hey guys in today's video i'm going to tell you everything that you need to know about the
forehand grip on the serve and there are actually a lot of myths when it comes to the forehand grip
on the serve maybe you didn't know that some of the greatest servers of all time actually served
with a slight forehand grip for example boris becker or patrick rafter these guys on their
first serves were slightly over towards the forehand side on what's called the australian
grip is the edge between the continental grip and the eastern forehand grip and another common myth
of the forehand grip on the serve is that you can't achieve a racket drop when you indeed have a
forehand grip so even if i have a severe forehand grip in this case it's an eastern forehand grip
and i hit a serve with pretty good speed i can achieve a proper racket drop there's
absolutely no problem getting the racket to drop the normal weight in reality there's going to be
very little difference between my regular continental grip and
a serve with a forehand grip when it comes to the racket drop take a look here's the
a forehand grip on the serve you'll see that my racket will drop almost the same amount
so your racket will drop if you have a forehand grip another myth is that you're going to lose
power with the forehand grip this is also not necessarily true you are going to be
able to smack that ball pretty hard even with a forehand grip there's no reason because there's no
loss of range of motion you are going to be able to smack that ball
pretty hard when you indeed have a forehand grip now you're probably thinking this is great news
nick i serve with a forehand grip does this mean that i can keep certain with the forehand grip
you absolutely cannot and it doesn't matter how long you've been playing even if you've built up
a lot of muscle memory and you're serving with a forehand grip at least an eastern foreign grip
or even in a worst-case scenario you have a semi-western forehand grip on the serve
you absolutely have to change it because of several reasons the reason number one
why you must change your forehand grip right away because you are gonna have a lack of variety on
your serve it's gonna be absolutely impossible to put any type of kick or slice on your serve
if you indeed serve with a forehand grip and while you are able to generate some good pop
with a forehand grip on your serve especially if it's done in conjunction with other power sources
there's going to be less range of motion when it comes to the way the racket is traveling through
the air so in a continental grip if you have all the proper fundamentals and if you have possessed
the right serve acceleration the racket will come out on edge and now you're going to be pronating
into the contact and on some serves you are going to continue to pronate this is not the case
in a forehand grip if you take a look at my racket head if i come out of the drop you see that my
hand is going straight at the ball like this this is what you call approaching the ball with the
strings there's absolutely no pronation into the contact and when this is the case you're using
less of the natural ways to get power on the serve because we are not controlling the way the racket
is traveling throughout the service motion if you serve with the proper fundamentals if you have
proper server acceleration naturally the racket will come out on edge and then naturally with
the right muscle memory you'll learn very early on to open the strings into the contact which is
basically what pronation into the contact is and this little movement right here absolutely does
add uh to the effortlessness of a tennis serve okay so now comes the important part of this video
which is the tutorial on how to actually change the grip from a forehand grip on the serve to a
continental grip and before i go on any further i'm okay with you being on the australian grip
so this is going to be a very small my new detail but if you go to the australian grip you're going
to be okay if you go to the continental grip it's going to be the optimal way because from here you
don't have to worry about any grip changes i do have some students that serve with an australian
grip and you do need to change your grip if you want to hit a kick server or slicer it's going to
be very difficult to do even with australian grip so the optimal way to do it is to do all sorts of
continental grip but i am okay with you serving with an australian grip so before i tell you how
you're going to change your grip from a forehand grip to a continental grip i first have to explain
to you what is going to happen to your serve when you do change your grip to a continental grip so
if you have a eastern grip on your serve your wrist will have a certain muscle memory at the
moment of contact usually the wrist is going to be a little bit more straight
there's not going to be a lot of extension in your wrist if you take a look at my racket head
my racket head is neutral this is what's supposed to happen and my wrist is kind of neutral as well
so even though you're not aware that you're getting this position at the moment of contact
your body has developed muscle memory so now as you change your grip to a continental grip you
see how the angle of the racquet phase changes but my wrist stays in the same position and now
if i turn towards the court you will see that the strings are pointed towards the side and i'm gonna
get all my serves to have an extreme leftward trajectory on right-handed servers it's gonna look
something like this once you change your grip from a forehand grip to continental grip everything's
gonna go that way so here's what i want you to do to successfully change the grip from a forehand
grip to a continental grip is i want you to serve from the service line and also don't want you to
do a whole serve but half a serve i want you to freeze that racket right at the moment of
context so the thing that we need to avoid is this extreme leftward trajectory of the ball because we
have muscle memory built up so we have to learn to actually extend the wrist a little bit more
it's going to feel like a high five so if you come up to the ball like this and then you turn
the hand over and high five the ball it's exactly the movement that you need to do in order to break
this leftward trajectory and the best way to do it is to actually freeze the contact because here
you'll be able to feel the contact in the easiest way so you simply toss the ball up and freeze the
racquet right at contact and you'll see it's going to be a lot easier to turn the wrist over to get
a further extension of the wrist and make the angle of the racket face more neutral
now the next progression that you can do is actually to back up a little bit further
and in order to get the ball over the net you will see that it's going to be more difficult
to freeze the racket but i want you to try to freeze it anyway but generally what will happen
is there will be some continuation of the swing and just because you're trying to get the ball
over the net and you're further away you will swing a little bit faster it's going to be more
difficult to freeze the racket right there but in this progression you're still concentrating
on the contact and you're still trying to get rid of that bad angle of your wrist you're trying to
get more wrist extension so first progression is you do the freezing of the racket and contact
from the service line then you do it from the baseline and then you slowly start introducing
your full service motion and you simply check how much leftward trajectory you're getting
if you're still going here now it's time to get back to progression number one if you're
slowly starting to get that serve into the box now you know you've built your built some
muscle memory into your serve and you're on the right path to get rid of that forehand grip now
here's another thing that happens to a lot of players they will go through these progressions
and then it appears as if they're serving nice and straight they're getting ready to grip
but if you examine their serves in a little bit more close detail you will see
that somewhere along the way in the service motion there is a grip change so usually it happens
close to the trophy phase or in the racket drop is that these players will open their fingers
to turn the racquet over mid service motion and they're not really aware that they're doing this
but the best way to check this is to immediately look on your hand after
the serve so if you start in the continental grip and then after the serve you check and you see oh
my hand slipped to a forehand grip you know that somewhere inside your service motion you
actually change the grip but don't worry there's a paper trick and in one of my lessons with anna
i demonstrated how the paper trick works so in order for you to maintain the same position
of your hand throughout the service motion all you need to do is put a piece of paper underneath your
finger and if you finish your serve and this piece of paper is still on your grip that means that
your fingers were holding the rack in the same position throughout the whole serve if indeed you
let go the racket do change the grip the little piece of paper is going to fly away and you know
you're making a grip change mid-serve but guys i've been doing this for a while and i know what
the reality is a lot of you guys are not going to put in the time and effort that it's going to take
to break this muscle memory and a lot of players are stuck serving with a forehand grip forever
they just simply can't get rid of this type of serve they're too comfortable serve with the
forehand grip and it's too much work to build the correct muscle memory and to change it and i don't
care how much muscle memory is built up when it comes to the fundamentals on the serve it doesn't
matter what else you're trying to do on your serve you will have extreme limitations when it comes to
your service especially when it comes to your second serve see a lot of these players while
they might be able to pop a first serve pretty hard here's what these players are stuck with
on a second surface basically a tap-in this is the only option you have because with a forehand grip
you absolutely have no chance to put slice or spin on your second serve so for that reason it is of
the utmost importance that no matter how much muscle memory is built up you absolutely must
change your grip to at least an australian grip or ideally a continental grip on your serve