Why Your Racket Doesn't Flip - and How to Fix It

The secret to the racket flip is that you want to take your racket and swing it out first, not straight towards the ball. Now, it doesn't mean that you have to take your arm and press it like this. But remember, when you start your swing, your chest is going to be facing sideways. And so the key here is that you're going to take your racket and drive it in the same direction you're facing, rather than taking your elbow and coming straight towards the ball. So if I do that, it looks like this. And you'll notice one of the things about the racket flip is that when you can get it, you get relatively effortless topspin with it. And so if you feel like you have to fight for your topspin, part of the reason might be because your racket's not flipping the way we want. So here's what that looks like from the baseline. Now we are going to go back to the service line and explain the basics up there and then get back here later in the video. But another thing I want to show you is that really vivid visual flick in behind the forearm. That is a result of swinging fast. You're not pulling your wrist there. And so this position you see me in at the baseline, if you frame by frame any of the service line shots, you'll see my hand's not going to be actually as far back. The first thing we're going to talk about is the grip. And the key to the grip is to make sure that the handle is seated in the top of your hand. So if you're an Eastern player, feel it against your palm. If you're a Western player, feel it in the V and on your index finger. Take your off hand and gently push the handle into the top of your hand and then curl your fingers as far around as you can. That's step one. And the reason that's step one is when I relax my wrist and go like this, I can feel the hand bending backwards. Whereas without that, it is much less visceral with this gap here, much less visceral connection between that articulation where that thing flicks behind the forearm and the handle. So I'm going to gently press the racket into my hand, curl the fingers around, you know, now the first couple of times, you know, don't fight with it, nestle the racket and feel it, make it feel comfortable. And then you'll have a very good feeling here of what the racket is doing and whether you're getting that flip or not. And if I go to that other swing, oh, that feels, well, it feels very viscerally locked up and pushy because my connection with the top of the handle is so good that my hand is very connected to the handle. So I can feel when that racket is actually flicking in behind my forearm and I can feel that effortless release and it's going to be easier. Everything we do for the rest of this video is going to be easier if you have that connection because you're going to get more signals about whether you're doing it right or wrong. Now we've talked about pressing before and the idea that your pecs press the racket forward. The key to this is exactly what I want you to press is the inside of your elbow. I want you to press that in the same direction that you're facing. So sometimes when I give the pressing cue, students will go like this and that does activate the pecs in some way, but it's not the kind of a press we're going for. We are going for the direction that I'm facing, press the inside of the elbow, boom, inside of the elbow in the direction you're facing. Now, why does that send the racket out? Because when I start my forehand, if I'm facing sideways and I'm going to press inside of the elbow direction I'm facing, that's going to send the racket out and that's going to lead to that racket flip. Now I'm going to pull the elbow across the body. Notice how everything is much stiffer and less flipping. Now I'm going to drive the inside of the elbow out. Now that one I sprayed, but that's one of the things that you're going to have to learn about this is you are going to have to regain your control of the swing proximally. So when you do this properly, everything is going to be stretched here and then it's just going to release. And so if you're used to more of this kind of a swing, you can kind of tense up and kind of control it late with your hand and forearm. You're not really going to be able to do that here. You are going to have to perceive what's happening and change what you do upstream to throw the racket so that different things happen. If you can find that confidence to let it go, your brain will calibrate it as long as you're holding the racket properly so that you can control this release. Now let me explain the exact, you know, when to be tight, when to be loose, because I know you've probably heard be firm at contact and you've probably heard relax and you're like, isn't that a contradiction? So during this part of the swing here, during this part of the swing, it is very, very important that the bottom of your hand is not tight and trying to pull the racket head around early. So if any coach, including myself, is telling you to relax, probably what they mean is that right here, you're gripping the racket pretty tightly. And then before this, before the natural hinge in your swing, during this part of the swing when the racket is supposed to kind of just be nicely lagging backwards because of momentum, somewhere before there, you're either accidentally or purposefully squeezing with the bottom of your hand, which would send the racket around. And that's not only going to mess up your swing, it might hurt you. Now, if you play with a light enough racket and soft enough strings, it won't hurt you. It'll just make your swing slower. With more serious equipment, it will