Amazing Tennis Forehand in 5 Steps

Improve your forehand in 5 steps. Let's start with the body posture. There are three different postures that you should get used to and perfect to improve your forehand. This is the neutral posture. Here you put your left foot forward and shift your body weight onto the stick. This is the optimal position to get the most power out of the stick. Since you shift your body weight onto the stick and can turn at the same time. The next posture is for the slightly deeper balls. I want you to try to get into the half-open posture. Here the left foot is in a 45 degree angle to the right foot. This still allows a certain body weight shift, but also increases the shoulder rotation. Since the ball is now a little deeper, you still want to generate power. And the last posture is the open posture. In this position you go into the open standing position. From here you either use your legwork to hit the ball or you go to the ball. But you turn all the time and hit the ball. So it is very important to get used to hitting the balls from different positions. When we have adopted the neutral posture, it is important that we move in the direction of the incoming ball, so that we can move forward afterwards. We move in an L-shape, where we first go sideways and then forward. This ensures that we do not have to stretch after the ball and can put our entire body weight into the stroke. In these half-open positions, when the ball is hit a little deeper, we may not even move that much. Or even if we do, we have done it and can now turn. In wide balls you are in the stretch. The open posture gives you the best chance to keep the body balance when you stretch after the wide ball. From here you want to hit the ball and be able to recover quickly. So play around with the positions. Can you take a neutral position when you change the ball in the middle? Do you use the half-open position to generate a little more power? Do you use the open position in these wide balls to keep the balance? Make sure to practice these in all your training sessions to be safe when hitting a forehand. Now that we have the perfect position, we have to concentrate on our uniform rotation. This shoulder rotation is crucial to generate power. It is important that you do this early. As soon as you see that the ball is coming at you, you should start this rotation. Keep your head calm, but the shoulders are turning around the body. Many players believe that uniform rotation or body rotation is just achieving this position. Yes, you are facing the ball, but there is no distance between your hip and your shoulder. Here, however, I create this distance first. I store the energy. I store the power because I have recognized that the ball is coming to my forehand. And if I take a step now, I have already stored this power and can put it into the stroke. This happens with every position, whether half-open or open. So as soon as I move to the forehand side, I am already moving during the preparation. And this shoulder rotation helps me. A good way to practice this is to make sure that the left hand, i.e. the hand with which you do not play, takes out the stick. The swing begins with the left hand, with which I lead the stick away from the body to create space and at the same time turn the shoulder. Guys, it looks like you haven't subscribed to the channel yet. You should do that now. Click on the subscribe button and the notification bell so you don't miss any future lessons. Let's start again. A good way to practice this is to put your chin on your left shoulder. If you did that right, you can look at the ball while you turn your shoulder. So you look over your shoulder. If you hit now, you replace the left shoulder with the right one. So if you have made a complete 180 degree turn, you can put your chin on your right shoulder. To do this, you have to be able to loosen your hip. So make sure that you are not just standing there with your legs stretched out. Make sure that you go to the tip of your toes with your hind foot, so that you can loosen your shoulder from your hip and close the stroke properly. By doing a complete turn, you optimize your body for maximum strength and control. If you now feel confident in just turning around, you can actually test how good you are at extending your left hand parallel to the baseline. A good way to practice this is to hold a ball in your hand in front of the stroke and throw the ball in this direction when you hit. So if the ball flies parallel to the baseline, you did a good job. That looks like this. In this preparation, I take the stick and the ball and throw the ball in this direction, which gives me the space now. That gives me the rotation and puts me perfectly in position for the rebound. Now, where we have the shoulder rotation, we come to point 3, the rebound. The stick must be over the hand when you take it back. So you can play with a relaxed arm when in contact. You shouldn't be too low here. You can also deal with many different balls. You can hit high balls, medium-high balls and also low balls. From here you can drop the stick, go to the ball or get to the stroke. What you don't want to do is to hang behind here, but to pick up the ball. And here you carry the stored energy from here, into which you brought yourself. This is your strength position before you perform the stroke. In this position, you have to make sure that the back of the stick points up. It shouldn't point up. You want