what is the role of your wrist on your forehand there's a lot of information out there about
what the wrist is doing on your forehand and in the best case scenario i find it a lot of times
misleading and in the worst case scenario just plain wrong because
it is very specific what you're supposed to do with the wrist when you hit your forehand
if you're doing it wrong you're actually running the risk of not only messing up your forehands
but also you're risking injury so that's what i want to prevent we have to have the lag and
i'm going to show you and tell you exactly how to get it when to get and what to do with it but snap
not so much so let's get into it how to use the wrist in your forehand to my mind the number one
ingredient for a good forehand and correct use of the wrist is that you don't hold
the racket with the knuckles of death you want to hold it somewhat loosely because
the wrist lag will happen naturally you don't have to force it you have to
learn to feel it but what you don't want to do is you don't have to force yourself
into this position if you hold your arm loose enough this will happen naturally so two tips
that i was taught how hard to hold the racket one being imagine you have a tube of toothpaste
open tube is open if you squeeze too hard toothpaste goes everywhere
if yeah you don't hold it enough of course it drops think about it another way you have a live
mouse in your hand of course if you don't hold it enough little mouse in your hand it runs away
jumps out if you squeeze it too tightly not so great for the mouse so those are
two fun ways to figure out how hard to grip your racket now when does the lag happen
we have our components for our forehand so we have our unit turn meaning i'm taking my racket
up i'm taking my racket all the way back and i let it drop and now as i'm starting to pull forward
that is when the butt cap should be pointing to the ball and that is called the lock in position
that signifies the end of your preparation and from here on out i'm pulling up and forward to
my contact point and then i have my follow through and then lastly finish here are the biggest words
of caution lag all day we need to get it you need to get into this position every good forehand
player has this position whether it's world class good college or good recreational players
it is not that hard to achieve unless you have any kind of physical limitations and you can't
do this what i find very very misleading and very yeah incorrect to my mind is when people say
lag and then snap because yes we're talking about laying the wrist back
and i'm understanding the english language as snap here this is a snap so i'm having this motion
and then the opposite of this motion is this and that's not what i want from the back it looks
like this i have my lag i need that i want that but i definitely don't want this what i want is
the lag here allows me to get under the ball and brush up
here to my contact point and keeping my racket in the plane of the ball if i'm snapping
i'm getting out of the direction of the ball and yeah i'm shanking the ball or i'm actually hurting
myself wrist injuries not great so why does the lag happen and yeah why do i need it again
so the lag happens if you have your wrist loosely enough your entire arm loosely enough
because you have a weight here i'm moving this weight and now i'm applying force on the inside
of my handle here grip as i'm pulling forward and momentarily the weight of the tip of the racket
holds it back and because my wrist is doing this that's what it's designed to do
it lays back it lags back as i'm then accelerating forward to my contact point the tip of the racket
starts to catch up with my hand until i'm making contact and now i'm perpendicular to the ball and
of course however i'm turned wherever my rocket face is pointing when i'm making contact is where
the ball goes so that is why i need my wrist in this laid back position so i can make contact
out here in front and that has changed a little bit due to the grips back in
the day and i learned with a wooden racket and actually in a continental grip believe it or not
the contact point was out to the side and next to your hip that is no longer true with the grips
that we teach these days that most everybody has we want our contact point out here in front
and i can't do that if i have a straight wrist so if i'm coming a little closer you see that
i can't really accelerate a whole lot if i'm meeting the ball here already i'm depriving myself
of this entire space here to still accelerate to so instead of using the
snap i would like to use the word lot more roll brush over the ball
whatever you want to call it but snap to me is misleading because this is a snap to me i
don't want to do that so as i'm done hitting the ball here i'm actually rotating over the ball
all right that's what we call the windshield wiper you've probably heard that before
i'm not doing this i'm coming around and up over the ball here and another checkpoint is
that the butt cap points to you right now as the viewer or the palm
faces to the outside the side with which i made contact follows through and points to the
outside that is when i know that i didn't do this because i see a ton of clients because trust me
i'm a doctor i'm a tennis coach and i see a lot of clients doing this that is the snap that we don't
