Tennis Fundamentals - Forehand & Backhand Biomechanics From The Ground Up 

Thank you very much, Tomas. I do have a university degree in Electrical Engineering. But I never had any other job than a tennis coach...

Great to hear!

Thank you very much!

Glad you liked it!

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Thanks, Jorg. I have not had an adult student in 5 years that would initiate the stroke with hip rotation. 90% of the adults that I teach do not engage their hips and use their arm first. If you think that the hand initiates the stroke, you are not on the right track. It's always the body that initiates and the arm follows. Also, please let me know if you are a professional tennis coach so that I know whether we can have a productive debate or whether you're just a recreational player in which case we cannot really have a good debate because the knowledge gap will be too big.

Hi Tomaš, Thanks for your answer. Frist to your last questions: Yes I‘m a professional Tennis Coach, and former higher league and tournament player, with itf ranking. But I never trained a professional tennis player. I have students at all ages and mostly at recreational level, sometimes with competitively targets. I‘m sure there is a gap between our knowledge and our experience, but I hope it is not too big and our conversation may be helpful. What I meant „the stroke is initiated by the hand“ Is the first impulse comes from the hand. Look at your slow motion video with Roger. After preparation (taking the racket back by the non hitting hand, coiling up the upper body) and reaching the power position, watch the moment what happens before any hip and shoulder rotation occurs: the racket drops naturally by gravity, this implicates that the first impulse must be direct from the hitting hand. The racket drop (box 2: swing path) is followed by hip and shoulder rotation as you described in box 1. I think the body rotation happens (uncoiling) is natural, if you have coiled your body during the preparation phase initiated by the non hitting hand which leads your shoulder turn. Do you agree? My experience with older students or beginners is, that there is mostly less body rotation. There is most action from the arm, independent from the body and often no stable, balanced base to execute the stroke properly. My experience with younger, ambitioned player is, if the hear about hip rotation, they make an active hip rotation, the hip comes forward too fast, they „overrotate“ and lose control of the stroke. To get a natural feeling of the body rotation, we used throwing an exercise ball with both hands and with coiling and uncoiling the body. And this is why I ask you, Tomaš as a very experienced tennis coach, if you have any other exercises to get this natural feeling of a fluid body rotation, which is essential for a good groundstroke in modern tennis. (My descriptions concerning the forehand groundstroke). All the best Jörg

Hi Jorg, the hand / racket dropping from a high position in preparation is a passive thing, not something a player "does". Therefore I do not see that as a trigger. The swing is continuous from start to finish if done in right timing so I don't see any signal there. The signal to "go" or "hit" comes from body / hip rotation. The body rotation is not natural for adult rec players because 99% of them are hitting the ball late therefore they need to accelerate their arm before their body just to get the racket square on the ball. Their brain sends a signal to their arm before sending it to the body (rotation) and therefore the kinetic chain is broken. This haunts 99% of the rec players. They are late and therefore cannot rotate into the shot. They initiate the forward momentum with the arm instead of hips. Correcting strokes is mostly done with over-corrections therefore I get good results by focusing on the hip. As for juniors and over-rotating, sure, it happens. Please let me know one single tennis instruction that cannot be misinterpreted and done wrongly. I do not know if any advice or instruction that exists in tennis that cannot be misinterpreted. That's why it takes weeks, months,... to exactly convey to the player what exactly we want with a certain instruction. You have to go back and forth 100 times before the player finally gets it. Not only intellectually but feeling in the body. As for the exercise for natural swing, try this one: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GeElHXkCG7g.html

@@feeltennis Hi Tomas, reflecting the theme again, regarding your video again, regarding some forehand groundstrokes on videos of the students (rec players) and some other slow motion videos of the pros and even my own groundstrokes. Finally, I must completely agree with your Analysis. I was trapped by focussing the swingpath (box2 in your video). By doing my own groundstrokes (Forehand) I can not really find a point of "ignition" in the swing path itself, its a fluid, smooth motion, it feels like a holistic body movement, beginning with orienting to the incoming ball. I must admit, what for me is easy to handle is often difficult for my students on recreational level and especially for late beginners which never have had practised any ball sports when they were young. They often have this "independent arm action" and when they were tought, that there is a beginning of the stroke initiated in the hand/arm, it ends mostly in the result of this independent arm action. Your exercise you recommend in your video "The Universal Tennis Swing And Drills To Learn It" was very helpful. It works proper with hand feed, even with students which have not a good ball-eye-hand-coordination. It takes mostly a lot of time to transfer this learned movement while hitting from the baseline. In this situation often happens a fallback to "independent arm action" or interrupting their stroke, because they were so focused not missing the ball and let not happen the movement (but they get better results with a bit heavier rackets if they let "flow" the rackets weight). This happens although even they are great "shadow-swingers" and have proper "stored poses" in their muscle memory. This is why a good technique only works good if a player can calculate the most important thing in the game: the ball. In any case your advices and video was very helpful to me. Thank you very much Tomas, please keep on your esteemd work with the feel tennis channel. All the best, Jörg

Thanks for the feedback, George. My point in explaining and teaching fundamentals is the priority in teaching and correcting. It is NOT the only thing we should teach. "Fundamental" means it's base, a foundation. Stability, body rotation, contact zone come first, arm / swing corrections come second and more advanced technique like hitting in tough situations comes after that.

If you play mini tennis you can just rotate the body and make no backswing. Check this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bii5hE-KD6U.html

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Why are you so offended for no reason?