Biomechanics First and Tennis Technique Second (Part 3 of 3)

In part 3 of conversations with Colin, we go a bit deeper into how we can build tennis technique based on biomechanics.

If you missed the previous parts, jump first to part 1, where we discuss the main purpose of improving technique and why we must always have a clear intention.

In part 2, we start discovering how the body’s natural biomechanics need to be the foundation of tennis strokes as only then will we avoid struggling against our own body and the laws of physics.

The key message of this article is that tennis technique is not based on someone’s opinion but on the natural biomechanics of the body.

What confuses tennis players as they search for more information about tennis stroke techniques is that there are so many different opinions on how a forehand or a backhand needs to be hit.

In reality, most tennis pros out there base their teachings on their own opinions instead of first understanding the simple biomechanics of the body and how it naturally wants to move.

They focus on player’s styles – which is what you see as the variations of the forehand technique among the players – and fail to see the foundations that we need to teach first.

So, in my point of view, most of the online and on court instruction does not work because it’s based on someone’s opinion and not on biomechanics and physics.

And the proof of that is you, dear reader, as you are still here online reading various tennis blogs and watching videos, still hoping that there is a solution for your troubles. Clearly, they have not been solved yet despite taking tons of tennis lessons and buying a bunch of online tennis courses.

The reason for not finding the solution yet is that the solution is counter-intuitive and quite illogical.

The Paradox Of Developing Correct & Effortless Tennis Strokes

When you hit a tennis ball with the racket and you miss, you will likely want to exert more control of the racket on the next shot.

That means you will grip the racket even tighter and try to control the racket even more by engaging a lot of muscles in your arm so that the racket won’t wobble or twist or swing around too much.

As you tighten your control of the racket, you use only your muscles to move it through space. You don’t use gravity, momentum, centrifugal force, swings and other elements of physics and biomechanics.

While it seems at first glance that exerting more control over the racket will help, it actually doesn’t. Not only you are still missing a lot, but you also lack power.

And so the most logical way to increase power and control is to try even harder.

Yet, it doesn’t work. It keeps you frustrated and confused because here and there you see a very skilled tennis player who executes his strokes effortlessly while still hitting the ball very fast.

That’s where the biggest paradox of tennis strokes lies: in order to get more power and control, you need to work LESS hard. (…with your arm! Your legs and body need to engage more!)

You need to loosen control of the racket and allow it to swing more.

Instead of using just your arm to control the racket, you need to try and engage your whole body from the legs upwards through your hips and core and eventually shoulders and arms to make sure your body is not fighting against itself.

It feels like you are giving up control – and, for a short while, you are – until you LEARN that there is another way of controlling the ball.

And that’s through an effortless and repeatable swing.

If we can swing very similarly over and over again, then we’ll hit a very similar ball – which is what I already showed in part 2 of this series of video articles on the topic of tennis techniques.

Why It’s So Difficult To Find A Solution To Effortless Tennis

The biggest obstacles in finding this counter-intuitive solution are:

• Simple logic: If the ball doesn’t go fast enough, I’ll try to hit it harder (meaning engaging more muscles in the arm and applying more “force” to the racket as it hits the ball) resulting in more tension.
• Playing for points too much: This causes even more tension in the body due to pressure and of course not being able to experiment at all with different ways of swinging at the ball because too much is at stake in every point.
• Playing on fast court surfaces or exchanging shots with friends at the speed that you cannot manage yet: You will keep tensing up when the ball is arriving since you are in time pressure.
• Playing with not very skilled tennis buddies who cannot give you many very similar balls in a row: You cannot get into a nice rhythm. They give you high, low, short and long balls with various rotations, and that prevents you from settling down and relaxing a bit more so that you can start playing in a more relaxed manner.
• Being very critical of mistakes: When this happens, you are unable to let go and experiment a little bit to see if there’s a better way of hitting a tennis ball.
• Simply not enough repetition to groove in and trust strokes where you let go and swing more: Tennis is a very demanding sport in terms of timing and ball judgment, and our brain needs to see thousands and thousands of ball flights to eventually better calculate the timing of our swing. Playing just twice a week for example will not get you very far in tennis.

I will explain the paradox of power and why more force doesn’t work in a future article.

