 Hey guys and welcome back if you've been there before otherwise nice to meet you. Now in this video I'm going to be talking through the forehand. Now for most people the forehand is their weapon but it's also their weakness. They have the ability to hit the ball quite hard but as a result of this they end up making lots of mistakes from it. Now I'm going to be talking through three of the most common mistakes I see people make on their forehand and how I like to fix them. Let's get straight into the first common mistake that I see and it's people getting into the wrong position. Now when we talk about positioning it's slightly different for everybody depending on what grips they're using but in general everybody needs to make sure that when they hit a forehand they make contact with the ball in front of their body or in front of their shoes if possible as well. Now the reason for this is it's the most stable and strong position for you to be in to make the shot. Now an example of this is if you are pushing a very heavy object the ideal position to be in would be behind the object with your hands in front of you. You're much more stable if you do this you wouldn't push a heavy object with it being close and tucked into your hips here and it's the same for the forehand. If you're able to contact the ball out in front of you you've got much more control over the racket head and much more strength and stability here. One of the most common mistakes I see people have is they meet the ball when it gets next to their body or even behind them and they end up having to force the ball back into play by using their wrist so as much as possible try to get that contact point out in front. Now height wise is where it varies the most and again depending on what grip you use will result in what height you find most comfortable. If you've got a semi-western or a western grip and you like to hit with lots of topspin then as a player you probably prefer meeting the ball slightly higher but if you've got a slightly more traditional grip and you're around eastern or continental with a chopper grip you likely to prefer the lower ball. So depending on how you hit your forehand whether you're a heavy topspin player or a flatter player will result in how high you like to make contact with the ball but a general rule is somewhere between waist and shoulder height. So a little checklist that I like to go through to ensure that players are in the right position is ready, read, react. Now are you ready for the oncoming ball? So have you prepared? Are you stood in the right position on the court? Have you done a split step? Now if you're ready for the ball have you read the ball correctly? So as soon as you're ready and you've seen the oncoming ball coming towards you you need to make sure that you're reading it correctly. So reading the height of the oncoming ball, reading the speed and the depth and the spin all of those things make it much more difficult to get into the right position and if you're good at reading the oncoming ball the next step is can you react to it? Are you quick enough to move into the right position? Do you prepare the racket early enough? Do you prepare your feet early enough? So go through that checklist yourself to see where you're breaking down. The most common thing is actually the reading part of the game and one of the best ways to improve your reading skills is to actually hit more tennis balls and play in more matches. Now playing lots of different game styles helps and playing lots of different people who hit the ball hard or hit them slow is good for your game because you're having to adapt quickly to different situations. One of the ways that I like to practice positioning with my players is by playing two touch tennis. Now it's a simple game when the ball comes in towards them their job is to tap the ball up, let the ball bounce and hit it over the net. Now the reason this is a good one is because it gives them a bit more time to get their positioning right and it's slightly more forgiving rather than going straight into normal rallies. So like I said the aim is to get a soft touch on the first hit, adjust your positioning to make sure your second hit is in the right place. So as you can see there when I was practicing the two touch tennis exercise sometimes my first touch was a little bit too close to me so I had to move back to give myself enough space to contact in front and sometimes I'd tap the ball on the first touch a bit too far in front of me and I'd have to move my feet to get slightly closer to the ball to make sure that the contact point was in the right place. So it's a really good drill to raise players awareness of where they need to be and it gets them feeling a bit more comfortable with moving and preparing slightly earlier. A slightly more advanced exercise that I like to do with players that struggle to find their positioning or to get themselves a bit too close or too far away from the ball is one-legged tennis. Now when the ball comes towards the player their aim is to set up and as soon as they're about to hit the shots down on one leg strike the ball and hold their balance for a second or so. Now the reason this one's a really good one for your positioning is because if you're slightly too far away from the ball and you set up to balance on one leg you'll be reaching and you'll fall onto your second leg. If the ball is too close to you the same thing happens you'll get cramped up and you'll lose balance. So again it really heightens your awareness to make sure that you're in the perfect position to make contact with the ball otherwise you're going to lose balance. So again when you watch me practice that exercise I showed you a few good examples of how to practice with one leg and obviously a few bad examples as well. So some of those balls that came in a bit too close you could see me getting cramped up and falling onto my back foot and the same goes for if the ball was too far away from me I was losing balance but the ones where I could get my feature to the right place and contact in front in between waist and shoulders were much easier for me just down on one leg. So the second common mistake that I see people make on their forehand is their use of their spare hand so for me it would be my left hand as I'm as I'm right handed. Now the reason I bring this up is your left hand is massively important or your non-dominant hand is massively important in your forehand as it is in most other strokes because it helps you to keep a good center of gravity it helps you to keep your balance but also it helps you to engage more of your muscle groups so more of your body parts as opposed to just hitting with your dominant arm. So what we should see when we hit a forehand is our spare hand bringing the racket back and you can see here that I'm taking the racket back with my unit turn so my whole body's turning as opposed to just my right arm going back and leaving my left hand dangling by its side or splitting. This results in a lot more work having to be done with the hitting arm not only can this result in injuries but it also lack of control because you're putting so much force into getting that racket to move it's a lot less likely to go in play so if you can be more efficient by using your left hand to take the racket back and almost get your left hand to help you to drive the racket through by pulling your elbow backwards you'll get a lot more efficient power so you won't have to force the racket through the ball and you'll be able to get a bit more control. The first way I like to try to encourage players to use their non-dominant hand is by doing self feeds okay so I'll show you a few here so all we're looking for is ready position with a ball in their spare hand we're going to turn our upper body sideways on so our left hand comes with us and we're simply going to drop the ball and meet the ball in front of our body so it will look like this a unit turn a drop and a hit as you can see from me demonstrating a few there it really encourages that upper body unit turn so the power is coming from the torso and the hips