Tennis techniques of pro players

The reason why professional tennis players are able to hit better shots than amateur and club players is simple – Their tennis techniques are more efficient. Differences in tennis techniques is what separates the pros from the lower level players.

At the highest level of tennis; from professional to collegiate tennis, the tennis technique is virtually perfect and the differences among the tennis strokes are small. But often times, this is not so at the club level. The tennis techniques of players at the club level is usually less than ideal and players may have huge flaws in their tennis strokes preventing them from hitting the tennis ball with the same amount of precision the pros do.

Tennis techniques aren’t reserved for the pros

A big misconception is that developing tennis techniques is reserved for professional tennis players. The common thought is that amateur and club players cannot develop good tennis technique. It’s true that professional tennis players spend hours, months and years developing technically sound tennis strokes, but tennis techniques is not reserved for players at the pro level.

The difference is understanding the key elements of tennis techniques, and recognizing these elements that will allow a tennis player to incorporate some of the elements of the fundamental tennis technique into their repertoire. With ample practice time working on tennis strokes, the right tennis techniques may be in fact a element that can propel a tennis player allowing them to hit shots they never could with their old and inefficient tennis strokes. That means that all of the tennis strokes can be improved, the tennis forehand, backhand and serve are the three biggest tennis strokes in the modern game. All three tennis strokes are also incumbent upon having good tennis technique to make these tennis strokes work.

Tennis techniques Explained

The tennis techniques of the pros can be broken down into easy to understand elements. and can be described as powerful, efficient and natural. While the tennis techniques of the pros may vary from one tennis player to the next, there are fundamental components of tennis techniques that they all share.

I’ve spent years in attempts to understand tennis techniques and secrets that few people ever learn in tennis lessons. Most competitive junior tennis players have the privilege of time and money to develop and learn tennis techniques, but maybe you don’t. Tennis techniques are an important part for every tennis player and even small changes in tennis technique can result in big improvements.

Why Learn Tennis Techniques?

It’s simple, elegant and fluid when you have mastered some of the basic key elements shared amongst high level tennis players. Also, you will notice your level of play will increase. You will benefit from increased shot selection, increased power and spin and overall improvement in your entire tennis game. Due to some limitations of tennis techniques, most recreational and club tennis players are unable to fully enjoy the game of tennis. If you can’t sustain long rallies with a consistent shot, or you can’t start out your service games with confidence – your overall enjoyment of the game will be limited.

Fundamentals of Tennis Techniques

So why not take a stand and try to learn some of the key fundamentals of tennis techniques? I promise it’ll be a whole different world opened up to you when you finally grasp the basics of solid tennis technique and are able to incorporate these into your tennis strokes. It starts with a motivated attitude and the desire to learn tennis techniques.

Tennis Forehand Techniques

Tennis forehand techniques are essential for a player developing the forehand. The tennis forehand techniques involves adapting the key elements of a world class tennis forehand into easy to understand concepts. The technique on the forehand can be complex, but breaking down the tennis forehand into fundamental technique can simplify the tennis stroke.

Tennis techniques has adapted for every new generation of tennis players. Tennis forehand technique has evolved, from old school closed stances, to rotational angular momentum hitting styles.

Tennis Backhand Techniques

Backhand tennis techniques is important to have, as the tennis backhand is the second biggest shot in the groundstroke game. The tennis technique of the backhand must be solid, adaptable and efficient to allow a player to achieve maximum power and spin on this backhand shot. The backhand shot is often weaker for most tennis players, exploiting a key weakness in most players. The tennis backhand is a shot that can linger and worsen if the tennis techniques are not practiced and refined.

Tennis Serve Techniques

The tennis serve is one of the most important shots in tennis. The serve in tennis begins the point. A powerful and accurately placed tennis serve is a lethal combination that can only be achieved with the proper tennis serve techniques. Serve tennis techniques involves modeling critical key movements that technique must be perfected upon to reach maximum levels of power and efficiency.

