Understanding Professional Forehands: Part 2

[johnyandell]

Let's discuss Dr. Brian Gordon's article, "Understanding Professional Forehands: Part 2"

[ten1050]

Hello Brian,
How would you classify the forehand of Jimmy Conners? His forehand seems to be driven by a rotation of the torso. There is video of him hitting recently, and it looks like his forehand and backhand have not changed much.

Norman Ashbrooke

[BrianGordon]

Hi Norman - very cool question. Connors would be closest to the type 3 swing in my view. This stroke is an evolutionary step to the current version which puts a higher premium on spin. The backswing is positional (although straight back and not elbow driven) and ends with the racquet on edge and slightly to the inside (main difference to the current version) - typical of his (our) generation. The position entering the forward swing mitigates the neuromuscular enhancement (flip to roll) of the current version. Not withstanding, the rest of the swing is essentially type 3.

[ten1050]

Hello Brian,
I thought it might be type three. In a real sense, Conners was a precursor to the modern game. I know that Conners, Agassi, and Laver were trained in a boxing environment. Conners’s grandfather was a boxer, Agassi’s father, and Laver trained with boxers as a teenager. Do you think there might be a connection between the torso rotation of a boxer and that of a world class tennis player?

Norman Ashbrooke

[hockeyscout]

Hello Brian,
I thought it might be type three. In a real sense, Conners was a precursor to the modern game. I know that Conners, Agassi, and Laver were trained in a boxing environment. Conners’s grandfather was a boxer, Agassi’s father, and Laver trained with boxers as a teenager. Do you think there might be a connection between the torso rotation of a boxer and that of a world class tennis player?

Norman Ashbrooke

lol ... train a player MMA fighting, wrestling and kicking - transitioning them into a better tennis player is very simple. Put the 20 best tennis players in a ring with the 20 best NHL/NBA/NFL players and get back to me on how that will work out for the tennis “athletes.” Tennis players do “fitness” - never heard that term till I came to tennis. The issue why tennis is so bad today is these “unqualified tennis fitness” coaches, specialization and the fact the majority of these kids have never done MMA, boxing, golf, hockey, track, football, baseball and had five/six months a year to become functional athletes. There are all these fancy drills that coaches run now that look great on instagram - but, all I know is ten minutes of wrestling with a professional trainer like myself will do more for athletic game skills than two hours of fancy exercises that will never correlate to the force a tennis player feels when going out wide to hit/recover. On the wrestling mat I can expose weaknesses very quick, and teach an athlete to be calm, flowing and able to find a way out of pressure force.

[stroke]

lol ... train a player MMA fighting, wrestling and kicking - transitioning them into a better tennis player is very simple. Put the 20 best tennis players in a ring with the 20 best NHL/NBA/NFL players and get back to me on how that will work out for the tennis “athletes.” Tennis players do “fitness” - never heard that term till I came to tennis. The issue why tennis is so bad today is these unqualified tennis fitness coaches, specialization and the fact the majority of these kids have never done MMA, boxing, golf, hockey, track, football, baseball and had five/six months a year to become functional athletes.

Hockey, I like reading your posts, but to me, you are simply wrong about tennis. As far as putting folks in a ring, I do agree. I will be picking the world champion MMA fighter in his weight class over anyone in the same weight class in any other sport.

[hockeyscout]

Really? Tell me what you disagree with sir? The fundamentals of sports development are the fundamentals - and, they will never change. In any sport - joint angles are joint angles, and the basics of training are what they are sir ...

Nothing new under the sun - look at training for instance - most of this stuff coming out these days in terms of athletic development/training comes from the Russian's/German's/Polish of the 60's and 70's - some smart ass American's are patenting devices now that were invented in the USSR. I like the American hacks that came up with TRX straps and painted some beautiful story about Navy Seals using them - strongmen from the beginning of time have used a rope and a gymnastic hoop - all of these giant leaps in training are nothing new/exciting to guy like me that have been here for five decades.

There is a reason why this is the worst crop of players, ever. Especially in woman's - take the winner of the USA open this year - she would not even be top 10 if you put her with the 1988 to 2000 years of the game. Everett, davenport, seles, hingis, capriati, navratolova, pierce etc etc - they’d tear her apart - those girls could play the game any way you want it and skin a cat in ten different ways. NO SPORT is that happening now - regression.

You take tilden’s principles from the 1930’s and apply them to a national level tennis program and they will work better than ANY current day program.

Fancy drills, and pretty tennis clubs - but just zero feel for the game this current batch of players. Nurtured in a protective cocoon. Graf/Navratilova/Federer/king/Borg - their will never be players like this again that have an educated third world “dirt-ball” feel/ability ... there is a major difference between a tennis academy ball and something that was very organically developed like Jimmy Arias' daddy's forehand idea ...