actually hurt you. That back here, you can't be squeezing before the racket naturally wants to start hinging. And so relaxation is really important during this part of the swing. Now, like we talked about, if you overdo the relax cue, especially at the top of your hand, then your brain starts to lose track of the handle back here. And that's why it's so hard to communicate. It's like you want a solid connected feeling, but still being loose and relaxed during this early acceleration phase. But the reason that so many players tell you to be firm at contact is because even though you are relaxed here, as the racket builds up this speed, the physical reality of it is that you're going to have to grip tighter and tighter and tighter, specifically at the bottom of the handle to make this happen. If you don't grip tightly during this part of the swing, then the racket will kind of micro-slip and micro-drift in the hand. If you really don't grip tightly, the racket will just fall out of your hand this way. You've actually probably seen that in the follow-through. Most pros intuitively grip tight enough to hit the ball, but everyone is relaxing in the follow-through in order to protect themselves. And you've probably seen people throw their rackets here by accident. I think like Dimitrov did this once. But the point is, during this part of the swing, what is happening? Well, this is accelerating backwards relative to this. So the bottom of your hand, middle finger and down, is providing a backwards force on the handle. The harder you swing, the harder that backwards force is physically interacting with the handle. So if you swing really, really hard, you're actually going to be close to your max squeezing forearm contraction right around this part on the swing. But why does that not mean that you should think of the forehand as squeezing hard? Because again, just like with so much in tennis, the timing window is so small. Here, you need to be relaxed. The tension has to build and be really, really big right here. And then right here, it's pretty much relaxed again. So it's like, okay, I want you to know that that's how it physically works. So that if you feel yourself squeezing, you know you're not doing it wrong. But the idea to squeeze, if you tell yourself, I'm going to squeeze when I hit the ball, very often you'll start squeezing early. You'll start squeezing right here. So really, it's the cue. First of all, if being firm and squeezing at contact helps you, absolutely do it. But if you find like, man, like that's injuring me or like, ah, I'm losing my racket hits me when I try to be firm at contact. But then when I'm loose, I'm out of control. The key is coupling, one-to-one coupling between the racket and the hand. Your goal is for the handle and the hand to always move as one unit. So here, when you're trying to get that kind of flick the racket back feeling, you need your hand connected, but relaxed. But then here, as the forces start to build, if you want the hand and racket to move as one piece, you will naturally need to grip tighter and tighter and tighter, especially right here during this crackoff phase. Now, because I'm hitting mini tennis here, and I'm not swinging the racket very fast at all, I don't really even perceive the squeeze at all. I mean, I probably am intuitively squeezing marginally faster right here than I am here. But with like a full kinetic chain from the ground through the chest swing, you will feel yourself squeezing the handle a lot right here. And that is not wrong. That is actually necessary to get the racket to finish on the same tempo as on a slower swing. If you don't squeeze, the racket will decouple from your hand right here, and you'll get, you know, micro slippage, micro changes, and none of, none of the, much of the energy that is here will leak out here, and then obviously the control will be totally out of control. Now, we're covering a lot in this video, and if you think about all of it at once, probably things will just kind of fall apart, and you won't really be able to produce the swing. So just pick one or two ideas and try to implement them and see how they feel. And if you want help with that, like which specific ideas would make the most sense for you, if you're in New Jersey, you can get on court with us. If you're not, you can join us in the online program, because obviously, you know, we're going through 10, 20 things here. You can't think about 10, 20 things. Which of the one or two things are going to have the biggest impact for you right away, and which things are you already good at just intuitively, versus which things, oh man, if I could just find that feeling, I could get way better. That's what we're there to help with, whether we're in person or online. Now, I want to go back to this feeling, because it is very important when you're trying to get your racket to flip, that you do not confuse the back to front flip with the rolling action. So see how this is roll, and so that is going to become this action at contact. This is hit. That is going to become your hitting action at contact. And a lot of times, especially if someone's grip isn't properly set, their brain confuses the roll for that lag flick in behind the forearm. Here's why that's dangerous. The way the forehand works, you are not making contact at the fastest part of your roll. The fastest part of your roll is in the follow-through, and so if you are perceiving this as the lag, and this as the swing, you're going to end up making contact in this really brushy follow-through part of the swing. Your timing is determined by this back to front loading spring. That's where you hit the