Backhand muscles

[rosooki]

Robby Koenig made a comment during the Nadal-Wawrinka match today in Shanghai that (paraphrasing) all of the top 10 players walk with their chests puffed out and shoulders back because they have such strong 'scapular muscles.' He was discussing backhand power when this came up. I'd like to hear what everyone here thinks of that comment. This is an honest question, as I have no idea myself. I do know that the guy with the backhand I most admire, Nicolas Almagro, has huge backhand pop and definitely has a shoulders back posture.

Second, and more important question. What exercises do people recommend for building up more backhand power, single or double?

I seem to recall a post where John Yandell said he believes 'racket head heat is a god-given gift', again paraphrasing, but even if that is true, and I believe it is, how should we develop those muscles and maximize our potential?

[uspta990770809]

Physical Training

Robby Koenig made a comment during the Nadal-Wawrinka match today in Shanghai that (paraphrasing) all of the top 10 players walk with their chests puffed out and shoulders back because they have such strong 'scapular muscles.' He was discussing backhand power when this came up. I'd like to hear what everyone here thinks of that comment. This is an honest question, as I have no idea myself. I do know that the guy with the backhand I most admire, Nicolas Almagro, has huge backhand pop and definitely has a shoulders back posture.

Second, and more important question. What exercises do people recommend for building up more backhand power, single or double?

I seem to recall a post where John Yandell said he believes 'racket head heat is a god-given gift', again paraphrasing, but even if that is true, and I believe it is, how should we develop those muscles and maximize our potential?

First of all, this site is a great resource. Just click on "Physical Training" to the left, especially Paul Roetert's articles from USTA High Performance for a lot of information on training for tennis.

Second, the power of the one-handed backhand certainly requires a certain amount of strength in the rhomboids, paraspinal stabilizers, lats and various external rotators, but that's not the key to hitting the big backhand. As strong as she might be, Henin's back muscles would be small compared to the average male tennis player (not talking about pros even) and, of course, she can really wail on her backhand. It's how you use those muscles that really matters. Certainly, you need a minimum amount of strength in your shoulders and arms to transfer the power of your core and legs to the ball, but the true source of power is in the legs and core.

But you do need tremendous posterior musculature to protect you from injury when the racket decelerates on the followthrough for forehand or backhand. Typically, guys go into the gym and work on things like bench press and curls. These exercises do little for speeding up the ball and tend to move the shoulders forward, a posture already too prevalent in our society. Tennis players, more so than the regular population who also need to be stronger in this area, must work on pulling exercises like seated rows and lateral raises and front raises to strengthen the shoulder muscle to handle the tremendous forces on the shoulder at the end of the swing. And as much as I love Robbie, I don't think you can lay that forward chest posture off on the backhand, although it certainly might be a contributor. (Oscar Wegner makes a big point of pulling the shoulder blades together as you hit the one-handed backhand.) But I think you will find a lot of the touring pros with their coterie of personal trainers do a lot more than most people would expect to strengthen that posterior shoulder musculature. Do you remember Murray talking about doing over 20 pullups in a competition with his coaches? That's a lot of posterior back muscle. The body was meant to be in more of a chest forward/shoulders back posture than we see in the general population. The excellent physical training that the pros get these days pushes all of their postures more in that direction, and correctly so.

Third, after talking so much about not needing to isolate shoulder exercises for just the backhand, here's a good one for the one-handed backhand. Go into the gym and use one side of the cross-cable pulley setup with the typical tricep extension bar like a racket (that is hold one end of it) and work through your the forward part of your backhand swing with resistance while holding good form and keeping your posterior shoulder stationary (as opposed to rotating the whole body). Be sure to take your knuckles out toward your imaginary target through the contact area and as far after that as you can. Start with very low weight. You can also usually move the source of the resistance to different heights. I like to use this exercise to work on strength for high one-handed backhands (and backhand overheads).

don brosseau, d.c.

[rosooki]

Re: Physical Training

Excellent comment. Thank you.