🇪🇸 How Spanish Players Generate So Much Forehand Speed

Hey guys, you want to learn how to get power in your shots like Carlos Alcaraz, I'm going to share with you my favorite Spanish drills right now for acceleration and racket head speed. Hey, I'm here with my two favorite students from Virginia, from Virginia, right? Chloe and Zoe, say hi guys. These guys are top players down there and they come to visit me up here in Vermont and we're just going to show you a variety of acceleration drills to help with your racket speed and your power development and it's going to be really fun. You guys ready? Okay, great. So the first one is, you may have done this with me before, but basically we just toss from the side and the ball just kind of sits there and you get to work on generating the racket speed from your kinetic chain. That's the whole idea, that's the whole principle. So this is a type of velocity-based training where you try to swing really fast in rapid succession and the ball is just going to be dead weight and you have to generate, you have to generate the energy from your body, from your kinetic chain. You've done, you did this one I think with me before, no? Never? But this one, we'll do the, this is like the easiest one I would recommend for any of you guys back home. If you want to work on acceleration the Spanish way, I would let the ball bounce. So I'll show you how to do it. Just, it's going to drop, it's going to come up between your hip and shoulder and you just accelerate. And one of the things they do in Spain is they try to get topspin, like topspin is a big thing in Spain. So I don't want you to hit the ball flat, I want you to try to like work the spin on the ball. But there's a lot of big debate right now about topspin and whether you should like try to hit topspin or whether you hit, you should hit through the ball. Well my answer is both. You should hit through the ball and also topspin. Not just, you don't want topspin that's weak, like a weak shot, and you don't want just a pure power shot. You want a blend. And so there's all these debates online right now between online coaches about whether you should work on topspin, whether you should hit through the ball, and it's just not an either-or. You want both. You want to get that heavy ball that's fast and also has a good amount of topspin on it. That's my position. Ready, we'll let it bounce and we'll do like eight, maybe six or eight, maybe ten max. And you're trying to get height and shape. Yeah, that's better. You don't want to skim the net. You want to learn to swing upward. So you want your racket to go underneath and up and you want to lift and accelerate right through that kind of like that zone, that hitting zone there. And so it's through and up. It's not just through for flat and it's not just up for spin. It's through and up and you want to get a nice safe passage. That's something I work on all the time, is getting a safe passage over the net. You don't want to skim the net. So many students that I see, they hit the ball like so close to the net and this is a great drill to work on the height. Let it bounce and accelerate and when you're learning, like this is stage one, I'm just tossing it. Look at the tempo that I'm using and I'm giving Zoe like a lot of time to get under the ball and the ball is going to sit up for you. It's just sitting there like in a bread basket for you. Nice. You try to keep little details, like try to keep like little details. Keep your head still, load the system, load the legs, rotate the hips, keep the head still and then accelerate through and up. It's not one or the other. You want to try, Chloe? All right, ready. Remember, this is the easiest one. Just off the bounce, through and up. You don't want to land the topspin short. You want to get the topspin with a lot of racket speed and acceleration. You want to stay loose in your body. That's a big key to power is staying loose and free with your body. Many people are too tight. Nice. Stay loose and free. Let the racket lag and load the system well. That's a good example where it's a little too short. You want to get that nice length on the ball. Accelerate. Yeah, that was amazing. Like look at the difference there. That had a lot of spin and it was very, very deep. Good job. So the next one, if you want to take it up another level, is you can hit it right out of the air. Let's try that, Zoe. We'll do six or eight, just for example. So it's almost the identical drill, but it's more difficult because you have to time it and the ball has more weight because it's coming down with gravity. So it's a little tougher. Ready? Come a most kids. I think Zoe's done this with me before, but if you're just trying this at home, it takes some practice. If you're doing this with a partner or with a coach, it's quite taxing and it takes a lot of timing. Yeah, that's the one. That's beautiful. So you want to avoid the net. You want to get that good high one. Want to try that one? Let's do six or eight or ten. Remember, it's coming down. You still want to receive it between your hip and shoulder and then you accelerate up and out. Okay? And you work on your depth. You don't want to drop the ball short. Really load. Strong in the legs. Strong in the legs. That's a nice one. And so what we're looking for on the other side is the ball's going deep. Sometimes we work on, depending on how much spin, we work on how high you can bounce it on the back wall. Like that's a very important thing. They do that a lot in Spain. See how high can you bounce it on the back wall? And obviously you want to keep the ball out of the net. By the way, you can do all of these exercises