The first topic in today’s show is safely creating big angles from the baseline by creating more topspin. How exactly should we hit these shots without them sailing wide? I give two practice drills to get a better feel for how vertical you should be swinging. The second topic has to do with mishitting volleys and missing easy volleys in general. I give a great three step system to eliminating miss hit volleys and also talk about how you can hit an offensive volley without losing your consistency!
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Hi Ian,
Great show as usual. About the overactive racket in taking easy volleys (if there are any…?). I think you really nailed the technical solution to this, but looking at my own occasional problems with the sitters, I see also a mental bit that wasn’t commented on in the show.
Sometimes, when I see an ‘easy’ boll approaching, I get confused by having too many targets, especially in doubles: the closest player, a sharp angle, a drop-volley, and so on. Being at the net there truly are several targets, right. Too often, however, this makes me do a last split-second change of mind of the worst kind, and this induces an overactive motion with the racquet.
If i notice this, my personal solution is simple: for the rest of that game, I only aim at the best target available – the feet of my closest opponent. Never mind if he manages to dig that ball up, I’m still taking control over my mind and racquet. Usually it just takes a few shots to get back in the groove.
Ian, about your mountain of questions: could you set up forlders/categories in the forum, into which you could sort and dump the questions. In that way you’ll see what subjects are most popular, and I’m also sure there are members here that can throw in their own answers.
Cheers, Sören
Soren,
Excellent point about those easy volleys! I just got done recording a response to that at the end of Episode #188 (out soon).
Hmmmm……not a bad idea about linking question submissions with the forums. I’ve been trying to think of a good way to get more people active over there as well. Maybe I could get two birds with one stone using your suggestion. Thank you!
Ian Great show as usual!
Thank you for all you do!
also, Drfredc, I liked your post, thank you for your time in explaining this.
QUESTION – What about interviewing Jack Sock and Melanie Oudin,
and see what listeners can learn from their mixed doubles success ?
Bob,
Absolutely, I’d love to interview the two of them. It’s definitely not a matter of wanting to interview pro players, it’s a question of actually getting in contact with them and having them be agreeable to it 🙂
Hey Ian,
Thanks for the podcast; always a pleasure to listen to them.
My question – and I think drfredc might just have given an answer – is *how* one should be adjusting the ratio of vertical and forward drive in my swing. I get the point about how to practice, but what are the technique fundamentals? I hit with a fair amount of TS anyway, but I find that when I try to add even more TS by doing a more vertical swing I start to make mistakes. What I think is going on is that I am trying to “flick” the racket upwards using my elbow and maybe my wrist. The result is flipping the racket on the follow through, loss of control on ball height and depth, and more than a few embarrassing shanks!
I would love to hear your thoughts about how I should address this. Is it a matter of maybe shortening my swing, or as drfredc suggested, keeping the swing the same but using the legs and core more while keeping the actual swing-path in relation to my trunk the same?
Thanks
Ed (in Nairobi – 6000 feet above sea level, so the balls really fly and topspin matters!)
Ed,
Great to have you listening in Nairobi. I addressed your question at the end of Podcast #188, if you have any more questions let me know!
I find hitting a foam tennis training ball a good way to get a feel for various forms and degrees of spins, including, but not limited to topspin. This can be over the net to a partner, or against a wall.
Also, a lot of instruction on adding topspin misses how most pros (especially men), get a lot of their vertical racket movement from moving their core (body) in a vertical direction during the stroke. This is typically done by bending and unbending at the knees while keeping the upper body (core) in position to rotate and hit the shot. Go to any You Tube of male pros hitting topspin groundstrokes and put the cursor at the player’s head at the back of the stroke, and see where it’s at finish. The players head is typically almost a foot higher at the stroke finish — they’ve added a bunch of topspin without adjusting their swing pattern — you can even get topspin with a “flat swing” this way.
Using vertical core movement to add topspin can provide a lot additional topspin without the complexity of adjusting racket swing speed or swing and racket angles. When one learns to add topspin with vertical core movement, it’s a relatively easy task to adjust power to hit deep heavy topspins that are difficult to return, or angled shots, or take off some power and zing heavy topspin defensive shots that barely clear the net and drop to the net player’s shoe laces or hit finishing shots on short shots in no man’s land that don’t go long. One way to help reinforce this vertical movement is to figure that every time a topspin hits the net or goes long, it probably did so because of lack of sufficient vertical core movement — get your knees bent, butt down before the approaching ball clears the net…
IMHO, there’s too much focus amongst rec players upon racket orientation and movement with too little on vertical core movement in adding and controlling topspin. Weak application of vertical core movement to add and control topspin may also be a common weakness amongst many higher level women players, including pros.
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Here’s a simple alternative drill to recalibrate where your sweet spot is for volleys and strokes in general — get a small 4″ diameter kick ball that is blown up bouncy hard. Practice some in close volleys and gentle controlled strokes against a wall. Add in spins as you get flat shots and the sweet spot recalibrated. Because of the weight of the ball, you absolutely must hit the ball in the sweet spot or the racket will twist out of your hand. Don’t take full speed swings — the ball is too heavy for that. Controlled slow motion full swings work fine to develop muscle memory and hand/eye coordination of the sweet spot. The purpose here is to ‘recalibrate’ how to get the ball to the center of the racket, not develop stronger swings.
The fine print on having difficulty hitting the ball in the racket’s sweet spot for any type of shot is one I’m very familiar with — funky eyesight. My day job (dentist) has me overworking my closeup focus so that when I hit the court after work, my eyes sometimes take an hour or more to adjust to clearly see the ball to properly connect with the racket’s sweet spot. This can also vary between right and left sides — some days the right side is fine, left not, and then next day it’s the other way around.
Anyways, one simple eyesight drill that I find helpful is while driving to the courts to focus upon something about 100 feet away like oncoming car license plates and try to read the letters and numbers. After a couple cars, then one switches to oncoming cars or road signs then quickly refocus at something about center windshield and back to something on the road — I’ve got a handy rock ding in the center of my driver windshield that works fine for the up close focal spot :(. Then vary this by turning your head slightly sideways one way or the other, while still looking forward.
Of course, as the driver, this all has to be done with driving attention and safety first in mind — priority based multitasking is also a good skill to work on. If this exercise seems too much of a distraction while driving or traffic is too demanding, then don’t do it, or work into it slowly. If you’re the passenger this all becomes easier…
Drfred:
I agree that using the legs and core can in fact help increase the amount of topspin imparted on the ball. However, a relatively flat swing path will never create much spin, no matter how well the core or legs is used so I always spend most of my time explaining that side of things, the elements that make the biggest difference.
I do also agree that changing swing speeds and swing paths can cause inconsistencies, but if practiced they can become a reliable part of a player’s game!
Thanks for your thoughts as always.