forehand, and you're going to hit the forehand somewhere like here, and then the vertical, most of your shoulder rotation, most of your windshield wiper, most of your topspin, that is all follow-through. And so if your brain, if you're not holding the racket right, so you don't have the top flush, so your brain can't really perceive that flick in behind feeling, you are probably struggling with the fast version of the swing because your brain is trying to use the roll part and the internal shoulder rotation, the really fast part, but that is the part that you serve with, but that's not quite the part you hit for. You hit your forehand slightly before that here when the wrist releases. Now let me show you that same concept on Federer's swing. We're going to watch these in fast motion first. So first of all, I picked one with that Rafa style follow-through because it's so vivid, but the point is when you imagine Federer, you're probably thinking about this kind of a high elbow motion finish, but now if we go frame by frame, what I want you to notice is that is mostly follow-through. So here we go. Inside elbow towards the ball. There's the lag. There's the contact. See how little of the windshield wiper has taken place? The racket's down here. So we're using like the first 25% of the windshield wiper to hit the swing. Now watch this right after contact. Look how much rolling racket head speed we have. Look how much rolling shoulder action we have. And then this is a really good example where, okay, be honest right here. Do you think Federer is going to follow through above his head? It's the hit. The hit is what matters. The hit happens earlier than you think. And then all of that super speed rolling, super speed internal shoulder rotation is just the way that the arm decelerates the release that happens right here. So you're feeling for this wrist-hand release for the timing window, the fastest roll and the fastest your shoulder is rotating is more like here in this weaker brushy part of the follow-through. You know, if you watch carefully here, you'll notice that most of the vertical action, most of my upward racket head speed is actually after contact. And my racket was like here, here, here. It's a very beginning of the windshield wiper that you're hitting with. And the reason is you are hitting when this releases, when that releases. And that's why you have to feel the top of your handle because that's going to give you a better signal for whether that's loading and releasing. And you are not hitting with, you're not hitting with the fastest part of the vertical action because the fastest part of the vertical action is actually a part of the swing where the racket angle is changing like crazy. And so if you are, if your brain is trying to hit with that part of the swing, it's going to look like this. You're not going to do what I just did. You're going to tighten up so that you can keep the racket on a plane. And so if your swing looks like this at all, that is because you're actually hitting too late in the action. It's earlier in the action where that controllable release happens. That is, it might not feel like the fastest part of your swing if your brain is perceiving the roll and not perceiving the hit. So this is the fastest part of this. It is not the fastest part of this. And so that's why we have to build a control system through the handle where you're feeling the hit. You want to feel the roll so you can calibrate topspin, but you're not hitting with the fastest part of the roll. You are hitting with the very beginning of the roll's release. The very beginning of the roll. If you try to hit with the end of the roll, that's where you get these kind of shanky ones, or you tighten up to keep it together. If you hit with the very beginning of the roll, which is the thick part of the back to front hit, that is where you can just have confidence that you can let it go and you're going to get the action that you want. Now next we are going to talk about back stability. And the reason is, this version of the stroke, which you see Alexa doing, we call this your simplest effective forehand. And the way that this works, the way you get your racket to flip with this tiny little level of effort, requires that the scapula back here be stabilized by the back and the side. And specifically, we told you take that inside of your elbow and drive the inside of your elbow, press that through where you're facing. This is what looks like when Alexa tries to do that, but doesn't stabilize her back. And you'll notice, like, it's not like it's the worst forehand in the world. She can still make it, she can still get the hand to show up on contact, but she has lost that crisp control, she's lost control of the racket face, and she's lost the efficiency of the swing. As opposed to now, that same idea here, but with the stability from the back, which we're going to talk about exactly how to do that more in a second. All of a sudden now, the swing is much smaller, you get that nice, effortless, crisp, simple contact action. Now when I say back stability, this is exactly what I mean. When you go to your forehand prep, the first thing to check for is if you're shrugging. So if you shrug up, you can't swing like that, and so your brain is going to probably relax everything when you go to swing. So the first thing to do just as an exercise, just shrug and just undo the shrug. So go ahead and shrug for me, and undo the shrug. And notice how, if you look at any of your favorite players, the undo the shrug, the upper traps are relaxed. Now, a lot of this is mostly isometric. You're going to feel kind of isometric stability