Timing Article

[tennis_chiro]

Great article on timing, and I think I understand, and agree with, most everything said. What I don't understand is the concept of racquet head momentum, and maybe I just don't understand Bill Tilden when he says it's only the racquet head which connects with the ball. I tend to think of the body and racquet as being connected, basically a single unit, with the body contributing the bulk of the mass in the creation of momentum. Is it Tilden's position that at the point of contact the racquet is no longer effectively attached to the hands? If so, then wouldn't the velocity of the racquet head have to be very high to create the necessary momentum to counteract the momentum of the ball?

And, if I take Tilden literally and only the racquet head is involved, then I must have lost touch with the racquet and now have no feel whatsoever. I've tossed the racquet head at the ball and at some point can only hope for the best! Hmm, I don't like that idea!

Do you know of anyone who has ever explored the idea of "effective" mass, which would take into account the size of the person hitting, the rigidity of the grip, maybe if the person is positioned strongly behind the ball versus reaching out to the side, etc.?

Thanks for the article and the drills!

Mike

There's a couple of points to be made in response to your question, Mike. First of all, excuse me for being a little slow in a response. It's been a busy week.

Momentum is mass times velocity and the mass of the racket head is approx. 10x that of the ball (or more). It is not traveling as fast as the ball, but it is traveling almost as fast as the ball, so there is no great question of overcoming the momentum of the oncoming ball, as long as the racket head is moving in the right direction. That's how you move a volley off a fast ball with a short swing, if you have your volley swing moving in the right direction at impact.

I don't think Tilden was talking as much about the racket head momentum as he was about the fact that the racket head is what actually physically touches the ball and there is certainly no getting around it. But (and I haven't seen that book in a long time) he was also inferring something about the momentum of the swing.

As far as your concept of effective mass, I need some input from the biomechanists out there, but there are some fundamental principles that apply.

We hit the ball with levers. Long levers are more powerful than short levers. But remember how Archimedes said he could move the world with a lever if he had a place to put his fulcrum. Your body weight and planting your transfered weight on the front foot makes your "fulcrum" or pivot point more secure for you to swing around. But increased weight may be more stable, but the law of diminishing returns takes effect (or tennis champs would look like interior linemen). Tennis is still more about movement than about how hard you can hit the ball. Also important to note, when you snap your wrist on a forehand, you move the fulcrum to the wrist or basically the end of the handle, whereas when you swing with one big piece pivoting around the center of your body, the lever arm is much longer and the "fulcrum" is somewhere deep in your chest (almost twice as long as from the end of the racket).

As for releasing the racket, you should be able to release the racket right at impact and still have a pretty good shot. Your grip should be snug to control the racket rather than tight. When you hold on tight, your muscles act like brakes. What you really want is to accelerate through the impact (even on a slow shot) so that you can keep the ball that little bit more (at least in feel). One of the great drills is to have someone try the two-finger or middle finger and thumb hit, especially with weaker players who are struggling to get any power. Suddenly, they actually hit the ball faster with this grip because they must use the momentum of the racket head. Maybe not on the first 2 or 3 shots, but almost everyone gets the idea within a few shots.

More food for thought: do you want your surgeon to hold the scalpel tight, or do you want him to let the blade do the work and hold it with absolute control and accuracy (and very lightly)? The racket should be your scalpel. Control it, don't strangle it!

That's all I have time for right now. I hope that answers some of your questions. Perhaps someone else will chime in and explain these points in a little more technical terms.

don

[uspta170296952]

Momentum and racquet head

Great article on timing, and I think I understand, and agree with, most everything said. What I don't understand is the concept of racquet head momentum, and maybe I just don't understand Bill Tilden when he says it's only the racquet head which connects with the ball. I tend to think of the body and racquet as being connected, basically a single unit, with the body contributing the bulk of the mass in the creation of momentum. Is it Tilden's position that at the point of contact the racquet is no longer effectively attached to the hands? If so, then wouldn't the velocity of the racquet head have to be very high to create the necessary momentum to counteract the momentum of the ball?

And, if I take Tilden literally and only the racquet head is involved, then I must have lost touch with the racquet and now have no feel whatsoever. I've tossed the racquet head at the ball and at some point can only hope for the best! Hmm, I don't like that idea!

