How To Hit Powerful Forehands Like Carlos Alcaraz

Right now, you are the best player in the world. He's the future of the men's tennis. 102 miles an hour. Make it known as the best player in the world. I mean, obviously, he's the new Rafa, right? He doesn't have to look at me anymore, no. He's started already. And for Alcaraz, the foundation of it all starts with his forehand. Alcaraz's forehand starts with his unique grip. In most shots, he pairs a version of the semi-western grip with a straight-arm forehand. Now, only a few other players like Nadal and Verdasco have used this specific combo. But this combination naturally creates heavy spin because you get more racket lag and a bigger amount of internal shoulder rotation, or this windshield wiper motion into contact. But that's not to say that it isn't possible to hit with crazy spin like Rude or Berrettini, or to be able to bomb super-fast forehands like Gonzalez and Thiem with the bent arm. And I can't stress enough that your specific grip and hitting arm combination is just a matter of personal preference. Now, if you want to know exactly what grip is best for you, we actually have a free quiz in the first link in the description below, so check that out. When Federer and Nadal were winning all the Grand Slams, everybody was trying to copy their straight-arm forehands, including myself back in the day. Back in my day. But ultimately, finding your unique grip and hitting structure boils down to experimenting instead of copying. Like all other elite forehands, Alcarez's swing starts with the unit turn. He starts turning to the side with his hitting arm relaxed and low with his racket tip pointing more forward. In contrast, you can see players like Federer, Nadal, Aliassime, and Nishikori start with their racket tip upward in the unit turn by lifting their off-arm right away. Now, there's no hard and fast rule here, but players with compact backswings like to take their racket tip up with their off-arm because it allows them to have a fluid backswing without them having to lift their entire arm up. From there, their racket drops mostly happen from this motion called elbow extension. Alcarez keeps both arms low initially and then lifts both of his arms at the start of his backswing. You'll see other players with huge forehands like Kyrgios and Gonzalez who also do this. From the side view, he keeps his off-hand on the racket past his hitting shoulder and releases it off at about ear level. Now, this might seem like a very nuanced difference, but holding his off-arm for longer forces him to create more hip and trunk separation which builds a huge stretch or elastic potential energy in his core and oblique muscles. So, a simple way to get used to this style of backswing is to sandwich your racket, just hold both ends like this, and start with these three cues. Number one, you're gonna stretch your off-arm all the way across, just like this, with both of your arms going back together. From here, you're gonna relax and let the arms just drop, just like that. And step number three, once you feel your arms dropping, I want you to rotate your hip and trunk back in and you'll start to feel that rotation coming more freely. Now, this style of backswing does take longer. So, if Alcarez is ever rushed on the run or scrambling around his backhand, he'll often move with his hitting arm already set in position to accelerate forward. So, my personal recommendation, well, I would say try turning with a less extreme unit turn first and then start experimenting with this greater hip and trunk separation from there. This is because it does take a lot more trunk mobility and better timing in your swing to get used to a motion like this. I'd start off with something more along the lines of what Federer does, which is at around the 45 degree point of your turn, start releasing your offhand off the racket and then start experimenting with more of the Alcarez style where you keep both hands on the racket and focus on leading your hitting elbow up and back. And of course, if you feel any discomfort, don't force this range of motion. I don't want you to be the first tennis player to have to go home in a stretcher. So, after releasing the offhand, he continues lifting both arms until his off-arm bicep is parallel to the court. And at the same point, his hitting arm is about 70 degrees away from his torso. Now, because of how high he raises his hitting arm and quickly turns to the side, his racket tip is gonna point forward. And this key characteristic is what a lot of players are calling the next-gen forehand, even though somebody like Gonzalez did this 20 years ago. I guess he was just ahead of his time. Now, we'll actually make a video on the classical versus next-gen forehand if this video gets three likes. You can tell we really wanna make this. So, Alcarez's hitting arm starts to straighten out and just before it completes extending, he'll begin to unload his hips. Now, for players looking to hit with a straight arm, this is exactly what I recommend. Just as you're starting to fully extend your arm, I want you to think about pulling that hand forward already. This is gonna help a lot for relaxation because you won't stay stuck in this position where you have a lot of time to start tensing up your arm. Instead, you want your arm to extend naturally like it's a lasso. Now, if