Hi guys, I’m Clay Ballard with Top Speed Tennis, and how many of you out there are
struggling getting enough topspin on your backhand?
Maybe that ball is spinning parallel with the ground instead of really getting a lot
of topspin and diving down in the court, bouncing high up into your opponent and making a difficult
shot for them to return.
We’re going to talk about how you can get this snap coming through contact, get a lot
of that topspin going on your ball to create a lot of difficulty for your playing partners
and your opponents.
Let’s go ahead and get started.
I’m going to teach you this move in three simple steps that you can incorporate very
easily.
All right, so the topspin portion of the backhand can be accomplished very easily once you learn
the correct technique and a little bit on ingraining and some practice.
The first thing we’re going to do is break it down into three separate motions, and then
coming to a full finish.
Then we’re going to start to incorporate that into one simple motion.
But I want you to go ahead and start out with your racket up and down vertically.
So as we’re loading up to get ready for a backhand, my racket is going to be up and
down vertical with the ground.
So if we’re looking at it from face on, it’s going to look straight up and down.
If we’re looking at it from the side, we’re going to see that the racket is actually angled
back a bit.
But from face on, from the butt end of my racket to the tip of my racket, it’s going
to be up and down.
Now I want you to go ahead and get into that position and pause here a few times.
Just get comfortable with that, you’re loading up into this position, getting that racket
vertical.
The second motion you’re going to get into is you’re going to let this racket begin
to drop.
From here, the racket is vertical.
I’m going to begin to let the tip of the racket head drop down until now, it’s basically
parallel with the ground and the butt end of my racket is facing out towards you guys.
What that’s going to do, is that’s starting to get the racket head to drop down, so that
we can kick it back upward as we’re coming through impact and get a lot of topspin on
the ball as we’re coming through impact.
That’s how you’re going to do that, you have to get that snap of the racket.
Here the racket is vertical, we’re going to let that racket drop down, and the momentum
of that racket dropping down as it gets parallel is actually going get the tip of the racket
a little below the butt end of the racket as we’re moving forward.
Now the final piece of this is we’re going to go ahead and turn the racket back the other
way to get that snapping motion.
If you remember the lag and snap motion with the forehand, we talked about getting this
right hand to turn a doorknob to the right and then back to the left as you’re coming
through contact.
Just like they would teach in the windshield wiper effect, or a little similar to that.
Now with the backhand, we’re doing the same motion, but we’re turning it around the
other way.
So here our hand has the doorknob, we’re going to turn that doorknob to the left as
we’re going back, so we’re turning that doorknob counter-clockwise as this racket
drops back.
Then as we’re coming through contact, we’re going to turn the doorknob the other way,
and it’s going to go back clock-wise.
So there’s contact with the strings parallel to the ground.
Let me go ahead and show you all three positions from down the line now, so you can further
ingrain these and get a lot better feel of what’s going on here.
Let’s go over these same three positions now going down the line.
As I’m coming and loading up, now my racket is going to be up and down, we’re looking
this way so the butt end of the racket is facing out this direction.
As I begin to turn my hand counter-clockwise, now the racket tip is going to drop down in,
so the racket is going from vertical to dropping down in to where now it’s parallel with
the ground.
That momentum is going to continue as I begin my forward motion.
So the racket tip actually drops below the butt end of the racket.
Now as I extend forward into contact, that’s when I get the snap backward.
So this is the lag position, here’s the snap position, and now my racket is kicking
up and creating topspin as I’m making contact with this ball.
So the racket is turning down, and then turning back up at contact, and then as I finish all
the way through.
I’m just going to let the momentum of that motion to carry me forward, and my racket
is going to come all the way around with the butt end of the racket facing the opposing
side of the court.
That’s that lag and snap motion that you’ll see all the top ATP getting that’s really
going to help you to create tons of topspin and tons of speed.
All right, so finally just like we always do with Top Speed Tennis we’re going to
break these motions down and we’re going to start to ingrain them.
I want you to take your forehand grip and I want you to pause in position number one,
with your racket vertical to the ground.
It’s angled back a bit, but if we’re looking this way it’s straight up and down with
the ground.
For position number two we’re going to start to let that hand turn counter-clockwise and
get the racket parallel with the ground.
Butt end of the racket is facing out this direction.
Position number three we’re going to go ahead and extend up and get the racket parallel
to the ground as we’re getting that contact well out in front of our body.
So one, two, three, and then we’re just going to let the momentum carry us on around.
Once you’re practiced that, get a good 100 to 300 reps in.
Slow motion, pausing in each position, then we’re going to get 100 to 300 reps in doing
it without any pauses.
Once we’ve done that, now we’re ready to hit a couple shots.
You’re just going to toss a few balls in front of you, hit a few of those backhands,
and really work on getting that snapping motion to get the ball to turn down into the court.
That’s going to help you to get a lot more topspin, get a lot more speed, very, very
little effort.
So good luck to you guys, good luck with your backhand, and I’ll see you soon.
Hi guys, I hope you all really enjoyed this video, and as a bonus for you guys I have
a preview of a video that’s going to build upon the motions that we learned here.
We’re going to go in more detail how the racket should load, how we’re going to load
our shoulders, what positions we’re going to get our body into, to help further incorporate
exactly how to do the backhand perfectly.
Make it effortless, make it fluid, get a lot of speed, and a lot of spin on there.
That preview is going to play here in a second.
If you want to watch the full thing just click the link that’s popping up in the bottom
of the screen or down below in the description.
If you like this video click the like button, +1 this video on Google, and always remember
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information for you guys.
So good luck, I’ll see you very soon, and good luck with that backhand.
Hi guys, I’m Clay Ballard with Top Speed Tennis, and how would you all like to absolutely
rip your backhand.
That’s what we’re going to talk about in this video, we’re going to talk about
how to get the lag and snap wrist action that we all learned in the forehand series.
We’re also going to talk about how to get triple hinge pendulum physics.
I know it sounds crazy complicated, but it’s really simple.
We’ve got four simple pieces that are going to allow you to maximize those levers and
get more speed on your backhand.
Let’s go ahead and get started.
All right, so the first thing we need to understand is that when we’re doing the lag and snap
technique, what we’re really talking about is creating some levers in our arm.
We’re creating a lever in our elbow, as we extend from this lever we can maximize
speed.
We’re also creating a lever in the wrist.
So any time you create levers, you’re creating leverage.
As you release this leverage, you’re creating speed.
So as we keep our arm bent and we go to an extended arm, or if we have a bent wrist and
we go to an extended wrist, we’re creating speed.
That’s where the lagging action of the lagging of the wrist and the…