hingis forehands

[robheath]

John
I remember looking at some photos of Hingis's forehand a few back and even though she plays a loop, the right elbow stays bent yet close to the the side of the body. It seems that young playerslearning to play a loop forget this include this fundamental part of the stroke.

This style seems to be a better way than to coach players to lead with the elbow. Those players that lead with the elbow seem to have trouble returning serve.
Your thoughts
robby

[johnyandell]

Yeah I don't get the whole lead with the elbow argument. You don't hold the racket with your elbow--you hold it in your hand--yeah we can track the movement of any given body part and describe what it does--but is that a cause or an effect--and is it how a player should key the entire movement?? I'll stick with the hand. Similar by the way to the argument over shoulder tilt here...

[thereallovebone]

Are you talking about raising the elbow on the backswing? The two best forehands in the last 20 years, Agassi and Lendl, both lead back with the elbow. Raising the elbow is key to generating racket head speed and topspin.
Certainly there are serves that should be returned with a more abbreviated swing or even a block, but for your bread and butter forehand, raising the elbow is key.

[johnyandell]

If that is what Andre is doing here, it is very slight, and certainly different from Lendl or Pete, where the elbow is way above the hand and racket for a great part of the upward movement. But even if it were true, I don't think you can really jump from that to the certainty that this is what generates more racket head speed or topspin.

If you look at the pro backswings you'll see they are all different. There are plenty of people with incredible racket head speed--Federer for example--whose backswings look nothing like Lendl--or Agassi for that matter. Check out the Advanced Tennis article on the backswing for more on this. It's probably the most idiosyncratic part of the modern game.

What the backswings all share in common is the similar position they deliver the racket and hand to at the start of the forward swing--with the elbow in and the wrist laid back.

3D studies show that the rapid acceleration of the racket starts here. The speed is actually fairly constant over most of the backswing. Not saying that raising the elbow is wrong either. It obviously worked beautifully for Lendl and Pete during their pro careers. But did you check out the video of Pete age 10-11 in the Lansdorp Forehand article?? Very conventional backswing and not a hint of raising the elbow. That came much later.

In filming for the the USTA and other elite coaches one of the truly shocking things I've seen is the gigantic size of the backswings on some of these 12 year old juniors--as if they were copying and even exaggerating the most extreme elements of the pros--even if the very players they are copying were far more compact at the same age.

I think one of the great challenges in teaching is prioritizing what is truly fundamental and at what stage to introduce what. We certainly need a lot more information before we can make statements about relative amounts of racket head speed and spin due to the stylistic differences in the motions of the top players.

[thereallovebone]

Are we watching the same clip? The elbow is raised on the backswing.
I don't agree that it's "slight", but that's a relative term. It ABSOLUTELY
increases racket head speed. The original poster was talking about "keeping the right elbow bent and close to the body". That's not what Agassi or Lendl are doing at all. It's what McEnroe, who I know you've worked with, did.
Next time you bump into John ask him whose forehand he would have rather had, his or Agassi's or Lendl's.

[thereallovebone]

From Vic Braden's book:

One reason I advocate the loop over straight back is that the loop is more rhythmical and produces significantly more power and control. My friend and physicist Dr. Pat Keating has found that on a free-falling loop, the racket head gains approximately 5.5 mph on the first foot of the drop; then multiply 5.5 times the square root of the height of the drop. The result is the speed of the racket due to gravity. This increased racket speed has a multiple effect on the speed of the ball, and it helps explain why little kids who use the loop can hit the ball so hard. In contrast to this, the person who goes straight back to the low point of his backswing has gained ZERO miles per hour as he starts to move into the ball. He must use a lot more muscular effort to gain sufficient racket speed in a short period of time.

[johnyandell]

Well, I think we are looking at the same clip--just not seeing the same thing. Now that I look more closely, I do see what you mean about the elbow--it does raise slightly. So thanks for that. I learn something everyday. But after that little lift, the hand, arm and the racket are moving up together and the elbow is part of that. It's much different than Pete where the elbow gets way above the hand. I understand what you are talking about with the elbow moving away from the body on the backswing--my point is where it ends up at the start of the foreswing--that's the critical time for it to be close in. So I'm still not convinced that taking it way out of that position and putting it back makes a big difference--we can agree to disagree there...



The quotes from Vic are great and I would have to agree that there is probably some gain as the racket begins to fall in the loop--it's just not the same level of acceleration as in the few frames before the hit when the racket goes forward. Again that is where it is really happening in terms of the majority of the racket head acceleration. One of the things I plan to do is write about the speed of the racket over the total path of the swing in the future.

Regarding the straight backswing, there are a couple of points. First, it doesn't usually really exist. Anyone who is taught the simple, straight back motion naturally evolves a small compact loop. Second, again, it doesn't matter what shape the backswing is if it doesn't deliver the racket to the key position at the start of the foreswing.

Hey with John's grip and style, not sure Agassi forehand would have worked in his game. But whatever the differences, the stroke is too complex to claim that just raising the elbow is the most important key to the forehand. Don't think you are really saying that. There are too many commonalities among the top players and if this was a core element, they'd all be doing it. It's a perfectly valid version but it's certainly not the only valid version--and just my opinion, teaching it to young kids can be dangerous because it can get exaggerated at the expense of some other core fundamentals.

For comparison, look at Federer with an inverted racket move at the start similar to Guga and Safin. I think we all may agree that he has decent racket head speed too. He probably has the most compact backswing of anyone in the Archive. It's great to have the chance to talk about these things--makes me stretch my brain a bit.