7 Tips For Fixing A Tennis Forehand On Your Own (With A Ball Hopper)

Hey, Tomas from Field Tennis. You have a basket of balls no one to play with and you want to work on your forehand and is that even possible? Yes, you can actually work on the forehand fundamentals really well on your own just with the basket of balls. So today I'm going to show you some key checkpoints that you can pay attention to when you're working on your forehand and just drop hitting balls and also show you some ways that are not very good, that are wrong and that giving you bad habits. So let's get started. The first thing to keep in mind when you'll be hitting balls like that just over the net and we are going to be talking just about technique later on in the video is that you don't mindlessly hit balls which means you must have some general idea, some intention of what do you want to do with the ball. So you can't just hit the ball with no intention and expect that you're going to hit a good forehand. So one part of your mind has to kind of monitor the ball flight and you must have some general idea how you want to hit the ball. So that includes the height above the net so you must have some general idea at which height you want to hit above the net and you must have some general idea about the length and direction. So of course here you can just hit down the middle first and your typical ball should go something like this so that it has some trajectory, some height above the net and it's roughly going in some place. You can use a certain target on clay courts we use this sweeping mats and you can put it there just a little reminder because once you start thinking about technique when we're talking about the wrist, arm, the hips and so on you can get lost in the technique and you forget about the goal and when you forget about the goal then you just hit the ball and it might end up in the net and that is not your forehand's fault or technical fault it just means your forehand didn't know what to do with the ball. So first thing to keep in mind just have some general idea how do you want the ball to fly and where do you want the ball to land. So now that you have a general idea how you want to hit the ball let's start hitting some balls. So if I hit the forehand where do we start checking the forehand? We have to start checking the forehand the fundamentals on the ground with the foot. So the first thing and the most important thing is balance. So if you're hitting a forehand like this and always falling off that's already a bad sign. So your first goal when you're hitting a forehand before we go into any arm technique you can just do how you how you do is that you stay in neutral stance and that you can stay stable. You can first position already in the neutral stance we're going to go through two stages and then also open stance. So the easiest one is to position already like this into a neutral stance and just drop the ball and hit it and your first objective is that you stay flat on the foot. A very common problem here is that when players hit they start lifting their heel and then of course it's very difficult to balance your whole body just on the balls of your feet. So in the most fundamental way when we're hitting a forehand or a backhand just any ground stroke we stay on the ground the foot stays on the ground. So in this case when I hit the ball I stay on the ground. I want to feel very stable very upright when I finish and to stay on the ground. The second thing when it comes to the feet position is that do not position yourself too wide like this. While it might feel okay when you're preparing for the stroke so one option is don't you can position wide with your feet because that's how you should play tennis but you must not stay wide because you see my upper body can rotate but my hips cannot so I am stuck here and I will end up in a twisted position like this. So if you do start with the wide position you have to pull the leg like this. I teach a lot on clay courts and I teach players to make a line with the tip of their shoe. You can make a line on hard courts maybe a bit more difficult to see but you can hear it. If the hip is rotating well in sync with the upper body then it will pull the leg with you. So if you do position like this and you hit you need to pull this leg with you so that when you finish you are comfortable. So your general guide whether you did well or not is comfort. If you hit the forehand and you feel something like this then something is wrong. You can still correct now you don't have to throw this forehand away when you do it and you feel oh I'm not okay okay let me try another one. You don't have to throw it away. If you feel like this when you finish you can just straighten up find a good position and memorize this one and then you reset and start a new one. So another option is just to stand a bit more comfortably not too wide shoulder width and hit the ball and again this is the the right finish position. There are many ways to do strokes wrong so of course I can't see you this is one way communication but for example I have seen players hit forehands like this and keep the foot on the ground not rotate hips and all sorts of things. So if the the hip must be part of the stroke the hip rotation or pelvis rotation and if the pelvis twists like this then the heel is going to come up so that's your that's your checkpoint and your balance. You will feel likely here and there that you lose balance this way or you lose balance this way and so on so that's why it's very good to practice in easy conditions first because balance is one of the most important things in tennis and you have to master it in this condition just dropping the ball and hitting and you must be perfectly comfortable when you finish the stroke. A bit more advanced way of hitting a neutral stance forehand is to begin in a ready position and you first do a turn and you put weight on the right leg. So what I see often when players begin even in the easiest conditions they miss the basic fundamental and that is stabilizing well on the right leg first so again we're talking about stepping in and hitting a forehand so what players usually do is from from ready position they either step backwards and immediately kind of disbalance themselves or they just feel it's forward from here so from here they just feel it's forward and again they're falling they're not in control of their body so they're falling and hitting so it might look like this from the side view if they stand like this then they drop the ball and they're already falling so in easy conditions where you have time to think and feel and so on the first move is have a nice on the right leg and you stabilize and calm down you stabilize and calm down and then you drop the ball and you hit it so you can take your time there's no rush you stabilize you must feel very calm and stable and upright on the right leg you go here you turn drop the ball step and hit here's important that