that my racket
face is more level.
As I do that, I’m going to have to swing harder up and I’m going to get even more
topspin.
So you can see that ball really turns down, and I’m just hitting those nice and easy,
but you can definitely see the spin starting to happen on there.
So a continental definitely won’t work for a forehand, we’re coming in level.
An eastern grip, we’re going to have to come in a little bit more vertical into it.
Again, continental has the most power.
As we start to go more and more vertical with an eastern, and then much more vertical with
a semi-western, that’s creating more spin but we’re losing power.
So we’re really looking for that balance between spin and power, that consistency and
power that we can get by adjusting this racket.
That’s why I recommend to start out with an eastern then move to a semi-western.
There’s a couple advantages we’re going to have when we’re using the eastern grip.
And that’s the grip that a player like Roger Federer, Grigor Dimitrov, they’re going
to use an eastern forehand grip.
Other players like Nadal use a semi-western grip and create more spin.
So if we’re starting out with this eastern grip two things are going to happen that are
good.
Number one, we’re going to have a little bit more transfer of energy, a little bit
more power.
As I mentioned before, if we’re coming in more level to this ball, all the energy from
the racket is getting transferred directly into this ball and we’re maximizing our
power.
As we start to go more up into the ball, now we’re creating more spin but we’re losing
out on that power.
So if you had Federer and Nadal hitting side by side, and they’re both swinging 60 miles
an hour, Federer’s going to have more power transferred into the ball because he’s coming
in a little bit more level.
Maybe his ball’s going to clear the net by a couple of feet.
Whereas Nadal’s ball is going to spin more, and go four or five feet over the net.
So he’s going to have more power, Federer is, for the same amount of swing speed.
Now how does Nadal make up for this, because he definitely has tons and tons of power.
He just swings harder, right?
So he’s getting more topspin and he’s got tons of speed to burn, he’s a powerful
guy.
So he just swings another 20 miles an hour faster and he gets tons of speed.
So if you can do that, that’s great, semi-western is a great way to do it.
If you can create all your own speed, nothing wrong with doing that with a semi-western
grip and getting a lot of spin on there.
If you’re an older player, maybe feel a little bit weaker, you can get a little bit
more power, and a little bit more penetrating shots with that eastern forehand grip.
Now the second thing here is it’s going to teach us to use our wrists properly as
we’re doing this motion.
Every professional player, every great player has learned how to get the wrist to snap upward.
I mentioned this in a lot of other videos, about how we’re going to turn a doorknob.
Feeling like you’re grabbing a circular doorknob and turning it to the left, that’s
what’s happening as you’re creating topspin and that snap, as you’re coming through
contact.
And that’s with any type of grip that you use.
And with an eastern grip, you’re not going to be able to kind of cheat and just do that
with your arm to create all the topspin, you’re going to have to use the wrist a little bit
more to learn how to create your own topspin.
So it’s not going to be as easy.
If we go all the way to a full Western, which would be like the hand completely underneath.
I’ll see some people doing this every once and a while.
Now I don’t have to use my wrist at all, I just can kind of do this chopping motion
to get the topspin.
It will create topspin, but we’re really never learning how to get that speed and that
snap from the wrist which we see in all good players.
So we start out with that eastern, now I’m having my hand turned over, I’m going to
have to create my own topspin.
I’m going to have to learn how to get that ball to turn down by using my wrist rather
than just using overall motion of my arm.
So those are the two things.
A little bit more power, and you’re going to have to learn to use the racket properly
to create that topspin.
Now from there, once you’ve done that, you can play great tennis with either one.
You can play great with an eastern or a semi-western.
Tons of great players playing with either one.
Go ahead and try the semi-western at that point.
Once you learn to create your own topspin with an eastern, switch over to semi-western,
try it out.
If you like it better, if you’ve got power to burn, if you really want those shots to
dive down in the court, go ahead and go to semi-western and you’ll play great.
So practice these grips out, do some drills, and I’ll see you guys soon.
All right, so finally let me go ahead and give you a couple drills to really get familiar
with these grips and start practicing them on your own.
First let’s start out with the eastern grip.
I’ll go ahead and start with my knuckle on bevel number three, or on the side of the
racket.
I’m going to hit three different height shots.
My first shot, I want the ball to clear the net by maybe a foot to two feet.
I’m going to try to hit that nice and firm, and land down in the court.
I got a little bit high, I didn’t get it nice and deep into the court.
So you’re just going to practice that out, that one was much better.
Until you hit about, maybe 15 or 20 reps, getting those nice, low shots.
After that, we’re going to kick it up a notch and go a little bit higher.
Now as I’m going higher, and wanting to clear that net by more, I’m going to have
to create more topspin with my wrist.
That’s the second motion I was talking about earlier in the video.
So here you feel like your racket is lagging down, and then you’re letting it kick up.
This is a windshield wiper motion, and as it’s kicking up, it’s kicking up and forward
just like this.
So we’re feeling like we’re taking a doorknob and turning it to the left.
As I do this, I can start to clear the net by a little bit more, and the ball is going
to still dive down into the court.
So now, I’m going to try to clear the net by maybe three feet, two to four feet, in
that zone.
That was even a little bit higher, but I still landed in the court, so that was good.
Another 20 shots doing that, 20 sucessful shots.
Finally we’re going to really turn it up, still keeping this eastern grip, and really
get that racket to snap vertically.
I’m going to fill like my racket is going straight up and down, and I’m going to get
a lot of topspin.
On this one I’m going to try to clear the net by maybe seven or eight feet, just like
that one, and still get that to turn down into the court.
So we can see I’m generating that topspin with my wrist.
Now from there, another 20 repetitions, then you can switch over to the semi-western.
You’re going to feel an immediate difference because now my racket is going to be turn
down much more, and I’m going to try and do the same thing.
You’ll see that I have difficulty hitting those more penetrating shots.
I naturally want to swing much more up on the ball and get more spin.
So try out all three of those again.
20 low shots, 1 or 2 feet over the net, 20 mid shots, 2 to 4 feet over the next, and
20 high shots getting 4 foot plus over the net, maybe even 7 or 8 feet using that semi-western,
and you’ll definitely feel the differences.
You’ll start to get some more awareness of how that changes up your spin and your
speed as you’re doing these grips.
Go ahead and practice those drills, they’re going to give you a better awareness of where
your grip is.
It’s going to help you to control your penetrating shots, your more spinning shots, and you’re
going to just do better overall forehand.
So good luck, and I’ll see you guys soon.
All right, so I hope you guys really enjoyed this video, if you did I have a great bonus
for you all.
It’s going to be a video from the Topspin Forehand series.
We’re going to have five individual videos talking about how you can really maximize
that topspin.
We’re going to go into much more detail how to use the wrist like I mentioned in this
one.
And I’m going to play a preview from one of those videos from this series in just a
second.
If you want to see that entire video plus that entire series, just click the link that’s
in the bottom of your screen or down below in the description.
You’ll get access to the entire series free of charge.
If you have any questions post them in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this video click the like button, and remember to subscribe to this channel.
That way as we come out with new videos you’ll be notified.
So good luck to you guys, good luck to that forehand, and I’ll see you all soon.
…and make this L-type motion with our arms.
Then the racket needs to be pointed out at basically a 45° angle.
The racket is going to be at a 45°, and the tip of the racket from the butt end, will
be pointing right over towards 3:00.
That’s the first motion we want to get into.
As we’re loading up the racket tip is going to be pointing out towards 3:00 and at about
a 45° angle.
Now 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.
So 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 motion, 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.
Now don’t mistake this with your…