Hey, hey, this is Shaun with the GoTennis! Podcast powered by Signature Tennis.
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Speaker:With that said, let's get started with 10 minutes of tennis.
Speaker:Today is 10 minutes of tennis and this is 10 tennis tips in 10 minutes.
Speaker:Justin Yeo, today is the forehand and you and I agree on this.
Speaker:We're going to start with a bonus tip and this is more of a philosophy that you and I
Speaker:agree on.
Speaker:Your first statement here is just grab a racket and hit a ball.
Speaker:What's that?
Speaker:Grab a racket and hit a ball.
Speaker:And one of the first things on every lesson, I have someone just hit ball.
Speaker:As soon as you have them hit the ball, you can already pick up on the things that they
Speaker:already can do and the things that you want to progress on.
Speaker:That way you're not trying to reinvent well, trying to make everybody the exact same, but
Speaker:it doesn't work that way.
Speaker:And grip wise, there's not everybody with these extreme grips and you can teach them with
Speaker:an East End or with a semi-western where they're just lonely because of the face or already
Speaker:doing something naturally with their hands.
Speaker:Why would you then go and reinvent the wheel?
Speaker:So I think sometimes people get too caught up on the grip and it creates tension, it creates
Speaker:all these things that don't happen now and now the player can take longer to progress
Speaker:and your job is to progress as fast as you can.
Speaker:That's what we're paying for.
Speaker:The elasticity is everything, Patrick Murray told me, he says that all the time, I'm a really
Speaker:big fan of his because finally someone's talking about the elasticity of hitting a forehand.
Speaker:It's just really his peak.
Speaker:So anyway, don't want to take that to another tip.
Speaker:I was just saying, you're giving him a line out.
Speaker:You're giving him a line out.
Speaker:You're giving him a line out.
Speaker:You're giving him a little bit of philosophy.
Speaker:All right, so let's do the grip.
Speaker:Just pick up a racket, hit the ball and then work on it.
Speaker:There you go.
Speaker:And your coach can find out what you do naturally.
Speaker:I think that's really the target there.
Speaker:So now we have nine minutes for our tips.
Speaker:So number one tip, what is the right grip just in your...
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:The grip is the way you hit the ball.
Speaker:Like if you could just hold the racket, hit the ball, I would look at it.
Speaker:If they're closing the face, then obviously you got the grip slightly around and they think
Speaker:control the ball and move the ball around with that grip.
Speaker:That's really the key to the grip.
Speaker:Eventually as they get better and it depends on the player.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So there's players that are very advanced in their two over here and they're going to be
Speaker:six foot eight.
Speaker:If they're six foot eight, why are they hitting with an extreme grip like this?
Speaker:They can't come forward, right?
Speaker:Or they can't take the ball in the rise and take it all the early.
Speaker:So there's a lot of things that factor into the grip and I think it's best to see what
Speaker:the player...
Speaker:What kind of player it is, what kind of player they're going to be, where they want to progress
Speaker:and make sure the grip comes on the sides of a lot of that.
Speaker:So there you go.
Speaker:Number two, and I'm not sure how this relates to the forehand.
Speaker:So catch me up here.
Speaker:Reading the player's racket.
Speaker:Yes, 100%.
Speaker:A lot of people.
Speaker:I've seen so many people with a bad late forehand purely from not watching the other players
Speaker:racket from the perception of reading the ball.
Speaker:When they're not perception reading the ball, the split step is off, the contact point is
Speaker:off, the backswing and preparation is off.
Speaker:All these factors are off purely for the reason that they're not reading the other players
Speaker:racket.
Speaker:So I put that at the top of the list because sometimes you can totally fix someone's forehand
Speaker:just by getting them to read the other players racket and read ball.
Speaker:Get ready sooner.
Speaker:I like it.
Speaker:Now along those lines.
Speaker:Number three, ready stance and split step are crucial for this preparation, right?
Speaker:100%.
Speaker:If you don't have an athletic base and you're not in a decent ready stance, there's no
Speaker:way you can prepare for it.
Speaker:There's no way you can be ready for the variation of the ball.
Speaker:And then again, we'll totally affect your forehand.
Speaker:So yes, preparation and ready stance is absolutely key.
Speaker:And aside, shameless plug.
Speaker:Of course, this is the Atlanta tennis podcast.
Speaker:So I can plug whatever I want.
Speaker:But today, this afternoon goes out to publish the Know Your Athletic Base episode replay on
Speaker:the audio only.
Speaker:So check that out where you can get your podcasts.
Speaker:Awesome.
Speaker:The end of the ball is your feet.
Speaker:Not in the heel.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:You covered all that.
Speaker:We got that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Number four, the non-dominant arm is huge component.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:It helps with the unit turn.
Speaker:It helps with the preparation.
Speaker:It helps with getting staying in an athletic base, right?
Speaker:It helps with space to the ball.
Speaker:It helps with all of those things.
Speaker:It helps if it's an advanced player.
Speaker:If you're turning your left arm and really turn like the players do, it gets your
Speaker:load in the back rear end.
Speaker:So then you're ready to drive into the ball.
Speaker:But the non-dominant hand also, in the ready stance, holds the racket nice and loose.
Speaker:So that your right hand is loose, right?
Speaker:So non-dominant hand is a critical component to the ready stance, to the preparation, to
Speaker:the whole thing.
Speaker:Balance, stability, all of it.
