Massive Forehand Topspin - Tennis Lesson

hey it's Ian welcome to video 3 of 4 in this new series where it's my goal to transform your forehand into a reliable weapon I want you to have the best of both worlds high degree of accuracy and consistency and also a big amount of offense on that side so that you can dictate points and beat better players than you are right now now in order to make that happen you need three different elements you need placement with your forehand you need power and you need curve in video 1 and 2 of this series we talked about placement and power if you have not seen those already there's going to be links right around this video someplace make sure that you start with placement then watch power and then watch curve because these concepts build on top of themselves today we're going to focus on curve which is topspin this is really the element that allows you to hit with a lot of racket head speed a lot of aggressiveness and offensiveness but still have a wide margin for error so that you don't shoot yourself in the foot and beat yourself with unforced errors when you try to hit with more offensiveness so let's get right to the lessons focused on curve so when it comes to creating topspin especially heavy topspin the topspin that at least there is enough of it to significantly change the flight of the ball which is the whole point to curve the ball to shape the ball the fundamental issue that is non-negotiable that you must have is a significant vertical motion of your racket rather than have the focus of its motion towards your target now the the racket is going to be moving past the ball vertically upwards if you don't have that you don't have topspin now to most people this can aesthetically just doesn't make sense they see their target right in front of them and so it's most intuitive for most people to swing in that direction I think this is probably one of the biggest reasons why a lot of players don't ever achieve topspin or at least not enough to make much difference in their game is it doesn't make sense to feel like they're swinging this way when their target is that way but to begin with she's going to start with her hand on the throat of the racket and she's not going to take the racket back at all instead she's going to put the racket in front of her with her racket head pointed down towards the courts and she's going to leave her racket there about drop a ball to herself and turn the racket around in a circle so her starting position is with the racket head pointed down and as she hits the ball she's going to turn it around in a circle and basically she's going to trace about 3/4 of a full circle or so as she comes around with the racket head so her goal here is to make contact with the ball with her rackets only movement being vertical coming up and around and as she does that you'll notice that the path of the ball is very very art there's a big upward pass and then the ball quickly comes back down again and depending on how big of a screen you're viewing this on and what detail of the video is you'll notice possibly that the ball is rotating very aggressively forwards I would ask her be at this point all right Kirby continue to turn your racket but I want all your shots that you hit to land halfway between the net and the service line so the middle of the service box so anything that lands deeper than that she's pushing forward too much with the racket we want the ball to just go straight up nice there we go so we're getting really exaggerated now loop or curve of the ball last three and this is just the very beginnings of getting a feel for that vertical nice acceleration now she's going to bring her hand down onto the grip of the racket start with the racket lower now that she's not choked up anymore and moved through that basically that exact same motion but now with her hand down where she would normally grip the racket for her forehand ground stroke so she's tracing about three-quarters of a circle turning the racket head around and her goal is to just strike the ball as the racket is coming up vertically not push the ball forward at all and as before so just drop to herself turn the racket around nice now what we're going to do as Kirby gets set up and she's going to start with her racket head up instead of starting with it down now the key here is from her starting position here the head needs to drop before she goes up towards the ball or else topspin is impossible if she starts with the racket head up and it only follows to here then she will not make topspin just won't happen at least not at waist high contact point if the ball is way higher than this then maybe it's possible but from a standard contact point it won't be possible so she'll start with it up practice dropping the head down before coming up to the ball and in the same feeling she will turn the racket head over in a circle to bring it up vertically past the ball so you're going to be looking at home for a big arc of the ball exaggerated curve of the ball and I'm going to challenge Kirby here at Kirby I want your shots to land inside the service line and be at least four feet over the nets so I'm giving her a really specific area parameter to follow you'll notice that she had a more exaggerated curve that time her other shots had topspin but if I'm working with a student that has never been able to hit topspin successfully before then I want him or her to really get a feel of what kind of an exaggerated motion is like the last three Kirby hit and that one included had a really pronounced curve to the shape of the ball and that's what we're looking for topspin can really start to be used as a weapon or an offensive advantage when you combine the path of the racket that we've been talking about with really aggressive acceleration now if as you try harder to accelerate the racket you also flatten out your swing and you start to swing more lateral towards your target then it negates what you were going for and you'll end up you'll end up hitting harder but it'll be flatter and straighter and you'll lose that arc in that consistency and you'll also lose the the big kick off of the court that you see from high level players when they really really go after the ball with heavy topspin and the ball kicks up off the other side of the court so I'm just going to have Kirby really go after a couple here and we're looking for a ball that goes over the top of the net bite I would say at least three feet with a really aggressive swing so that means a really vertical attack at the ball with big acceleration that is a good example there the Kirby let me see you go like 70% spin and 30% drive with a really aggressive swing yep and now really go after it really really aggressively sorry a little bit of a low feed there nice so Kirby's getting a big bounce off my side of the court here really going after it aggressively and it's really fun to hit the ball this way because Kirby's really really accelerating aggressively but because she's accelerating vertically she's getting big height over the net and a big curve down towards the courts which means it's very very safe if I asked her to hit a foot over the net over the net with 70% Drive and 30% spin her consistency would drop substantially of course those would be very effective shots but you need to be able to find the right combination for you that has a good mix of challenge for your opponents and consistency

Channel: Essential Tennis - Lessons and Instruction for Passionate Players

Views: 886,523

Rating: 4.7984495 out of 5

Keywords: Essential Tennis, Ian Westermann, tennis, forehand, lesson, instruction, tutorial, topspin, top spin, power, consistency, groundstroke, tennis (sport), tennis instruction, topspin forehand, how to hit a forehand in tennis, tennis lessons, how to hit topspin, tips, how to hit a forehand, lessons, coaching, tennis lesson, topspin forehand lesson

Id: ZFX5O8YROeo

Length: 8min 18sec (498 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2016