Category: Tennis Tips
Tags: forehandmistakestechniquetennistraining
Entities: Carlos Alcaraztwo cross one line drill
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Hey, in this video I'm going to go through the five biggest mistakes that I see players making on their forehand and giving you tools on how you can fix them. As your forehand is probably the shot that you hit most often.
And if you're anything like most players, it's your weapon, but also your weakness.
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Let's get into it. If you're a subscriber to the channel or you've been watching my videos for a while, you'll probably have a good idea of where mistake number one comes from, as I often talk about tactics coming first before technique.
And so mistake number one is your shot selection on
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your forehand. As I honestly see, this is where most unforced errors come from in most players games.
As for most players, the forehand side tends to be the favored shot. And anytime you favor a shot, you're more tempted to go for those higher risk shots.
Use Carlos Alcarez as an example. Alcarz has one of
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the best forehands of all time. As on any given ball that he receives, he has tons of options.
He can rip his forehand with top spin. He can flatten it out.
Or he can hit a disguise drop shot from behind the baseline. Now, this might sound amazing, but with lots of options also comes decisions to make.
And even
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for someone of Carlos's caliber, it can become a problem. You'll often see him making unforced errors through having too many options.
Now, I know that sounds crazy. So, let's bring it back to reality and bring it back into your game.
The most common mistake that I see players making on their forehand when it comes to shot selection is hitting the
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wrong shot for the phase of play that they should be in. When you're playing a point, there are four phases of play.
We have defense, when you're under pressure, whether that's pushed back behind the baseline or pinned into one of the corners. Anytime your opponent has the upper hand, you're in defense.
We have rally mode. This is where you
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and your opponent are both neutral. Neither of you has the opportunity to attack.
Phase three is attack. This is where you have the opportunity to put your opponent under more pressure.
Anytime you have an easier, shorter, slower ball, your job is to put the pressure on by attacking. And phase four
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is finish. And this is putting the ball away to finish the point.
Now, anytime you're in defense or rally, you should really try to go crosscourt. And although this might sound obvious to you, far too many players try to go down the line when in defense and rally, often resulting in a mistake or an easy
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passing shot for your opponent at the other end. Not only is crosscourt safer because you've got more than four feet of distance to play with when hitting on the diagonal and you're hitting over the lowest part of the net, which is actually 6 in lower in the middle than it is in the corners.
There are two more fundamental reasons. One, when hitting
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crosscourt, you're able to pull your opponent further out of play. And number two, you don't have to recover as far when getting ready for your next shot.
As anytime you pin your opponent in the corner of the court, you don't need to recover all the way to the middle. You need to be off center to the opposite
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side of the court from where you've sent the ball. And so if you feel like you often make the wrong decisions when playing points, try to stick to crosscourt as much as you possibly can, especially when you're rallying and defending and save your down the line shots for when you're in the attacking or finishing phase.
Now, you might think
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that that becomes predictable and that your opponent's going to know what you're doing, but the fact of the matter is they're so focused on their game, they won't realize that you're sticking to these good patterns. And what you'll actually find is if you stick crosscourt for as long as you can, they'll be the ones to rush and go down the line first,
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often making a mistake or inviting you to hit a much safer winner crosscourt. Mistake number two is a technical one and it comes down to splitting your hands too early.
You may have heard me talk about this before, but your offhand when hitting your forehand is vital for
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your efficiency, your balance, and your control. And what lots of players do wrong is they prepare well for their forehand with their offh hand coming back with the racket, but they'll pull their off hand away, opening up their chest to the court before they hit the ball.
The problem with this is you then
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start to spray. Whether you're dragging the ball across to your left or you're catching the ball late and hitting it off to the right, you really lack directional control.
What we should really be doing with our offh hand as we strike and finish the
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shot is once we've prepared in this coiled position, hips and chest sideways on with our arm across our body, our legs are going to drive our back hip through before the racket comes through. And at the moment that your hips start to move, you also want to drive your offhand elbow back, tucking your arm in
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towards your chest. This is going to help you to increase the speed of that rotation and in turn increasing your racket head speed, allowing you to hit the ball deeper, potentially with more spin if that's what you're looking for as well.
But the key is not opening up too early, holding on in this position
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for as long as you can until you're ready to drive into the ball. If you want to be really picky with where your elbow should finish, ideally anytime you're hitting a forehand from the back of the court with an intention to drive up and create arc, you want
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your elbow to be slightly higher than your contact point. This is going to help you to accelerate up the back of the ball to get that trajectory.