Do you know of anyone who has ever explored the idea of "effective" mass, which would take into account the size of the person hitting, the rigidity of the grip, maybe if the person is positioned strongly behind the ball versus reaching out to the side, etc.?

Thanks for the article and the drills!

Mike

[zakito]

I like the way this site is always improving, feel like my money is well spent
This year I subscribed also another site of tennis coaching I'm not obviously mentioning: bleahhh,It's awful compared to tennisplayer: 6/0 6/0 for John.
Glad your next article is coming soon.

[tennis_chiro]

another article is coming

Thanks for the positive feedback, Zakito. The follow-up article that gets into timing more than the racket head is coming up soon. It's great when people let John know they like this article. He pays attention!

[zakito]

very,very interesting and useful article.Hope reading more articles from this coach.

[tennis_chiro]

Pause after the turn

I would think you would be better off. When is that pause? Maybe you want to think of it as the point where you get the opposite arm straightened out, then go. As you increase your proficiency, the pause will disappear or be disguised, but it is always still there in function. Note that the pause does not mean "racket back". When you complete the turn and make that pause, you should have the racket head in a plane that includes the movement of the racket to the ball, and the contact point and the target. I hope that is not too complicated. Once you get well past the contact point, the racket "sweet spot" and the head can move out of that plane and make the windshield wiper move or whatever form you want your stroke to take. Hope that helps
don

[dipperhitter]

Regarding the racket and the sweet spot I was wondering if you think I should use the pause after the turn? Maybe that would help me find that point in the strings that you are talking about?

[tennis_chiro]

Braden, Brody, Sweetspot and speed of the serve

I finally got to see Vic's comment about the speed of the serve and Brody's work that the ball goes faster if the ball is contacted closer to the throat. this comes back to my comment about the early use of the Prince rackets. I wonder if Brody's work is dated back to when the rackets had lower sweetspots. I think today's rackets are different and have been designed so that the COR (I believe coefficient of restitution) for the end of the racket is much higher as a percentage of the COR in the true "sweetspot" so that you don't lose so much of a multiplication factor and get the benefit of the additional racket head speed at a greater distance from the other end of the lever arm. I.E. the tip of the racket is traveling faster through the air than the throat. I am the wrong person to speak to this, but I really believe the engineers have moved that sweetspot further out on the racketface with the new materials and designs. That is one reason balls go faster than they used to.

I repeat, I am not the right person to answer that specific question. But I do believe a player will feel the spot that gives him/her the best combination of consistency, accuracy, and power. My point is that once he finds that spot, he has to always be aware of playing with that spot.

[uspta146749877]

Vic Braden

Your anticipation of my answer is correct, but if you are serious about understanding what is going on with these technical points, you just have to read Cross and Lindsay's book, Technical Tennis. I read it just in the last year and I just keep rereading it when I get a chance. It will explode a lot of "myths". I'm not familiar with the "Speedpoint" series. Mostly, I think we make too much out of rackets. It usually took me 3 months to really get used to a racket, and I have seen students who regularly change more often than that. I would find a racket I liked and then get a half dozen of the frames (I'm not on the tour!) and use them for a couple of years at least.

Just to close a my completely unsuccesful post:
the school of thinking I mentioned couple post above has been promoted by Vic Braden quoting Howard Brody.
Overall a punt at MY END.

[John Yandell]

I'll have to chime in to say people look for answers in rackets when they would most often be much better served by working on their strokes.

When you compare the modern rackets to what most people of my generation (you too Don) learned with you realize that the technology is incredible and tweaking the sweet spot one inch in some direction is not the real answer to better tennis.

[tennis_chiro]

Speedport??

OK, as usual, when I get done reading these comparisons, I don't feel like I have really improved my ability to make a choice. You have to find the racket that feels better to you. The ball will go faster from a sweetspot further out on the face of the racket or even from a non-sweetspot if the difference is that great (3 to 4 inches). It's simply matter of math and physics. You reallly should read Technical Tennis.

