Achieve Effortless Power By Releasing The Racket Head

thanks for clicking on the video my name is Tom allsop today I'm going to help you to get a little bit more racket speed on your forehand and we're going to achieve that by being able to release the racket head now how do we do that well we got to make sure we're using all of the coordination chain the shoulder the elbow the wrist even the fingers to make sure that we can release the racket head and get the racket head the tip of the racket moving faster than the handle so the goal right now is to move the tip of the racket faster than the handle of the racket if I wasn't to do that and everything moves together as one piece it's going to be very difficult to generate that racket speed racket speed is essentially getting this thing moving and in order to do that we need to have the coordination chain working now we're going to talk about that from the ground up where the energy comes through our body through the legs through the hips through the shoulders but today I really want to focus about what's going on with the arm if we lock the shoulder and we swing everything from the shoulder again we're not going to transfer the energy into the rack your head if we don't pronate the Almond we just push the arm here again not a lot of Racket speed is going to happen we're pretty much at the same con same angle here as here so everything is moving together if we don't use the wrist we also struggle to move the racket head so we want to be able to rotate the shoulder rotate the elbow and forearm and release the wrist and release the racket so everything moves in this coordinated sequence where ultimately the racket can be released instead of hanging onto it by either tightening this this or this so I'm going to give you the full story on how much you should be using your wrist hands and even fingers as you're hitting the forehand now personally I think you should be engaging your hands quite a bit that's how you're going to feel this shot you don't feel the shot from the shoulder you got to relax the wrist relax the hands and feel like you can maneuver the racket head from the hands a little bit now you don't want the entire shot to be a rusty shot and certainly you can get too risky and and get too messy by flicking the racket around but at the same time for me to feel a shot a lot of it comes through the hands if I push it up the line I'm pushing it with my hands this way if I'm whipping it off my feet I gotta use my hands even my fingers to work the racket head so I'm trying to be relaxed with my hand because to me the racket is an extension of my hand if I asked you all now to do a shadow swing without a racket demonstrating a forehand how would you do it here's an interesting fact for you a low level player or someone who doesn't play tennis will always swing pretending to hold in a racket anyone at an advanced level will always do it with their hand so they'll pretend the racket is their hand instead of something they hold that's how I see the forehand the racket is an extension of my hand I therefore have to relax it and be able to maneuver my wrist maneuver my hand even maneuver my fingers to work the racket head and to truly control the tennis ball so when it comes to the arm we're looking to use every joint in the right way the shoulder will rotate a lot of people lift it up that ruins the entire coordination chain right there you can't really rotate the shoulder from here so relax the shoulder feel like the shoulder can rotate the forearm needs to rotate and the wrist will be laid back a little bit at contact but that should also release and rotate along with the forearm if you do this you have that coordination where everything is transferring through from the Shoulder Through the arm and into the racket head before I show you how to develop this coordination in a very natural way it's important to understand that this is not necessarily the right way to hit a shot it can be the right way to hit a shot but if the ball is coming fast say someone serves 120 miles an hour at me I'm not going to want to release the racket head because my timing is going to be a little bit tricky and by holding on to something maybe not releasing the shoulder the arm and the wrist I can control that racket head a little bit more so the more you release everything the more power you'll get But ultimately the more you risk losing a bit of control so in my experience people seem to have a pretty good feel for rotating the arm at the shoulder some people will certainly lift it a lot but they can feel when they relax it that the shoulder can rotate to allow them to swing the racket around the body people who do that and keep the arm quite straight tend to be able to bend the arm with a little bit of practice and feel like they can again move this racket head a little bit quicker by using the shoulder joint in the right way and the elbow in the right way now the forearm pronation with the wrist tends to be a little bit tricky there's a lot of people who are laid back at the point of contact so the wrist is laid back here that's fine but as they come through it continues to stay laid back again not necessarily wrong because you might do this if a ball is coming really fast and you want maximum stability but if you want the effortless power you have to be able to come in here and rotate the forearm and release the wrist a little bit so when you get to this point some people might be here some people might be here depends a lot on the grip but my wrist is no longer laid back so I'm not keeping the wrist laid back all the way it's releasing and people find that tricky but I have an exercise to help you with that so I'm going to show you how you can use a golf putter to really understand how to use your arm your shoulder your elbow your wrist and the right way to release the tennis racket now right now we're going to be releasing this but it's going to be easier because there's so much weight to it all the weight is at the end so if I take this and I hang on to it like this and don't release it it actually feels very heavy if I swing it and I just allow the weight of the club to guide me in the right direction my shoulder rotates my elbow bends because it doesn't want to stay maybe it'll stay straight but anyway bend the elbow but what it'll really help you to do is to release the wrist we don't want to be keeping this back all the way here it's going to feel very heavy so use this weight allow the weight to guide you in the right direction and to release all of your arm and this is what a lot of the coaches are looking for when they say passive wrist is to allow it to release but the problem is a lot of people don't do things naturally so you have to train yourself to understand what release in the wrist really feels like this should help you to do that you can usually find Putters at like a Goodwill or something like that for a couple of bucks so find one that's got a little bit of weight to the end and just swing it around and just don't have any tension let it swing and it'll guide you in the right direction now when I pick up this racket here I can do the same thing and you can sort of imagine that this is this rack is heavy you know think about how would I swing this if it was heavy and just let it swing obviously you can hold on to this and you can do this you can tighten your shoulder you can tighten your wrist but just let everything release and it shouldn't feel all whippy and Rusty but if you just release everything you'll end up using your wrist in the right way to release the racket head so we're trying to use your hands you're trying to use your wrist but that doesn't mean you have a risky shot and that's how you're going to generate the power you just have to find ways to effortlessly and efficiently move the racket head if you enjoyed the video don't forget to hit like And subscribe and if you're looking for another video on the coordination chain check out this one right here it's a good one

Channel: TPA tennis

Views: 117,455

Keywords: tennis, forehand, technique, swing, tennis tips, tennis forehand, racket speed, power

Id: tGA__q2qLco

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Tue May 23 2023