This is very valuable insight, thanks so much Meike! I do feel you are right about my hitting arm not being relaxed enough, and that leads to my wrist not lagging as it should. Lots to work on, I'll take a look at the drills in the video you recommended! Amazing stuff.
Fantastic video ! It points a very specific point and helps me drastically to improve my forehand : hitting the ball in front, forward weight transfert During many years different coaches said : "go forward, hit the ball early, don’t roll up, … " with no stable result ! Thanks a lot !
Hats off ma'm. It's a great presentation done in the most vivid way possible. A million thanks for a most valuable and useful instructional that stands out among the rest.
What an incisive analysis of this player's problem. All of his awkward adjustments later may not be the problem, as you say, but the result of what came before! That notion, in itself, is worth a $million. May I make a suggestion and, if you have time, would you let me know if my suggestion has merit? First, I think the notion of butt cap pointing to the ball is generally helpful but it has a flaw. The flaw is that it may be possible to point the butt cap to the ball without really being in the proper locked-in position. And it is the locked-in position that the player should be striving for. I see in Monfils that he is in such a great locked-in position that his butt cap probably is actually pointing farther to the right of the incoming ball. I think that is even better in terms of lag and power. I would suggest that players learn what it means to extend the wrist and what it means to supinate the forearm and doing both of those at the same time is the ideal locked-in position (of course, with the racquet head down and back). My second suggestion is that the racquet comes up to the ball in the swing because of the rotation in the shoulder (and lift in the legs and rotation of the torso). Saying that topspin is generated by pronation makes the player think that he/she should pronate the forearm up to the ball. I don't believe that is what you are trying to convey. The arm is a fixed unit rotating up to the ball with the shoulder, torso, and legs doing the movement. The forearm pronates after the ball is struck because the arm is way out in front of the player by then and almost has to in order to curve around the body. Would you agree with all this? I'm trying to figure this all out. Thanks.
I think the wrist lock in position is a passive motion which is automatically achieved by good unit turn and then opening up the left should simultaneously as the racket and right arm are coming in to hit the ball . An active lock in position, for me , has invariably led to a wrong snapping of the wrist .
I could be wrong, but it appears to me that he was too close to the ball and that is why his wrist could not relax and his hip opened too soon and therefore no wrist lag. Good analysis and comparisons.
Wow! Amazing level of analysis and details here coach that can make all the difference in our game. I don't think I've ever seen this kind of side by side comparison (the eg with Gael) to help me to see, understand and appreciate (that "Aha! Moment) one of the most important technical detail I need to incorporate to leverage all the advantages of a good forearm. Thank you! 😊 You're doing a really great job 👏 And you're always encouraging and affirming players as well.
The "locked in position" is very interesting. Once you get into the locked in position with buttcap pointing to the ball, the wrist will be relaxed and the wrist will be in an extended position. Let's say, for example, the wrist is extended 70° at the locked in position. You want to essentially *maintain* that 70° wrist extended position up to the point of contact? Is that the idea?
Nice video. Great talk about this fundamental. However I think there aren't a lot of good players that thinks about this 'locked in position'. Your body does this by it self. In this case I would almost question if there is not a anatomical reason why the wrist of this player is not doing what is normal. Bio mechanical I think the wrist would allow itself to get in the locked in position by itself naturally. And also extra strange because you can see that the player is pretty relaxed and has a lot of other motorical skills in a good shape. Was he maybe once injured and in pain why he unconsciously blocked his wrist and not allowing to relax? If you relax the wrist 'the lag' would be there without trying to make it lagging. Just my take on it. I work with professional players so it's not that I am new to this kind of themes. Keep up the nice and good work. Like this !
If you get a chance to visit a local court or club and watch recreational players play, you’ll be surprised how few people has the so called wrist lag or lock in position. It’s not intuitive and takes time to learn or train yourself to do it. If it’s natural and everybody does it, there won’t be so much buzz around wrist lag. Do a YT search on wrist lag tennis and you’ll be surprised how many videos pop up.
