Tennis Forehand Technique - 5 Steps To Crazy Power On Your Forehand

Hey everyone Simon here from Top Tennis Training and in this video I want to help you to generate effortless power on your forehand using five simple steps. Now the first step is generating good racket head speed. Now we can do everything right in the preparation, we can do everything right using our body, the big muscle groups, but if our racket is traveling through the contact zone slowly we simply won't have the power that we want. So it's all about creating this fast racket head speed through the contact point. So it all comes back to this racket head speed and actually all five steps will lead us to generating more racket head speed. Everything that allows us to swing the racket faster during that contact zone gives us more power. That's why you sometimes see players with poor technique but very fast racket and they still generate power because they have a quick hand, a quick racket through that contact zone. So everything starts and finishes with generating more racket head speed. The quicker our racket travels through the contact zone the more power we will have on that forehand. Now a simple way to test your racket head speed is to simply shadow your forehand. You could do this in your garden, you could do this out on the court next time you're playing and just listen if you hear anything happening during your contact zone. So if I do a couple you can hear very little because I'm traveling through that contact zone slowly but if I then speed up now I'm generating that quick racket head speed and this is what we want. Now later on in the video I'll show you a great drill that you can do to practice that racket speed and help you get more power on your forehand. Now the second step is all about coiling the upper body at the start of the swing so that you're able to store energy in the major muscles in your trunk. Now if we take a look at some of the best players in the world let's see how they prepare when they recognize that the ball is coming to their forehand side. So as you can see there as soon as the players are recognizing that the ball is coming to their forehand side that initial step, that first thing they're doing is turning this left shoulder if they're right-handed and the right shoulder if they're a left-handed player. So they're turning that shoulder as early as possible. This will do two things, it gives you time, it creates time. Now if I do nothing with my racket head but I simply turn the upper body at the start of the swing I go from this ready position where I'm facing the net to now a side on position without doing anything with my racket. So I've simply coiled up the upper body and this has already started that preparation and has already started the swing. If I coil the upper body at the start what I'm doing is separating this shoulder, my left shoulder from my hip. So I'm not doing it as one massive turn with my whole body where the hip is also turning at the same time, what I'm trying to do is feel that my left shoulder is separating from my left hip. So I'm going from here to here and as you can see now there's a big twist in my abdominal muscles, in the trunk muscles, especially the oblique muscles and what this is doing is I'm storing energy in those muscles, the major muscles of the trunk, the muscles responsible for rotation. So once I store that energy, once I get to here, now I can start turning the hip as well and once I turn that hip I've now rotated my body side on to the net and I've also coiled up with this left arm. So the left arm is coming across the body, I'm now facing the net sideways on. This will allow me to store the energy but also have that racket preparation. So when I'm moving to the ball I'm not moving to the ball like this and then preparing, I want to feel that I'm moving to the ball in a side on position. So I'm turning and then I'm moving. Now if I move to the ball front on, this is how it will look. I'll be moving like this and then I have to turn. It takes too much time and those side steps won't help me get to that ball quickly, especially if the ball is wide away from me. So that first step is that coil with the upper body. I'm coiling the upper body, now I can turn the hip and now I can run normal to that ball. This will create time and will help me to have energy from the trunk. And step three now is having a good swing with our forehand. We can do everything right with the body but if our swing is too small, it's too compact, we'll always struggle to generate that racket head speed. Now if my swing is only down here but I've coiled up my upper body, I'm using my legs well, everything is working with my body but my racket is just from this position and I'm trying to accelerate to the contact point, the distance for me to accelerate is only a couple of feet. Now this simply won't work if I want to generate that effortless racket head speed. Yes I can get power from here and yes I can still get some racket head speed but it's very forced because the distance from the power position to the point of contact is minimum. What we want to feel is that we have a circular loop, a bigger loop so that allows us space to accelerate our racket. So if my racket is down here, going from here to here is very hard but if my racket is up here, now I've increased the distance from my power position to the point of contact