Mistake number three is another technical one and it comes to the size
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of your back swing and the size of your follow through. Generally speaking, most players have a back swing that is unnecessarily big.
The benefit of a big back swing is you can generate more power as it creates more space between your racket and the ball, giving you the
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ability to really accelerate towards it. The downside of a big back swing is it takes much longer and often for players that have a big back swing, they catch the ball late, meaning inconsistency and a lack of power.
Now, most players won't see the back swing being a problem in
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itself. they might see it in a different form as a common thing it leads to is a very short follow-through.
Most players that have a really big back swing when catching the ball slightly late, they end up trying to control the ball by stopping quickly. And so they spend time working on trying to follow through, but
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actually it's not helping as the root of the problem is their timing and their big back swing. Instead of having a big back swing and a short follow-through, we want to flip that.
Ideally, we want a short back swing and a long follow through. This is going to help you to time the ball better as you're going to
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have much more time on the ball, but also it's going to help you to extend your hitting zone through the ball, allowing you to improve not only your directional control, but your depth. Now, yes, initially when you try to shorten your back swing, you'll find that you lose a bit of power.
But what you lose in power, you'll gain massively
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in control. And if you do it properly and pair it with tip number one where I'm talking about using your coiling and using your legs to generate power, you'll be able to regain that power through better timing and using your bigger muscle groups.
And so rather than a big back swing and mistiming the ball,
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we want to keep our back swing small and well timed. Mistake number four is gripping the racket too tightly as you hit the ball.
And you've probably heard this before, but maybe for different reasons to what I'm going to explain to you here. Now,
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having a tight grip on your racket tenses all of the muscles in your forearm, which really reduces the range of movement that you have in your elbow and your wrist. Whereas, if you grip really loosely, your elbow and wrist can move in their most natural plane of movement.
Now, having this looseness
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allows you to use all of the energy that you've built up through your legs and your torso as you rotate into the shot. That looseness in your wrist is going to allow you to release that energy.
However, if you grip really tightly, even if you do great movements with your legs and your torso, it's really going
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to limit your power, but it also changes the mechanics of your swing. As by gripping tightly, it forces your racket to move in one plane of motion.
Often decreasing the length of your hitting zone. It stops you from going all the way through the ball, but also it really
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limits the amount of internal rotation you can get from your shoulder. And if you think of a nice loose, heavy top spin forehand, your hand is going to roll over the ball like this.
Whereas, if you're gripping tightly, it just won't happen. Your swing is going to be more of a swipe across your body.
Now,
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my two top tips to help you to be looser on your grip is number one, replacing your overgrip as often as you can. As if you've got a grip that has no grip left on it, you're going to feel like you have to grip really tightly, otherwise you're going to drop the racket.
Whereas, a nice fresh overgrip, you're going to feel much more confident
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gripping loosely and ripping through the shot. The second thing you can do is to try to practice breathing out as you hit the ball.
By breathing out, it allows you to loosen up your muscles in your arm, but at the same time, it helps you to tense those muscles in your core, allowing you to be really stable, but at
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the same time loose. The fifth mistake is losing the collision with the ball.
And what I mean by this is simply letting your opponent's shot put you on the back foot. Instead, on every forehand where possible, we want our body weight traveling forwards or at least staying
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neutral. The last thing we want is our body weight going backwards.
Now, the first way to fix this is first recognizing the type of player you're playing at the other end. If they're a big heavy hitter, you want to position yourself further back than you normally would be.
This is just going to give you space and time to step in to that
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oncoming ball. If they're a player that hits the ball shorter or with less speed, then by all means, you can be on the baseline, but just make sure you give yourself enough space on every single ball.
We're all pretty good at reading whether we're going to hit a forehand or a backhand on any given ball. But what most players struggle
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with is depth perception. And so, if you feel like you're often caught on the back foot, it's really important that you're more aware and more alert when it comes to reading the depth of the oncoming ball.
As soon as you see that that ball's coming deeper or heavier, get yourself back far enough to give yourself room to get your body weight
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going forwards. And if you get caught in a position where they've hit a really good shot at your feet, rather than letting that ball push you onto the back foot, try and get wider with your base.
This is going to give you a lot more stability and control when you're taking the ball on the rise, but it's also going to allow you to hold your ground and stay neutral as opposed to leaning
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