Yes, there could be other reasons for sure. Grip has something to do with it. Almost impossible to get that lock in position with a conti grip. The "problem" with the lock in position is that the human eye can't see it well in real speed so as coaches we often focus on the contact point which is what we can see. I've had really good success with clients when we work on loading correctly because that comes before anything else. And if you have that in place, the wrist lag happens naturally. I also agree with Jason below that a lot of rec players don;t get into the lock in position and to my mind that is because the stages before that are not done correctly or effectively. It's a topic that cannot be exhausted :-)
JMO, but the low racquet drop like Rafa or Roger results in too steep of a path to the ball for someone who makes contact with a bent elbow, such as your student. The low racquet drop and semi-western grip result in Rafa needing to swing extremely hard to keep from hitting short despite having his arm extended at contact resulting in a much shallower swing path than someone making contact with a bent elbow. It isn’t an issue for Roger because he has a weaker grip, but he still gets a lot of topspin relative to his grip. Even so, I doubt he could hit the ball well with that racquet drop and a bent elbow. I think the student is guiding the ball because if he got the topspin that comes with good racquet lag, a low racquet drop, a semi-western grip and bent elbow at contact he’d have trouble getting the ball to land past the service line no matter how fast he swings and much like Rafa when he loses confidence he’d often dump the ball into the net. In summary, I think it is extremely difficult to make good contact with a bent elbow if you have a low racquet drop and I wouldn’t try to get anyone to change from bent to extended or vice versa. I wouldn’t be surprised if your student has been trying to copy Roger without realizing he has a very different contact point from Roger. Murray and Djokovic both make contact with a bent elbow and they don’t have low racquet drops.
Djokovic has different depths of racket drops depending on what type of balls he wants to hit. Same with Rafa, who doesn’t only hit heavy top spins and hence the racket drops depth varies too.
@@bournejason66 For a given height ball Rafa’s racquet drop will always be lower than Djokovic’s unless he’s trying to hit a completely different shot. Just take a look at how much further out in front Rafa makes contact than Djokovic. He has to drop the racquet lower to get the same low to high angle to the ball. On a similar height ball Rafa drops his racquet about 6” below his waist while Djokovic drops his to just above his waist. Djokovic takes his racquet back toward the back fence further than Nadal but Nadal makes contact further out front so the horizontal distance traveled is similar. Now take a look at how steep the student’s hand path is to the ball. He’s taking a topspin lob path and trying to drive the ball. He has to slow down the racquet and almost push the ball to hit it where he’s trying to hit it. BTW, take a look at some clips of Nadal. The racquet drop is always low and his hand is usually well below where the ball will be at contact even when hits a relatively flat ball. Djokovic tends to drop his hand to the same level as where the ball will be at contact and makes contact with his hand a bit above the ball and the racquet head lower than his hand.
@@marktace1 as long as the swing path and racket face angle at contact is the same, the ball trajectory will be the same, regardless of straight or bend arm.
@@bournejason66 Given a low racquet drop and a bent vs extended arm at contact the racquet path is significantly different. The path with a bent arm is 1:2 vertical:horizontal vs 1:3 vertical:horizontal for an extended arm. That’s a much steeper angle for a bent arm. That means with a low racquet drop swinging up at about 18 degrees with an extended arm and up at about 27 degrees with a bent arm. 18 degrees is preferable so if you are going to hit with a bent arm you don’t want a low racquet drop in most situations. The angles are rough approximations that don’t take into account the curved path of the hand from racquet drop to contact. The true angles into contact should be a bit steeper. I hit with a bent elbow and I’ve tried a low racquet drop. It is very difficult to get any pace on the ball and making clean contact is more difficult.
@@marktace1 I think you're on to something that I relate to 💯. I always felt my drop was too low and that my balls, while getting good topspin, flys too high over the net. I have no problems hitting lobs, but really struggle to produce consistent depth and pace. As a result, my game centers around counter punching and extending rallies. I rarely find myself taking initiative and playing offensively. When forced to, it's out of my comfort zone and causes errors. Thanks for the feedback! I'd like to play around a bit with my racquet drop. I've never liked that I had a straight arm take back and a bent arm at contact.
I think it’s a matter of knowing there’s “wrist lag” and one needs to point the racket butt-cap to the ball, then practice the heck out of it. It’s a very counter-intuitive movement. If you watch this video (link below) you’ll find Edberg doesn’t have that butt cap point to the ball. Was he not relaxed and hold the racket too tight? I doubt anyone who holds racket too tight can win multiple grand slams. Also, if you watch pros receiving serves, most of the times they swing just like the person in the video, no wrist lag. Edberg practices with Federer: ruclips.net/video/Cwrt36THazc/видео.html.
