having a loose and relaxed wrist is often used as the magical solution to various problems
with your tennis technique mainly when players come to me they think that the serve and the
forehand can benefit greatly from having a loose and relaxed wrist interestingly
nobody really talks about having a loose wrist on the volleys or on the one-handed backhand or even
on the two-handed backhand or on the overhead there it's pretty obvious that for example on
the volley we can benefit from holding the racket a little bit tighter we can provide more stability
at the moment of contact however on the serve and the forehand the reason why most people
think a loose and relaxed wrist is beneficial is that on the serve for example people think that
having a racket drop with a loose wrist will make the racket drop lower and also a loose wrist will
allow players to pronate into the contact and then continue to pronate on the other hand on
the forehand players believe that having a loose wrist will generate a wrist lag a la
roger federer so today's video i want to show you that number one a loose wrist will not guarantee
certain technical elements to take place on your strokes and also it's quite the contrary
the wrist is actually not as loose on high level players as you think it is so let's start off with
the wrist lag on the forehand so what happens with the wrist lag is that when we accelerate
forward after sequencing our torso rotation when we lead the way with our non-dominant side
the arm is finally going to start going forward and we're going to be pulling that
racket towards the contact what will happen naturally is that the wrist will lag behind
now some players on the atp tour will close the racket face up on the racket drop and now
the reason why the wrist leg is so visible is that the racket will flip from this position
to this position this is very easy to observe when we watch slow motion footage however we
cannot see this in real time so naturally players want to imitate this and they start becoming very
wristy with their forehands and they're also very loose when they try to make the wrist lag
happen at the conscious level so i'm going to try what many recreational players have tried before
i'm going to close the strings up on the racket drop and then i'm going to with a loose wrist
make my racket go back this way take a look what happened so here i'm going to close my strings
and i'm going to be extremely wristy making that wrist lag happen a la roger federer you can see
there that the wrist is so sloppy it is so loose that i have absolutely no stability at
the moment of contact this is what i want you guys to understand the most important thing
on the forehand is the contact point if you're too loose when you make contact with the ball
you will start spraying the ball and you will have absolutely no control so naturally what needs to
happen when we meet the ball the wrist needs to be in an extended position so we can provide
maximum stability to the racket head when we meet the ball so there are two options on the
forehand we can set this position in place prior to the racket drop this is what many
elite tennis players do so basically we're going to extend the wrist backwards in the same position
that we will get into when we make contact so we can set this immediately now naturally
as we go through the motion on our forehand the wrist will lag behind you can see that
the acceleration of the racket forward will make the wrist lag behind even further so naturally
even with a set position of the wrist prior to the acceleration phase the wrist will still lag behind
further from the acceleration so this is very easy to see because if you take a look from any
high level player from behind you'll see that on the forehand when the racket starts to accelerate
the tip of the racket is not pointing straight towards the back fence it's actually pointing
towards the side because the acceleration is making the wrist lag further behind
now a lot of players find more comfort in being a little bit more relaxed with the wrist
prior to the acceleration phase and there's nothing wrong with being relaxed prior to the
acceleration phase you could easily have the wrist straight a la andy murray drop the racket down
but now just be aware that it's going to be more movement in the wrist when we start accelerating
from this position so does this require wrist movement it doesn't require any wrist movement
at the conscious level yes the wrist will be more relaxed as you're dropping the racket but
naturally as you accelerate the stroke even from this position the wrist will extend backwards and
you will naturally achieve more stability at the moment of contact here are some facts about wrist
extension so basically when we make contact on the forehand our wrist is going to be extended
and what most people associate with relaxation is when we let the wrist flex down this is how
we relax the wrist this is how our muscles are relaxed and naturally when we extend the wrist
upwards you can see that the muscles are flexing they're not very big my muscles used to be
bigger i don't train anymore but you can see that as soon as i extend my hand upwards
you see there's flexion in these muscles so that means is once we lag the racket behind naturally
the wrist will extend and what happens when we extend the wrist these forearm muscles are
slightly flexed and this is not a relaxed position at all naturally there is some control required on
the forward phase of the swing if your arm is too loose especially the wrist you will not be able to
accelerate fast enough and overall the contact is going to be too sloppy so naturally on the
forehand this is true for any high level player as the wrist lags back there's more tension applied
to the forearm providing the entire forehand stroke with more stability now once you have
hit the ball on the forehand you get to about this point this is where you can activate your wrist
