Shoulder Adduction Will Transform Your Forehand Contact
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- čas přidán 22. 06. 2024
- Horizontal shoulder adduction is the final major link in the forehand kinetic chain, when the pectoral humeral angle closes, and the pecs drive the racket through contact.
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I’ve been trying to figure this out for the last 3 months! Thank you so much!!! My problems started when I successfully got a coach to teach me how to shorten my swing, and I managed… but then I lost the ability to hit the top of the ball and keep it down. I will now warm up every time with those small motions you showed us. 🎉
This is the only video I've seen that discusses this. I've struggled to understand how to fix my forehand and this is a summary of the solution. I have a lot of work to do but results are immediate. This alone solves that tight feeling which costs me so many points. Great work man.
Amazing. That's exactly why I do this.
@@FaultTolerantTennis Do you teach to slice drive the ball with the one hander at 80-100 mph?
@@germanslice Not sure I understand the question, but definitely not. Trying to hit a slice at 100 mph sounds like an automatic error.
@@FaultTolerantTennis
Ok well I changed it from brushing under the ball to pronating instead all through the ball instead to slice drive it leading with the bottom edge of the racquet. And the result of using a longer contact point is 80-100 mph slice drive groundstrokes staying all low through the court with greater deeper more penetrating lengths in the court that I could not get with the normal slice grip. So I changed the contact point to allow me to drive slices with effortless power instead of having to muscle the ball with just brushing it.
@@FaultTolerantTennis Well I shifted my contact point away from the middle. So it is possible to drive slices at the same velocities as the groundstroke drives when you lead with the bottom edge of the racquet into the ball. I do not use the slice grip. I generate the slice a different way instead.
I subscribed immediately after watching this video, great explanation, thanks!
As a fellow coach great to see people who sees so many BS tips on CZcams it's great to see people who know what they're taking about.
Really glad to watch this! This really open a new page of my understanding on forehand stroke!
best example for this point is Federer, he is hitting effortless forhands in practice only concentrating on the contact. Thanks for this worthy information, most club coaches are so useless
That's a great point. I highly recommend that practice style for most players - don't start injecting effortful velocity until you're really feeling the contact zone.
It is what I need the most. Thanks.
top tier content!!!! please keep it coming. subbed.
I watch a lot of tennis channels...
this is a good and simple explanation of the space in front of the ball
my subscription
That's exactly right. This motion is WHY the best forehands require so much space to hit, and can't be hit right next to the body.
Through lots and lots of experimenting with the forehand motion I actually found that the key is to do exactly the opposite during the contact i.e. opening the shoulder angle and extending the overall distance of the racquet handle from the body by relaxing and letting the shoulder to open. Whenever I try to close the shoulder angle as you suggest I feel like I can't put the body weight into the motion any more as all the leg work I do counters the shoulder opening and I feel like I need to really stress my peck muscle in order to close the shoulder as I need to fight my own legs now.
This is a nuanced point so this will be a longer reply. You're absolutely right about what you're feeling, and you're right about relaxing and leg drive.
The forehand is a kinetic chain - chain being the operative word there. For it to work perfectly, each link in the chain fires after the previous link. Horizontal shoulder adduction is the *last* major link. Trunk rotation and leg drive come first.
You are very correct that, if you adduct your shoulder too early, your swing won't feel right, and it'll interfere with the power from your legs. Early in the swing, you are supposed to relax, and drive with your leg, and then torque your torso around with your stomach muscles. Only after that initial drive should your chest drive your hand forward, not before.
Additionally, you *can* hit a pretty decent forehand with leg drive and trunk rotation alone, and no adduction, but it'll never be truly great. I'll be able to hit as hard as your max effort shot just by torquing my abs a little and adducting my shoulder, but it'll take me a lot less energy. I promise it's worth spending the time to sync the adduction to the end of your chain. You can still explode off your back foot, and you can still torque your stomach muscles, while adducting your shoulder at the end. The real magic happens when all three fire in the right rhythm. The ball will explode off your strings.