He actually hits his forehand with almost a continental grip and that's not a grip I would teach to anyone these days. However, he made it work. He'd be the first to tell you that his forehand wasn't his best shot, but heck, I would have taken it. And on the return, you just don't have time for a bigger takeback that's why it will be a more passive shot most of the time.
You mentionned pulling too soon and not extending enough. I’m guilty of this and even though I’m trying really hard to fix it, the bad always comes back. Any suggestion? Thanks
Try this visual drill, in this case it's for the backhand but you can do it just as much for your forehand: ruclips.net/video/M0aIRntFvcE/видео.html I hope that is another way of working on this.
@@MeikeBabelTennis Thanks, I knew about this tip. I'll try again tonight. Problem is, in action, I often forget what I'm trying to work on. And there is that expression in french "Le naturel revient au gallop" meaning that your natural tendencies always come back to the top... so very hard to get rid of bad habits.
@@mathieurivest2348 this is very true. I went out trying to work on the wrist lag Meike described, but it was so hard to find my timing. Working to change years of habit is very difficult!
I think his real problem is that his torso anti.clockwise / fwd rotation starts very late. So his shoulder don't square up to the net early. The arm and the chest come thru together ... No seperation , consequently no lever arm .. just pushing action going on 🎾👍
To me he prep. Ok. His spacing and timing is a bit off. And contact point is off as well. Just my take. It doesn't seem to push forward he seems to pull off of the ball or go back
I could be wrong, but it appears to me that he was too close to the ball laterally and that is why his wrist could not relax and his left hip opened too soon and therefore no wrist lag. Good analysis and comparisons.
Yes, I think it's a bit of the chicken or the egg thing of cause and effect. Is he too close and can't get the lag or he doesn't have the lag and that's affecting his spacing. Either one, the good news it's fixable :-)
This is very valuable insight, thanks so much Meike! I do feel you are right about my hitting arm not being relaxed enough, and that leads to my wrist not lagging as it should. Lots to work on, I'll take a look at the drills in the video you recommended! Amazing stuff.
Thank you so much for your feedback. Glad it helped!
Fantastic video ! It points a very specific point and helps me drastically to improve my forehand : hitting the ball in front, forward weight transfert During many years different coaches said : "go forward, hit the ball early, don’t roll up, … " with no stable result ! Thanks a lot !
Fantastic! That is great to hear! keep me updated with your progress!
Hats off ma'm. It's a great presentation done in the most vivid way possible. A million thanks for a most valuable and useful instructional that stands out among the rest.
You are most welcome and thank you for your kind words!
What an incisive analysis of this player's problem. All of his awkward adjustments later may not be the problem, as you say, but the result of what came before! That notion, in itself, is worth a $million. May I make a suggestion and, if you have time, would you let me know if my suggestion has merit? First, I think the notion of butt cap pointing to the ball is generally helpful but it has a flaw. The flaw is that it may be possible to point the butt cap to the ball without really being in the proper locked-in position. And it is the locked-in position that the player should be striving for. I see in Monfils that he is in such a great locked-in position that his butt cap probably is actually pointing farther to the right of the incoming ball. I think that is even better in terms of lag and power. I would suggest that players learn what it means to extend the wrist and what it means to supinate the forearm and doing both of those at the same time is the ideal locked-in position (of course, with the racquet head down and back). My second suggestion is that the racquet comes up to the ball in the swing because of the rotation in the shoulder (and lift in the legs and rotation of the torso). Saying that topspin is generated by pronation makes the player think that he/she should pronate the forearm up to the ball. I don't believe that is what you are trying to convey. The arm is a fixed unit rotating up to the ball with the shoulder, torso, and legs doing the movement. The forearm pronates after the ball is struck because the arm is way out in front of the player by then and almost has to in order to curve around the body. Would you agree with all this? I'm trying to figure this all out. Thanks.
brilliant :-) Really clear and insightful .
Thank you
Very helpful tips as always, but can you please put a link for that video to correct the racket lag?
I think the wrist lock in position is a passive motion which is automatically achieved by good unit turn and then opening up the left should simultaneously as the racket and right arm are coming in to hit the ball . An active lock in position, for me , has invariably led to a wrong snapping of the wrist .