Keys of Tennis Techniques

1. Tennis Grips

I’m a firm believer that tennis stroke production and overall tennis techniques has a play in tennis grips. We all know that as the game of tennis has evolved, the grips have changed. On the forehand, players are now using semi-western grips rather than the old eastern and continental grips. There are several inherent advantages to these slightly more extreme grips. When you combine modern tennis techniques with a grip closer to semi-western, you’ll notice you can swing harder with less effort and still keep the ball in play.

2. Unit Turn

The unit turn in tennis is one of the most important key aspects of tennis technique. Simply stated, the unit turn is where the body and racket turn sideways together as a “unit” to begin the preparation phase of the tennis stroke, whether its forehand or backhand strokes.

3. Swing Shape

The swing shape is very important as it relates to tennis techniques – this is how you position the racket and arm through the course of the takeback. Most lower level players make the mistake of having excess motion in their takeback, and others have various flaws throughout the takeback which limit their ability to generate power and spin.

4. Lowering and “Drop”

This is probably the least taught AND the most significant. Agassi, Nadal, Safin, Federer – with all of them, if you study their strokes, you will see that as ‘the racket’ head falls, it drops inside towards their legs first. This positions the racket head to facilitate optimum efficiency.

5. Kinetic Chain

The kinetic chain is a scientific term used in tennis technique to describe the linking and unlinking of the body parts. Top pros sync their body to flow with their tennis strokes, utlizing every inch of rotation and time the ball perfectly to their contact.

Learning Tennis Techniques Is a Learning Process

Tennis techniques does not come overnight, and rarely will a tennis player be able to fix their tennis strokes without having many ups and downs. Tennis technique can only come through proper refinement and practice and lots of dedication.

Tennis techniques and how to play tennis with proper tennis technique is not an overnight process, just as with any other good thing in life – it takes time, study and positive practice. The tennis technique is a learning process that must be given time to develop and fully grow.

Learn to Hit a Forehand Like Roger Federer

If you want to jumpstart your forehand and play like the PROS, check out my 70+ page Tennis Ebook that will immediately show you how you can take your forehand to the next level.

The Modern Forehand Domination Ebook is guaranteed to improve your tennis technique, and increase power, topspin and accuracy of your tennis forehand!

Modern Tennis Forehand Ebook
Learn How to Hit a Forehand Like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic

The post Tennis Techniques – Forehand, Backhand and Serve Techniques appeared first on Tennis Instruction.

Professional tennis players on the other hand have tennis technique that is virtually flawless

This allows them to maximize their power, spin and accuracy potential. The important point to understand is that each tennis player will have their own hitting style, tennis strategy and tennis strokes, but they all adhere to distinct commonalities of tennis technique. These basic fundamentals of tennis technique are shared by high level tennis players, college tennis players and professional tennis players.

In Tennis Technique, I have broken the secrets of world class tennis technique down into three main qualities.

These foundational qualities make up tennis technique and which a player should strive to achieve.

Explosive

Explosive tennis technique is the first foundational quality necessary to play at a high level of tennis. Explosive tennis technique means that the tennis stroke, whether it’s your forehand, backhand or serve should have an element of explosiveness. Explosiveness can be seen in the tennis technique of the top professional players, particularly on the ATP tour. It’s easy to see how much racket head speed top pros achieve in all of their tennis strokes. Explosiveness in the ground strokes is accomplished through unique biomechanical elements.

Efficient

Efficient tennis technique is defined by smooth, effortless yet powerful tennis strokes that are able to achieve maximum racket head speed and topspin with the least amount of energy. Overly large backswings, hitches or unnecessary movement will hinder tennis technique. You’ll notice how top pros like Federer, Nadal, Safin, Roddick all have tennis strokes that are efficient. They are able to get the job done without wasting energy.

Watching professional tennis players practice can be a very eye opening experience. When you watch pros play, it’s easy to see how they are able to hit massive shots time and time again; while at the same time it appears like only a portion of their total strength. They are simply getting a lot more efficiency with a lot less work.

