How To Improve The Timing on Your Forehand - Tennis Lesson

Hey guys, what's happening? It's Nate with PlayYourCourt. Today, we're going to talk about how to improve the timing on your forehand. All right guys, so we're talking about timing, how to improve the timing specifically on your forehand. Look, tennis is a sending-receiving game, and we know that the contact, that ideal contact being out in front, is what is going to help us with our power and with our spin. Now, if our timing is off, contact becomes really, really difficult, or ideal contact becomes really, really difficult, and we end up being early and we end up being late. A lot of things happen, and we end up having a really inconsistent forehand. So that's what we're going to help today, is try to get your forehand consistent. And specifically what we're going to talk about is something that you may be doing with your non-dominant arm. All right, so let's jump into this. So we know that from our ready position, our left hand should be up on the throat, and we want to take, we want to get into our unit turn utilizing our non-dominant arm. So as I'm riding my left hand. Why do we want to do this? For one, we want to coil. And so when we coil, I don't want a bunch of tension. I don't want my right arm taking the racket back. I want my non-dominant arm taking the racket back. All right, this is going to get me in that position without making my arm tense up. What it also does is it helps influence, keep the racket head up. So for you players with eastern, semi-western, or western grips, it's always going to be advantageous to start with the racket head up, because this is going to give us leverage over the ball. We get a high ball. We don't want our racket down here. We want our racket up. So this is the positives of the non-dominant hand. This is something that we absolutely must do. If you take a look at Federer, Djokovic, Nadal, Serena, Osaka, I could go on and on. Every player that you watch, all of our heroes on the tour, they all use their left hand to initiate the unit turn. But something can happen that actually disrupts our timing. So number one is keeping the left hand on the racket too long. Okay, so sometimes we see the left hand getting past the shoulder, and it's okay if it does that for a moment. You can see the left hand is past the shoulder, but I don't want to end up in a situation to where the non-dominant hand goes all the way to my right shoulder. This is too deep in the stroke. May give you a large coil, but remember, in order for that forehand to activate, this also has to get out of the way, and that's problematic, right? So the other way, the total opposite of that, is the left arm coming off too early. So the left arm, if it suddenly comes off over here, you can tell that I'm still at a 45, and my body's not actually turned here, right? So I'm still super, super linear, more closed stance, even though I'm in an open stance with my feet, the left hand hasn't traveled with me, even this. I see a lot of players take the left hand off here, and they point at the ball, right? Maybe you heard that, point at the ball, but not here. Let the hand come off, and then allow the hand point to the ball, so that contact happens here, okay? So both we want to avoid. So what do we want to do? We want to make sure the left hand takes the racket back, and I think the focus for most of us, where we're going to find it, for you advanced players, you can go a little bit deeper, try to allow the left hand to leave the racket once it's parallel with the shoulder, all right? And so when we're going to strike the ball is just, I'm sorry, when we're going to let go is just after the ball has cleared the net, right? We're going to get in place, we're going to stalk the ball with our hands, just after the ball has cleared the net, we'll let go, and then we'll work forward out to that contact point. I know it's a little nuanced, seems a little bit funky. How can the left side influence the right side? Does it mess with timing? It does, and trust me on this, all right? So we'll jump into some demos now. First up, I'm going to show you two of the wrong ways, taking the racket too far back, and then taking the left hand, I'm sorry, taking the left hand too far back with the racket, and then opening early, and then I'll show you my forehand. Not perfect, but better timed than the other two versions. We'll jump into those demos now. Oh! All right, guys, really hope this video helped. Remember, don't hold on the racket too long, but don't let go too early. Use your shoulder and that parallel line to be the indicator of when to let go of the racket. All right, guys, thanks for watching. Be sure and jump out on the court with your fellow PlayYourCourt members and give some of this stuff a try. And don't forget, Nate and I have built a full-blown tennis ecosystem that gives you literally anything tennis related you could ever need. So if you're thinking about buying some tennis gear, jump in the deals and discounts section. You're going to see some deep discounts on all the tennis stuff you already buy. If you're thinking you need a deeper dive on some specific instruction, be sure and check out PlayYourCourt Plus. PlayYourCourt Plus unlocks all the video instruction we've ever created, all of our premium video courses. So if you're looking for more video coaching, that's the place to find it. And if you're ready to get out on court with a teaching pro, maybe you just have another question about something that we covered, PlayYourCourt is the number one lesson provider in the United States. So as long as you're located in the US, we will link you with a teaching pro near you at the court of your choice. That's right. And guys, lastly, if you just want to get out on court with me and Nate, you want to come here to Virginia Beach, maybe meet us in Indian Wells or New York. We do offer destination clinics as well as in-person trainings here in Virginia Beach. So be sure and check out the work with Scott and Nate section if you want to get on court with us. We'll see you guys soon.