The Hidden Switch Pros Use for Explosive Forehands!

What if I told you there's a hidden switch inside your body that can give you 30 to 50% more power on your forehand without lifting a single extra weight or swinging harder? Sounds impossible, right? But this is exactly what every pro on tour is doing, whether they know it or not. It's called the stretch shortening cycle and it's like flipping on a built-in turbo boost for your game. When you use it correctly, your arm becomes the passenger, not the engine. That's how players like Sinner and Djokovic make their forehands look silky smooth, but the ball explodes off the strings like a gunshot. Most players have no idea this even exists and they're leaving massive free power on the table. By the end of this video, I'll show you how to tap into this same system the pros use so your forehand finally feels explosive and reliable. Now, here's the biggest problem. Most players think that most of the power you're getting comes from your arm. And so what happens is their power either goes up or down and then they can't control it, which only makes it feel more unpredictable and frustrating when you think you're going to hit the ball hard and it just doesn't come off the strings that well. So you're probably wondering, what's the solution, Kevin? Well, honestly, the solution's been in plain sight. It's something called the stretch shortening cycle. This is how the pros create massive amounts of power on their strokes, especially their forehands. And now understanding it, it's made a huge difference in my own forehand. So how about I play you this video right now that explains exactly what the stretch shortening cycle is and how we can start adding more power to your game. Now, let's watch a short part of a video from Dr. Brian Gordon explaining the stretch shortening cycle. Number one, brain commands muscle to contract, okay? So the muscle tries to contract. But if I can create a situation where technique forces the muscle to actually lengthen, okay, so I'm trying to shorten it, but the muscle's getting longer, now I can put that muscle in extremely forceful conditions, extremely forceful conditions. And at the same time, I can get that muscle up to full tensile strength before I really need it to execute the motion. Overall, if I can create this situation where I say contract but force the muscle to lengthen, then when the muscle actually shortens later, it can shorten with much greater pulling force. Estimates vary from 30% to 50% greater force. If I contract that bicep, it makes my elbow bend, right? Okay, so if I say contract and bend, contract, it should bend, but if he forces it to lengthen, I'm trying to contract, but now he's forcing that muscle to lengthen. So that's this condition here, right? So then, if he pulls that hand back all of a sudden as I just push me down, see how my arm just snaps up? I get that for free. If you can build that into tennis strokes, you're getting somewhere now. This is why players like Yannick Sinner, Djokovic, and Alvarez can produce huge forehands, yet it almost looks, it almost looks like they're doing what everybody else is doing. Now granted, all the pros on the tour are doing this, but without that stretch-shortening cycle, they won't get the same amount of power. This is why I love when you go to a pro tournament and what do you hear? That gunshot pop sound from when they're hitting the ball. This is a huge contributor to making your ball sound like this gunshot when your racket makes contact with the ball. So now that we understand the basic concept, let's go watch the pros do it and show you exactly what's happening and how they use it sometimes and how they don't. You'll be able to tell when they're using it and when they're not, and you'll never be able to look at another forehand the same way again. Now we're going to look at a couple players. First, we're going to start off with Sinner and Djokovic. You're going to see how the same thing works in their stroke where maybe they have technically different backswings, but they're using the same internal motion with the stretch-shortening cycle. Both of them will set up where the arm is away from the body. This creates a situation where this will be used as resistance later. Again, you can see how far the arm is away from the body. From here, they're going to start rotating their hips and their shoulders forward. What this is going to do is start to put a stretch on the chest muscle. The pectoral gets stretched right here. You can see how it's being stretched. Now, because of that, the weight of the racket and the weight of the arm right here is getting left behind creating resistance that Dr. Gordon talked about. So we got the hips and shoulders going forward. We have the resistance. From here is where we have the resistance right there. For both of them, if they start engaging and pulling against that resistance, this activates that stretch-shortening cycle. So the racket speeds up through contact. Same thing here, speeds up through contact. Now we have two more players. We have Alcaraz on the left and Vidasco on the right. The reason I want Vidasco here is because he has his shirt off and we can see what muscles get engaged. And so you see the same take back where they're trying to get the racket as far away from the body right here. You can see this from Vidasco and you can see this from Alcaraz. This creates a situation where when they start pulling forward with their hips and shoulders, this racket gets left behind here and causes resistance, okay? Just from the weight of the arm and the weight of the racket. So if you clear that, you can clearly see how the racket's getting left behind a little bit right there. A little bit where he's turning but it's getting left behind and because of that, it's stretching this muscle here. You can see that being engaged. Same here with Alcaraz. Racket's being left behind. He's stretching this muscle. From here, he starts to engage pulling against that resistance. And for both of them, the racket starts to accelerate through contact. Now, before I show you some drills you can start working on to improve your stretch shortening cycle, I wanna make sure we have some fundamental things already taken care of. You're gonna have to understand how to coil and then uncoil, creating the stretch across your pec and in your shoulder, allowing that phase where you have the eccentric pull, the lengthening of your pec and then, boom, using that concentric pull. Now, if you feel like your rotation isn't the best, no worries, I got you covered. At the end of the video, I'm gonna show you another video you can watch to help you work on your rotation because here's the deal. The better you get at rotating, the more you can lengthen and have this eccentric pull on your chest muscle. When you have that, that gives you that stretching of the rubber band that you can then snap back. Now that you understand the fundamentals, let's go and start doing some drills so you can start working on this and start hearing the