"Brush Up" Myth Busted - Tennis Topspin Lesson - How to Hit Topspin on Forehand & Backhand

hi guys I'm clay Ballard with top speed tennis I know a lot of you guys out there are really struggling getting a lot of topspin on your shots and that's a key if we don't have any topspin we don't have anything that's going to pull our shots down into the court which gives us a very low margin prayer the most common thing you're going to hear for this is to brush up on the ball and I'm going to talk about how that can actually kind of elicit the wrong idea of what you should be trying to do and how brushing up on the ball won't always work with that idea of brushing up on the ball won't always work I'm going to show you what will work so that you can create a ton of topspin on all your ground strokes so if you're ready to get started getting that massive topspin let's go and get started okay so when we talk about brushing up on the ball to get more topspin there's really three parts of this that create the spin two of these are correct and then one thing is incorrect I think it causes a lot of damage as I know it did for me when I was first learning to get topspin on my ground strokes I know that having this idea of brushing up on the ball really made me struggle and I ended up getting balls that float long that don't have a lot of topspin and you know my instructor kept saying we'll brush up on it brush up on it more but the more that I did that the more that I struggled so let's go ahead and talk about this as you're brushing up on the ball as you're trying to get topspin the first piece is going to be that my racket is moving from low to high as I'm coming through the shot so as I'm loading up my racket is going to drop down it's going to be low around waist high and as I swing through my racket overall is going to be brushing up and moving up through the ball if you look at it from this direction it's going to start here and it's going to move through contact from a low to high fashion allowing it to kick up and through the shot that is 100% correct every pro hitting a ground stroke whether it's forehand backhand the racket is always going to be moving from low to high and that's why so many people instruct to brush up on the ball that piece is correct the next piece is going to be you often here get a lot of speed you know the more speed that I get the more power I'm going to have the more spin it's going to create and the more that ball is going to dive down in the court that's also 100% correct where I think that the idea of brushing up really causes people to struggle is it as I try to brush up on this ball I'm going from low to high and all I'm hearing is brush up hit up and hit harder up on the ball and automatically I think about brushing up on the bottom of the ball I know I struggle with this and I see people struggle with this a lot and you'll see the racket face is now open because I'm trying to hit up on the bottom of the ball so you see my racket faces like this now when that happens if I'm hitting up on the ball and my racket face is open that ball is going to sell really far along so if I'm just you know throwing a ball up I'm going to brush up on this one and there's my racket strings up that flew into the back fence not a lot of topspin even though my racket was moving up even though I had a decent amount of speed on that stroke because my racket strings were open the ball flew up in the air now you'll also hear to contact the ball level so as you're going from low to high brushing up on this you may hear people say you want your strings vertical this is also incorrect if I do this and I come in with my strings vertical again it's going to go way too long so that flew almost into the back fence not a lot of topspin on it in reality what we want to do is we want to have these strings turned down what you're going to see with pros is somewhere between 6 and 10 degrees so if this is vertical string bed face up and down this is going to be forward where the racket strings are now facing down toward the ground often say to have them facing about at the bottom of the net as you're making a ground stroke from the base line that's going to tilt it forward and that's the main difference in the idea of brushing up on the ball instead of brushing up on the ball what I like for people to in visualize is brushing up on the top of the ball and it's just a minor than in details or language but it makes a big difference in how your brain visualizes this so if we grab a tennis ball I went ahead and made three dots on this tennis ball and we'll see the bottom dot is red the middle dot would be in the center of the ball that would be black and then the green dot is on top so if I'm brushing up on the bottom of the ball I'd be contacting this red dot and my face is completely open very bad shot that's going to sell way long no topspin very bad if I contact in the middle of the ball my strings straight up and down again that's going to sell long and I'm not going to get in the court if I contact the top of the ball where that green dot is now I'm going to be able to get the topspin on the ball it's going to stay lower and it's going to dive down into the court that's what all your pros are doing and that's why I