Inefficient or improper tennis technique can also result in injury. This is why the most common injury of club players is tennis elbow. Having poor tennis strokes and incorrect tennis technique, they will frequently be unable to maximize the power on their shots. Instead, they may be forced to muscle the ball and over time, this puts additional strain on the arm, eventually causing the condition known as tennis elbow.

The club players themselves may blame the tennis racket or the grips, or the tennis strings – but in actuality they have never seen themselves practice. While a head heavy, or oversize racket may be to blame, it is frequently a result of having faulty tennis technique.

At the pro levels, it is extremely rare to encounter tennis elbow. They may have other various injuries, but these injuries are normally a result of overtraining rather than faulty tennis technique.

Adaptable

The ability to adjust to adverse conditions and still being able to execute the shot is what constitutes adaptable tennis technique. There is always a day where the wind blows the tennis ball further than one would expect, or a day where the tennis balls don’t bounce the way they normally do on a warm day. This is where having adaptable tennis technique comes in. The ability to make fine adjustments without drastically altering the tennis technique makes up the key foundational aspects of adaptable tennis technique. Having flaws in tennis technique will prevent a tennis player from fully capitalizing on their maximum ability on the court. It may become difficult to adapt to certain conditions if there are foundational problems in the tennis swing shape itself. These problems usually come out during match play – – Which is why so many tennis players complain of playing “much worse” in matches than they do in practice. The weaknesses are exploited in matchplay, and they really come out to haunt you in key moments in the match – where your body may be tighter than normal.

Tennis Technique: Why It’s Important

Tennis Technique is one of the main areas to focus on if a tennis player desires to improve. Just as in Golf, players analyze their golf swing, Baseball players record their pitches, Quarterbacks work on their throwing mechanics, Bowlers fix their bowling technique – It’s the same for tennis. Tennis players (particularly at the club level) have the tendency to neglect working on their tennis strokes. The emphasis is by most mainstream tennis instruction is getting tennis players to learn the game and play the game, but rarely do these sources mention the exact methods of tennis technique.

While there are variations among professional tennis players and their tennis technique, there are striking basic commonalities that high level tennis players share. These commonalities seperate the elite from the amateurs, and why they are able to maximize power, topspin and accuracy. The irony here though, is that these commonalities often go unrecognized and very rarely taught to tennis players in traditional tennis lessons.

Tennis Technique can be taught and developed

So we all know that professional tennis players like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Andre Agassi seem to have that special talent in tennis that makes them stand out from their opponents. Does that mean that the average tennis player has no chance of developing technically sound tennis strokes? Is having a powerful, consistent forehand out of the question for the ordinary player? Is developing an astute tennis serve reserved just for big strong giants like John Isner’s serve, or Ivo Karlovic?

The good news is that having technically sound tennis technique is not impossible, nor does it require that a tennis player be born with a special “gift.”

The key to having sound tennis technique is recognizing what the key elements of proper and efficient tennis strokes are, and reproducing them with positive repetition.

Learn Tennis Technique

Learning and understanding the fundamental key elements of tennis technique can make the difference between staying at the same level, or drastically taking a climb in terms of power and topspin potential. The reason most tennis player stay at the same level for months and years is simply because they are reproducing the exact same flaws over and over by swinging away with incorrect tennis technique

By swinging the tennis racket over and over with the flawed technique, all the tennis player is doing is burning the exact same muscle memory – the brain’s taking in the same stimuli resulting in the same poor results day in and day out

The Key to Improve Tennis Technique

The only way to improve tennis technique is to first recognize the tennis stroke that needs to be fixed. The brain is a very complicated organ, and the only way to improve is to feed it correct information through visualizing the ideal tennis technique or tennis stroke that needs to be mastered. Hitting thousands of tennis balls, playing tons of competitive matches and traditional tennis lessons alone may not be enough to reinforce the positive repetitions needed to really fix a tennis stroke. Improving tennis technique is a time consuming process, and the flaws in tennis strokes usually do not go away on it’s own without the proper work ethic and attention to the stroke that needs to be fixed

The Tennis Technique of Great Tennis Players

High performance tennis technique is a result of hours of studying and working hard. Having a good solid foundation is the only way to progress to a higher level. At the club level, we may see a tennis player with inferior strokes beat a tennis player with better tennis technique but the tennis player is still limited at the end of the day as to who he can defeat. That same club tennis player is unlikely able to defeat a college tennis player, or a junior tennis player with refined tennis strokes.