in the side here, this muscle that fans around your ribcage, and then specifically in the back, but again not the upper traps. Just turn a little bit towards the fence for me. So the lower traps and the mid traps pull your scapula in and down. Those will help you stabilize, and then the lats and the rhomboids also pull the scapula this way. They're going to help you stabilize. You're going to feel isometric tone back here, and that is going to create the base so that when you try to drive the inside of your elbow like this, it's going to bounce off of that and kind of release the arm through, rather than getting that really unstable swing. So again, here's what that looks like when it's nice and stabilized, and you're probably thinking, well coach, I'm not going to think about all my different muscles on court. No, you're not. At first you are, just to kind of get a sense for it. First, I just want you to drive the inside of your elbow and see if it works. If it doesn't, I want you to experiment with that feeling of stability in your side, with that feeling of stability in your back, that feeling that you're kind of holding your shoulder back and attached while you do that early driving action, and you are technically releasing it right before contact, but you might even feel like you're releasing it only in the follow-through, because again, and I'll go ahead and relax it all too early. Even if you are correctly trying to drive that elbow, you're going to get this kind of unstable, kind of looks like a Thompson swing, and you can just tell there's something wrong. That's what you're going to get if you're missing the stability. With the stability is where you get this really crisp contact, and this really crisp contact is what allows you to lead with the inside of the elbow and allows you to get that racket flip in behind the forearm. So coming back to the baseline here, one thing I want to talk about with the back stability is you'll notice Alexa and many players have this very high elbow preparation. So you'll notice that kind of big loop there, but what I want you to pay attention to is that she's not sending the racket straight down from that big loop. So what's happening here is we have the big loop, but we're not launching in from that big loop. We are just dropping the elbow into that stabilized position where we can launch out from there rather than, you know, just starting there. Someone like Federer, he almost just starts there. Now that is totally fine, and a lot of players actually find it's easier to get that really connected feeling between the arm and the trunk if they use a kind of a bigger backswing and almost kind of drop the racket in there. The key though is that when Alexa is, and we're going to watch Arthur Feist after this, when that drop from the loop is happening, that is not the racket flip. So if during the drop from the loop, if you go for that racket flip in the drop from the loop, that's where you're going to spray all your shots. What's happening here is just a little bit of rolling and then we attach and fire that out and then the flip happens from actually a very similar elbow slot to what you would see from like a swing. And so you're still connecting your arm, using your back, you're still connecting your arm to your body, whether or not you feel comfortable with that bigger loop or with the more abbreviated swing. And the key when you have that bigger loop is not to dive bomb the contact with your racket flip and just kind of relax, let the racket roll a little, drop the racket tip a little, and then feel that racket attach to the back and fire out the same way it would if you're using a simpler swing. So let's watch probably the best super high elbow prep forehand in the world here. All right, I'm going to show you what I'm talking about, because I think what goes wrong for players when they copy this preparation and then they try to get velocity is, let's go back to the beginning of the swing here, is like from here, they now flip the racket. They like flip the racket and dive bomb straight into the contact zone and that gets you just this ridiculous up and down vector, down, down, down, up, that sprays. But if we watch here, notice the hand and the arm are drifting down and back, down and back, down and back. Notice how little forward acceleration and then the truly loaded slot is now only slightly above the ball. So we're not loading and dive bombing the slot from that super high elbow. What's happening here is the elbow is, the racket is gently kind of rolling back down and then getting into that attached to the body, depressed slot, and then we're firing from there. Now, Arthur Feast does actually still come a little bit from above the ball. That's fine. You gain a little bit of racket and speed. You lose a little bit of fault tolerance. That's just a trade-off every other player makes rather than coming from more straight or even a gentle upward diagonal. But the point is he's not coming from here, right? What's happening here is not the racket loading down this way. And that's where players go wrong with the high elbow loop is it's like, oh, this is my backswing. Okay. And now I'm just going to fire down and forward. No, we roll back and down, back and down, back and down for a lot of time before that forward swing. And then that forward outward swing is from a slot that's similar to actually what players with smaller backswings use. And then the last thing I want to point out here is what we're really looking at is the hand relative to the trunk. So right now his spine, his trunk is on this kind of 45 degree angle with the ground. So he's not straight