Learn how to hit your backhand like Novak Djokovic... DRILLS Included!

Novak Djokovic has one of the best backhands in the business. And what makes his backhand so great, it fits great with his game. Novak is known for just getting every ball back, especially with his forehand and backhand and movement. Where in most players use their forehand as the major weapon and their backhand is just getting it in and being solid, Djokovic can equally be aggressive and hurt his opponent with his down-the-line backhand. So in this video, we're going to take a lesson for Novak Djokovic's backhand and learn what we can do to start making our backhand not just something to be steady, but something that we can also attack our opponent when we have the opportunity. So let's get started. The very first thing I want you to notice about Novak Djokovic is how he's in his ready position and his grip that he uses. When he's in his ready position and he switches to his backhand grip, what you're going to notice is that he has a continental grip on the backhand and instead of having an eastern, meaning that this pad right here and here is behind, is slightly behind and under. Where I think it is, is if you're counting one flat, two flat, three flat, we're right around the bottom of that third flat, probably not completely under it, but a little bit lower than just a completely eastern. And what this does, you can tell because when he takes his racket back, it's slightly closed, whereas if you had more of an eastern where it was top or the knuckle is a little higher, you see the racket on edge. Now this is a start, just having the grip set up. Now the very first thing you'll see Djokovic do is a unit turn and he does a great unit turn. What I mean by this is, his first movement is taking the racket back with his shoulders. There's no arm movement, which is one of the biggest mistakes I see so many recreational players do. They take their arm back and their body hasn't moved, so disconnects your hands from your body. It makes you lose power. You're losing power because of that disconnection between your hands and your body. What you're going to see him do is take his toe out, but by taking his toe out and almost like I like to say, shaking hands with somebody, what you would do is turn just like this, but he turns his shoulders. So right now, he hasn't even started his swing and I think this is really important to separate the unit turn from your swing. So what I mean by this is, boom, just by turning my shoulders, I've started my unit turn, but I haven't started the backswing. And what this does is it shortens, it makes your backswing compact because if I just do the unit turn here, I have a very small amount of space I have to move for the rest of my swing, compared to if I just take my arms and I haven't really done my unit turn here, I've had to move the racket a long way with my hands compared to using my shoulders, then taking the racket back. And so you see him get in this position where the racket's back. Now, the second part that I think is so important is his rhythm. The rhythm is making sure that he does his unit turn and takes his racket back with the swing and the swing portion is just from here to here to get the racket ready to go forward. It's his timing. This is crucial. This is where I think a lot of recreational players go. The pros are so good. I can't have timing. I can't do this. They hit the ball and there's no point in working on it. It's not that. It's that you don't have the timing the pros do. And you might be thinking I mean by like, oh, they can time it off the hop. No, I mean the preparation timing. The preparation timing is so important. And what I mean by preparation timing is you'll see that the pros take their racket, they're doing the unit turn as the ball's coming over and they're in the swing position by the time the ball bounces. Okay, let me say this again. They take the racket, unit turn and swing and generally the ball's bouncing now. Most recreational players wait for the ball to bounce and then the ball's coming up and then they take the racket back. And this is what happened. Most of the time you don't have enough time, especially if the ball's hit fast. So while you're taking a racket back, you realize you don't have time to do the rest of your swing and then you have to shortcut it. And that's why your timing and your swing doesn't look as smooth. You haven't set it up early. You haven't prepared early enough with your unit turn and your swing by the time or a little bit before the ball bounces to make sure that you have plenty of time to hit the ball and swing forward. Not only that, you want to know why they can pick up balls off the hop so easy is because of this. It's not because they have like magical timing where they're like, they just know when to do it. It makes it so much easier to pick up those balls when your racket's already back and you just have to worry about swinging forward. So now let's get back to the swing. Once I'm in this position with the swing, I like to say the stir. Have you ever stirred a pot? Okay, and I mean, stirring a pot this way. This little stir also contributes to the rhythm. And so you'll see Djokovic turn, do his unit turn, take the racket back and it has this little stir. He's taking the racket and this little stir drops the racket into what I call the calf position. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the stir for a second. Most players, I think, especially recreational, they go here and they're trying to hit their spots. There's no problem. I get what you're trying to do. You're trying to hit this spot, but you lose the rhythm. You lose the fluidity of the stroke, the smoothness. That's what you're really after. Having that smooth, effortless power stroke, not the jerky, muscled, maybe power stroke. Okay, so what you want to do is go here, stir and drop the racket to the calf. And you can see that here where he goes here and drop. Here and drop. Compared to back, drop. Back, drop. This feels very rigid and it actually throws your timing off. So if we put it together, we're going to split, turn, stir and drop. And this drop now puts the racket in this position that it can come up on the ball. So the key marker here that you're going to see with Djokovic is as he gets the ball or the racket to drop towards the calf, this flowing of dropping, he's going to initiate his hips to turn. And the way he's going to do this by simply turning this knee. This knee, just by turning it, is going to take the racket. So right now, if I just drop my racket on my calf here, okay, and pull it up just a little bit, if I don't move my arms, I'm not doing this. And I want you to watch the difference. Let me just move my arms. Now, I'm just going to turn my knee forward, forward. I'm not moving my arms. The racket's moving. And this is such a crucial thing. When you combine the ability for you to have that rhythm and stir and take the racket as the momentum of the racket drops and then turn your foot, it accelerates the racket so much without having so much effort. Or you're just muscling with your arms. You can just let it drop. And you see this timing now. Now you see how the timing's coming into effect. Drop, boom. And what I want