greatly, so I've increased it by a couple of feet. So instead of swinging from here and forcing it, I can now swing from here, be much more relaxed, much more loose with the arm, much more relaxed with the wrist and I can generate that power by using that longer swing path. So having a circular loop will help you to generate more power on your forehand. Another important thing to note in the preparation of your forehand is if my racket head and if my grip are on the same level, from here now if I want to have a bigger circle or if I want to have more space to accelerate, I have to lift the racket really high with my arm because they're level. If I'm in that position, it doesn't look correct, it doesn't look right, it doesn't help me generate that effortless power but if I drop the arm now and lift the racket head so that the racket head is higher than the grip, now I have that space to accelerate but also I'm creating leverage in the racket and the wrist. So this leverage is basically force over that ball. The ball that's coming into us will have some amount of force on it and in order for us to overcome that force, we need something like a leverage. Now imagine when you're hammering a nail into your wall, you've got the hammer and you're holding it like this and you're going into the wall like this. Now that same idea, we want to have that same concept when we're hitting our forehand. If I have my racket traveling like this, it's almost like I'm traveling with a towards that ball but if I'm traveling like this, it's very limited. So it comes back to that leverage, it comes back to that force over the ball and by lifting the racket higher than the grip level, when we're getting to that power position, we get to a position similar to this. From here now, I've created that leverage but also I've cocked back my wrist slightly so instead of being in a neutral position with my wrist, my wrist has gone back slightly and this will allow me to achieve step four much easier as you'll see when we get to that step. So a circular loop will help us generate power because we have the space and the distance to actually accelerate that racket properly. It comes back to that racket head speed. So this circular loop where you see the players going up, down and then swinging forward is the easiest way for you to achieve power and to achieve that effortless power from just a swing. Step four now to creating effortless power on your forehand is generating racket lag prior to contact. So after we have reached that power position, we've coiled up the upper body, we're having that circular loop, as we start the drop now from that power position what we want to achieve is this racket coming behind the grip. So the butt cap of the racket is pointing towards the oncoming ball and that's leading the way. It comes back to that leverage almost like that hammer coming into the nail. We want to feel like we're going to hit the ball with the bottom of the racket. Now if I come forward with my racket and my grip level you can see that there's no leverage, there's no racket lag prior to contact whereas if I get from that power position I now allow the wrist to cock back fully or almost fully and I allow the racket head to lag behind the grip. This is also creating more leverage force over the ball so if I can achieve a position similar to this prior to contact this will help me with the racket head speed but also having that force over the ball so it will give me more power on my forehand. Now some coaches will say that you should achieve racket lag naturally, you shouldn't have to think about it and for some players this will be true but for the vast majority of players they'll have to work on it at some stage in their forehand. For myself a great drill that I used to do was to actually hit the ball with my butt cap so instead of just thinking about hitting the ball with my strings I'd warm up five or ten shots in the service box where my coach or my hitting partner feeds the ball to me and I do my whole swing and instead of hitting the ball with the strings I now hit the ball with my butt cap and this allows me to feel that lag and this allows me to feel that that's leading the way forward to the oncoming ball so if you want to achieve that racket lag this could be a great drill for you instead of hitting the ball with the strings hit the ball with the bottom of the racket the butt cap of the racket and really feel that relaxation when you're coming to the ball don't force it you don't want to feel like you're forcing this lag and your wrist is very stiff and the whole arm is tight you want to achieve it in a relaxed way in a loose way now when you're first learning it you might have to have some tension to actually allow your racket to get back into that position after you start working on it hopefully it becomes more and more relaxed and eventually you want to feel that this is happening in a very loose relaxed way because that's the way we want to hit our forehand for effortless power if we're stiff if we're tense the muscles don't work as well if we're relaxed and loose the muscles can now fire properly in that effortless way and this is what we want to have especially if we're playing matches we don't want to be tight for three hours we want to be loose for three hours and step number five is using the ground force which means using the leg muscles the major muscles