I could be wrong, but it appears to me that he was too close to the ball and that is why his wrist could not relax and his hip opened too soon and therefore no wrist lag. Good analysis and comparisons.
Wow! Amazing level of analysis and details here coach that can make all the difference in our game. I don't think I've ever seen this kind of side by side comparison (the eg with Gael) to help me to see, understand and appreciate (that "Aha! Moment) one of the most important technical detail I need to incorporate to leverage all the advantages of a good forearm. Thank you! 😊 You're doing a really great job 👏 And you're always encouraging and affirming players as well.
Thank you for your kind words!
Nice video! I have the same exact problem! What drills would you recommend to fix it?
Check out this video: ruclips.net/video/u9U3SEKQdWw/видео.html
The "locked in position" is very interesting. Once you get into the locked in position with buttcap pointing to the ball, the wrist will be relaxed and the wrist will be in an extended position. Let's say, for example, the wrist is extended 70° at the locked in position. You want to essentially *maintain* that 70° wrist extended position up to the point of contact? Is that the idea?
Nice video. Great talk about this fundamental. However I think there aren't a lot of good players that thinks about this 'locked in position'. Your body does this by it self. In this case I would almost question if there is not a anatomical reason why the wrist of this player is not doing what is normal. Bio mechanical I think the wrist would allow itself to get in the locked in position by itself naturally. And also extra strange because you can see that the player is pretty relaxed and has a lot of other motorical skills in a good shape. Was he maybe once injured and in pain why he unconsciously blocked his wrist and not allowing to relax? If you relax the wrist 'the lag' would be there without trying to make it lagging.
Just my take on it. I work with professional players so it's not that I am new to this kind of themes. Keep up the nice and good work. Like this !
If you get a chance to visit a local court or club and watch recreational players play, you’ll be surprised how few people has the so called wrist lag or lock in position. It’s not intuitive and takes time to learn or train yourself to do it. If it’s natural and everybody does it, there won’t be so much buzz around wrist lag. Do a YT search on wrist lag tennis and you’ll be surprised how many videos pop up.
Yes, there could be other reasons for sure. Grip has something to do with it. Almost impossible to get that lock in position with a conti grip. The "problem" with the lock in position is that the human eye can't see it well in real speed so as coaches we often focus on the contact point which is what we can see. I've had really good success with clients when we work on loading correctly because that comes before anything else. And if you have that in place, the wrist lag happens naturally. I also agree with Jason below that a lot of rec players don;t get into the lock in position and to my mind that is because the stages before that are not done correctly or effectively. It's a topic that cannot be exhausted :-)
JMO, but the low racquet drop like Rafa or Roger results in too steep of a path to the ball for someone who makes contact with a bent elbow, such as your student. The low racquet drop and semi-western grip result in Rafa needing to swing extremely hard to keep from hitting short despite having his arm extended at contact resulting in a much shallower swing path than someone making contact with a bent elbow. It isn’t an issue for Roger because he has a weaker grip, but he still gets a lot of topspin relative to his grip. Even so, I doubt he could hit the ball well with that racquet drop and a bent elbow. I think the student is guiding the ball because if he got the topspin that comes with good racquet lag, a low racquet drop, a semi-western grip and bent elbow at contact he’d have trouble getting the ball to land past the service line no matter how fast he swings and much like Rafa when he loses confidence he’d often dump the ball into the net. In summary, I think it is extremely difficult to make good contact with a bent elbow if you have a low racquet drop and I wouldn’t try to get anyone to change from bent to extended or vice versa. I wouldn’t be surprised if your student has been trying to copy Roger without realizing he has a very different contact point from Roger. Murray and Djokovic both make contact with a bent elbow and they don’t have low racquet drops.
Djokovic has different depths of racket drops depending on what type of balls he wants to hit. Same with Rafa, who doesn’t only hit heavy top spins and hence the racket drops depth varies too.
@@bournejason66 For a given height ball Rafa’s racquet drop will always be lower than Djokovic’s unless he’s trying to hit a completely different shot. Just take a look at how much further out in front Rafa makes contact than Djokovic. He has to drop the racquet lower to get the same low to high angle to the ball. On a similar height ball Rafa drops his racquet about 6” below his waist while Djokovic drops his to just above his waist. Djokovic takes his racquet back toward the back fence further than Nadal but Nadal makes contact further out front so the horizontal distance traveled is similar. Now take a look at how steep the student’s hand path is to the ball. He’s taking a topspin lob path and trying to drive the ball. He has to slow down the racquet and almost push the ball to hit it where he’s trying to hit it. BTW, take a look at some clips of Nadal. The racquet drop is always low and his hand is usually well below where the ball will be at contact even when hits a relatively flat ball. Djokovic tends to drop his hand to the same level as where the ball will be at contact and makes contact with his hand a bit above the ball and the racquet head lower than his hand.