on the backhand side. So we've been doing, we're demonstrating the forehand side, but we can also do all of these acceleration drills on the backhand side if you want to work on power development on the backhand side. All right, so this one, let's say you're fairly advanced. These girls are pretty advanced and we're going to take the ball right out of the air from the front now. It's going to be a little tougher. The ball, you have to track the ball coming in, set up, and work on your acceleration and your topspin and power from the front side. Here we go. Ready. One. All out of the air. Two. Three. Okay. Try not to pull to the left. Try not to go, try not to accelerate and do, look, you keep your head there. Very important to control your body when you're accelerating. They work on that a lot in Spain. So accelerate and control your body. Don't, try not to pull your body off the line. Ready. Accelerate up. Nice. Chloe, you want to try that? Ready. Let the ball come down and then you accelerate up. The ball's kind of hanging there and then you work on maximizing your width. It's really important to stay loose in your wrist, to stay loose in your shoulder, to stay really whippy in your body. You want your body to be very supple and elastic. You know, that's the key. Here's a really good one. I'm going to stand in the front now slightly differently from the player. And this is going to be a low acceleration. Low acceleration is tough. You got to drop your body down and then you got to accelerate from down here. And the goal is to get low and accelerate. Low accelerations are tricky because most people struggle on these low balls and they hit them too flat and they catch the net. You need to use, let your wrist really, really relax and then whip up to create the spin and get it up and over. Ready. We're going to move forward a little bit. Ready. One, two. I'm in a different position now and I drop it low below the knee and then you try to spin it. Come on. Bend your knees, bend your knee. And as we get closer, a little tougher. Yes, but keep trying to whip. Keep trying to whip. So this is an awesome Spanish drill. Sometimes it's known as the Nadal drill because it's like one of, you know, there's a story that this was one of Rafa's favorite drills when he was a kid. You know, he's this little low acceleration drill. And I think whether that's true or not, it's a great story. And it's a great drill. A lot of my students love this drill. You got to drop low with the base. Low with the base and then whip. Ready. Come on. Turn the shoulders, accelerate. As we get closer to the net, accelerate, accelerate, accelerate, accelerate. Nice. Good job. And the last one I recommend, and there's a whole host of these, or maybe I'll show you two more. This one is low and high. So you have a difficult low one. And then the next one is going to be high and you're working on position and acceleration. This one's quite tricky. This is a bit more advanced for you guys. Ready? Here we go. Low one. High one. Low one. Always working on staying loose and whipping. That was a great one. Getting the spin. Not too flat. Nice. You can get like a little swinging volley action up here at the net, topspin volley action. That's great. That's a very important shot in the modern game. In my book, The Secrets of Spanish Tennis, I detail a lot of these exercises and I've shown a lot of videos on my channel at Chris Lewitt. All these acceleration drills from Spain. A lot of them come from Luis Bruguera, who's a famous Spanish coach. And I think he was a genius. He instituted these drills back in the 80s and 90s and they really helped to literally accelerate Spanish tennis. They accelerate the forehand, especially the forehand of Spanish players. And I use these drills all the time to help my players get more power on their shots. It's a great way to challenge the body to produce energy. This one is a little more complex. I'm going to move you kind of like back and forth. So there's a movement challenge. You're with me. Ready? We go. One. Yeah, you can do it like that, but we're going to do the more advanced way in the air. You can do this with the bounce. We're going to do it in the air. Let's start here. Are you ready? Come closer. Ready? One. In air. And two. And so I just move Zoe a little bit. Then we come back. Keep coming. Keep coming. So this extra movement challenge, this challenges the eyes and the nervous system. Good. Switch. So you can be creative here. You can move the player left and right and challenge the eyes and the brain a little bit more than just being stationary. You can also, like I showed you, move forward. You can also do some acceleration drills on diagonals. You have a lot of creative options here. Ready? Nice. Try to receive it. Nice. Nice. Good acceleration. Good width. Nice. And so the key for me is the whole time is you're challenging the eyes and the brain. You're always encouraging the player to stay loose and whippy and you're trying to generate spin and speed. Not just speed. Not just like tight flat shots. We're always trying to encourage the player to get a combination, a blend of spin and speed using the whole kinetic chain properly and hitting the ball with body control. So when players accelerate, a lot of times they lose control of their body. There's a number of details here that we want. We want the head still. We want the base strong. We want to use the legs. We want to keep the posture. So there's this idea in Spanish tennis of accelerating while controlling the body that I think is really important. If you like these racket speed drills from Spain, check out my other Spanish videos right here.