Tennis Lesson- ADD HUGE POWER & SPIN - TWO HAND BACKHAND RACQUET DROP - Insight Tennis

Hey guys, welcome back to Insight Tennis Tour Stroke Series. My name is Rick Oldroyd. I'm the president and founder of Insight Tennis. I'm also the head pro. We are doing a lot of new things with Insight Tennis this year. You probably have seen that the website has a lot of new content on it. There's a lot of other things that will be forthcoming. We've gotten a lot of feedback from all over the world requesting training courses on each of the strokes in the game. We just launched the Forehand Mastery Training Course. We're running a big promotion on that right now. A drastically reduced price on that course. You can check that out on our website at insighttennis.com or click the link below. I'll go ahead and put it below the video here so that you can check out that course, learn more about it. And there will be other courses forthcoming. We just finished shooting the Two-Hand Backhand Mastery Training Course. And that should come out probably next week. So watch for that. Also the serve, volley, overhead, footwork, return a serve. We're gonna do courses in all of these areas. There's gonna be also a new series coming out that I call the Power Secrets of the Pros where we talk about a lot of the things that the pros are doing that you may not be aware of that gives them such power and a weight of shot on their ground strokes. So watch for all these things coming out. A lot of new things happening. I've been injured for a long time. I couldn't post and couldn't play for almost two years. And it's great to be back. I've gotten a lot of really great well wishes from people from all over the world. So thank you so much for that. And subscribe to the channel and click the notifications button so you guys get all of the new content as it comes out. Today's video, I wanna go ahead and talk again about the backhand, the Two-Hand Backhand today. If you saw a video that I did a little while ago on the racket drop, I wanna kinda revisit that. So if you've seen that video, some of this will be a little bit of a review, but that's okay because repetition is the key. This is something that I see at the recreational and club levels and even above club and recreational levels that far too often, if you're struggling with your Two-Handed Backhand, you're probably not achieving a good enough racket drop. This is something that actually allows you to rotate back to contact. It creates more spin. It creates more momentum in your swing. As you drop the racket and release it back to contact and out through contact to your target. So this is a critical element to having a great Two-Handed Backhand and to developing more spin and more weight of shot on your Two-Hander. So if you watched my video a few weeks ago on the racket drop, you heard me talk about the importance of this. And so let's just revisit very quickly. Grips, everybody kind of has a different grip. Most players have some variation of the Continental grip on their right hand. And this is for right-handed players. I like to be up on top of the racket a little bit more than a Continental perhaps on my Two-Handed Backhand. So the Continental would be here and I like to be about there, okay? So whatever works for you guys, use whatever you want. But on the left hand, most players have close to a semi-Western grip or their hand right behind the racket. Not many players are gonna be up here because as I come into the ball, I'm gonna be coming in open and would have to rotate my wrist to get my racket square at contact. Now I'm not saying you couldn't do that, but it's just another variable that you really don't need. My personal opinion is reduce everything to its essence so that you have as least amount of variables as you possibly can have. Consistency must be affected. So this is what I wanna look like on my right hand. My left hand is gonna be essentially a semi-Western grip or close to a semi-Western grip on the back of the racket here, which squares me up really nicely at contact. Okay, so as I'm waiting for the ball to come, if I'm going to hit my Two-Hander, I'm usually waiting with a forehand grip unless I'm hitting return of serve and then I might be a little bit more here. But as the ball comes to my Two-Hander, the first thing that I'm gonna do is rotate that racket with my left hand and slide my right hand up to my Two-Hand grip. Notice how I didn't do anything except just rotating the racket with my left hand. So rotate my racket, then I've got my hip and shoulder rotation, and now I'm pretty much where I wanna be to be able to step into the ball, drop, release, and hit my shot, okay? So guys, what we wanna talk about today is this racket drop. And what you're gonna find with the best players in the world is when they take the racket back, first of all, they're gonna take, I'm gonna do this from the side so you can kinda see. They take the racket back with their body, but the initial unit turn, they don't take the racket back as far as they're actually going to when they're hitting the ball. So what I mean by that is it's kind of a mini unit turn, so maybe about to here, okay? But then as the ball is coming off the ground, they're going to take the racket back farther as they step in, and that's where that racket drop is going to happen. The reference that I want you guys to have on this racket drop is notice how my wrist is bowed here, okay? If I'm here, that's not what we're looking for. We need that position there. Now, depending on the height of the ball will determine how much you need to drop the racket, but clearly what you wanna look for is this position here, okay? If I only get to here as I come back to contact, right, as I rotate back to contact, I'm gonna have a very, very flat shot. There won't be much topspin on that. This is what creates the topspin, the rotation back to contact, not flipping my wrist at contact, okay? So this racket drop, let's go back to that. I've got my grip. Here's my hip and shoulder rotation. Ball, now I'm going to time, even if I have to move out to the ball, I'm gonna time this so that I can rotate back as I'm stepping into the ball. I'm doing this in slow motion and I need to get here, need to get in this position here. Now, as I come back to contact, I want you to watch carefully what happens here. My racket is going to rotate back to contact. Notice the rotation back to contact. This is what creates spin and momentum into the shot, okay? So in order to do that, in order to have that tremendous momentum, you've got to have that racket drop. So you're here. Now, whether you take the racket up or you take it straight back, if you watch the best players in the world, even if they have a lower backswing, they all drop that racket before they hit the ball, okay? And that's the key, guys. Go out and work on this. You need to exaggerate it initially to be able to feel it. So the racket drop here, again, I'm going to hip and shoulder rotate and notice I'm taking that racket back with my body, not my hands and arms, taking it back with my body. Now, I'm timing the ball. So I'm not taking the racket all the way back yet because the ball's coming across the net. I see that it's a backhand. Okay, I'm going to hip and shoulder rotate, but now I'm moving out to the ball, getting set, and as the ball's coming off the ground, I'm going to be dropping the racket into position, all in one motion. Drop, release, and finish, okay? So guys, go out and work on this. This is critical and the frame of reference that you need to have is this bow in your wrist. Notice this bow right here in my wrist. That's when I know I've got the right position on that racket drop is that I'm going to get to this nice bowed position here so that as I come back, driving with my body, I'm coming back into contact. Notice how my hands now have got to rotate back to contact. And as they rotate back to contact and extension out to my target, right? Out to my target, that creates plenty of topspin and tremendous power, especially when it's linked and driven by the body, torso, and trunk rotation. So again, go out and practice this. It takes some time to get it, but when you do, you're going to start popping that backhand like you probably never felt before, and that's what you're looking for. If you guys like this video, click the link below, subscribe to the channel, Insight Tennis. Check out our website at insighttennis.com, subscribe, share the video, and please click that notification button so you guys get all the new content as it comes out. And go check out the website with all the new paid content. There's several other things on the website that will be forthcoming that we've put on there so you kind of know what we're going to be doing that are coming soon. So thank you so much, guys, for your time. We greatly appreciate all the support from all over the world. Again, thank you for your time, and we'll see you next time out on the court.