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Tennis Tip of The Day

Oct 28, '05 11:29 PM
by albert for everyone

federertei

Come across a good tennis tip to share. Post here and get others opin.. Click on "Reply to this" to post

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7 CommentsChronological Reverse Threaded

federertei wrote on Oct 28, '05, edited on Sep 13, '06

Swing EASY to hit HARD
====================

By Jon Levey,

You don’t have to be big or possess brute strength to hit the ball with a great deal of pace. In fact, I bet you’ve come across a few opponents who aren’t giants but whose strokes pack plenty of power. That’s because they know how to get their racquets moving at the proper time. The surest way to hit with good pace and spin on your ground strokes is to have the racquet head at full speed right at contact. Many players’ racquets reach peak velocity during their follow-through, which wastes energy and doesn't increase the force of their shots. If you’re looking to up your racquet head speed, try this:

Use a looped backswing: A quick, straight take-back is fine when you need a fast racquet--such as on a return of serve--but it limits your power on most ground strokes. As you tune in to the U.S. Open Series on TV, watch how the pros prepare for their shots. You'll see many of them take the racquet back above their heads. This creates a lot of distance to cover before contact, which affords them time and space to build plenty of racquet speed.

Keep in mind that the pros have pinpoint timing so they can get away with an extensive backswing. You may need to be a bit more conservative. Try not to let your racquet get much above your shoulders on the take-back. To visualize a proper stroke, imagine the shape of your swing path to be that of a sideways candy cane or question mark.

Relax your arm and grip: Whether you’re hitting a ball with a racquet, club, or bat, the adage is: “Swing easy to hit hard.” It means that when players try to swing with a lot of force, their bodies tense up. In tennis, this actually slows down the racquet. Having a loose grip and arm helps you generate more speed. Try to hold your racquet with just enough pressure so it doesn’t fly out of your hands when you swing. Don’t think about strength and power, but rather quickness and acceleration.

federertei wrote on Jul 26, '06

Visualisation Technique Vs Over Analysis
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“I have played tennis for some years. However, recently I took some coaching for the first time in my life. It looked good to start with, but thereafter my tennis gradually became worse to the point that I stopped taking lessons. I have become very tense/stiff when I play, and all the smoothness and ‘natural’ play has disappeared. I suspect that I am now over aware of my body movements (I am quite an analytical type of person anyway) which in turn makes me tense my muscles (this is especially noticeable in my shoulder and stomach area)”

Observations and Recommendation

I’m going to assume that you recognized something of your own tennis experience in what I wrote in my article and I’ll respond on that basis. You can let me know me if I’ve assumed incorrectly.

If I interpret what you wrote correctly, before you took tennis lessons and perhaps for a brief period thereafter your experience when you played tennis was one that was for you smooth and “natural”. This is not too surprising because my guess would be that at that point your were still playing intuitively and were not yet preoccupied with all the right/wrong details which would subsequently be presented to you by your tennis coach as a way for improving your technique. Not preoccupied with such details your analytical mind had not yet come strongly into play and your attention when you played was evenly dispersed.

As your lessons progressed and you were presented with more and more things to work on it would be my guess that, as long as you were in the “lesson” and the primary focus for your attention was the teacher and what he was saying and/or demonstrating, you seemed to be making progress and your technique was improving. And it would be my guess that even for a brief period after lessons the experience of improvement may well have lasted; but that there always came a moment when the experience went stale and it became a struggle to maintain what you thought you had learned. Such moments come as often than not when we try to take a newly learned idea into a stressful competitive environment and discover very quickly that it doesn’t work as well as we thought it would.

What you are doing is indeed over-analyzing or what is commonly called in sports “thinking too much” (a golfer would recognize the phenomenon as being overwhelmed by “swing thoughts”). Specifically, what you are doing is what I described in my article: in response to detailed instructions from your coach you (like many) become preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and body parts, believing that this is what is necessary in order to “learn” how to execute a given instruction. The goal we have in mind when we do this is to find a “feeling” that can believe will reliably tell us when we are executing properly. By doing this, by narrowing our attention to and fixing it on “internal” sensory stimuli what we do is create the “mental” tension of what we call concentration, which simultaneously translates into the kind of “physical” tension that you have come to recognize in your tennis play. In so doing our visual attention to the ball is diminished and mishits become more common.