and a lot of professional players do that and it's perfectly safe to do so but what you absolutely
have to avoid is being loose once the racket has dropped and then being loose at the contact this
will not only hurt your control but it can also cause some injuries because as the wrist is wildly
moving around at a very high speed remember that forehands are accelerated up to 100 miles
an hour at the elite level this will be very difficult for the wrist to handle the wrist is a very
fragile joint it's a very weak part of the human body it is absolutely impossible that the wrist
will be able to sustain speeds up to 100 miles an hour therefore naturally this extension of the
wrist provides the arm with needed stability to be able to handle such fast acceleration
a lot of players come to me and they think that having a loose and relaxed wrist on the serve
will make their racket drop lower and will also allow them to pronate into the contact so this is
absolutely not true a sufficiently low racket drop like you see at the high levels where the tip of
the racquet goes below your lower back will only be there if you possess the right fundamentals and
if you have a lot of acceleration in your serve and the same goes for the pronation into the contact
and the continuing pronation and a loose wrist will absolutely not guarantee that you're going
to accomplish these things now you got to remember that the serve accelerates even faster than the
forehand and the same rules apply for the serve that apply for the forehand we need to provide
the arm with more stability and there's wrist extension involved in the racket drop if you
take a look at any high level serve you will see that the wrist slightly extends
on the racquet drop this is true for all high level serves you will not see a racket drop
with wrist flexion in other words you will not see something like this where the wrist is flexed and
the racket is kind of going over the head and into the back this is way too loose and you would not
be able to get number one high acceleration and you wouldn't be able to be accurate in other words
this type of racket drop will be way too sloppy and this is why you don't see it
at the high level so what happens on the racket drop is the following the wrist slightly extends
and now there's two options the racquet can drop with an open racket face or it can drop
on edge in both of these circumstances the wrist is slightly extended and again this
is done by the body naturally to be able to provide more control with the extremely high acceleration.
and the same is true for the pronation into the contact the wrist is still extended when the
racquet is approaching the ball and it's still going to be extended at the moment of contact
there's also going to be some ulnar deviation in other words the wrist is going to be going
towards the right so if you take a look from this angle the wrist is slightly extended
and it's going to the right this is true for all high level serves and again
why is this the case well if we made contact with the wrist completely straight this would
be a very weak contact and you remember that serves accelerate faster than any other strokes
in tennis and if we were holding a racket like this at a moment of contact we will be very sloppy
and very weak by naturally extending the wrist backwards a little bit
we are able to handle the impact of the ball and provide stability to the racket head
and guys if you're interested in finding out what exactly happens to the wrist on all the tennis
strokes check out my series the role of the wrist i'm gonna put a link in the description below so
you're probably asking yourself nick if i'm not supposed to hold the racket loosely am i supposed
to grip it super tight absolutely not do not grip the racket too tight and this will restrict
the movements it will make strokes too rigid so you shouldn't be too loose you shouldn't be too
tight either you should hold the racket on all strokes except the one-handed back you need to
have a spreading between the index finger and the middle finger this is super important also
you want to hold the racket as low as possible with the pinky towards the edge and the end of the
racket inside your hand this will not make your wrist rigid because the wrist will have to move
in different positions throughout the strokes this is super important that the wrist is not
rigid or in other words locked the wrist has to be able to move and this holding of the racquet
and the way i described it will allow the wrist to move in all the different directions and one
test that you can do either by yourself or with another person is basically trying to push the
racket back so if i hold the racket too loosely i can easily push the racket backwards and now
the racket comes out of my hand now there are some players that hold the racket so loosely that the
the bottom of the grip is not even touching the inside of their hand and this is definitely not
something that you want to do so the easy test is you just push on your strings and if your hand is
holding the racket you will not be able to push the racket back if you're holding it too loose
you will be able to push it back quite easily so guys the students that come to me often bring up
these four things when it comes to a loose wrist so they think that with a loose wrist they can
achieve a better racket drop on the serve they can achieve pronation into the contact and continuing
pronation and they also believe that they can achieve a proper wrist lag on the forehand if they
have a loose and relaxed wrist and like i said in this video it is absolutely untrue you got to
remember that all those things are direct result of the proper fundamentals and stroke acceleration
if you relax your wrist too much on the forehand and the serve you will not only lose control
but you will also lose acceleration and by the way it is by no means a guarantee that the
technical elements that you're trying to achieve by relaxing are going to happen in the first place