and the shoulders as opposed to just from the arm so a very good simple exercise especially for beginners or players who struggle to make use of their non-dominant hand so a nice little progression that I like to use after doing the self feeds is to do a catch drop hit now it's exactly the same as a self feed however you're dealing with reading an oncoming ball so the player will be following an oncoming ball they'll move into position to catch with their non-dominant hand and from that same position that they caught the ball they will drop and hit the ball I'll try a few here so another way that I like to encourage use of the non-dominant hand this is slightly more advanced slightly more tricky than the previous one but it's double-handed forehands now quite clearly if you have to hit your forehand with two hands it forces you to turn your upper body and to bring your non-dominant hand with you now it's quite an extreme way to practice it and it feels very very uncomfortable for people when they try it but it really does encourage use of your upper body and your unit term so I'm going to try a few here you'll probably laugh at me chuck a comment below and tell me what you think so you could probably see that that was a little bit more awkward but in fact not only does it help you to use your non-dominant hand as well but if you look back at the last mistake that people make with positioning it forces you to get a better position because you can't afford to be too far away from the ball you don't have as much reach with your two hands and actually when you see the next tip or the next common mistake that I'm going to go through in a second this really helps with that one too so although it's a tough exercise it's quite a good practice to help combat these three mistakes that I'm talking about here a final little trick that I like to use to get the left arm involved is to get the player to imagine that they've got handcuffs on so their hands must stay at a pretty close distance on the way back but as soon as the ball bounces in front of them that's when they're able to separate their hands use their left arm to come back before making contact with the ball so if you've ever had trouble with your non-dominant hand or if you've got a player that struggles with it give those little exercises a go because using your left arm or your right hand if you're left-handed really encourages your whole body into the shot so you're going to get more efficient power so you don't have to try to hit the ball so hard because of course as soon as you try to hit the ball hard that's when mistakes start to creep in so give those a go and let me know how you get on so the third most common mistake that I come across with my players is the size of their take back now take back sizes do vary from shot to shot and from player to player you'll see lots of players on the pro tour have a really really big take back and very powerful shots and you'll see other players that have a slightly more compact swing now each take back size suits different players and different needs now if you're a player that likes to hit with power then a bigger take back will allow you to do that however because it takes more time in its path often you'll be catching the ball slightly late and it's much tougher to get your contact points in front of you as much as possible whereas having a smaller swing although you won't get as much power from the shot your timing will be much easier and you'll be able to meet the ball out in front of you again it depends on the speed of the oncoming ball if you're receiving a fast ball you don't have time for a big take back so a smaller swing can help you get control of that ball and to use the pace to hit it back whereas if you've got a slower oncoming ball a slightly bigger swing can help now just by understanding the concept of take back size and when you need to have a bigger take back and a smaller take back that can help you because when you play against the bigger hitters you can minimize the size of your swing if you're playing against slower hitters and you want to put a bit more power on your shot then do try to make it bigger but in general I do see people having two bigger take backs and actually if they made their take back slightly smaller they'd have a lot more control over the ball and they'd still be surprisingly powerful through the shot as this is personal from player to player it's important to know what you want to get better at if it is power that you're after then maybe you can think about making that take back slightly bigger but if you want more control and more consistency of your forehand then making the swing or the take back a little bit smaller can help that to happen now the first piece of advice that I have for you or the best way I think that you can improve the size of your take back is by simply videoing your forehand so set up the camera as I have here and hit some forehand and just take a look at the size of your swing now most people when they see their forehand or their backhand in action are actually quite surprised at what it looks like quite often it looks different to what they think so first of all video yourself see what you think about the size of your take back and from there you can then start to make the swing smaller and practice making it smaller or if you want to make it bigger you can and best advice for that is video yourself first go out and practice hit lots and lots of balls and then video yourself again afterwards to see if you've made a difference you may need to exaggerate the different feel of swing so if you've got a big too big a swing you may need to try to make the swing or the take back very small to find somewhere in the middle so if you normally have a swing like this to get it to where you want it to be you may have to try to make it tiny often exaggerating gives you that middle ground the second way you can help to make your take backs slightly smaller is by practicing receiving lower shots or faster shots now practicing with a lower or faster shot limits the amount of time you have to take the racket back so it almost forces you into having a smaller short and more compact take back give that a go whether it be having a partner hit the ball in fast to you or low to you or make a use of a ball machine or a coach any of those ways can work but minimizing your time is a good way of giving you a small take back so the final way that you can minimize the size of your take back if you've got a player or it is for yourself is by using a wall or a fence as a restriction so as you can see I've got a fence behind me here now there are two ways that you can use this fence or wall number one is standing sideways on with your non-dominant side to the fence have a partner throw you some balls and this will stop you from taking the racket back too far so you can see here that it's forcing me to keep the racket out to my dominant side and hit the ball if my racket goes back too far I will hit the fence so you can see that's for a player who takes the racket all the way back here and it goes to the non-dominant side of their body having a wall behind them will force them to take the racket back to here instead now if you want to make the swing even smaller you can stand with your back to the fence so as you can see here this is really limiting the size of my take back so this would be suitable for practicing a return of serve where you want to get the racket just out the side and use the pace of the oncoming ball a much more compact swing but same again you'd stand with your back to the fence or the wall have a partner throw you some balls and just practice having a short take back so they were some of the most common mistakes that I come across of course there are lots of other mistakes that we see and you may have some yourself if you do find that you struggle with any of those three things let me know how you get on with the fixes that I came up with if you enjoyed the video don't forget to click the subscribe button underneath and please feel free to make any comments or questions if you have any take care