2 BEST ATP Modern Forehand Drills for Learning Lag and ATP technique - PLUS Pro TIPS!

Hi, it's Chris Lewitt here, top American high performance coach and coach to many number one juniors in the U.S. I want to tell you about my top two favorite drills to develop the ATP forehand and stick around for an extra bonus way to practice the ATP modern forehand. Okay, this is drill number one and this is a little setup that I created here at the Chris Lewitt Tennis Academy in Manchester, Vermont, but you can do this anywhere. You just set up a barrier because one of the keys to the ATP forehand is not taking the racket across the plane. So that would be taking the racket here. A lot of players, especially female players, take the racket across their body. They cross the plane. So this is the 6 p.m mark and you just want to create a barrier. You want to create a wall here and that way you can practice your ATP backswing on this side of the wall, this side of the barrier. So then what I would recommend is doing some shadowing here and work on getting a feeling for where the racket should be and where your hand should be. So you're going to set up in front of this barrier and you can use this. I just set up a pickup tube on top of a construction cone here. So this was very creative and it just happens to match in color but this is very simple but you could use a ball cart. What have I used in the past? I've used different types of cones and a chair. Anything that will block the racket from coming across. Blocking like a big loop will work great. And usually you want something soft that has some give to it because you don't want to chip up somebody's racket or your own racket and you'd like something that you don't bash into. If you do bash into it, which sometimes happens, you don't mess up your racket or mess up whatever you're bashing into. So basically what I recommend, especially if you're practicing at home, if you don't have a coach, you could have someone toss you balls or feed you balls. But a really simple thing you can do is just get some balls in your hand or stuff your pockets with five, six, seven balls or whatever you can fit. And then you can just drop toss to yourself. It's a very undervalued and underrated and not well-known way to practice. You can just toss to yourself and get a very good practice that way. So you just toss it up and then you go and make your swing. I'll show you what that looks like. There we go. I'll toss it and see if I can accelerate without coming across my body. I want to make sure I don't get greedy and try to come across the plane. Pretty much every ATP player, a few exceptions, but almost every ATP player on the men's side has has a variation of backswing in this space. You know you have Alvarez, you have Sinner, you have Federer who's just retired and all the top players these days, Djokovic have their backswings in this area. So I'll show you again what it looks like. A little toss to yourself and then work on your backswing. You can work on getting lag, staying relaxed and using staying relaxed and then using your hips to create lag in the racket and then accelerate the racket to the ball. Here's a pro tip in terms of trying to get lag. You know I wouldn't focus on it too much. Don't become too obsessed with that. Just try to stay relaxed and let the lag happen. A lot of players try, they're obsessed with lag. I get a lot of emails and people connecting with me trying, especially adult players who are trying to change their forehand to be more modern and they really want to get that perfect lag like the pros do. Remember, most people don't have the range of motion that that pros have, the elasticity. So you may not have the flexibility or mobility that the pros have and you most likely are more rigid in your swing than the pros are. So I would try to be relaxed and that's really the key to getting lag here, is to be relaxed in the entire arm structure, shoulder, elbow and wrist and that will help create the lag. But the biggest thing I would think about is using your legs and using your hips to drive and pull the racket through the hitting zone rather than trying to do something with your wrist. It's really, what lag is, is more of a passive movement of the wrist. There's not an actual wrist acceleration in the sense that you're concentrically contracting your wrist, the muscles of your wrist. So be very careful with that. A lot of special recreational players, they're trying to do stuff with their wrist, they're trying to flex their wrist through the impact, they're using flexion and that's a great way to get injured. So I would just focus on relaxing the wrist. The wrist is the passenger in the car and use your legs and your hips to pull the racket through and accelerate the racket through and that will over time create lag and that will get you what you want. If you look at high speed video studies, you'll see that there's not a lot of wrist movement through the impact. So there's not a lot of wrist flexion happening through the impact. Most people assume that after the lag that the wrist is flexing forward. That's actually not the case. In most of the situations, the wrist, it barely moves. I think there are certain shots where the wrist may have a little more of an action behind it, especially like shots that you're trying to curve or slower speed shots when you're working like an angle or something. But on most high speed shots where you see the big lag that the pros do, the wrist is staying almost the same angle all the way through the impact. So when you see the wrist break, that's post-impact. You see that that wrist flexion and you see internal rotation of the shoulder post-impact. So that, you know, on all the YouTube videos that I see, it kind of drives me crazy. Everyone's focusing on lag and snap, but there's really not a snap based on the biomechanical research and the high speed video. So you got to watch out for that. Try not to obsess about the wrist snapping, but you do want to get lag by staying relaxed. So if you can stay relaxed, you'll likely get that racket head lagging behind. You know, you want that compact backswing and the racket will hopefully lag if you use