Development of Tennis Technique

Frequently, commentators on TV and in tennis magazines convince the audience that professional tennis players and having great tennis technique is something a person must be born with.

But in reality, it is a product of hours of refinement and practice. I was inspired by an older tennis documentary that revealed some of America’s Top Juniors. In that video, Andy Roddick was quoted for saying, “There is alot more training that is involved, because you’re still learning and building your strokes and technique – – That’s when the work is put in.”

Tennis Technique: A reality

It may be too much to expect that everyone can develop and produce world class tennis strokes even with the necessary refinement; however, even a slight adjustment can result in big improvements to one’s tennis game. The tennis technique involved may require a higher degree of athleticism that what you may be accustomed to, but a prerequisite to play better tennis.

Learn to Hit a Forehand Like Roger Federer

If you want to jumpstart your forehand and play like the PROS, check out my 70+ page Tennis Ebook that will immediately show you how you can take your forehand to the next level.

The Modern Forehand Domination Ebook is guaranteed to improve your tennis technique, and increase power, topspin and accuracy of your tennis forehand!

Modern Tennis Forehand Ebook
Learn How to Hit a Forehand Like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic

The post Tennis Technique appeared first on Tennis Instruction.

3 Key Elements of World Class Tennis Techniques

After nearly a decade of studying the top pro players in tennis, I’ve been able to break down the key technical elements behind world class tennis players. While every player has unique idiosyndacacies in their strokes and slightly different stroke patterns, there are certain key commonalities behind ALL top pro player’s tennis techniques that are responsible for their ability to hit powerful, consistent & accurate shots time and time again. In general, every world class stroke has the following 3 key elements evident in their strokes.

1. Efficient – All top pro tennis strokes are efficient, meaning that the stroke should not contain any hitches or stoppages during the motion. The stroke should flow smooth and freely from the preparation of the stroke into the follow through. Any hitches or stoppages would be like a nascar driver slamming the brakes suddenly and then restarting the motion from 0.
2. Adaptable – World class tennis technique is marked by adaptable strokes, meaning the stroke should be able to hold up under pressure, during different playing conditions (wind, cold day, uneven court surface, an odd bounce, etc) because tennis is a versatile game. Quite often players have inefficiencies in their strokes (hitches, stoppages, unnecessary or excess motions/movement) that prevents them from hitting better shots under adverse or unexpected conditions. As an example, watch how effortlessly Federer moves around the court and how natural and relaxed he is during every shot. There is no tension or rigidness in his movement or his strokes. This is the same mentality and racket behavior you need in order to hit effortless and explosive shots.
3. Explosive – Every world class tennis stroke has an element of explosiveness in it. Today’s modern game is marked by a high level of power, topspin and explosiveness. Today’s player’s utilize their whole body in the kinetic chain to produce HEAVY topspin shots on all sides. A common mistake most lower level players do is they try to “arm” their shots, whereby they use their arm and wrist rather than their ENTIRE body to hit their shots, which results in weak shots.

Improve Your Tennis Technique 

Players that want to improve their technique must first iron out any inefficiencies in their strokes. This starts by first learning to ingrain the proper tennis technique. It can be helpful for players to visualize the correct technique in their mind by observing the top pros in super slow motion video.

Quite often, players do not even realize they are hitting with flawed tennis techniques – because the image in their mind of how their strokes actually looks is different than the reality of how they are actually hitting the ball. These flaws typically go unnoticed for years and years – sometimes even despite taking many tennis lessons from the “club pro.”

The best way to identify any flaws in your tennis technique is to video yourself hitting the stroke in question. Then, analyze your stroke frame by frame and then compare it to the pros. More than likely, you will be surprised on how different your stroke looks than the pros. You may have imagined your strokes to look a certain way – but in reality it looks completely different in actuality.