you find the right rhythm so you might be doing step and hit but the rhythm can be wrong so for example you could do like this so i'm stepping and hitting roughly the same time you rush too much for example so there must be a certain rhythm between the step you grounding yourself now transferring way to this leg so you ground you ground and then you hit by the way that's sometimes very interesting way to teach players because all of you have heard of the term ground stroke ground strokes in tennis and this can eventually give players some meaning because i teach if they're lower level or intermediate beginners i teach them to feel ground ground ground stroke this is a stroke before that was a ground now what's the rhythm between two what's the timing something like that so through experimenting and trying and being aware that there is a really good rhythm between grounding and hitting the ball you must try to find it it's very hard to explain because we're talking about tenths of a second but try to observe especially also here when i'm demonstrating try to see what is my rhythm you can record yourself and compare a little bit so when the player gets it it's really good because in these conditions when they feel it i'm aware of the timing between putting my foot down stabilizing and hitting because later on when they play tennis they're going to search for this timing they're going to be moving around and if you are not aware that such timing exists then you're just running around and hitting balls all right now we've covered the feet we're moving up the next section of the body is hip or pelvis this big bone structure in the body and pelvis has to work right there is no negotiation about that we can negotiate about the shape of the backswing we can negotiate about grips we can negotiate about follow-throughs but we cannot negotiate about pelvis rotation if you're doing it right you're doing it right if it's not there it's wrong and it's going to hurt your stroke so again very simple way when you're practicing on your own is that you're aware that pelvis rotation is happening that you're doing something and the way we can tell if pelvis rotates well if you did it right is through the back foot the heel so if for example so let's say common mistakes are like this it's a common mistake so players do pull the leg but it's like this it's not on the tip so you can see the difference between this and this another common mistake is that the player pulls the leg a bit further but they are still on the sole they're touching the ground with the sole of the shoe so the hip is in wrong position it didn't stabilize it didn't firm up so it might look okay at first glance like the player is transferring weight they're pulling the leg they're making the line but this is a wrong position of the hip the pelvis it has to go a bit further so when it kind of locks itself like this then the foot ends up on the tip like you're really on just on the toe on the toenail maybe you're just on the toe on the tip if later on you're doing the advanced version where you start in the open stance so you start here your first transfer weight you must really be conscious for a while about the hip because again i have seen many times players do something like this end up twisted not pulling the leg with them not really driving the the hip so your guide can be the sound you can hear the dragging of the foot you must feel firm stable here you can check your heel you can check if you're stable do you do you stand comfortably or do you feel in any way twisted all right now we're coming up let's take a look at the arm so the arm should be comfortable comfortable arm looks something like this it doesn't it doesn't look like this it doesn't look like this it doesn't look like this the player prepares that's not a comfortable arm comfortable arm you can loosen up a little bit you just put it like this it's a very comfortable arm here and this is the position in which you should wait so i'm going to start with the easy version first so we already get in a position and i just put my arm here very comfortable so important thing here is that when you begin the stroke there is no more backswing so from here i'm gonna drop the racket so it will appear like a backswing but my arm is not going back anymore so from here when you're ready you should only feel down and forward you should not feel that when you drop the ball you do an additional backswing this very common players then they do additional backswing and lose their rhythm and the backswing is too big and so on so from here try to feel you're just gonna go down the slide like a roller coaster arm is very comfortable monitor your arm okay loosen up it's just comfortable here is bent and i hit again common mistake that i see is that players are somewhere here with the racket they drop the ball and now they're doing the whole stroke so that's not the right way once you're dropping the ball you should only feel you should just begin forward there should be no more backwards after you drop the ball there should be no more backward with any weight or any backswings or any leaning you are here in a position once you drop the ball it's only forward i will soon show you where to place the arm where to drop the ball where you can pay attention to your follow-through but since we're going now from bottom up and from bigger body parts to smaller body parts let's talk about the wrist so the wrist should be comfortable so again sometimes i ask players to feed the ball into play and they already begin they begin like this and i see tension in the wrist for no reason right so there is a position of the wrist in this case you can find it where the wrist is completely comfortable and the wrist will be comfortable when the racket is vertical so you can do like this a little bit okay i just balance the racket or sometimes i do a little trick i put the pinky finger under like this and i ask the player to balance the racket that they feel they don't need any wrist strength or any wrist muscles to hold the racket in place so it's just kind of balancing on my pinky and i'm just holding gently with my fingers so all you do is just take the racket a bit out you put the pinky under and you can even feed the ball like this it's very relaxing relaxed so you hit like this and you want to feel oh i'm balancing the racket on my pinky finger so when you do that you will feel very comfortable it's very easy and then later on you just get back to normal grip and you try to feel okay when the racket is vertical there is no force pulling it anywhere therefore i don't have to fight it i'm just gently balancing the racket in a vertical position and then i can just let it tip over this way let it tip over and begin my stroke so now i want to give you just a few simple guidelines that you can better orient yourself in space because you might wonder where should be my backswing where should i drop the ball and where should be my follow through so