you're just learning the straight-arm forehand, this isn't 100% necessary. In fact, I think I started out my forehands just starting from the end of the backswing position and look where that got me. Because Alcarez raises his hitting arm more in his backswing, his racket face doesn't close down to the court as much with a lower take back as Federer's does. And because of this, it often looks like his racket is dropping more on edge. You could see Tsitsipas and Rublev also drop their rackets on edge instead of closing the racket face down like Federer. And when he's on balance, he's typically hitting from a semi-open stance because it allows him to create a huge stretch or separation between his hips and trunk. And then he rotates his body the most into contact. As Alcarez's racket drops into the slot, he pushes hard from his back leg to start a powerful hip rotation and unwinding effect from the huge unit turn. Now, this is really where we start to get into what makes Alcarez's forehand so special because he's able to generate so much force here that allows him to hit some of the fastest and heaviest forehands on tour. So this rotation creates a huge lag where his shoulder and forearm are now flipped back into external shoulder rotation. And this rapid motion here of external to internal rotation like here, boom, bow, allows him to hit with tremendous topspin and racket at speed. Now, if we compare him to Nadal, I want you to notice the difference in the direction of his acceleration. Because of how high his hitting arm raises away in his take back, he doesn't actually drop his racket quite as low as somebody like Nadal or Federer. And the direction of Nadal's acceleration tends to travel more steeply to his right, assuming he's a righty. So despite them creating very similar amounts of topspin, it is possible that Nadal's backswing allows him to actually create more sidespin as well because of how much he's swinging out to his left. On the other hand, Alcarez's bigger take back allows him to hit harder and bigger without losing too much consistency. All right, now moving into the contact. Alcarez hits with a variation of the straight arm forehand just like Federer and Nadal. But this is what many players tend to focus on. But it's not the only thing that makes his forehand special. On most forehands, he's extending his hitting arm across and up until his hand moves up to about his forehead level. And his elbow doesn't break or decelerate until well after his contact. Other players like Federer and Tsitsipas will tend to bend their elbows earlier and actually follow through a little bit lower than Alcarez does. Simultaneously, he rotates his shoulder and forearm initially, which creates tons of spin. So to implement this into your own forehand, I want you to try this out with me. Start at your contact point just like so and try extending your hitting arm up and across until your hand reaches about your forehead level just like this. And try that a few times without any real focus on rolling the racket over just yet. Now from here, you can start to focus on getting this internal rotation of the shoulder and the forearm to get this racket to come across just like this. If you combine that with the forward and upward extension, now you can start to see how much upward and forward racket at speed you can start to generate. If you're a Dominic Thiem fan, you've probably noticed that he'll exaggerate this by pausing in this position for a split second during his warmups. Now from here, once you've reached this halfway position in your extension, you can start to bend your elbow to decelerate the rest of your swing. After Alcarez releases his wrist through contact by keeping it relaxed, his wrist goes into full flexion in his follow through until his racket face closes down to the court. Now this amount of wrist flexion in your forehand is not necessary and it absolutely should not be forced because you will definitely get injuries. But keeping your grip and forearm relaxed will help you to transfer more force into the racket head at contact to hit a heavier shot. And of course, depending on the situation, he'll make all kinds of adaptations to his swing speed and stance just as all other players do. And above all else, what allows Alcarez to have such amazing ball striking ability is his head stability at contact. It's very reminiscent of Federer. It turns into contact and stays completely stable through his extension, helping him to make clean contact time and time again. And this was a huge personal revelation for us. You know, when we started looking at techniques like keeping the head still or relaxing the arm or even swinging low to high, it wasn't like a checkbox we were trying to check off and say, yes, I did it. It's more about how much we're doing it and how effectively we're doing it in as many situations as possible. So what I mean here is anytime you think you couldn't possibly get your head more stable through the shot, just look at somebody like Alcarez and get back on the court. Now there's a lot more to Alcarez's game than just his forehand technique. There's his defense, net game, kick serve out wide, and much, much more. So let me know in the comments below what you guys want us to break down next. And until next time, athletes, go out and train hard. I'll see you in the next video.