want you to visualize as you're brushing up you're brushing up on the top of the ball because my strings are facing down let me give you a great real world scientific example of this tennis warehouse has a great tool where you can measure trajectories and put in different numbers now and the one I put in here this is a pro caliber swing speed about 88 miles an hour that's a pretty good hard hit for hand for most pros you're going to see that the angle that the racket is moving up on both of these is 45 degrees so it rackets moving from low to high 45 degrees up and that's exactly the same on both these strokes the only difference is one of them is turned down the racket faces turn down about 7 degrees you can see that that ball is turning down into the court a lot of good topspin I think it's almost gotten I have to look on there again but it's got 16 1800 rpms more topspin than the one where the strings are level and you can see that that ball sailed well long into the back of it would have been well long if you're hitting that in the real court had a lot less topspin even though everything else was the same so we got to get on top of that ball as we're brushing up that's going to give us a massive amounts of topspin now we're ready to we understand the science of this we're ready to go ahead and learn this by using a series of drills let's go ahead and do those and you guys are really going to be well on your way to hitting some great topspin forehand and backhand z' okay so first of this we're going to do some basic drills to ingrain the overall motion of the stroke and then we're going to go ahead and take it over to the fence and we're going to work on how to control the face angle so we know we're doing this correctly so let's start out with the basic motion I'm going to pretend like I'm hitting a ball straight into this fence as I'm loading up as I'm turning back I want to make sure that I turn my hips I turn my shoulders as a getting ready for the shot we'll go ahead and use a modern or 45-degree open stance here and as I'm loading up I want to make sure that my racket drops down so we talked about this in the lag and snap that's a forehand video to point to in our system but we're going to make sure that racket drops down and our hand stays on this side of our body so if I'm going this direction even as I'm loading up my hand is staying in front of my body as my racket drops down so it's getting below the ball this is the dropping part so I can start from low and can rush up too high and get on top of the ball this I have to get my hand first low and in front of my body now as I'm coming through I'm going to brush up and over top of the ball as I come on around as I finish my left hand or my right hand is going to finish over my left shoulder here that's going to allow me to go from low to high as I'm coming on through and again that racket should be kicking up about 45 degrees as you're coming on through the harder you swing the more speed you're going to have the more spin the ball is going to have on it so go ahead and do about 50 repetitions just focusing on getting that hand to come down about waist high and then rushing up and ending up over on the outside of the left shoulder as you're coming on through that's going to get you the overall motion there now I'm going to go ahead and step up to a fence you can do this in your living room you can do this wherever but I want to get a sense of when I'm at contact what's the angle of the face now we'll start out you know I'm going to start out about six inches or so with my left foot behind this wall and that way that will represent when I'm coming into contact about where my racket is going to be so as I'm again going to be 45 open here as I'm coming back same motion here I want to do this first one incorrectly so as I brush up into this ball I'm going to think about hitting up on the bottom of the ball and you'll see that my racket strings are open to this fence that's incorrect that's going to get that ball to sell really long the second one I'm gonna do the exact same thing and I'm going to come in level with the fence that's also wrong I don't want my strings to be level here I want my strings to be pointing down so as I load up again this third time as I come I'm going to definitely swing up on the ball but I'm going to feel like the top of my racket hits the fence first and if I do this a couple times really nice and slow I'm loading up getting low hitting up on the ball but my top of my strings are getting to the defense first again I'm going to do about you know fifty to one hundred repetitions making sure that the top of my racket reaches the string fire the defense first that's going to get that tilted forward that's going to get you a good feel for this and then we're going to do the same thing with another you know 50 repetitions or so where I go from low to high and now I'm concentrating on that racket being tilted forward as I finish again over my left so do about 50 or so we won't have to do a set number low to high not worrying about the face 50 where I'm letting the tip of the racket hit first and then 50 where I'm coming through and getting that same feeling as I'm making a full stroke again now I've done my shadow reps I'm going