in the leg to push off the ground and explode into the ball now we can do everything right with the upper body but if we're not using the major muscles in the legs we'll never generate the most amount of power that we can possibly have on our forehand it's like serving without the legs imagine hitting your serve and trying to really go for the serve but taking the legs out of the equation taking the legs out of play you want to feel that on the serve just like on the forehand you're going into a good knee bend to then explode up and this is the same on that forehand now depending on if you want more top spin on your shot or a flatter ball you'll have to change stances and also change the way you execute that shot if i want more power my swing will be a little bit more linear so i'll be going outwards towards my target much more than if i want more spin so if i want more power i'm going to hit the ball flatter in general so for a flatter shot the neutral stance will suit you much better so this is where you get into that side-on position with your upper body you're still coiling but now instead of opening from here with the open stance i step forward with this left leg if i'm right handed and from here i can now go back leg to front leg during that contact zone i'm still loading the legs and i'm still using the major muscles now when you are loading you want to feel like you're using the quads the hamstrings the glutes as well and also the calves everything is involved in that loading phase if my height is six foot when i'm loading up from my forehand i want to be down at five foot so i've gone one foot lower using my legs i don't want to bend with my back i don't want to be bending like this i want to be bending like this i'm storing up the muscles i'm using those major muscles off the legs to help me then explode up into the ball so going back to the stances if i want to hit more top spin i'll use the open stance more because i want to go from a low position upwards on the ball we'll get into that in video number two but if i want more power we want to use the neutral stance as often as possible because from this position now i'm storing the energy on that back leg and as i come forward towards the contact point i now have that weight shift from the back leg to the front leg so i'm in that position and now i start that weight shift onto the front leg now from here i can carry on longer with the ball by being in that neutral stance which allows me to hit that more linear swing path this will help me to have that racket speed in that forward way as opposed to that upward way the vertical way on the top spin shot so when you want more power try to feel like you're stepping into the ball using that neutral stance so you're coiling up i'm getting my racket back i'm using that circular loop and then as i step forward with this left leg i'm having that weight shift back leg front leg back leg front leg if i can master this you'll see a huge difference in the power on your forehand simply because you're using the major muscles from the legs now a great drill for you to improve your racket speed and improve the power on your forehand is simply to do shadow swings so this is where you have no ball you don't even need a court for this you can do this anywhere where you have enough space what we're going to do is shadow our forehands so instead of shadowing it and just doing it kind of half-hearted we're going to really imagine that there is a ball coming on to us and we'll focus just like we'll be focused when we're hitting the real ball so we're going to set up do our split step coil the upper body and then start that swing and as you can hear i'm trying to produce that swoosh sound during the contact zone so once again coiling up and swing and if you can practice 40 to 50 of these every day i guarantee that you'll have more power on your forehand in a week if you can do this every day shadow swings without the ball and you work on that racket head speed i'm really accelerating the racket all the way through that contact zone and once you go out and actually hit the real ball try to feel that same swing so you've taken the ball out of play when you're doing your shadows but when you start hitting the shot try to feel that same racket head speed through that contact zone now inside our forehand revolution course we'll cover each of these segments in much more depth and we'll show you more ways to increase your racket speed and generate more power on your forehand so if you haven't done so already subscribe to our channel and also turn on the notification bell so you get our latest videos as soon as we release them so a quick recap step number one is generating effortless racket speed anything that allows us more racket speed will give us more power step number two coiling the upper body at the start of the swing storing the energy in the trunk muscles step number three having a good circular swing so that you're able to generate that racket head speed and momentum from your swing alone step number four achieving good racket lag hopefully in a very relaxed and loose way and step five using the ground force so the major muscles in the in the legs to load up and then to drive into the ball now if you've enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up and also leave a comment down below signing off Simon from TTT all the best and see you soon