@@FaultTolerantTennis Thank you for such a detailed explanation! What you say makes sense and I completely agree with you on most points. Moreover, this is how a forehand motion is taught by almost all high level coaches I've ever had lessons with. However, when trying to apply these ideas in practice I faced the following problem: as the pace increases I have less and less time for all my leg drives and body rotations. This means that I have to make all the motions either shorter or faster or both. As you absolutely correctly pointed out for the kinetic chain to work the timing requirements have to be met i.e. I start with my lower body and wait for my upper body to "catch up" the motion while it's still relaxed and only then uncoil the torso and then shoulders. However, as I shorten my motion (or do my lower body faster) this makes my torso just lag behind more and the only way to make to make it to catch up on time is to actively muscle it with the abs and later with the peck muscle right away together with the legs. Because of this at no point I have my muscles relaxed any more. I'm not sure if I'm explaining it clearly but I hope you understand what I mean. I also found a solution to this issue but I had to entirely change the idea of how the racquet is accelerated and a stroke is produced. I believe it's possible to hit great forehands the way you describe it and many people including top pros do so. They somehow manage to time it well though in spite of the issue I mentioned. I personally could not make it work for me without overloading my shoulder and getting injured as the result.
@@alexeys158 I'm fairly certain I know exactly what you mean. Here are a few things that might help:
1. One of the best open secrets in tennis is that you actually *don't* need to use your legs for anything but balance if your opponent is hitting hard. You barely even have to coil your upper body if you don't want to. You can stay almost completely facing the net, adduct your shoulder to create a very short swing, and in doing so remain very competitive. The better you get, the more links you can incorporate at a faster pace, but I can't stress enough how often pros hit using ONLY the later links, and not the beginning ones. Fognini, for example, has hit 90 mph forehands while on the DEAD RUN, getting absolutely nothing from the lower body.
2. The inverse of the kinetic chain is how fast you can do it. Shoulder adduction is the quickest. Trunk rotation is pretty quick. Leg drive is the slowest. Because of that, you include or exclude links based on the shot you're seeing. At the top level, the guys have such a strong core that they rotate (and adduct) on almost every shot, but they don't necessarily press with the back foot on every shot. As you train your stomach muscles, you'll get to the point where your core rotation is explosive enough to handle fast balls as well, and you'll learn when to fire the trunk so that your arm has time to fly out to the ball before it gets on top of you.
3. You need to adjust properly when you're late. The safe swing strategy when you're late is to throw the racket above your head, or to stay sideways (don't rotate) in order to adduct forward like normal. If you try to force the arm forward into space that doesn't exist, that's when it hurts. Preventing shoulder injury is all about learning to feel the natural motion of your shoulder, and then creating it even out of awkward spots. It's a matter of figuring out how to swing the shoulder through different contact points without impingement.
I know this was long, but hopefully it helps, and don't hesitate to ask if you still have questions.
U suggest that the racket should be slightly closed at contact, do u have a suggested range of closeness?
Great video. I’m subscribed. Seems like the first step is to figure out my personal motion and where my hand/wrist is and the angle they are at in the optimal impact zone. The second step is to adjust the racquet angle (which means adjust my grip) to get the strings in the right position. Step three is then focus on the shoulder adduction. But it has to be in that order. Is that right?
Nice explanation kuya
Interesting concept. Was expecting to see also a demonstration during a rally though.
Noted! I'll have more full strokes, through an actual ball, in follow-up videos. Still experimenting with the best techniques for delivering the info.
From a Fellow coach: With all the BS out there, Great to see someone who knows what he's talking about.
Thanks, and in that same vein, I always invite discussion in the comments in pursuit of truth. I've been wrong before, and I'm sure I'll be wrong again. It's the only way to uncover the truly important things people don't already know.
Everything follows contact point
Interesting content. Thank you 👍… and please get a body mic with wind noise reduction 😉
Yeah, I get it. Would it really be a tennis video, though, if the coach wasn't talking to the cam, on court with, wind noise in the background?
Great content. Thanks for posting! Wondering if you could clarify - When exactly does the adduction happen in relation to contact with the ball? Is ball contact at the start of the adduction, midway through it, or towards the end?
Ideally, contact is not right at the beginning of your adduction, because then you don't get as much time for the chest to accelerate the racket. Too late, and you're now pulling sideways, rather than back-to-front.