up. And so when he rotates, he's going to be swinging, you know, low to high in a way that someone whose spine is more straight up would just be swinging into out. So the hand here is getting lower respect to his shoulders. It's lower, it's lower, it's lower. But right here now, even though the actual swing is still going down, you'll notice that from right around there, the hand is not actually going down relative to his body anymore. The hand is just going around his body. The only reason the swing is still going low to high is because his body is tilted like this. And this is the real secret for making your low swings work. Tilt your body like this and then just swing on the same into out circle as you normally do, rather than trying to pick it down and up with your hand. Now, another cue that gets at this idea is to throw your racket more like a serve. And the reason is we're talking about back stability. We're talking about sending this inside point of your elbow forward. All of those are how you accelerate a throw. So if you are a baseball player, for example, all you have to do is get your brain to use the part of your brain that throws and all of these cues that we're talking about will come into your forehand. The key is just remembering that release rhythm, remembering that if I were going to throw this ball, I'm going to go here, boom, and I'm probably going to release right around here. That would bury the forehand. So the release on here. Well, that one actually released like my forehand, which is why the throw wasn't great. But the release on a real throw is going to be later. So that's why this is very visceral. You would really release a throw closer to there. But on the forehand, everything is releasing through the racket a little bit earlier. So you're throwing there. And because I'm thinking about throwing now, you know, I don't really need as many of those other cues because those are the things that happen when you throw. This Dragonette tool, it cracks when you get that late acceleration pop. So swing it a couple times for me. You'll notice it's cracking very close to her forehand contact. And what she's doing is all the things we're talking about to get the racket. She's got a loose hand, got the top of that grip nice and connected, and she's got that shoulder stabilized and she's letting it release, not trying to control it. Now, probably when you pick this up, it'll be tough to crack. So I recommend first just find that release feeling, just crack it down nice and easy, crack it down into the ground. Similar thing with your forehand here. If you're struggling, you can just nice and easy. Okay. Obviously I want to get this release feeling out here, but can I first just feel that nice, easy release feeling into the ground? And then the trick is, what's happening here when she cracks into the ground? Is her hand relaxed, going here, going here, going here, runs out of space to go down anymore. And that's why without her having to do anything conscious, it just catches up and cracks. Now, gravity makes that really easy. Your arm runs out of space and you get a hitting action. Where it's hard to do is here, where I have to get my arm to get stuck out here using those mechanics we talked about. I have to get that flip in behind to get my arm to get stuck here, so it releases out there. So go ahead and swing forward for me. So now, it is actually a bit of a challenge, but you need to get the hand to get stuck the same way it gets stuck when you swing down. That's also how you need to get the hand to get stuck when you're swinging forward. And if you can create that same kind of a chain, you can stay just as loose and feel that same release action here that you feel. Now, I also want you to look, as Alexa swings this, listen for the crack. Listen for the crack here. The crack is right around here. What I want you to notice is just how much of the really visceral rolling part of the swing. When you think of the modern forehand, you think of the high elbow, you think of the windshield wiper follow-through. All of that is follow-through, so listen for the crack and watch her mechanics. Notice she's getting to that really fast part of contact that cracks relatively early in that release action, and most of what you're seeing there is follow-through. And how that maps onto the swing is just like this. Same thing. Really watch while I'm contacting and just how not part of the actual forward swing before contact, all of this very visually vivid stuff is. A lot of times when you're watching TV, you're imagining them swinging from here to here as a swing. That's not what's happening. We're swinging from here to around here, and the way we've loaded it ends up finishing like that, but that is mostly just the finish. Now there is a bit of a contradiction when it comes to the grip, which is that we need the hand all the way against the handle, fully connected to the handle, but still as loose as possible. So if Alexa tightens the wrist up so that it can't hinge, I want you to listen to the magnitude. Listen to the sound. Now she's pretty strong, so it still cracks a little. Do you hear how less pronounced that crack is? And what she is doing there is she's tightening this so that it can't hinge. Now that's gonna help you control the racket face. What we need to find is that Goldilocks grip where I can feel the racket, my hands all the way around the racket, but I'm not death squeezing to keep the racket connected to my hand, and then you can relax the hand and you can feel where the racket face is while you let it go. Now this is tricky because this means you're going to have to kind of let