Shamir I think you can improve your volley if you change a few things and
one thing I did not like on your volley was the fact that you were coming
through with the tip of the racket on your finish. This was causing a lot of
balls to go long. You think that's a problem on your volley? Yeah it's from
this. There's a little bit of a pushing on the ball and then there's a
finish where the wrist might be involved as well and the tip of the racket going
this way is an indicator that this is taking place. On the backhand it's even
wilder. Your racket goes way forward like this and it goes across this way.
And basically what I want you to do is imagine a wall in front of you when
you're volleying and basically you're going to come into the ball and then
freeze it right at contact. You can also squeeze the racket to make the racket
head even more stable. And on the backhand you do the same thing. You come into
the ball and you imagine there's a wall in front of you and you just freeze the
racket and maybe tighten the grip a little bit and if you do that your
volleys are not only gonna have more control but they're also gonna have more power.
So main thing you are saying
is at contact that's when the racquet stops
you don't keep going after that
You try not to
Try not to, so if I make contact here I stop there
You stop there
Now sometimes the racquet might continue
little bit. It's kind of hard to stop it. The momentum will carry you usually
across the body interestingly. Okay. But your intention has to be to stop the
racket right at the moment of contact. This is not only going to give you
control but it's also going to give you more power. Like the ball is gonna pop
off the strings much faster if you do that. Like a trampoline? It's kinda like a
trampoline. The ball will deflect off the racket and you will actually get more
power. If you continue going through the ball and push on it you actually get
less power that way. Okay. And you will feel this instantly. So go over there I'm
gonna feed you some.
Okay now in addition to freezing I want you also to tighten
the grip a little bit. Tighten the grip pressure. So as you make contact you also
squeeze a little more. You squeeze on the grip.
Okay so this will work when there's a lot of pace coming your way. So you
basically are going to come to the ball you're gonna tighten the grip, you're
gonna freeze the racket then the ball is just gonna pop off the strings really
fast you felt that right? Yeah immediately. Okay but now what if the ball doesn't have any
power? What do you do then? You have to create the power from somewhere because
you can't deflect the ball with power that doesn't have any power to begin
with. Yeah. So this is where you need to take a back swing okay? Okay. Alright so
there is a back swing on the volley and it's not really a back swing where
you're taking your arm back if you do on a forehand and the hand goes back it's
not like that. The hand stays in front but the racket lags behind like this. Okay. So
the hand stays in front of you the racket tip lags behind and then you come
into the ball this way and you freeze it like that. So this little action from
here to here will help you get power on balls that do not have so much pace. Okay.
Alright now look same as the forehand if the ball doesn't have any pace we got
to take a little bit of a lag on the backhand. So you see you don't take the
hand all the way back like this like you would on a slice backhand, but simply
you know I'm hitting this way look watch. I'm gonna turn and I'm gonna lag the
racket behind. See my hand really doesn't go back but but tip of the racket is lagged
behind my hand and when I come in I'm gonna freeze it a contact like this.
So this little space from here to the contact is gonna give me the required
power that I need on ball step do not have any pace.
Okay what you have to remember is that if the ball is coming with a lot of pace
you don't really have to move forward on that ball you don't have to step into
it you basically need a strong foundation. So you want to have a wide
base and you want to be in a proper ready position basically with your upper
body slightly down and you don't really need a big knee bend. The most
important thing is that the elbows are free because what happens to a lot of
players when I get a fastball coming at them and the torso is kind of straight
they tuck the elbow and they move out of the way. Have you ever seen this? That's me.
And now all of a sudden they're making contact too far back. So to prevent that get down
with the upper body slightly. You need a slight knee bend getting the balls of
your feet and keep the elbows in front and when that hard ball comes you
basically just think about deflecting it. Let me feed you some really hard ones
and you try to do just that. Okay.
When you get a ball that's a floater let's say like a little dink shot or
like a slice or like a little spinny ball you got a close on it. So you got to
transition through the volley and the most common mistake on these other
vollis's when players take a step and they freeze this step. Now they probably
not going to be close enough to the ball because those type of balls have a
tendency to die and lose penetration very quickly and then end up reaching
for the ball and that sudden stop also causes players to lose balance as they
execute a shot like that. So what you must do when you're transitioning through
volleys like this on balls that are coming with no penetration, you must take
at least one or two steps after making contact. So you're gonna come in like
this contact one two and then you come back.
Just picture Nadal he's probably the best closer in the world when it comes to
closing off volleys and he always takes two steps after making contact. He comes
in he hits and continues going one two and then he positions himself for
the next shot which he usually doesn't have to because he puts those away for
winners most of the time. So you wanna try it out? Yeah.
One thing you got to remember is that you got to be very explosive when you recognize a ball
like that. So you got to be fast on the ball otherwise it's gonna drop too low
on you.
Shamir what do you think? Do you feel like your volley has gotten a little bit
better? Yeah the main thing I was able to control more the volley because I I'm
stopping at contact right and I'm able to differentiate between this is a
ball with pace or not with pace and a different way to approach it. That's
that's key if you take a look at the ball you determine how it's coming and
then you're either gonna hold your ground being a good foundation and just
deflect the ball back or you're gonna close on it and when you do so you can
actually lag the racket behind a little bit but the thing that worked the best
today I felt was the squeeze and freeze technique. When you started doing that
your volleys cleaned up almost instantly.