difference in your forehand when you go out to hit it. So drill number one, you can use a medicine ball or you can just use something with a little bit of weight. Like Dr. Brian Gordon talked about, is the racket acts as somewhat of a weight. It's the weight in our hand. And so when we rotate our hips and shoulders forward, what it does is stretches our pectoral major right here, basically your chest muscle. You're gonna feel that stretch and that elongation and coupled with the fact that you have some weight creates that stretch that we can now use that resistance to pull back into the court with a racket. And so the very first move we want to do is just simply start working on a rotation and get comfortable with feeling that stretch right across here. And so I'll have my racket on the outside of my body here and what I'm gonna do is focus on rotating. And so I'm gonna rotate my hips and my shoulders forward so it'll look like this. Now, one thing I wanna guard you against is if you're not used to this type of move, start off very slow. If you're not very strong in this area, we don't want you over rotate or rotate too much and stretch this too much causing us an injury. So I recommend starting really slow, just like this. I'm just using this as a three pound metal small just to feel it. And so I'm gonna do a slowly rotate. And if you put your hand right on your pectoral muscle, your chest here, and you'll feel the stretch. I'm not even gonna rotate all the way, but I feel that stretch. And the stretch happens because since my arm is being left behind, okay? Right now, I don't feel that stretch because my arm is coming forward with the rotation. But the moment I have a little bit of weight, which my racquet will act like, I'll feel that stretch. And this is the first element we wanna start feeling for. It's that I'm rotating and feeling that stretch. Rotating and feeling the stretch. The second drill is we're gonna do a release of the ball. And so when I rotate and I feel that stretch, the moment I feel that stretch, then I'm gonna start pulling my hand and my arm through. Now, you may be saying, Kevin, isn't this just using my arm again? No, because of the stretch, we've elongated this and we're using both our chest muscle and we have the rotation, which is initiating this. And so now when I feel that stretch, I'm gonna let go of the ball and pull my arm forward. And so this breaks our stroke up into another segment, where we have our hips going first and then our arm coming second, as long as we have the stretch. And so what we're looking for is this very instant we feel that stretch, we're gonna let go of the ball and pull that hand forward. And so I'll start pulling, boom. And then you're looking for that sensation of that stretch. Now, what we don't wanna do is actually hold on and contract this while we're rotating. We wanna make sure we feel that stretch and we let go. And what I recommend doing this when you're doing drills like this, do three sets of maybe six to eight times. Again, we're not trying to do this super hard to hurt anything. We're just trying to get the sensation of the stretch first and then the stretch and the release. Now, one quick note, we need to have a relaxed wrist when we're doing this and relaxed forearm. And so what this means is when my racket's on the outside here, when I pull, watch what happens, boom. You can see, I can feel that stretch. And so we're doing the exact same movement, making sure I feel that stretch. You also have to have your arm relaxed here because if I'm too tense, I don't feel that stretch. And as I move forward, my chest contracts too soon. And so what we wanna do is have that stretch again. So notice that as I'm doing the stretch, the butt of the racket's moving forward just because, boom, I'm in this position here, okay? My chest is pulling forward. Now, to give you some perspective on what's going on here, my forearm here is nice and relaxed. And as it comes forward, it rolls open just a little bit. So with my grip here, I'm just gonna practice this action, making sure I feel that little instance of stretch. And then once I start feeling it, I'm gonna start snapping it racket forward, basically contracting now and making sure I have a concentric load after it's been elongated, okay? Really quick or really simply, we're waiting for that stretch and then we can start pulling the racket forward compared to pulling it together. Okay, so now we're gonna go through two more phases. First, I'm gonna drop feed myself balls. So the very first thing I wanna do is as I drop, I'm gonna start rotating. So I'm gonna drop and rotate. And so to check to make sure I'm creating this lengthening, this elongating, boom, you can see how I'm turning my hips and shoulders first. My racket doesn't come with me compared to as I turn here, you can see the racket coming forward. But to create the extra power from the stress shortening cycle, we need to create the stretch across the chest. And so once we get really comfortable with this, remember, I'm not making this happen. This has happened because it's being pulled forward from my hips and shoulders. Then what I'm gonna do is snap it forward. Now, when I snap it forward, aka pulling their hand forward and contracting, I'm not gonna do it super hard right now just to get the timing. A lot of times when I have players and students do this, they get too tight too quick, okay? So I'm gonna go here, very smooth, create a stretch. And some balls might fly on you in the beginning, but all I'm doing is looking for that stretch. And what you're sensing or what you're feeling for is to stretch across your chest. And so what I recommend doing as you're doing this is every once in a while, toss the ball and put your hand above your chest so you can feel that stretch. And I can feel that stretch and then contrast that towards boom. I don't feel a stretch, I feel a tension because I'm contracting the moment I'm going forward versus a stretching and elongation of it. Go back and forth so you can recognize which one you're doing. From here, then I want you to start practicing just now letting it go, feeling that stretch. So now I'm gonna use the ball machine and the very first two, I'm actually gonna rotate together. And then what I'm gonna start doing is lengthening my chest muscle and then using the contraction to pull back. Very first ball, go here. You can see how I'm rotating together. Again, nothing's wrong with this. Great forehand. Now I'm gonna start lengthening, which means I have to have my hips and chest go forward first before I hit the ball. That one I got a little tight, I didn't do it quick enough. And you start to feel the difference. That one I did too early. And so there's a timing element to make sure you're up to the ball when you're doing this. Got away from me. One more. Turn. And you'll feel the difference. Now that you understand this, you're gonna see this everywhere. And it's so important that you understand how to rotate correctly. And if you need to work on that, go watch this video.