Abbreviated Homunculus
"Homunculus" because named for a graceful little fellow with long arms (Tom Okker or Ben Hogan). "Abbreviated" because the arm work sends the racket not in a circle but straight line-- sideways.
Circle enters the picture from hips rotating first and shoulders rotating from the gut second.
At contact, less contorted than a golfer, you almost face the net.
If you hit one of these special forehands long, take a counter-intuitive measure immediately to hit another-- open the racket as part of the continental-gripped backswing. This will exaggerate forward arm roll in the opposite direction.
Reflect on the event here. The body is rotating the racket around but the arm is not doing that, but rather accelerating the racket head sideward in a straight line, so there is a good split in function.
Your hand is smoothly gaining on your gross body (pulling away as in a race). And the racket head, through rolling, is pulling away from the hand (again as if in a race).
Key to understanding these arm and hand stratagems, which conclude before contact (!), is your decision to loop the elbow into your side ("Hogan's secret") and meld this effort into a push beyond your side again while extending and rolling your arm.
And then the arm of course, as sideways becomes forward, bowls through the ball and continues far away from the body in full followthrough that finally circles back.
For fun, try one now that's all hips and no shoulders.
"Homunculus" because named for a graceful little fellow with long arms (Tom Okker or Ben Hogan). "Abbreviated" because the arm work sends the racket not in a circle but straight line-- sideways.
Circle enters the picture from hips rotating first and shoulders rotating from the gut second.
At contact, less contorted than a golfer, you almost face the net.
If you hit one of these special forehands long, take a counter-intuitive measure immediately to hit another-- open the racket as part of the continental-gripped backswing. This will exaggerate forward arm roll in the opposite direction.
Reflect on the event here. The body is rotating the racket around but the arm is not doing that, but rather accelerating the racket head sideward in a straight line, so there is a good split in function.
Your hand is smoothly gaining on your gross body (pulling away as in a race). And the racket head, through rolling, is pulling away from the hand (again as if in a race).
Key to understanding these arm and hand stratagems, which conclude before contact (!), is your decision to loop the elbow into your side ("Hogan's secret") and meld this effort into a push beyond your side again while extending and rolling your arm.
And then the arm of course, as sideways becomes forward, bowls through the ball and continues far away from the body in full followthrough that finally circles back.
For fun, try one now that's all hips and no shoulders.
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