Two Tennis Tips That Work Better Than "Swing Low To High"

Hi, Tomas from Field Tennis. Have you ever heard the instruction of swinging low to high, that you should swing low to high to either impart topspin or to lift the ball higher above the net? If you've been trying to use the low to high idea or you're a coach and you're using it with your players and it doesn't work really well, I want to show you today why it doesn't work, how the players usually misinterpret the instruction of swinging low to high and I want to give you two ideas, two tips that work much better than the instruction of swinging low to high. When we tell players to swing low to high, they imagine something like this, that this is the starting point that they need to be under the ball and that they need to swing up on the ball to lift it and to hit with topspin. Now what happens is that when they start their swing like this on the forehand side or like this on the backhand side and they have this picture of swinging low to high, they are going to try to find this starting position. So they're going to do a swing, then they're going to try and find this starting position of this instruction, swing low to high and then they're going to go up and in the process what will happen is that they will lose the momentum of the swing. So their swing will not be continuous or smooth and they will lose all the momentum that we create by lifting the racket head up. The reason why we lift the racket head up is so that gravity can help us accelerate the racket so that can be on the forehand side or on the backhand side and so when we give the players the instruction swing low to high, they're going to go like this. They're going to stop the racket here because they have this picture in their mind what low to high means. They know okay this is the starting point, this is the finishing point and they're going to break the fluidity of their stroke and they will feel no power because no energy will come to the ball and because they will feel no power they're going to make a very jerky movement here to accelerate the racket and that again will not produce very good results. The second reason why the idea of swinging low to high doesn't work really well is because players imagine a swing path that is very steep. They imagine almost a vertical swing path because they're imagining like in an exaggerated way they're imagining low to high and so this swing path is way too steep for what really happens in reality because in reality the swing path is something like this and so yes there is a low to high swing but it's very shallow so players usually go way too steep when they are instructed to swing low to high because they they are too conscious of it but in reality the the low to high swing is maybe at this angle is is this shallow we are hitting the ball at this angle if we swing at this angle that would be a lob so for the backhand again i'm not swinging low to high like this this is my normal swing path so you can see what is the angle of the swing so yes it is slightly low to high but again the swing path is quite shallow maybe it's about 20 30 degrees and when players think about swing low to high they're going to swing maybe at 60 or 70 degrees upwards and so again they will not hit the ball well and they will not hit with good power the third reason why the swinging low to high idea is not very good is because players focus on their body they're thinking about their arm and how they're going to move it and while the ball is coming to them they are focusing let's say with 50 percent of their brain on the instruction and 50 percent of their brain or their attention to the ball and that's not enough because they don't pay full attention to the ball they're going to position poorly to the ball they will not time it well and again they will not hit a good ball so this is normal every time we give an instruction about something about the body think about your body rotate your hips or rotate your shoulders or whatever we say about the body we have to know that there will be less attention on the ball and that's why oftentimes we coaches we throw the ball with hands or we feed very nice balls because we don't want to trouble the player's mind with ball judgment because the player's mind is on the body and not on the ball but there is a way to bring the player's mind to the ball and at the same time have them hit the ball with topspin and lift it over the net and so the first idea that is better than the instruction of swinging low to high is to imagine that you're hitting the ball below the center or below the equator if you imagine a planet earth and here's the equator right here and i know that most players when the ball is coming to them they just want to hit it straight at the back into the equator of the ball but that's not a good idea that's not a good mental image you should imagine that you're hitting the ball first below the center so in a similar way as we explain a topspin serve where we say you should spin the ball from seven to one so we imagine like this we say okay start here at seven o'clock and go up across the ball that's how we imagine we explain the topspin serve in a similar way we can imagine how we hit a topspin forehand or a topspin backhand except that we don't say at seven o'clock but maybe more at six o'clock and not completely at the bottom of the ball because we are not under the ball but we are more behind the ball so you should imagine that you're hitting the ball at roughly 45 degrees angle below the center like this that should be your first contact with the ball and then you go over the equator and leave the ball above the equator so you should imagine when you're hitting the ball quite a long interaction between the strings and the ball it should not be a short interaction where you just tap the ball it should be a longer interaction where you roll the ball i don't like too much the the word brushing the ball because then players they just go up like this and they don't really hit the ball so i prefer to to tell the players that they roll the ball or they press into the ball and roll it and you imagine that you first make contact below the ball now what's important to understand here is that this is just a mental image it's it's not what really happens maybe it happens on some balls but what it helps us is that we create the right swing where the racket comes a bit under the ball so when i'm about to hit the ball i'm not thinking about hitting the ball at the back at the equator but a little bit below the center and rolling it so i'm playing more like this here's one more as i mentioned before the second problem of the instruction of swinging low to high is that players slow down or actually like almost stop the racket and then they go up because they have this picture in their mind where is the starting point and where is the finishing point of this instruction of this picture swing low to high and so instead of telling players swing low to high you can do exactly the opposite you can ask the players to swing down first here's an example of a player that has a very nice technique but he has a little pause in that lower part that i marked with the yellow line so this is where he's slowing down his racket too much because i believe he's thinking too much about low to high so as you will see right now i'll just go right to him and push his arm down so i'm pushing his arm down down to give him this feeling of swing down first and even though it's very strange for the player to do that he does it and then he is very surprised with the with the speed and the results of the ball so again you don't see any pause now and his backhand goes much faster and he has much more topspin on the ball even though he is not thinking about up he's thinking about down because up automatically happens so try this idea imagine swinging down first and see what happens try to feel that you feel the momentum building up you feel the speed building up and you realize oh my arm actually swings up automatically so the same on the backhand you can imagine first swinging down and realizing that's how you generate momentum and how your arm will automatically swing up so i show first one on the backhand so i imagine from here i imagine swinging down i swing down and i let go and it works out just fine and i can of course do the same on the forehand so i lift the racket i try to feel a downward swing first it's a downward swing i feel how the speed builds up and how my arm automatically goes up so if i hit the ball in the right contact point well in front when my arm is already going up then it will just work out fine so i'm trying to feel how i swing down i'm approaching the ball from below and then i just finish my stroke so in the end if you've tried the idea of swinging low to high and it didn't really work for you i really recommend that you try the idea of the mental image of hitting the ball below the center because not only will that create the right swing but you will also pay attention to the ball as i mentioned before when we think about our body and we think what we have to do with our body then we really don't pay good attention to the ball and then we miss time the ball and we don't position well and so on so we have a lot of problems with the ball but when we imagine hitting the ball a bit under the center then our whole attention is on the ball because this is our target this is our moving target so when the ball is coming toward us our full attention is on the ball we are positioning to the ball and we are imagining where we're going to hit it so it's a much better method because all our attention is on the ball and not on the body and the second idea of swinging down also works quite well especially if you have someone that can push your arm a bit down that you feel this build-up of momentum and that you realize that even when you swing down your arm will automatically swing up which is a similar idea when we serve because when we serve we say that we have to hit up yes we hit up we accelerate the arm up and even when we accelerate the arm up at some point it will start to go down so we don't really have to worry about swinging down because the arm has nowhere else to go it's attached in the shoulder so if we accelerate the arm upwards it will go downwards and for more on this i will give you a link to the full explanation of how we serve up and similar here it's a similar idea we have to swing down first and the upward swing will automatically happen so if you like this video please subscribe and like it and thanks for watching i'll see you next time