Because this is the habitual process you have been using to try to learn better tennis technique, if I gave you a “tip” like, for instance, “Stop thinking so much about what you’re feeling”, the chances are good that you would start to analyze that and pretty soon you would just have more tension.

If you were here or I was there we could go up to the tennis court and I could show you very quickly how to break this habit and how to improve and enjoy and your tennis without it.

But such is not the case so what I will suggest is an experiment that you can do that can show you that all of the introspective analysis in unnecessary. Try the following and let me know what happens.

1) This experiment is most effective if you can “see” the results so find a space where there is a mirrored wall. Two possibilities are dance studios or gyms/health clubs.

2) Stand with your back to the mirrors with your tennis racket in your hand and move from side-to-side executing forehands and backhands as you are accustomed to doing them. Do this for a few minutes and then…

3) Make some adjustments as you are doing this. For instance, loosen or tighten your grip, increase your hip rotation as you follow through, or sink more deeply into your knee bend. As you make these changes notice how you are “thinking” and what you are “thinking” about.

4) Now turn around and face the mirrors (from about ten or more feet away if possible). Just watching your reflection in the mirror and making no value judgments, move from side-to-side executing forehands and backhands as before, but this time just be content to WATCH what you are doing instead of trying to focus on what your are “thinking” or feeling. If you notice your center of attention wavering from what you are seeing and/or a tendency to want to draw your attention back to your “thoughts” or “feelings” stay calm and just redirect your attention back to what you are seeing. Let the “feelings” take care of themselves.

5) Now make the same changes as before, but this time just WATCH the changes taking place instead of trying to analyze and “feel” them. What you may well discover is that you can execute changes/improvements without all of the introspective analysis, that you can do so in a way that is not in conflict with keeping your eye on the ball, and that the result is much smoother and “natural” than what you were getting with all of the analysis.

When I work with tennis students I make it a point to have them visually focused on something whenever we are doing technique drills or even if they are standing off to the side practicing on their own. If they are standing in front of a backboard or practice wall and just practicing moves without a ball I will draw a circle on the backboard/wall with a piece of chalk so they have a definite visual objective, or just putting a tennis ball on the ground in front of them can achieve the same purpose. This prevents the kind of counterproductive introspection that causes the kind of tension you’ve experienced and it produces effortless and reliable movement and technique.

Let me add one last “tip” before I close.

Contrary to a belief that is popular with children as well as with adult Club players one does not learn how to play tennis well by playing games, sets, and matches; the best players learn, practice, and improve their skills relentlessly outside of the competitive environment. And, not incidentally, the best tennis academies teach this way.

If you want to play well you first have to practice well.

Copyright 2005
Joe Boland

federertei wrote on Jul 27, '06

Why Stepping into Your Shot is IMPORTANT
=================================

Another rule of good form is that you should "step into" your shot. This is somehow supposed to "get your weight into the shot," but it doesn't. Your weight just goes into the ground, as always, not into your shot. Then why is it good advice to step into your shot?

Because stepping into the shot puts the point of contact farther out in front where you can see it better and where your racket has accelerated more.

At that point, the image of the ball isn't tracking across the retina of the eye as fast as when the contact point is farther back. That's simply because of your changing geometric perspective: the closer the ball gets, the farther its image travels for every inch of its flight. (Hence the ball seems a blur when it gets close.) So, you see the ball better when the contact point is out in front of you.

More important, stepping into your shot adds speed to your racket head. If you don't step into a shot, you must swing much faster to get your racket head moving as fast as when you do step into your shot. And fast swings are error-prone swings. Mainly because, in swinging hard, we move the head. Also, your arm is attached at the shoulder, so you swing in an arc, with angular momentum, not straight-forward momentum. Therefore, not all of your arm speed is FORWARD speed that goes into your shot. But, when you step into a shot, all of that added foot-speed goes in the direction of your shot. Very efficient.

federertei wrote on Aug 17, '06

How 'Body Sense' Makes Better Tennis Players
===================================
by Rhys Thomas

World-class athletes depend on balance for power, control, endurance, and injury prevention. But what is balance, why is it so important in the game of tennis, and why should it be an essential element of tennis instruction?