want we want the roll with your entire arm over the ball so let me show you a couple of drills and
this is my trusty topspin pro i know shameless plug but this thing really helps for people to
start feeling the lag it also helps tremendously with finding the distance so again if i don't set
my wrist back if i don't lay my wrist back and i keep it fully extended in a neutral position here
here's what happens i can't make contact in front well i can but see what happens i'm actually
getting out of the plane of the ball i'm going to shank it to my left so laying that wrist back
i'm now able to stay behind the ball and brush up so again if i were to snap
i'm going to hit the topspin pro and i'm gonna make it fall so i'm coming under the ball here
and i'm brushing up and i don't have to do it fast at all i'm gonna show you two other drills
if you don't have the topspin pro so just here now you see i'm just going to let my racket go
just roll over and then i finish with the rhino nose high and away from my face i can finish
over my biceps i can finish over my shoulder i can finish like rafa or i can finish over
my hip even depending on what kind of ball i want to send but essential again is that i get
the wrist leg pointing to the ball here and then i brush over another reason why i find that snap so
misleading is i can manipulate the ball with my body position of course with my grip
with my swing shape if i hit a slice i manipulated or i manipulated with a topspin but i cannot
manipulate the ball at contact point because it is so fast it's 0.000 something seconds
no human being is fast enough and i do see this one coach who talks a lot about
and maybe it's because he's training only with world-class absolute geniuses but a mere mortal
no you cannot do that because it's just happening too fast we can't even see with our human eye
our eyes don't work that fast so keep brushing up to the ball lay it back that's great but then
don't snap it roll over it so michael when i watch the pros i do see movement in the wrist
and yeah you see movement in the wrist but you only see it after they make contact long after
they make contact which translates into 0.00 whatever seconds because again it goes so fast
you do see this but that comes again more from your entire elbow and because you hold the racket
so loose now again the weight of the racket pulls and it pulls so that the side with which you hit
faces to the outside so you can wave goodbye you can think about having a wristwatch
on the inside here and look at it that's one way or you make it as a checkpoint
the butt cap points to your opponent so twice you want to see the butt cap here
and then here okay so what i've done is i've just taken a slightly older ball and i'm able
to squeeze it into the fence here so try that if i'm keeping my wrist in a neutral
position meaning it's not bent flexed moved in any way and now i want to make contact
the tip of my racket actually makes contact with the fence first
and you see that my racket face is pointing this way so i'm having more of a horizontal motion
and i have zero of that vertical motion that i need to get some topspin now for me to get the
ball actually straight on which is what i want to do i would have to go into this position and
see here now my wrist can stay in this position but again i'm hitting the ball out to the side
too far away from me and i have to use a lot of my shoulder here that here put strain on my shoulder
and i don't want that so just seeing from the back if i have my wrist lag
now i can come up and make contact with the racket face pointing to where i want to go
if i'm holding my wrist in a neutral position i can send it straight on
if i'm in this position here which again is not ideal if i continue to swing with a neutral grip
now you do see that really clearly that my rocket face points this way another way to start feeling
the wrist lag is simply fix a towel or string or rope whatever you have to the
fence and mimic your stroke if i keep my wrist again in a neutral position
i have to use all of this here and me as a former shoulder injured
injury whatever somebody who had shoulder injuries that doesn't feel great i have to muscle that
doesn't feel good but if i'm doing this i just naturally let my wrist be pulled back so i see
the inside here of the wrist now another slightly out of left field tip which i use with little kids
and they get it trust me it's the spider-man okay we're shooting the web forward which yes
technically i think he's shooting it that way so don't don't nail me down on that one too much
but it totally gets them into laying that wrist back here so imagine you're spider-man and
you lay that wrist back and then yeah you have to go so if you now don't know how to use your
wrist i really don't know and you can work on that with a simple progression when you're by yourself
you can simply toss the balls that's perfectly fine so if you want to start in this position
i'm just tossing the ball and now i'm just trying to meet the ball by moving forward and
up i'm pulling up to contact point and i'm doing that super loose i'm not doing that hard at all
very gentle and then i'll just roll over the ball if you like my contact make sure that you're
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