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Hey, hey, this is Shaun with the GoTennis! Podcast powered by Signature Tennis.

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Also, let us know if you have questions or topics you'd like us to discuss and we'll

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add them to our schedule.

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With that said, let's get started with 10 minutes of tennis.

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Today is 10 minutes of tennis and this is 10 tennis tips in 10 minutes.

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Justin Yeo, today is the forehand and you and I agree on this.

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We're going to start with a bonus tip and this is more of a philosophy that you and I

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agree on.

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Your first statement here is just grab a racket and hit a ball.

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What's that?

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Grab a racket and hit a ball.

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And one of the first things on every lesson, I have someone just hit ball.

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As soon as you have them hit the ball, you can already pick up on the things that they

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already can do and the things that you want to progress on.

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That way you're not trying to reinvent well, trying to make everybody the exact same, but

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it doesn't work that way.

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And grip wise, there's not everybody with these extreme grips and you can teach them with

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an East End or with a semi-western where they're just lonely because of the face or already

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doing something naturally with their hands.

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Why would you then go and reinvent the wheel?

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So I think sometimes people get too caught up on the grip and it creates tension, it creates

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all these things that don't happen now and now the player can take longer to progress

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and your job is to progress as fast as you can.

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That's what we're paying for.

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The elasticity is everything, Patrick Murray told me, he says that all the time, I'm a really

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big fan of his because finally someone's talking about the elasticity of hitting a forehand.

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It's just really his peak.

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So anyway, don't want to take that to another tip.

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I was just saying, you're giving him a line out.

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You're giving him a line out.

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You're giving him a line out.

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You're giving him a little bit of philosophy.

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All right, so let's do the grip.

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Just pick up a racket, hit the ball and then work on it.

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There you go.

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And your coach can find out what you do naturally.

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I think that's really the target there.

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So now we have nine minutes for our tips.

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So number one tip, what is the right grip just in your...

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That's it.

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The grip is the way you hit the ball.

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Like if you could just hold the racket, hit the ball, I would look at it.

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If they're closing the face, then obviously you got the grip slightly around and they think

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control the ball and move the ball around with that grip.

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That's really the key to the grip.

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Eventually as they get better and it depends on the player.

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Right?

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So there's players that are very advanced in their two over here and they're going to be

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six foot eight.

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If they're six foot eight, why are they hitting with an extreme grip like this?

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They can't come forward, right?

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Or they can't take the ball in the rise and take it all the early.

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So there's a lot of things that factor into the grip and I think it's best to see what

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the player...

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What kind of player it is, what kind of player they're going to be, where they want to progress

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and make sure the grip comes on the sides of a lot of that.

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So there you go.

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Number two, and I'm not sure how this relates to the forehand.

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So catch me up here.

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Reading the player's racket.

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Yes, 100%.

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A lot of people.

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I've seen so many people with a bad late forehand purely from not watching the other players

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racket from the perception of reading the ball.

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When they're not perception reading the ball, the split step is off, the contact point is

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off, the backswing and preparation is off.

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All these factors are off purely for the reason that they're not reading the other players

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racket.

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So I put that at the top of the list because sometimes you can totally fix someone's forehand

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just by getting them to read the other players racket and read ball.

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Get ready sooner.

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I like it.

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Now along those lines.

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Number three, ready stance and split step are crucial for this preparation, right?

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100%.

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If you don't have an athletic base and you're not in a decent ready stance, there's no

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way you can prepare for it.

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There's no way you can be ready for the variation of the ball.

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And then again, we'll totally affect your forehand.

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So yes, preparation and ready stance is absolutely key.

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And aside, shameless plug.

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Of course, this is the Atlanta tennis podcast.

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So I can plug whatever I want.

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But today, this afternoon goes out to publish the Know Your Athletic Base episode replay on

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the audio only.

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So check that out where you can get your podcasts.

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Awesome.

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The end of the ball is your feet.

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Not in the heel.

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Yes.

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You covered all that.

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We got that.

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Yeah.

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Number four, the non-dominant arm is huge component.

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Absolutely.

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Absolutely.

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It helps with the unit turn.

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It helps with the preparation.

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It helps with getting staying in an athletic base, right?

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It helps with space to the ball.

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It helps with all of those things.

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It helps if it's an advanced player.

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If you're turning your left arm and really turn like the players do, it gets your

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load in the back rear end.

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So then you're ready to drive into the ball.

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But the non-dominant hand also, in the ready stance, holds the racket nice and loose.

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So that your right hand is loose, right?

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So non-dominant hand is a critical component to the ready stance, to the preparation, to

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the whole thing.