Bjorn Borg shows us here that footwork is the key to balance
Balance is more than just the ability to not fall over; it involves vision, body position, center of gravity, and coordination, giving players a "feel" for the game that both improves performance and makes tennis more fun.

More of this article at
http://www.ultimatebalance.com/art2_tennisone.html

federertei wrote on Nov 7, '06

Keep your head still on those mid-court balls
============================

by: Bill Mountford

I always hated it when coaches would tell me to watch the ball after I’d miss a shot. Of course I was trying to watch the ball! Perhaps a more important message is to keep your head still throughout the shot.

By keeping your head still, your eyes will instinctively follow the path of the ball. Experts agree that while you can watch the ball, you can’t actually see the ball during contact anyway. By keeping your head still, you will maintain better balance (our heads actually weigh a lot and when you move your head it has an immediate affect on your balance) through the course of your swing.

This is never more crucial than on mid-court balls. You are getting up to a short ball quickly, trying to attack the ball and hit an aggressive shot, all the while continuing to move forward. There is so much movement, that it is easy to jerk your head up before contact to peek where you mean to hit it. Usually this causes poor contact with the ball and you lose your accuracy.

The world’s #1 player Roger Federer offers the best example of how to play these mid-court balls most effectively. He always seems to arrive to the ball quickly with smooth racquet preparation, and then he keeps his head completely still through the completion of the swing. In fact, it looks as though he is still looking at where he hit the ball for a full moment after he’s hit the shot. This simple technique enables Federer to make perfect contact with the ball, and to execute this shot consistently and confidently.

federertei wrote on Dec 29, '06

Tennis - Anticipation - Early Warning Systems, what is it?
============================================
By Sergio Cruz

The radar early warning systems in computer games, calls your attention to an incoming missile or enemy attack...and you take evasive, defensive or aggressive action. Boy, would this be useful in tennis!

Some players seem to have that kind of radar; Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer and Martina Hings to name a few. In lay terms it is called "anticipation", in the players above it is almost an inborn factor that they naturally just use. For us regular humans it is something that one can learn and train.

How does it function? There are several other factors that influence "anticipation" but I am going to focus on just one; ball tracking.

Teachers often keep on telling pupils to "watch the ball", I say, "track the ball". Professional players track the ball from the moment it leaves their rackets to the moment the opponent strikes it and so on. Why tracking and not watching? Because when you track the ball your minds eye automatically produces a directional vector of the balls trajectory from the point of impact to the point of landing, therefore, giving your brain the exact coordinates where to go next.

There are different levels of tracking reactions, beginner, amateur and professional.

- Beginner; the ball is struck by your opponent, travels past the net, bounces off of the ground and at that moment you start reacting.

- Amateur, the ball is struck by your opponent, travels a few feet past the net and then you start reacting.

- Professional, the moment the ball is struck by your opponent, you react and move immediately in the direction the ball is going to bounce.

So when practicing, get used to activating your "early warning systems", track the ball from your racket and the moment your opponent strikes it, react immediately. Once you start using this new weapon in your game, you will notice that you will have plenty more time to get to the ball and you will eventually begin to beat opponents you thought were out of your reach!

Hope you will enjoy becoming a "faster" player. Have fun with "The Game".

About the Author
------------------------
Sergio Cruz is ex # 1 National Champion, Davis Cup Player from Portugal and former Coach of Jim
Courier ATP World Ranking # 1
Contact: cruz@tenniscruz.com or http://www.forum.tenniscruz.com http://www.tenniscruz.com

rahulresonance wrote on Dec 29, '07

Strong Wrist

The instructor told me that the cure to having the racquet wobble on my shots was to hit the ball in the sweet spot. well, that is a no brainer
A few racquet changes didn't do me any good and I figured that I'm always going to be off a bit on my contact point, so the only other
solution was to get a strong enough to fight the miss hits. A bit of reasearch brought me to the Gripstik wrist exerciser . No string and
weight stuff so easy to carry around in my bag. After about three weeks of following the guidelines(not much fun), I have noticed a definite
improvement in my gripping strength which translates to a more stable contact with the ball . I' m able to overcome the torque of missing
the sweet spot much better than before. Racquet speed also seems to be increasing a bit because of the oveball increase in my wrist and arm
strength .

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