@@marktace1 as long as the swing path and racket face angle at contact is the same, the ball trajectory will be the same, regardless of straight or bend arm.
@@bournejason66 Given a low racquet drop and a bent vs extended arm at contact the racquet path is significantly different. The path with a bent arm is 1:2 vertical:horizontal vs 1:3 vertical:horizontal for an extended arm. That’s a much steeper angle for a bent arm. That means with a low racquet drop swinging up at about 18 degrees with an extended arm and up at about 27 degrees with a bent arm. 18 degrees is preferable so if you are going to hit with a bent arm you don’t want a low racquet drop in most situations. The angles are rough approximations that don’t take into account the curved path of the hand from racquet drop to contact. The true angles into contact should be a bit steeper.
I hit with a bent elbow and I’ve tried a low racquet drop. It is very difficult to get any pace on the ball and making clean contact is more difficult.
@@marktace1 I think you're on to something that I relate to 💯. I always felt my drop was too low and that my balls, while getting good topspin, flys too high over the net. I have no problems hitting lobs, but really struggle to produce consistent depth and pace. As a result, my game centers around counter punching and extending rallies. I rarely find myself taking initiative and playing offensively. When forced to, it's out of my comfort zone and causes errors.
Thanks for the feedback! I'd like to play around a bit with my racquet drop. I've never liked that I had a straight arm take back and a bent arm at contact.
If you look at Rublev’s face at 9:57, it’s hard to believe he’s relaxed. 😂.
He never looks relaxed no matter what he does :)
I think it’s a matter of knowing there’s “wrist lag” and one needs to point the racket butt-cap to the ball, then practice the heck out of it. It’s a very counter-intuitive movement. If you watch this video (link below) you’ll find Edberg doesn’t have that butt cap point to the ball. Was he not relaxed and hold the racket too tight? I doubt anyone who holds racket too tight can win multiple grand slams. Also, if you watch pros receiving serves, most of the times they swing just like the person in the video, no wrist lag. Edberg practices with Federer: ruclips.net/video/Cwrt36THazc/видео.html.
He actually hits his forehand with almost a continental grip and that's not a grip I would teach to anyone these days. However, he made it work. He'd be the first to tell you that his forehand wasn't his best shot, but heck, I would have taken it. And on the return, you just don't have time for a bigger takeback that's why it will be a more passive shot most of the time.
You mentionned pulling too soon and not extending enough.
I’m guilty of this and even though I’m trying really hard to fix it, the bad always comes back. Any suggestion?
Thanks
Try this visual drill, in this case it's for the backhand but you can do it just as much for your forehand: ruclips.net/video/M0aIRntFvcE/видео.html
I hope that is another way of working on this.
@@MeikeBabelTennis
Thanks, I knew about this tip. I'll try again tonight. Problem is, in action, I often forget what I'm trying to work on. And there is that expression in french "Le naturel revient au gallop" meaning that your natural tendencies always come back to the top... so very hard to get rid of bad habits.
@@mathieurivest2348 this is very true. I went out trying to work on the wrist lag Meike described, but it was so hard to find my timing. Working to change years of habit is very difficult!
I think his real problem is that his torso anti.clockwise / fwd rotation starts very late. So his shoulder don't square up to the net early. The arm and the chest come thru together ... No seperation , consequently no lever arm .. just pushing action going on 🎾👍
To me he prep. Ok.
His spacing and timing is a bit off.
And contact point is off as well.
Just my take. It doesn't seem to push forward he seems to pull off of the ball or go back
Yes, I agree.
I could be wrong, but it appears to me that he was too close to the ball laterally and that is why his wrist could not relax and his left hip opened too soon and therefore no wrist lag. Good analysis and comparisons.
Yes, I think it's a bit of the chicken or the egg thing of cause and effect. Is he too close and can't get the lag or he doesn't have the lag and that's affecting his spacing. Either one, the good news it's fixable :-)