to be able to see the back of your stick. Then you move forward with your handle cap. So I lead with the handle cap. It leads into the stroke and stores the power in the stick. It allows me to exercise this lever effect on the ball. When it goes forward, the rebound is transferred. The stick head is brought back and into contact. The strings for this rebound must be closed. You shouldn't open them too early here. If you have opened the stick when hitting back and play forward, it is less likely that you can create a topspin, because your strings are already open. From here you want to go down with these strings and only have the feeling that the stick points to the ball in this position. To know if you did that right, just place a ball here in the V of the stick. And when you bring the stick back here, make sure that the ball stays in there. And when I hit forward, it still stays there. And only when I'm past my hip height here, does the stick drop the ball. So the ball should roll forward. If you did it right and opened the stick too early, it falls down behind you. You want to roll the ball forward so that it only falls in front of you and rolls on. This means that you have kept the closed stick surface in contact. And this closed stick surface ensures a solid contact with the ball. So when we make contact here, when I have opened the stick, I will do this. Now you might think, when I close the stick here, I hit the ball into the field, when I go to the ball. And yes, if you just approach the ball from above, the ball would go into the net. So the trajectory of the stick goes down first. Note how closed it is still. It is still closed. And now when making contact, note how flat it is now on the ball. At this point, I can either turn my wrist or make the stroke flatter. But here the stick actually points to the ball. And because I started here from below, this creates this small height, the lightness of the topspin. And you can do a lot with the ball. If you don't do it right now, and I see that with many players, it is so that at the moment when he opens too early, he can only make a flat stroke on the ball. And because you do that, you will hit the ball faster in the end. It will be more difficult for you to extend the contact, and your accuracy will decrease. So make sure that you close the sides and go forward in the direction of contact, by letting the stick fall under the ball. And here I don't let the stick fall with my wrist. So I don't let it fall this way. I let it fall here with my whole arm. The whole arm makes this movement. I grab the ball, and here it is in an open position. I didn't get there with my weak wrist. And that is another misunderstanding that some players have. They think, how should I create a topspin if I use my wrist? No, we will create the topspin by lowering the arm and keeping the wrist relaxed when in contact. A good exercise to practice this is to have two balls in your hand and drop them forward. You go under the first and hit the second. You won't succeed if your stick is directed directly at the ball. So if you went from here to the ball, you can't hit the second ball and miss the first one. So you want to get under the ball with your wrist fixed to the back and touch the second ball, to make sure that you did everything right. And finally comes the topspin, the last part of the stroke. If you have positioned yourself correctly, turned your body and saved the energy, and went forward in the direction of contact, you should have a relaxed arm that carries the speed of the stick and the momentum of the stick around your shoulders and allows your shoulders to turn, which brings us back to the exercise we did, where we put the chin on the left shoulder and then close it on the right shoulder. Now make sure that my arm is not interrupted here when in contact. What you don't want to do, and that is a tendency of us as players, is to tense up. We want to tense up to generate strength. And that is the completely wrong way of thinking. When hitting, you should have the feeling that the stick is doing the work for you. You let the stick fly. You don't slow it down and it naturally flies over your shoulder and across. A good exercise that helps you at the end and also gives you a good rhythm for the stroke, is to catch the stick at the end. So when you make the stroke, catch the stick and let it go. You take the stick back, catch it and let it go. Take it back, catch it and let it go. When you relax at the end of the stroke, you can let go of the stick. You don't hold it tight here. You let the wrist relax and the stick head fly around your hand and over your shoulder. So you catch it that way. Depending on the grip, your momentum can be different. Some players finish the stroke completely on the back and never really turn the stick around like a Yannick Sinner. You can also finish the ball over the shoulder, like in this exercise we just did, with a nice high elbow. This is a forehand in Dominic's team. You can also finish the ball a little lower if you have an extremer grip like Nick Kyrgios, who finishes the ball up here and across. But the stick always flies into the end position without interruption. So guys, next time you go to the pitch, you can play your forehand. Let me know in the comments below what you think of this video. And of course you should subscribe to the channel with a notification bell so you don't miss any future lessons. Let's get better in our next lesson.