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Balance, stability, all of it.

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And that leads us to number five, which you say is the key to the whole preparation,

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which is the unit turn.

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100%.

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I will say it right now.

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If anyone's listening, I will kill somebody.

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If they keep saying racket back, please, I do not want to hear those two words ever, ever

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again in this sport, right?

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It destroys a tennis player's preparation.

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You know, they're only hitting from here, right?

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They're not generating properly.

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They're not learning what the normal forehand is now.

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And so normal, normal racket back.

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I mean, I remember back in class, it was incoming back in 2000, 20, what?

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24 years ago, we're sure boys.

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And I was telling everybody, sit on the toilet, rotate, and hit a forehand, right?

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Little, little kids turn, sit on the toilet, hit a forehand.

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Something simple.

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Yeah, there you go.

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So no more racket back, we're moving it to unit turn.

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Number six, grip tension.

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Yep.

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Grip tension, 100% again.

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Something you can just, like you can see people doing it.

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If they're too tight, they're too tight all up beyond, and they're going to contact late,

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they're going to push them all.

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They're going to decelerate.

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They're going to stop on contact instead of finish.

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All can be blocked because of the grip tension.

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Which then comes back to the non-dominant hand.

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Even non-dominant hand helps hold the weight of the racket.

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This can be a lot looser, which then creates the elasticity.

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We like that word.

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Number seven, wrist cock.

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Yep, wrist cock as well.

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I say a lot of time with racket, we now get a unit turn, but the wrist is straight.

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This is cocked, right?

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And then I see some people cocking this way, which is not helping because that's helping

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you come down on the ball.

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They really have to learn what a wrist cock is.

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So they really learn, get it back, forwards the back end and really cock the wrist and learn

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how to utilize it.

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It's really a big factor now in learning how they pull the drag or the leg on the forehand.

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If you have no wrist cock, you can't learn to generate like that.

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And forgive the firearm reference, but a wrist cock then prepares you to pull the trigger.

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Oh, there you go.

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Yep, thank you.

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All right.

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Number eight, fluent swing in one rhythmic motion.

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Yes, so I talked a lot about keeping the rhythm of your swing.

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That way you can stay elastic.

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And if you can think about keeping it, so if the ball's coming fast, it's short, but it's

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all in one.

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If it's all coming slower, you've got a bit more, but it's all in one.

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I commonly use, which you guys can use it if you want, is called the roller coaster.

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When you see a roller coaster, it comes up, doesn't stop and then it goes as fast as

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it's the end, but it keeps going.

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It doesn't stop.

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So roller coaster, I use a lot just to make people understand what the hand and racket is

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supposed to do.

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I like the roller coaster.

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I use kind of a clock where I say you can go fast if the ball's coming fast or you can

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go slow around the clock if the ball's coming slower.

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So similar concept there.

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Number nine, forward swing is a priority.

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Forward swing is a priority.

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Most people spend more time thinking about the backswing, which is again, racked back and

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I hate it because they think about racked back.

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Now if you think about the brain and the process in time between rackets to rackets, you're going

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to have time to think about racked back and backswing.

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What we think about and should be prioritizing is one of my forwards swing doing to hit that

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ball coming, you know, and then my direction as to where I'm going as well.

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So there's only so many processes you could do and if you're constantly thinking about

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here, if you're one, you're going to be late or two, you're going to be commonly doing the

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same thing all the time when actually the focus should be up here.

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So forward swing, if you focus on it, can make things easier to strike the ball and learn

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to get better timing.

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That makes sense.

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And the last one, we're going to stop after this because I know we can keep going forever

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on these.

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But the last one, number 10, you want the contact point in front and both hands level.

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What do you mean with that?

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OK, so contact point is always in front.

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If there's anything you can go to all the top players ever have played this game, they all

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have the same contact point out in front.

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So that's one thing we all know.

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But what we don't know, when they slow down, we look at the best players, both hands tend

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to be the level on contact.

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This hand is not up here and not back here.

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If you look at tennis players like net or so many great online sporting tennis resources

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now and you'll see on contact point, usually both hands level on contact.

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There you go.

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That is 10 tips, actually 11 if you consider the first one.

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But we're going to start calling it at least 10 tips in 10 minutes.

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Justin Yeo world renowned tennis coach Australian in Puerto Rico.

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This has been 10 minutes of tennis.

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10 tips for your forehand.

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The most efficient 10 minutes of your day.

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Justin, thank you so much.

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I appreciate your time.

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Now that you enjoy everyone.

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Well, there you have it.

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