to feel pretty good at this motion and we'll go out and hit some tennis balls doing this so once we've done the drills on the fence now we're going to take it back and imagine this ball again with the red the black and the green dot on top if I'm going to start out here hitting the red dot on the bottom of the ball this would be the incorrect motion we'll grab a couple balls here and I'm going to make that low to high path I'm going to brush up on the ball but this time my strings are going to be open in the wrong manner we'll see here as I do that even though I'm brushing up on the ball that almost landed and hit the back fence so I'm accelerating I'm hitting up on the ball it doesn't have a lot of topspin on it and it's going way long as we start to turn that dent a little bit and we go to level if I still am swinging pretty hard even if I'm level it's going to go too long again I hit the back fence just like the video of the diagram we saw when we were looking on the computer now third we're going to do this the right way just like we practiced on the fence I'm going to let myself go from low to high but now I'm going to have the tip of the racket leading and I'm going to be brushing up on the top of the ball making contact on top of the ball and you can see if I do this correctly this ball is going to dive down into the court Oh got a little low on that one the ball is going to dive down in the court though and we're going to see some good topspin on it there we go that was started to jump down in the court do a little bit more there we go we see that one really started to tell down at the end I'll go ahead and try to go even a little bit more so you guys can see this on camera better there we go start to see that one curve and definitely start to see that one curve down so those are even just soft toss generating all your own speed if you start having a player hitting it 30 40 miles an hour into you you're going to create even more spin because you're going to have the momentum of their ball clashing into your racket and getting even more topspin so go ahead trout a good hundred shots getting on top of the ball still brushing up but he on the top of the ball and that's going to allow you to get that overall shape once you've done these drills the drills on the fence go ahead and take it out with a playing partner do about another hundred repetitions and you guys are going to be hitting the ball great so good luck get on top of that ball you're going to be doing fantastic hi guys I'm clay Ballard and welcome back to top speed tennis and the topspin forehand series hopefully you guys have watched a couple of the first videos we talked about what creates topspin what's the perfect grip and what's the perfect racket setup but now today we're going to get to the the real fun stuff in my opinion we're gonna start talking about technique and how you can use this right arm to not only creates more speed but to do it by using physics instead of power and also how you can use this right arm with the exact same motion to get more topspin be sure to stick around to the end I have some great drills for you guys let's go and get started okay so as I mentioned you know we want to use this right arm in the correct way to create some speed we'll go over speed first then we'll talk about the topspin but if you can imagine my right shoulder here as being a pivot point and my right arm is going to swing on this pivot I have a full you know 360 degrees range of motion or roughly 360 and as I let my arms swing I'm just going to let it swing with gravity here and you'll see that my my fingertips are actually moving with some pretty good speed without very much muscular effort that's because I have a pretty long lever here my right arm is extended and creating a long lever now if I bend my right arm and shorten this lever and my hand is much closer to my my pivot point here my shoulder now as I let that swing it's gonna my hand is gonna be moving much slower as I let that extend out it's going to move much faster that's what we want to do in the forehand also is create a longer lever by keeping this right arm pretty straight all the way through the hitting zone that's what you're going to see with some of the best players like Roger Federer Rafael Nadal really all the top pros are going to do something pretty similar to that so that's the first reason we want to do that we want to create speed with the right arm by using physics and keeping it nice and long to create this big arc and more speed now the second part is going to be some topspin and as we're coming in let's imagine this this ball is coming in I'm about to make contact with this ball out in front of my body and it's coming in basically right in my strike zone just above waist high now for those of you who have a bent right arm it's going to be difficult for your arm to get low enough to where your your racket can be moving upward very easily because

Channel: Top Speed Tennis

Views: 479,201

Rating: 4.8512464 out of 5

Keywords: tennis, top speed tennis, clay ballard, how to hit topspin in tennis, tennis topspin, forehand topspin, backhand topspin, topspin, brush up, Forehand, Backhand

Id: c0LiT3ZQFzY

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2015