here's a very simple guideline and that's the 3 45s that means 45 degrees so this line is a 45 degree from this angle this is a 45 degree and this is a 45 degree this way so these are very simple guidelines you start your backswing on the 45 you don't start your backswing behind you that's too big because once you drop the ball and the racket drops behind it's going to be here which is many times too much and you're going to have trouble timing the ball so you can start here this is the position you can just put three balls like this and like if there was a drone view or a camera above there my handle is right above the third ball so this is where i start i drop the ball and you will see that it works out just fine because once i drop the ball i relax my hand and i begin rotation you will see that the racket drops behind a little bit and i get good wrist lag and acceleration so here's a simple guideline you start at the 45 degree angle the second guideline is where do i drop the ball so many times players drop the ball too close to them so they are standing like this and they hold the hands to the side now you're going to hit here so you need to stretch your arm fully so you fully stretch your arm and you never throw the ball in the air you just open fingers and the ball drops so all you have to do is you stretch your arm fully in the 45 degree angle so i'm positioned here i stretch my arm fully at the 45 degree angle i'm here 45 and i hit the ball and the third guideline is about your follow through because i see a lot of players really wrapping their arms around the neck and not really going well through the ball because they have been so automated that that when they hit the ball they have to go here above the shoulder or something like that but that doesn't really make sense because you're hitting the ball forward why go so strongly backward with the racket so what i like to teach and what you can do when you're just working on the fundamentals of the forehand is to imagine the follow through on this 45 degree line so rather than choking yourself here with the follow through when you drop the ball so this is checkpoint this is checkpoint i finish the shot and my arm is finishing here at the 45 degree angle this would be just part of the forehand that hits the ball of course the momentum of the forehand can then take us further the arm can go down or something like that but just the stroke the movement the movement that hits the ball goes to about here and you see my arm ends up here so i also like to teach first players to catch the racket because they get much better shoulder rotation and stability compared to just going like this so here's the right position for through so you can do a forehand somewhere here at the 45 degree line later on if you have a bit more momentum you can go further so again these angles are not exactly 45 degrees but they are just helping you orient yourself in space so that you don't begin your backswing here or you don't begin the backswing here you don't drop the ball there or there you don't follow through but you have very simple guidance system for the basic movements of the arm on the forehand so we've covered the forehand in the neutral stance which means the first one was to position already in the neutral stance hit the ball the second option was to be in a ready position put your weight first on the right leg stabilize calm down and then transfer weight but i also recommend that you practice open stance from this very basic position so when you're hitting open stance make sure that you bend this leg and twist your hip so don't do something like this hitting a forehand on the straight leg because your pelvis will likely never engage it needs to be pushed by the leg so you're going to end up something like this so if you're doing a open stance you need to be quite wide you lower bend this leg and make sure that your pelvis tilts backward a little bit so that you don't go like this you see now my pelvis didn't twist didn't rotate my hips so like this is not good i need to go here so now i'm let's say again at roughly 45 degree angle and from here i can engage the leg and hip rotation so try to find this position first just make sure your your leg is loaded you must feel springy on the leg common mistake on the open stance is players leaning too much over the leg it starts to shake it doesn't it's not able to take your weight so you're like this and then because the leg cannot take your weight you just stay like this your leg is not to push you up so you must find the position where you feel strong you feel okay i can go from this position i'm not too much over the leg i'm stable i have hip rotation and when you hit you have two options one option is to just stay upright on the leg you stay like this and the other option is to transfer weight i recommend that you practice both because both happen in real tennis situations we stay a bit longer on the right leg when we move to the right for example i move like this if i hit the forehand then there will be no immediate weight transfer when i'm hitting the ball so there will be no weight transfer to my left but i will be hitting more from my right up jump and back so this movement or this way of open stance happens when we move to the right so the right leg is very stable and we feel more upright and the other way of open stance happens when we move to the left so let's say the ball is coming into my body then i will shift away now i'm open stance but when i'm hitting it i'm transferring weight to the left so we are playing open stance in both cases but some differences between them so if i show you with movement if i go here this table so i have to execute the stroke here on the right leg and then the weight transfer would happen so i would go like this but if i were to move a bit to the left then my weight transfer is happening as i'm hitting so both options happen in real tennis we're both times playing open stance but there's some differences between them you can try and feel these differences when you're just standing here you have a basket of balls and you try to feel okay let me see i'm open stance i'm gonna hit the ball but i'm just gonna extend my leg and stay here very comfortable no twisting and the other option is to pull yourself a bit to the left while you're hitting so as you can see we're talking about small details but they happen in a match they happen all the time and you have time here you're not in a rush you're not playing points you can be aware of yourself you can record yourself and try to see if you're doing it right what does it mean to hit open stance standing very firmly strongly on the right leg and what does it mean to hit open stance with the weight transfer so i've used all the balls in the basket that means the lesson is over i hope you enjoyed it if you have any questions just write to me in the comments below and i'll try and answer as soon as i can thanks for watching and i'll see you next time