Typically, contact happens with a pectoral-humeral angle of 150-100 degrees. 90 is usually too late. Watch some slow motion footage of your favorite pros from the side to see the player to player variation in how much they use.
I would say it depends on how heavy their racket is and how heavy the incoming ball is. The less force you have to counteract, the more you can afford to contact the ball later in the adduction. Imagine you're playing with a feather or just your hand. You'd have to be adducting right at the start and the whole way through because you'd basically have to carry the ball entirely and throw it forward in order to get any speed back.
Solidddd
Great video. I also have a question about beginning of the shot. Should our be closed first? So first it closed, then we opening it and closing again. Thanks!
Hold the racket comfortably, and place your hand away from your body. Allow the racket to open as you swing, don't force it open, and then, again, allow it to close, rather than forcing it closed.
I like it! The concept of starting with where you feel strongest/ swing fastest is interesting. I usually do a lot with students rotating their hips and whipping both up and across the ball (more-so across) to create this. You may have a better foundational move here though, because it starts with the correct feeling. Then the "upstream" stuff. I'm guessing based on the focus of pec action creating the shoulder motion that you would have a preference for straight arm forehands (all things being equal)?
Glad it resonated with you. Often, students have this natural adduction already, and in that case, working with them to integrate their hip rotation is critical, so that's wonderful.
I do believe, like you said, that the motion we're talking about here, the END of the swing, is the truly fundamental part of the stroke, and so with new players, or with players whose stroke is a complete mess, I highly recommend starting here.
With respect to the straight vs bent elbow - all else is very rarely equal. Similar to grip, I'd never correct a student either way, given that they are comfortably and efficiently adducting their shoulder and driving through contact. Jannik Sinner is a great example of a player who almost always hits with a bent elbow, but you'll see that elbow fly way out in front of his body, because his horizontal shoulder adduction is so strong.
first shoulder rotation and then adduction, correct? or does the rotation happen halfway?
Great question. I don't want to use the term "rotation" imprecisely. There are two different things rotating:
1. The trunk rotates BEFORE the shoulder adducts (they might bleed together). You start sideways, and you rotate back towards your target.
2. The shoulder internally rotates AS the shoulder adducts. While your chest presses your arm forward, your arm naturally rotates in (in meaning towards the midline of your body, in this case.)
Hope that clears up any confusion.
Awesome dude but what about people that are prone to shoulder impingement (like myself)? Is there any hope for us?
What's the nature of your impingement? Which motion hurts, or locks up?
@@FaultTolerantTennis it's the bicep tendon getting impinged in the subacromion space. I have the problem in both shoulders. It's genetic, it happens to quite a few people. The tendon gets sore after a while and it could theoretically get frayed. So, I avoid such motions. The internal rotation portion is what seems to somehow irritate it
Subscribed! Question about the forehand, I read the accelerate late like Sinner article, trying to figure out what I need to do now to hit a bigger forehand.
czcams.com/video/yOmb8QOMHZ0/video.html
I'm the one in blue. I am trying to see what can I do better? Accelerate starting at contact by trying to fire the hips and only when they are square to net then try to accelerate the upper body? I can feel the hips fire but then I don't know how to feel firing the upper part faster. Suggestions?
Your fundamentals look great!
1. Move your contact point right. It's too close to your body. Your brain still wants to swing straight at the ball, but that's not what we want. The first motion is exploding around, which sends the racket out, not forward, and then the racket goes back-to-front through contact.
2. Watch some pros from the side. Even though the swing is low-to-high, it's a very slight upward diagonal. The current swing path you're using should only be used on defense or lobs - it's too vertical. Drive the racket mostly forward, not up. (this will also naturally adjust itself as you move your contact point right)
3. Train your abs. I'll be releasing videos on this later, but work on your quick, explosive twist. The more explosively you can go from 90 degrees turned, to facing the net, the better your forehand will be.
@@FaultTolerantTennis wow thanks for the detailed reply. I’ll get working on spacing further away and use the abs to get the swing to go more out and away instead of being jammed. I’ve never thought about swinging out and around. My brain just wants to crush forehands and it’s become used to swinging the way I do now. Thank you, hopefully after the suggestions are implemented I can hit properly!