your legs and hips correctly. But if you're locked, if you're rigid, if you do the drill like this, you're going to get very minimal spin and you're also probably going to feel a little sore in your arm and you're not going to get much power and you're going to be, you're going to be right. You're not getting lag, but should you really obsess about the lag or should you just be relaxed and try to get the kinetic chain working correctly? You know, I think that's important to consider. Okay, my second favorite drill when working on the modern forehand or the HP forehand is to have a string, a high string that you work on. You can work on your lag, you can work on your whipping the racket through, work on all the, you can work on your backswing compact, but you've got to get it over the string and you've got to get really good topspin. So that is very, very difficult for most people and you have to work on it. So anytime that you're working on lag, anytime that you're working on anything modern, hip rotation, acceleration, compact backswing, all the components of the of the so-called ATP forehand, the modern forehand, you want to use a barrier. You want to go up and over that string, have a high target and then try to bring the ball down with spin. It's going to force you to hit spin and that's the key. If you're not able to do that, I promise you, virtually guarantee you that you're too rigid. So this is the best way that I found to develop the elasticity that's necessary to do the modern forehand type swing. And I'll just show you a couple examples of that. You can do the same self-tossing. It's a great way to practice as we talked about. Same self-tossing and as you accelerate, you want to get the ball up over the string and if possible, make it dip into the other side of the court. You don't want the ball to keep going. If it goes over the string and keeps going, it's too flat. You know, you were too, for sure you were too rigid. So you're going to have to stay very relaxed in your arm, very whippy through here, relaxed and whippy, and you have to aim over the high string. This device is called an AirZone. It's a really good tool. I recommend it to all my clients, all my students, all the families that I work with. You can make one yourself. The AirZone is not too expensive, maybe $100, but if you don't want to spend that, you can get two sticks, connect a rope like they do old school style in Spain, and you can just take that high string wherever you go, anywhere you're practicing. All right, I'll show you again. You want to accelerate. Okay, that one was a little low and make sure you're getting up and over and bringing the ball down into the court. That ball had a pretty good rotation on it. I got my fast swing. Hopefully, I got my 8-speed back swing in place. We'll have to check the high speed video, but the ball was rotating well and it went up and came down with a dip. So, anytime I'm working on ATP Forehand, I'm always working on that dip, and I recommend you do the same. Okay, we talked about my top two favorite drills to develop the ATP Modern Forehand. Here's a bonus way to practice. I recommend an iCoach. This is an iCoach machine. A lot of people have a Topspin Pro or an iCoach, or you may have another stationary device that you can use at home. You can use this in a living room, and what I recommend doing is working on your compact back swing, working on your lag and your acceleration. Practice a few times with your iCoach or your Topspin Pro, and then after you've had a few good practices, a few good swings, work on that self-feed and practice the the hit that way. So, you do a few here. This is also a great way to work on your spacing. Another kind of bonus tip is that most people are too close to the ball. If I get like this on the ball and I try to accelerate, I'm going to be able to hit the ball. I'm going to be able to get some speed, but I'm not going to maximize my speed or my spin. So, you don't want to swing in here. You can practice your spacing. Make sure the back swing is on the right so you don't come across like we talked about in the first drill that we were talking about not taking the back swing, crossing the plane. Stay here, work on the acceleration, work on coming through, and then give yourself a toss. And if you need to, you can also set up your high string to work on making that ball dip over the high string. All right guys, try that at home. Check it out. Okay guys, I hope you enjoyed my two favorite drills to develop the ATP Forehand. And if you like these drills and you're having some trouble with your ATP Forehand, I do have a full course on building the Modern Forehand. According to my method, it's on our we have an online school called clta.teachable.com. It's the Chris Lewitt Tennis Academy online and we'll put the link below in the description. You can check that out. And I think we have a very good course. It's called Hashtag Whip and it's how to develop that Modern Whipping Forehand with simple drills like this. And I think it's very effective. One of the key things in that course is it's not just a course where you take it and you don't get any feedback or follow-up. It's a course where you can actually work with me through WhatsApp and through messaging and I actually help you along the way. You send me your videos and I give you personal feedback and advice based on my experience. And I think that's really critical to the success of any kind of course that you take online. It shouldn't just be a static course where you get no feedback. You need someone with expertise to look at your stroke and give you good solid advice. And I think that's where most courses online go very very wrong and people are buying and buying forehand courses and their forehands are not actually really getting better. So consider that. We also have a lot of good free resources on the YouTube channel so feel free to check out those forehand videos as well. I'll include one right here. If you like this video please leave a comment below. I'll be sure to answer any questions you have about the forehand technique and give us a like and most importantly share share the content with your friends. Thanks a lot!