Forehand Backswing Part2

[llll]

great analysis john. worth the wait. would you agree with this analogy. if the double bend position (the slot some call it) coming into contact is analogous in my analogy to the trophy position you need to get to in the serve ,the pros have different ways to get there ie for the serve abreviated windup, circular, delayed etc. but all end up in trophy. so if you keep the racquet on the right side of your body, get a good left arm stretch across your body, and from there get to the double bend configuration ,,, the shape of how you got there ie your backswing is not set in stone. as is true for most things the k.i.s.s. principle holds true as you recommend .the more compact and less complicated ie agassi or ai (spelling?) are probably better motions to try to copy for those of us who are not elite athletes.

[johnyandell]

Excellent and accurate summary.

[airforce1]

a Couple of ideas

After watching the excellent vid on bkswing part2, a couple of questions and ideas have come to mind.

#1 what do we mean by open, closed and on edge?
in this discussion of the stick face, I had assumed we were using the terms as they are used on stances. Open would be facing the court or net, and closed would be turned away from the court, with not understanding where on edge would fit in. I guess on edge could be similar to a neutral stance.

In context like this, if the face or strings were more pointed towards the net, then that would be more open; and the less the face was pointed at the net, it would be more closed or fully closed.
And Yes, Gulbis and Murry seemed to have more of the face exposed to the court, for longer, during parts of their backswing than compared to the more consistent Fhs. My take was that was Coach Frausto's point.

#2 would be that my take is that investigating palm and wrist position would be far more productive than racket face position, due to the different grips used making the face do a variety of things. It seems clear to me that a big part of DJ's stick face position is due to his extreme grip. I'm figuring that watching the R face position is masking the more critical issue of where the palm is facing and the position of the wrist. The racket is largely restricted to what the palm is doing, but is connected differently due to grips, from a bio mechanics point of view.

#3
I would like to suggest some terms for looking at wrist and palm positions.
palm forward- towards the net or court
palm away- facing same as the upper chest
palm back- facing away from net
palm down- facing down towards feet
wrist loaded- laid back or cocked position
wrist neutral- just aligned with forearm

I look forward to any light Brian can shed on this with his work. He always does an excellent job within the scope he isolates. Maybe he can consider incorporating the aspect of looking at the palm and wrist into his findings.

[johnyandell]

By on edge I mean the face or plane of the racket is perpendicular to the court-- or at a right angle.

If the top edge is tilted downward so the angle of the racket face is less than 90 degrees that is some version of closed. You can see the difference in the 3 stills of the grip. Vertical, or on edge, closed and more closed.

By open I mean that the top edge is tilted back at something more than 90 degrees to the court. You can see that clearly in Djokovic and still somewhat with Nadal even after the adjustments Jason discovered in his backswing.

Again my own view is that the emphasis has to be on where the backswing finishes. It's not an end in and of itself. So you can get lost in tracking all the permutations. Ironically if you understand how many there are you have a better chance of not getting hung up on them.