Speaker:And that leads us to number five, which you say is the key to the whole preparation,
Speaker:which is the unit turn.
Speaker:100%.
Speaker:I will say it right now.
Speaker:If anyone's listening, I will kill somebody.
Speaker:If they keep saying racket back, please, I do not want to hear those two words ever, ever
Speaker:again in this sport, right?
Speaker:It destroys a tennis player's preparation.
Speaker:You know, they're only hitting from here, right?
Speaker:They're not generating properly.
Speaker:They're not learning what the normal forehand is now.
Speaker:And so normal, normal racket back.
Speaker:I mean, I remember back in class, it was incoming back in 2000, 20, what?
Speaker:24 years ago, we're sure boys.
Speaker:And I was telling everybody, sit on the toilet, rotate, and hit a forehand, right?
Speaker:Little, little kids turn, sit on the toilet, hit a forehand.
Speaker:Something simple.
Speaker:Yeah, there you go.
Speaker:So no more racket back, we're moving it to unit turn.
Speaker:Number six, grip tension.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Grip tension, 100% again.
Speaker:Something you can just, like you can see people doing it.
Speaker:If they're too tight, they're too tight all up beyond, and they're going to contact late,
Speaker:they're going to push them all.
Speaker:They're going to decelerate.
Speaker:They're going to stop on contact instead of finish.
Speaker:All can be blocked because of the grip tension.
Speaker:Which then comes back to the non-dominant hand.
Speaker:Even non-dominant hand helps hold the weight of the racket.
Speaker:This can be a lot looser, which then creates the elasticity.
Speaker:We like that word.
Speaker:Number seven, wrist cock.
Speaker:Yep, wrist cock as well.
Speaker:I say a lot of time with racket, we now get a unit turn, but the wrist is straight.
Speaker:This is cocked, right?
Speaker:And then I see some people cocking this way, which is not helping because that's helping
Speaker:you come down on the ball.
Speaker:They really have to learn what a wrist cock is.
Speaker:So they really learn, get it back, forwards the back end and really cock the wrist and learn
Speaker:how to utilize it.
Speaker:It's really a big factor now in learning how they pull the drag or the leg on the forehand.
Speaker:If you have no wrist cock, you can't learn to generate like that.
Speaker:And forgive the firearm reference, but a wrist cock then prepares you to pull the trigger.
Speaker:Oh, there you go.
Speaker:Yep, thank you.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Number eight, fluent swing in one rhythmic motion.
Speaker:Yes, so I talked a lot about keeping the rhythm of your swing.
Speaker:That way you can stay elastic.
Speaker:And if you can think about keeping it, so if the ball's coming fast, it's short, but it's
Speaker:all in one.
Speaker:If it's all coming slower, you've got a bit more, but it's all in one.
Speaker:I commonly use, which you guys can use it if you want, is called the roller coaster.
Speaker:When you see a roller coaster, it comes up, doesn't stop and then it goes as fast as
Speaker:it's the end, but it keeps going.
Speaker:It doesn't stop.
Speaker:So roller coaster, I use a lot just to make people understand what the hand and racket is
Speaker:supposed to do.
Speaker:I like the roller coaster.
Speaker:I use kind of a clock where I say you can go fast if the ball's coming fast or you can
Speaker:go slow around the clock if the ball's coming slower.
Speaker:So similar concept there.
Speaker:Number nine, forward swing is a priority.
Speaker:Forward swing is a priority.
Speaker:Most people spend more time thinking about the backswing, which is again, racked back and
Speaker:I hate it because they think about racked back.
Speaker:Now if you think about the brain and the process in time between rackets to rackets, you're going
Speaker:to have time to think about racked back and backswing.
Speaker:What we think about and should be prioritizing is one of my forwards swing doing to hit that
Speaker:ball coming, you know, and then my direction as to where I'm going as well.
Speaker:So there's only so many processes you could do and if you're constantly thinking about
Speaker:here, if you're one, you're going to be late or two, you're going to be commonly doing the
Speaker:same thing all the time when actually the focus should be up here.
Speaker:So forward swing, if you focus on it, can make things easier to strike the ball and learn
Speaker:to get better timing.
Speaker:That makes sense.
Speaker:And the last one, we're going to stop after this because I know we can keep going forever
Speaker:on these.
Speaker:But the last one, number 10, you want the contact point in front and both hands level.
Speaker:What do you mean with that?
Speaker:OK, so contact point is always in front.
Speaker:If there's anything you can go to all the top players ever have played this game, they all
Speaker:have the same contact point out in front.
Speaker:So that's one thing we all know.
Speaker:But what we don't know, when they slow down, we look at the best players, both hands tend
Speaker:to be the level on contact.
Speaker:This hand is not up here and not back here.
Speaker:If you look at tennis players like net or so many great online sporting tennis resources
Speaker:now and you'll see on contact point, usually both hands level on contact.
Speaker:There you go.
Speaker:That is 10 tips, actually 11 if you consider the first one.
Speaker:But we're going to start calling it at least 10 tips in 10 minutes.
Speaker:Justin Yeo world renowned tennis coach Australian in Puerto Rico.
Speaker:This has been 10 minutes of tennis.
Speaker:10 tips for your forehand.
Speaker:The most efficient 10 minutes of your day.
Speaker:Justin, thank you so much.
Speaker:I appreciate your time.
Speaker:Now that you enjoy everyone.
Speaker:Well, there you have it.
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