The Myth of the Recovery Step: Pro Backhands

[hockeyscout]

I do not agree with everything that is being taught in classes, workshops or accreditation. I get great value from the studying it, seeing it, trying it, playing around with it, and re-engineering it.

Tennis is hardly nebulous.

The same athletic, psychological and mental foundations you need to put in place to develop a hockey, baseball, basketball, soccer, sprinter, dancer, guitar player, drummer, piano player, businessman or whatever, are very transferable across a wide variety of sports.

In terms of coaching tennis is miles behind every other sport, and earlier I pointed out this is due to the fact no one has given people like John Yandell billions of dollars to pursue scientific study as it has been done in the world of hockey, baseball, basketball, sprinting, power lifting, personal fitness, neurology, psychology, music, business and all the rest.

Other sports are ahead because their is more money, and interest, in good data and research. Give John 20 researchers, access to every top 20 pro player in tennis, better video equipment, labs, assistance, analytics people, coaches from other sports, scientists and universities and it'd be a much different ball game.

In fact, NO ONE has done a study from top to bottom on a world number one tennis player! No one has invested say 50,000,000$ to study Federer.

Blind squirrels rarely find a nut. T Top players never just appear onto the scene from nowhere. It doesn't work that way.

And, ten years from now I really believe their will be a new breed of super players in the sport of tennis, and the technique will be radically different from what we are seeing today. Radically.

[don_budge]

tennis_chiro and johnyandell…what about Gary Player

What do you guys think of this golf swing as an analogy to the recovery step. To me it's perfect. Look how GOLFPlayer sort of does the "Welby Van Horn" compensatory move with the back foot initially before he walks it on through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o_cMVg4uEg

But Gary Player is totally done with his swing before he makes this move and he isn't even worried about the ball coming back to him. He's going to stroll down the fairway to find the one he just hit.

I was curious as to how you would interpret this seeing as this is also a two handed stroke and some of the footwork and time constraint issues seem to be applicable here as well.

[tennis_chiro]

Please help me out here!

I'm struggling with this one a little bit. I really like the emphasis on the recovery step coming after the completion of extension through the hitting zone and not really part of the actual hitting action. However, I thought there was a major difference between one-handed and most two-handed backhands (not all) in that the power comes predominantly from the rear shoulder and in turn from the rotation of the hips into the shot for the two-handed (opposite-forehand-like) backhand, whereas in the one-handed shot the power is drawn from the front shoulder and the shoulders and hips remain stationary in the classic one-handed backhand pose (not as true with heavy topspin like Wawrinka or Henin).

But the way I am reading this article is that you are identifying a 45 degree shoulder turn on the two-handed backhand (about half what we get for a normal forehand), but with almost no movement or rotation of the hips forward toward a net facing position. That is what is demonstrated by the clip of Murray's backhand. I've emphasized trying to get students whose rear foot was kicking back to try to use that foot to drive into the shot; if they were kicking that foot back, I felt they were not getting full power from their legs in their two-handed shot and were forced to power the shot almost entirely with their upper body.

Moreover, I THOUGHT I was successful in improving the shot when I got the student to drive off their left side (for rightys) and turn their hips into the shot finishing with almost their entire weight on their front/right foot. But the article is saying that kickback I was trying to discourage was actually a good thing that establishes balance for the player in executing the two-hander. Is it possible there is a significant difference between shots hit in the air and shots hit on the ground? Murray's shot looks great. But perhaps he needs that kickback because he is in the air and needs something to push against. All of the clips in the article are where the player doesn't have enough time to actually set up and move into the ball, but when you look at some neutral clips where they did have enough time, I find some difference:

Djokovic neutral stance from rear:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Novak_Djokovic_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Backhand/ND_BH_Center&stroke=ND%20BH%20Center%20NeutralStance%20Rear1%20250fps.mp4

Murray neutral stance from front:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Andy_Murray_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Backhand/AM_BH_Center&stroke=AM%20BH%20Center%20NeutralStance%20Front1%20500fps.mp4

And one of my favorites:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/high_speed/High_Speed.html?MaratSafinBackhand.mov

Hating being wrong again!
don

And granted, to make a strong argument, I'm going to have to find some closed stance clips where the player has enough time to apply the drive I am advocating here. But this should be enough to at least further the discussion. As for the open stance 2-hander, that makes it even easier to use the power of the legs although the actual hip turn may be reduced because the shoulder turn load the power into the "x-factor" between the hips and the shoulders.

[John Yandell]

DB,

Yep. And agreed one of the dangers of accreditation is uniformity...

[don_budge]

Mythology versus Sound Fundamentals...

Would love to hear your thoughts on "The Myth of the Recovery Step: Pro Backhands"

Good timing with this article as there has been much discussion on the forum with regards to "tennis footwork and movement" lately.

This gets outside my areas of expertise. More of a David Bailey question. All of those patterns exist, no doubt, in high level tennis. Teaching them? The danger is that you will get artificial forced movements instead of seeing it all in the flow.

The backfoot around on the neutral stance for example is an interesting case. You see it but this is after the player reaches the extension point in the swing. The danger is of overotating too soon in an effort to make this move...

David is starting a new series in April that will recap some of his work and then evolve into some new analysis of longer patterns of court coverage by top players--maybe he can comment at some point as well.

The above was a comment that you made in April of 2013 on the thread below…which turned out to be one very interesting thread.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/bulletin/showthread.php?t=2324&highlight=swedish+footwork

These two articles about the "recovery step" are quite possibly two of the greatest "debunkers" of modern coaching to date. The danger of accreditation is not only that it is dangerous to try and get everyone on the same page, which is sheer nonsense in the first place when trying to analyze and teach something as nebulous as tennis, but the real danger is also that the "thought police" will succeed in getting everyone on the same page and it turns out to be the wrong page.

It was fantastic to hear you expand your thoughts and analysis so thoughtfully with the appropriate video "evidence" and "examples" to evaporate this myth on this website. I wonder what it is going to take to make it go away on a larger scale. My guess is it will never go away completely now.

I have seen some very strange swings evolve from this concept. As you say…"once in a while a blind squirrel will find a nut" and make a great connection but by and large, on the whole it is one ugly mistake and violation of tennis fundamentals.

[gzhpcu]

Hey, think even I managed to get at least that right...

[John Yandell]

Kyle,

As I encounter them...

[klacr]

Destruction

"All this makes the idea of swinging the recovery foot around on the backhand a worse idea even than on the forehand. Why, because it is more disruptive of the proper sequence of the body rotation. Ironically, in the attempt to add "advanced" elements to your game you can actually end up destroying the core elements in your strokes." - John Yandell

Often times in search of the world class and modern techniques, players and coaches ignore what the body is trying to tell them by forcing and manufacturing an ideal position or movement. Often times, the body naturally sets itself in the right position, its the player or coach that second guesses it.

As for destroying core elements of a stroke in attempting to add advanced concepts...yeah, someone's forehand is dealing with that now.

Great article John. Any more Myth articles coming up? Love debunking these teaching and coaching cliches. Mythbusters: Tennis Version. I smell a new Discovery Channel show.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[John Yandell]

Would love to hear your thoughts on "The Myth of the Recovery Step: Pro Backhands"