Biomechanics As A Foundation And Technique As A Modification

So, what does it mean that biomechanics is the foundation of a tennis stroke?

I show Colin an example with my forehand: it is based on hip rotation, weight transfer and a swing (pendulum). Later on, I show the same principle with my one-handed backhand.

That’s the biomechanical foundation that generates effortless power and a repeatable swing.

This biomechanical principle with slight adjustments is also a foundation in other sports like baseball or golf where we swing something.

Now I need to modify this fundamental movement so that it works for the game of tennis.

To do that, I need to apply MINIMAL control of the whole motion so that I don’t “kill it”.

I can easily overpower the swing based on gravity, for example by exerting a lot of control over the racket with my muscles.

Once I lose that feeling of the swing, I don’t know what I should be looking for as the source of power and the source of consistent and repeatable movement that will produce a repeatable ball.

So, I need to very carefully “juggle” between maintaining the natural biomechanical movements of the body and the amount of control that I apply.

I explained this process before where I talk about “throwing and pushing” ratios that you have to adjust for every single ball.

As you can see, that requires a high level of attention to your body and knowing what you’re actually trying to do.

This is the process that will keep improving your strokes for a very long time.

My strokes were improving gradually for about 10 years following this process.

I am paying attention (feeling!) to the comfort level of my body while trying not to break down the natural swing and other natural movements of the body as I look to apply just the right amount of control so I can control the ball.

I am paying attention to the swing and trying to feel the right time to amplify it.

This is the same principle as when you sit on a swing (that you find in a children’s playground) and want to swing more.

You simply feel the right moment to kick your legs forward or backward.

No one can explain to you in English how to find the right moment. You simply feel it after some time as you keep trying to time it.

We need to do exactly the same in tennis when we swing our racket towards the ball.

We need to feel the right time to amplify the swing, and we need to find ways of naturally doing that, which is through hip rotation and weight transfer.

Of course you need to be in very easy conditions so that you can pay attention to your body and feel these nuances. That means you must be receiving easy balls so that your mind is not taxed with judging the ball flight.

Again, I point out how detrimental competitive tennis is for your long-term development of tennis skills as you cannot pay attention to your body and feeling the swing while you play points.

In fact, your opponent’s main goal is to break down your rhythm so that you become even more inconsistent.

The real question you need to honestly ask yourself is this: Do I want to master the game of tennis, or do I just want to beat Joe this weekend in the singles match and fuel my ego (for short-term satisfaction)?

I am telling you that you cannot have both in the short term.

You cannot keep playing tennis matches and at the same time work on mastering the game of tennis because everything you build in free hitting sessions in terms of more natural and effortless strokes will be broken down in the next competitive tennis match.

In summary, my approach to developing and correcting tennis technique is based on helping the players first feel the basic biomechanical movements that are natural to the body.

If you don’t feel those, they you feel lost and very insecure when you play because you feel no safety or consistency of your strokes.

Or perhaps you can make your shots very safe, but your movements are very tense and you exert a lot of effort.

Only when you start to feel how the body would naturally want to move can you understand why tennis strokes have the form that they do.

You will understand that this form or shape of a forehand or a backhand is not based on someone’s opinion; rather, it’s based on biomechanics and laws of physics.

Then once you feel these natural movements that generate a lot of effortless power, you can modify them a bit so that they work for the game of tennis.

That’s why I am sharing a lot of perhaps unusual tips on various exercises that encourage a swing, that give you the feel of gravity, that help you feel centrifugal force and so on.

For each specific stroke, I share plenty more drills in my courses that go deeper into the biomechanics of each stroke and how to build technique on top of that.

So, while the movements and swings that I point out are completely natural and comfortable for the body, you may not feel them initially because you have forgotten them.

It’s not that you have to learn how to rotate your hips or swing a weight; it’s that, in your everyday, mostly sedentary lifestyle, you lost the awareness of your body and how to use it in the most efficient ways.

That’s why I encourage you to use these exercises to wake up the feels of swing, body rotation, weight transfer, staying balanced and others so that your body can manage the demands of the game of tennis in a much more efficient way.

I’ll be posting more video articles on the fundamentals of tennis technique in the future, so stay tuned!