you to focus on is how this dropping, how you relax to get the racket after the stir to the calf, as it gets down, you start turning your hip and it sends the racket forward. And that's what's so important about him being able to create tons of power, tons of effortless power or acceleration on the ball because he's combining this drop and this knee turn. Now what you're gonna see is what I call the shift. And the shift is when Djokovic starts his and he takes the racket back, you'll see this arm extended straight and this arm bent. And then as he drops the racket, you see this arm straight and then this arm extended at contact. And you're gonna see him drive the racket all the way through and then him come here. So let's talk about the contact at first. You're gonna see Djokovic come up to the ball. And this depends. If he's trying to hit a heavy ball, let's say someone's at net, you'll see him come up on the ball more. If he's driving the ball deeper in the court, you'll see him still drop but not as drastic. And so this is a personal choice about the shot you're gonna hit. If you're not gonna drive the ball, there's no need to drop the racket steeply under the ball. The steeper you drop the racket under the ball, the steeper the angle that you're gonna probably come up on the ball, which creates more spin. So what we wanna do is drop to the level of which the shot we wanna hit and then turn the knee, making contact. Now, another thing about contact is the racket face angle at contact. We've just talked about the path which is coming up to produce topspin. The contact is gonna determine where and how high the ball's gonna go. If you're doing this and the ball's sailing long, it's because generally your contact is too open or if it's going in the net, generally your contact's too close. What you wanna learn to do is adjust, okay? I call it the three-phase adjustment. So what that means is, in practice, you probably wouldn't wanna use it as a match. If you're practicing this and you're doing everything right and you hit a ball that hits the fence, great. And you're saying, how's that great? The next ball I want it to hit the net. What you're gonna do is, to adjust, you're just gonna adjust your wrist position, not your grips. So by adjusting it closed, the ball's gonna go in the net. The third ball, I want you to go halfway in between, meaning that when you come up, you shouldn't hit it super high and you shouldn't hit it super low. You should be in between. And that's the racket head position. You should memorize, feel, so when you hit the ball, you can consistently reproduce that one. And that's what Djokovic has done through years and years in practice. This is the secret to when you see Djokovic on the full splits, being able to take the power that's on the ball and flick or shove or do some weird thing and hit these amazing shots. It's because he understands where the racket needs to be and where the racket face angle needs to be at contact. If you understand that, then guess what? Even when you're in trouble, if you can get your hands on the ball with your backhand, you can get it to go anywhere in the court just by knowing how to use the racket face. And finally, we gotta talk about the finish. Djokovic has a nice full finish. He comes out, he extends through the ball, and then what you're gonna see is the racket face looking behind him. So boom, boom. You see this a lot where his racket face is here, going through the contact and here. So what you wanna do is start focusing on this is I recommend you work on the stir to calf pull. And this is so important because this is what's gonna generate the power. And so what I want you to do right now as a drill is just start in this position with the racket back. We've done our unit turn to get the racket back. And from here, feel your hands relax. This is another thing. Players clutch the racket. I mean, they're squeezing the life out of the racket. And then they think, well, okay, I'm holding on tight, and then I'm gonna drop my racket. That feels so stressful, okay? And this feels so tight. The tighter your body is, the less loose you are. The less loose you are, guess what? You can't move as fast. Just think about if you were tense, if you tense up all your muscles and you try to run. If I tense up my arms, it slows everything down, okay? So what we need to do is make sure we're nice and relaxed. So if you find yourself being really tense, what I want you to do is take the top three fingers of both hands, grab the racket here, and do this drill where the bottom fingers are off. So there should be less tension. And focus on letting the racket drop, letting the racket drop. So what the drill is, you're gonna start here in the unit turn, do the stir. And I want you to just touch your calf. So we're gonna go here, calf. Here, calf. Here, calf, okay? From here, what we're gonna do is start missing our calf. And so when we take the racket back, let's just start here this time. We're gonna drop, miss the calf, and start turning the knee. So you notice how, boom, I'm turning the knee. I'm transferring that power. And what you're gonna really start noticing if you pay attention to what's happening down here, the faster I turn the knee, the faster the racket is. It's, I think, very counterintuitive for a lot of players who don't understand how to use their body. They think the faster I swing, the faster the ball's gonna go, compared to the faster I turn my hips. And so when you watch Djokovic, you'll see this nice pop of how he starts turning his hips when he really wants to accelerate on the ball, okay? And that's what's important, that you'll see him transfer his weight and turn his hip or his knee to get more power on the ball. And so this is the way you wanna start practicing. Just going stir, boom. So now let's just do us a couple drop feds and see exactly how you can work on this at home. Okay, this is what we wanna do for this drop fed drill. So you're a two-hander. I recommend holding your racket with your grip, your backhand grip, with your left hand and then having the ball in your right hand. And what you're gonna do is toss the ball. Now here's probably one of the biggest mistakes I see people when they try to drop fed themselves in their training at home, is that they do this. Oh shoot, I don't have enough time, okay? And you don't have a chance to do everything. When you do this drill, I want you to toss the ball in the air. It gives you more time and that way you're not rushed to set up. And so what I want you to do is actually do some fake tosses first. So I'm gonna toss, just like that. Toss, I'm swinging under the ball, okay? One more, up, toss. And then I want you to hit it. So again, we're here, toss and work on turning the knee and finishing, okay? So I'm turning the knee and finishing, just like Djokovic. The more you can do this over and over so you don't have to think about it when you're out playing, the better your backhand's gonna be and you're gonna be able to turn your backhand into a better weapon. Now that you have a backhand down, you definitely need a forehand. So go watch this video where I talk about Djokovic and the things he taught me about his forehand that you can start incorporating in your game too.