This contrast in perception vs. reality in a player’s tennis technique is quite a common occurrence.

Once you discover the top pros side by side and compare it to your own strokes, you will often realize the technical deficiencies immediately in your strokes.

The Concept of Muscle Memory in Refining Your Tennis Techniques

The concept of muscle memory is a crucial concept to understand if you want to improve your tennis game. Muscle memory is your mind’s motor ingrams or “memory” of how to hit the stroke. Just like when you were a child learning how to ride a bike – at first it was super difficult, but eventually over time – it became second nature to you as your brain started to learn and adapt. Your brain’s muscle memory started kicking in and pretty soon, riding a bike was as easy as a walk in the park.

The same is true for tennis strokes. As you learn certain tennis strokes, your brain will ingrain certain key body movements in your muscle memory, and over time – after hundreds or thousands of repetitions (hitting the ball over and over), your brain will ingrain the stroke like second nature so that it becomes a natural habit.

The problem with most club players is that they begin to ingrain bad habits into their muscle memory, without even realizing it. It could be something as simple as being flat footed, an excessive looping backswing, a wristy/armed shot, or any number of bad habits into their strokes. Many times, these deficiencies in your tennis techniques go on unnoticed or not corrected by club coaches simply because lack of awareness or lack of emphasis on the importance of improving a player’s tennis technique.

So if you want to improve your results on the tennis court, you must learn the fundamentals world class tennis technique. This does not require you to possess any god-like gifts ala Federer or Nadal, but simply the willingness and the understanding of what the proper tennis technique looks like.

As player go on and on with incorrect or technically deficient tennis technique, they often continue to ingrain these poor techniques deeper an deeper into their muscle memory to the point where making changes to one’s technique becomes a very difficult or nearly impossible endeavor without some serious dedication.

Improving your tennis technique can make the difference between winning or losing tennis matches, as poor technique will lead to weak or ineffective and inconsistent shots against your opponents. In contrast, the pros who possess world class tennis technique can hit consistent, powerful & accurate tennis shots time and time again not because they are naturally gifted – but rather they hit the ball in an optimal way biomechanically.

Fixing Your Tennis Technique

The key to fixing your tennis technique starts with awareness. After you have videotaped yourself and compared your strokes with the pros side by side, real improvement can begin. This starts by consciously ingraining the proper technique into your own game. It can be helpful for players to start by visualizing the correct technique in their mind, followed by shadow swings in front of the mirror with you hitting the shot with the correct tennis technique. At first, it may be helpful to shadow swing in slow motion, eventually you can train your mind of the proper “feeling” of the correct technique.

As you take these techniques onto the tennis court, you can practice in front of a wall or ball machine so that there is less added pressure for you to revert back to the old, but “comfortable & incorrect” tennis technique. It will be uncomfortable for your brain at first to change your technique, and you may initially play worse at first when attempting to ingrain the proper technique. This is just your mind’s resistance to change due to the years and years of you hitting the ball incorrectly. It will take many hundreds or thousands of repetitions to consciously ingrain the new technique into your brain’s motor ingrams.

In fact, you may even lose more games and matches at first. The process of improving your tennis technique can take months, and you will find that your brain may quickly revert back to what is comfortable during pressure situations in a tennis match or game play situation. But you must overcome this feeling if you want to improve your tennis techniques.

True success will not come for awhile, but the process of ingraining the proper technique into your muscle memory will play huge dividends in the long run in your tennis playing career – whether it is a weekend hobby or a full time endeavor for you.

Learn to Hit a Forehand Like Roger Federer

If you want to jumpstart your forehand and play like the PROS, check out my 70+ page Tennis Ebook that will immediately show you how you can take your forehand to the next level.

The Modern Forehand Domination Ebook is guaranteed to improve your tennis technique, and increase power, topspin and accuracy of your tennis forehand!

Modern Tennis Forehand Ebook
Learn How to Hit a Forehand Like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic

The post Tennis Technique – Learn World Class Tennis Techniques appeared first on Tennis Instruction.