go of the back of your swing. You're going to be able to feel the back of your swing, but you're never going to be able to control or guide it. You have to trust that the flick is going to finish. Next we're going to talk about spacing, and one of the drills I like for helping a student figure out their spacing, I call it the lunge drill where you get in an open stance and you stay there and you're not allowed to move your feet, so you're just kind of swinging your shoulders over that hip anchor. So that's the drill that Alexa is doing here while I explain the spacing idea. Now one thing you're going to notice when you get your racket flipping properly, remember you have to swing out, and so the result is if Alexa were going to push the ball through, she really would want the spacing more like here, but this is going to jam the best version of your swing. And so as you're trying to find that more explosive version of your swing, you're going to notice that your optimal contact point is actually surprisingly far away from you in the lateral direction. So notice even lunging like this, Alexa is using basically the same topspin contact action, and I'm trying to stretch her and still she's getting good topspin contact on the ball. It's actually quite challenging here. Notice how tough it is here. Now if she were trying to push, this would actually be the better contact point. And so the contact point you're habituating, it's not wrong, it was right for your more linear back to front swing. It's just that when we want to use this inside elbow press flick the racket behind the forearm racket flip action, you're gonna have to swing at a ball that is farther away from you because of the geometry of how the swing works. Now like we said, you have to let the swing go, let the swing release when you are using the racket flip. So how do you regain control? With your trunk. What's going to happen is you're going to go here, boom boom boom boom. When your trunk starts to slow down, your arm is going to snap over and around. And so you're going to use your hips and your abs to control the timing of your swing. If you go back together, forward together. Back together, forward together. You're going to notice here is my racket doesn't really release. And the reason is that my trunk is never actually slowing down. So I'm just dragging the racket through like this and there's never any momentum handoff where this slows down and transfers the momentum to the later links. Here's how we fix that. We coil instead of just spinning. So we twist instead of spinning. And here are the basics of that. Create an anchor with the foot you're going to coil into. Keep this open. Don't let your pelvis go in here. Don't let your knee rotate in here. You load the ball of your foot like this. And now when I swing, my shoulders are going to get fired forward. My hips are going to get tugged back and they're going to hold the swing. So now my trunk starts to slow down around here. And there's actually a reason for my hand to release. And I don't have to ever force the release. My hand will just release when my trunk slows down. And the reason my trunk is slowing down is the way that I'm loading stretches the hips in a way where the hips are pulling back on the trunk. And so now if I coil like that, my shoulders get accelerated in a way where it is a quick power pulse from the trunk. So it's a quick pulse from the shoulders. It's a quick pulse from this upper part of the thorax here. I stepped into a couple of those. We'll check that. We'll explain that in a second, but I'll do these open stance. But it's a quick pulse from the thorax here. And that's what you want your rotational power to feel like. You want it to feel like a quick pulse that stops and starts. That starts and stops because that is what is going to make the swing release where you're thinking about. Instead of feeling you have to control it with the hand late. Okay, you'll notice I stepped into a few of those. That is another way to kind of get your trunk to stop is if I step in, I create that same kind of an anchor. I load the ball on the arch of the foot. I get this open. I get that knee out. And I transfer my weight from my coiling foot onto that foot. And it's another way that the hips get in the way of my chest. And because the hips get in the way, the chest starts to slow down and my racket releases without me having to like force it with my hand. That one was open stance. And that one was a little too deep. I shouldn't have stepped in. There we go. Now the truth is, and anything that gets your trunk to slow down works. So you'll notice sometimes players will use, you know, a pattern like this. This is harder to execute than being on the ground. But the reason it works the same thing where the pelvis by throwing my pelvis backwards when I swing like that, it causes my arm to crack off. So that's the last thing is the goal isn't to like fling the shoulder out and then like time your release with the hand. The goal is to feel that moment when you use just that little trunk pulse instead of a constant speed spin. To just feel for that moment, just like this moment into the ground, feel for that moment where the hand gets stuck and the release wants to happen. And then you're just setting up your feet and your body to put that release to the ball. What you're doing through the grip is feeling for the signal of, did I get the release I wanted to? Did I feel the racket face on the line I wanted to? If yes, great. If no, maybe you can make fine grained adjustments, but if it's a big adjustment, you're making it upstream, something like not doing this and doing that instead.