are heavy tennis racquets good for the arm can you prevent tennis elbow by playing with the
heavy racket i'm going to give you the quick answer right off the bat no generally speaking
heavy tennis racquets are not good for the arm in fact playing with a racquet that's too heavy
might give you tennis elbow but there are gonna be some players and there's gonna be some players
in my audience who are gonna be okay with playing with heavy rackets and interestingly these players
might actually get more trouble with their elbow if they play with a light racket for those type of
players it is absolutely okay to play with a heavy racket sounds confusing right well it's
really complex trying to figure out what racket is good for a certain player and not only is it about
what racket specifications suit a player's game style and body it's also taking the muscle memory
of that player into consideration players will get used to a certain racket and also the arm gets
used to that certain racket now one mistake that recreational players make is they give
recommendations based on their own experiences some players might be comfortable with a certain
racket and then they give advice to other players thinking that if it's good for them it must be
good for other players as well and you just can't go by that because every player is going to have
a different muscle memory every player is going to have a different game style and also every player
is going to have a different body so let me tell you a quick little story something that happens
all the time with my students i have a lot of students who are roger federer fans of course
roger federer maybe the most beloved tennis player of all time and naturally players want to play
with roger's racket and not just any of rogers rackets the actual roger federer autograph the
rf-97 which is 340 grams now look guys i get it this is a beautiful racket it's got a cool
paint job it looks so sleek and roger federer plays with it so it's got the cool factor going
for it and understandably so a lot of recreational players who are roger fans but not only roger fans
will pick up this racket as their racket of choice now here's a little story i'm going to tell you i
had this guy who came to me for a lesson very recently and he's a strong guy a tall guy he
was about six four and he was an athlete his whole life and he chose this racquet because of
roger federer and from day one he played with this racquet and he asked me hey nick what do you think
is this a good raquet for me should i try something else and i asked him the following
questions do you have any pain in your arm and he said no i don't have any problems with the arm
then i asked him how do you like playing with this racket do you feel like it suits your game style
does it feel comfortable when you hit the ball do you feel like you have control and also do
you feel like you have power and he answered all those questions with yes so i told them there's
really no need for you to try other racquets if you like this one you don't have any pain you seem to
be playing well with it why switch something that is working now here's the other side of the story
of many other students who play with this racket and most of them are not built like the guy that i
was talking about previously they're just average recreational tennis players and they chose this
racket for similar reasons because they like roger federer they like the way this racket looks
but unfortunately a lot of these players that i teach don't necessarily play well with this racket
and to make things worse they even have problems with their elbow so i tell these players look this
racket is simply too heavy for you it's 340 grams by the way this is unstrung whatever is stamped
on the racquet that's an unstrung weight that's what i go by i know a lot of you guys in one of
my previous racket recommendation videos you guys were asking me i think 50 times at least whether
i'm talking about unstrung versus strung weight no when i'm referring to a racket's weight i'm always
referring to it unstrung whatever is stamped on the racket i understand the tennis warehouse
puts the strung weight of a racket on their website to me it doesn't make any sense because if
a racket is strung it's going to weigh more than it is unstrung but we, unfortunately, don't know
what strings are on the racket so are natural gut strings the same weight if they're 16 gauge as
some very thin polyester of 18 gauge of course not there's going to be differences in the
weight of the strings itself so that's not really an accurate way to describe a racket's weight the
old-school way what i've been going by my whole life is whatever is stamped on the racket in this
case this racket is 340 grams so for the average recreational player and the level is important
when we're talking about recreational players so in my experience the better the level of player is
the more likely they're going to be able to play with a racket like this so let's say 4.5 level
and above more likely to be able to pull off a racket like this than players who are below
the 4.5 level but the players and i'm talking about in today's video are more in the range of
3.0 to 4.0 and yes like i said in the beginning the player i was talking about in the beginning of
the video the really fit tall guy he was maybe at the 4.0 rating and he was absolutely fine to use
this racquet however the vast majority of players that i see in my lessons that choose this racket
it is a racket that's simply too heavy for them so my recommendation is to look for something
lighter around the 300 gram range and by the way there are a few lighter versions of the federer
pro staff racket and this is going to be true for any racket there's going to be different versions
of it and if you're the average recreational player with average athleticism playing with
a heavy racket might not prevent tennis elbow this is just simple fact i know there's a lot
of theories out there but what i go by is my experience i've been doing this for a long
time i've seen many many recreational players with tennis elbow and what you have to go by a
simple logic would you give this 340 gram racket to a junior player or would you give this 340 gram
racket to a female player no you would not why because it would be too heavy and could possibly
hurt their arm and the same is true for the vast majority of male recreational players let's face
it take a look at your local club and you see a lot of unbelievably fit guys like roger federer
walking around no and of course you don't because we're not talking about professional tennis we're
talking about recreational tennis so for the average recreational player
that doesn't have muscle memory built up this is an important distinction because if you play
with the heavy racquet from day one your body and your arm is going to get used to it and
you're going to be just fine but let's just say one of these average recreational players hears
advice where if you play with a super heavy racket this will prevent tennis elbow and the player goes
and grabs this racket and two weeks later they got a sore elbow it's exactly because of the racket it
doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why all of a sudden the player who is playing with a
much heavier racket is getting arm pain is because what happens when you play with a heavier racket
you're going to get less power this is just simple fact now what the player is going to have to do
is swing more the racket will not go through the air as easily as it did before and they're going
to have to put a little bit more effort put a little bit more pressure on the arm and then it's
very common that the arm starts to hurt so guys this whole thing with rackets and tennis elbow
it gets really complex now let's not even talk about strings in my experience
strings are even a greater contributor to tennis elbow than rackets are and only that
but also the way rackets are strung it is a big problem these days with the new modern strings
the strings don't break players leave them on the rackets way too long also the rackets get strung
too tight the pull speed on the stringers is too high and the strings get overstretched and
it's a really complex issue so it's not all about rackets even if you have tennis elbow
and going to a lighter racket it might not be the only answer i made a separate video on tennis
elbow you can check out where i discuss some of the other reasons why you might be feeling pain
in your arm and to all you wilson pro staff fans i have great news i have an awesome video coming
up very soon on the top five greatest rackets of all time i'm going to give you a spoiler i'm not
going to tell you what number in the rankings this racket received but it was definitely in
the top five greatest rackets of all time now this doesn't mean that you have to go on a computer and
order one of these rackets right away remember what i've said in this video i'm going to say
it again but really listen to me if the racquet that you're playing with is not giving you any
pain in your arm if you like the way this racket feels when you play if you're having good control
good power and good feel and also if you like the optics of a racket i'm personally i need a racket
to look good i'm not going to play with an ugly racquet so as far as looks this is one of the
best looking rackets of all time i can tell you that so if all those boxes are checked there's
absolutely no reason why you should even think about switching rackets just keep playing with the
racquet that you have the only issue that you're going to run into if it's an older model and it's
discontinued now you got to go on ebay but the great thing about ebay is that you can find old
rackets i'm currently hunting down babalot pure drive plus the 2017 model i'm stacking up on them
because i'm a type of player if something works for me i'm going to be playing with it forever