Bottom line. Try out the racket and be sure it feels good to you. If it is a radical change in weight or balance from your old racket, expect a long time to adjust. You also have to recognize that the racket choice depends as much on the speed of your swing and what kind of ball you hit and what string you use at what tension and what level of player you are.

don

[uspta146749877]

Prince rackets

Your anticipation of my answer is correct, but if you are serious about understanding what is going on with these technical points, you just have to read Cross and Lindsay's book, Technical Tennis. I read it just in the last year and I just keep rereading it when I get a chance. It will explode a lot of "myths". I'm not familiar with the "Speedpoint" series. Mostly, I think we make too much out of rackets. It usually took me 3 months to really get used to a racket, and I have seen students who regularly change more often than that. I would find a racket I liked and then get a half dozen of the frames (I'm not on the tour!) and use them for a couple of years at least.

Hi,
a bit disappointing response
but let me be a pest
A link for a Speedport racket example

http://www.tennis-warehouse.com/Reviews/SP03PW/SP03PWReview.html

[tennis_chiro]

Hi,
there is a school of thinking saying that hitting a ball CLOSER to a throat
provides a faster serve.
Does it contradict or compliment what you are saying?
Another way of phrasing this question:
Say I have two rackets A and B.
The racket B has a sweetspot located closer to a throat.
Is racket B better for my serve?
My understanding of what you wrote above is that your answer is NO.
Do we have the same answer for newest Prince rackets-the Speedport Series?
Does an answer depend on other parameters of a racket?
julian uspta 27873

Your anticipation of my answer is correct, but if you are serious about understanding what is going on with these technical points, you just have to read Cross and Lindsay's book, Technical Tennis. I read it just in the last year and I just keep rereading it when I get a chance. It will explode a lot of "myths". I'm not familiar with the "Speedpoint" series. Mostly, I think we make too much out of rackets. It usually took me 3 months to really get used to a racket, and I have seen students who regularly change more often than that. I would find a racket I liked and then get a half dozen of the frames (I'm not on the tour!) and use them for a couple of years at least.

[uspta146749877]

serve

I love Craig C's drills to feel the different parts of the racket head. Players can definitely feel the difference.

When I was one of the first players to start using the larger headed Prince in 1977, no one could hit a big serve. The "sweet spot" on the original prince was very large (comparatively), but it was also very low on the face and reduced the length of the lever arm on the serve and the speed of the racket head at the contact point (see Technical Tennis by Cross & Lindsay). It took me about a month, but I suddenly found myself hitting my first serve up well above the sweet spot and concurrently found the speed on my first serve. It was a dramatic difference. You still had to hit the groundstrokes in the sweetspot, but not the serve.

I also have junior players who have too much wrist in their forehands and one of the "adaptations" (just my guess) has been to hit a lot of these "golf swings" with the edge of the racket, because that holds the ball a little longer and they are not holding it long enough by the nature of their strokesd!

Just some more food for thought.
don

Hi,
there is a school of thinking saying that hitting a ball CLOSER to a throat
provides a faster serve.
Does it contradict or compliment what you are saying?
Another way of phrasing this question:
Say I have two rackets A and B.
The racket B has a sweetspot located closer to a throat.
Is racket B better for my serve?
My understanding of what you wrote above is that your answer is NO.
Do we have the same answer for newest Prince rackets-the Speedport Series?
Does an answer depend on other parameters of a racket?
julian uspta 27873

[tennis_chiro]

like CraigC drills

I love Craig C's drills to feel the different parts of the racket head. Players can definitely feel the difference.

When I was one of the first players to start using the larger headed Prince in 1977, no one could hit a big serve. The "sweet spot" on the original prince was very large (comparatively), but it was also very low on the face and reduced the length of the lever arm on the serve and the speed of the racket head at the contact point (see Technical Tennis by Cross & Lindsay). It took me about a month, but I suddenly found myself hitting my first serve up well above the sweet spot and concurrently found the speed on my first serve. It was a dramatic difference. You still had to hit the groundstrokes in the sweetspot, but not the serve.

I also have junior players who have too much wrist in their forehands and one of the "adaptations" (just my guess) has been to hit a lot of these "golf swings" with the edge of the racket, because that holds the ball a little longer and they are not holding it long enough by the nature of their strokesd!

Just some more food for thought.
don