Tsitsipas forehand

[John Yandell]

Rob,
The first thing is to get a complete left arm stretch which will increase your turn.

[dimbleby69]

Hi doctor,

Thanks for your comments. I need to unpack a couple of things.

You are thinking of shifting weight linearly( especially in neutral stance strokes) and not throwing your right hip up and around.

Even in neutral stance strokes, I shouldn't be thinking of shifting weight linearly? Makes sense given that I am diagnosing a problem with the 'flip', and “Hips make flips”. I suppose when I hear the word linear I think of it as a good thing, as in linear swing path, but it's not what is wanted for weight transfer.

The body rotates as the arm unfurls and extends out to contact. But, this movement must not outrun the arm swing.

By arm swing do you mean the swing from the shoulder? BG commented earlier that the concept of the Kinetic Chain isn't necessarily helpful. But I still have it as a mental model, of a sequence. I think of the “arm swing” as one of the last components of the Chain.

Does “ this movement” mean the body rotation, or the unfurling and extending of the arm? Are you saying that the body rotation should not be finished before the arm swing (my understanding is that it should be...), or that the unfurling and extending should not outrun the arm swing (the arm should not be straightening before the swing from the shoulder)?

The word outrun has me confused, I realise. Does it mean 'last longer than', or 'finish before'?

Sorry if I'm being obtuse. Thanks again for your comments

regards
Rob

[dimbleby69]

Rob,
The first thing is to get a complete left arm stretch which will increase your turn.

Thanks John. When I practise a more complete stretch I feel it in the back of the shoulder. Does that sound right? Or should it be in the arm itself? Does it matter which?

regards
Rob

[doctorhl]

The danger of my using poor words to describe movement.........this is BG’s terrorory for words and Yandell’s for correct images to copy. Look at second 36/ first half of 37(if you can advance frame by frame and assuming we are synced). At this point you have the edge of the racket pointing down instead of the racket face. Face down puts butt of racket well ahead of racket tip. Until I could get a face down, I could never feel or benefit much from hip rotation.rotation. Words like “ throw the racket butt at the ball”, put butt in the slot”, “accelerate the racket tip” were not useful if not starting from face down position. However, face down position with butt leading seemed to require me contact the ball well out in front, which altered timing some. Because of my old school continental/ eastern Forehand grip, I fought an immediate adjustment to a semi western grip which would have made it easier for racket face down. I initially cheated by hyperextending my wrist at this point to get at least some racket face down before gradually moving to semi western. I do remember self feeding and wall hitting from face down position hundreds of times before using a windup.....perhaps not a good way to get old motor memory out, but that was before I found JY’s website.

[John Yandell]

Rob,
Yes! You should feel something back there. You have my blessing though for a shoulder massage.

Doctor,
I don't believe that anyone should focus on the closed face. It happens but not all of the time.

https://www.tennisplayer.net/members/avancedtennis/john_yandell/the_myth/the_myth_of_the_dog/

[doctorhl]

John, I remember this article well and have to defer to its accuracy I need to withhold comments that are too generalized without observational or biomechanical evidence as I tend to get lost in the weeds sometimes.

[dimbleby69]

Face down puts butt of racket well ahead of racket tip. Until I could get a face down, I could never feel or benefit much from hip rotation.rotation. Words like “ throw the racket butt at the ball”, put butt in the slot”, “accelerate the racket tip” were not useful if not starting from face down position. However, face down position with butt leading seemed to require me contact the ball well out in front, which altered timing some. Because of my old school continental/ eastern Forehand grip, I fought an immediate adjustment to a semi western grip which would have made it easier for racket face down. I initially cheated by hyperextending my wrist at this point to get at least some racket face down before gradually moving to semi western. I do remember self feeding and wall hitting from face down position hundreds of times before using a windup.....perhaps not a good way to get old motor memory out, but that was before I found JY’s website.

More evidence that I am on a remarkably similar path to yourself, doctor. One of the themes of the lessons I've had over the last 8 weeks has been...keeping the racket face pointing down. At one point the dreaded phrase involving the canine (trying not to call down righteous wrath upon me from JY, maybe he won't notice) passed his lips. In the last session he even moved my heel pad round onto what I think of as the Semi Western bevel - No.4. I was not keen, since I haven't hit with a SW grip in more than a decade. And...I have to confess that when I speculated earlier in the thread on 'pre-cocking' the wrist, this was something I did at one point last summer - extending it consciously to change the racket face angle.

Looking again at the animation of Dimitrov at the end of JY's article that he directs us back to in post #65, it strikes me just how late in the stroke the 'lag' phase occurs, when the butt is pointing forward and ESR will be happening. The article says this :

“Roger hits a straight arm forehand on almost all of his forehands. When Roger straightens out his arm as the backswing descends, look at his forearm. At the start of the descent, the top of the forearm basically points to the sky and the underside to the court.”

This descent phase and its relation to what the off arm should be doing at that point, and when the push off the back foot comes when semi-open, are what I am struggling with. I've read enough of JY's Your Strokes articles (ie.all of them) to know that simple, indirectly related adjustments can dissolve apparently intractable problems. I'll have to hope that feeling that stretch in my front shoulder moves things along.

regards
Rob

[dimbleby69]

Rob,
Yes! You should feel something back there. You have my blessing though for a shoulder massage.

Doctor,
I don't believe that anyone should focus on the closed face. It happens but not all of the time.

https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...th_of_the_dog/

Thanks, John. I know where I can get a good massage.

Never a mistake to revisit an article on the site. A paragraph like the one I quoted above, apparently unremarkable on first reading, stirs the grey matter again.

regards
Rob

[stotty]

It's looks pretty good to me. The follow through looks a little blocked at times. This might be because you're focusing on extension. I like the way Roger, even when casually warming up, has a lovely relaxed follow through with his right shoulder finishing facing the opponent - with no decoupling his feet from the ground to achieve it - which shows there is hope the rest of us can achieve the same.

You have done well, though, and I am favourably impressed.

[doctorhl]

It's looks pretty good to me. The follow through looks a little blocked at times. This might be because you're focusing on extension. I like the way Roger, even when casually warming up, has a lovely relaxed follow through with his right shoulder finishing facing the opponent - with no decoupling his feet from the ground to achieve it - which shows there is hope the rest of us can achieve the same.

You have done well, though, and I am favourably impressed.

As Stotty indicated, look at how relaxed Federer swings in this clip when warming up and gets such a long follow through. There is something about the way he feeds the ball.... his racket tip almost strikes the ground in a full relaxed loop. Does striking the feed that low have something to do with his innate feel to contact the ball at full extension on a groundstroke?. Maybe irrelevant, but seems to me to be a connection. His backhand follow through is fairly long considering his hips and shoulders stay closed at contact as he doesn’t need them much in a warmup. I bet his shoulder flexibility is pretty good too.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sfBguU0U6Jg

[doctorhl]

As Stotty also pointed out, his hips/ shoulders, however continue to rotate after contact without decoupling of the feet. Must be loose in the hips also. Incredible!