How To Hit A FOREHAND Like FEDERER

Hello everyone, welcome back to Simply Tennis. In this video, I'm going to be teaching you how to hit a forehand like Roger Federer. Let's get started. Alright, this is a compilation of Federer hitting a forehand in slow motion, multiple forehands in slow motion. I'm going to go through a couple of these shots and just give you my suggestions on how to hit a forehand like Federer. To start, as you can see, he's obviously turning. Of course, that's what most people know about forehands. One thing I want to show though, is look how far back he's twisting with his body. He's using his hips, he's using his body, he's using his core, and he's twisting his body. He's twisting, and then from that twist, as you can see, he's releasing that twist into his shot, right? So he gets from twisted, and then he's untwisting with his body, mainly using his hips and his core. And look, at the end of this shot, he's twisting, he's still twisting, and then he finishes facing the side fence. And where he started was pretty much the other side fence. So he got from facing the right side fence with his body, all the way to facing the left side fence with his body. And this is super important because it's all about the body rotation. We want to use our core, our hips, our upper body, and not our hands to hit a forehand. We want to use our rotation of our body, our hips, our core, to hit the shot, not our arm. And one thing important too, what I want to mention here too, with Roger Federer's forehand, just watch how long he keeps his arm straight. So it's bent here, of course, but right when he releases that power, that twist, his arm straightens out. And let's see how long he keeps his arm straight. It's still straight, still straight, still straight. At contact, it is still straight. His arm is entirely straight at contact. And the racket is slightly in front of him. These two things are very, very important. I tell a lot of my students that you got to get slightly behind the ball and slightly away from the ball. Getting away from the ball helps to keep your arm straight when you make contact. Getting behind the ball is so that you can step in and make contact in front of you. And this is exactly what Federer is doing. He's keeping his arm straight and making contact in front of him, correct? So let's see how much longer he keeps his arm straight. Is he keeping his arm straight? His arm's still straight. His arm is still straight here. It's still straight. And now finally he starts bending his elbow to finish over his shoulder. And this is a super important distinction because a lot of people, when they try to finish over their shoulder, they bend their elbow so early. Where right after they make contact, they bend their elbow, which is not correct. You want to keep that arm straight, straight, straight, straight, straight after contact. Keep it straight, straight, straight, straight, straight, and then finally bend and finish over your shoulder. And as you can see, his arm is still semi-straight until like the very, very end. And this is super important because a lot of tennis players don't do this. And that way, with keeping this arm straight, they can hit through the ball and not just hit up, right? A lot of people just finish right over their shoulder right away. You've got to be able to keep your arm straight so you can hit through the ball. Another important thing, of course, is he's hitting in front of him. Another important thing as well, when you see, is as you can see, right when he's starting to twist and right when he's about to drop his racket face and start swinging that racket, he's stepping into his shot. He's stepping with his front foot, right, right? And that's when his racket starts dropping and he starts releasing that coil and exerting that power from his front leg. And as you can see, his front leg is pretty much carrying all the weight. That back foot is dragging across his front way. His front leg is pretty much carrying all that weight and all that power forward so that he can fully extend. So the main thing is keeping that arm straight longer than you think you have to, stepping into the shot and putting all that weight in your front foot, making sure you're behind the ball so you can, and make sure you're away from the ball too, so you can keep that arm straight and you can hit the ball slightly in front of you, right? So that you're reaching with your arm. See how his arm is fully extended forward like he's reaching for something? That's exactly the contact point you want. And you want to be able to step forward with that front foot and step and really put weight on that front foot to be aggressive. And this is why hitting on the rise is also very important because if you don't hit on the rise, you'll start stepping back five feet from the baseline and hit a loopy shot and you will be leaning back. Now granted, some professionals, including Federer, sometimes do lean back. That's because the ball is coming fast at them and they have to. Most times, you want to be stepping in with your front foot and leading with that front foot, if possible. Most times, being like probably 80% of the time. Now, if you're playing against players who hit really, really fast shots, that's going to be a lot harder. If you're running for a shot, you might have to kind of do open stance. You're not going to be able to step in all the time, but your goal is to mostly step in on most shots, if possible, to take advantage of the point. And as you can tell here, his arm is still straight, his arm is still straight, his arm is still straight, and then he finishes over his shoulder. One common myth, too, as well as a lot of people see is they see Federer's wrist and they say, oh, look what the wrist does. It twists over, right? It twists over and then it finishes over his shoulder. This is a super important distinction that is very important to address. You should not forcibly do that. When you hit the ball, do not use your wrist to flick. Do not flick your wrist like it looks like what Federer is doing here. Do not flick that wrist like that. Do not do that. One thing important distinction is a lot of people will start flicking at contact, which will make the ball go way out. The second thing also is he's actually not flicking his wrist on purpose. It's a natural body reaction of his muscles moving, not his wrist. So his wrist isn't actually flicking that way on purpose. He's not forcibly doing that. He's doing it naturally. And this is an important distinction. You do not want to be flicking your wrist like this, like what Federer is doing, unless it comes naturally. And as you can see, the reason it comes naturally is because look at his wrist here. It's pulled back, right? It's pulled back and stretching back. And since it's stretching so far back, eventually that stretch releases after contact and then naturally it comes across and twists like that. Important distinction though is he's not doing this on purpose. He's doing it as an after effect because his wrist was stretching. It wasn't because he's just flicking his wrist after the shot. Very important distinction. But obviously important thing is keeping that arm straight longer than you think you have to, stepping forward with that front foot and putting the weight on your front foot and make sure you're away from the ball so that you can keep that arm straight and then make sure you're behind the ball so that you can hit in front of you as well. And here's another forehand he's hitting in slow motion. Of course, this one, he's moving a little bit more as well. As you can see in this one, he is stepping forward with his front foot. He's putting all his weight on the front foot. This one, he's a little bit more open stance, but he is, as you can tell, putting a lot of weight on that front foot. Now, he's not necessarily stepping forward with his front foot. He's more stepping sideways, but he is somewhat stepping forward, but he's putting all the weight on that front foot. As you can tell, his back foot is lifting up because it's not having all the weight. And as you can see, his arm is still straight. He's making contact with the ball in front of him, and his arm is still straight, his arm is still straight, and then he finally bends his elbow. Even then, it looks like he's pretty much almost straight all the way through. And this is super important that a lot of tennis players don't do, is they don't keep their arm straight. They bend their elbow so, so soon, and then you just lose all your power. And this is also the important distinction why he's moving his feet a lot. Because look, here's also a very important thing that I tell a lot of my students. This ball is probably going straight at Federer. If he stood there, he would be stepping in with his front foot, yes, probably, but he would be so close to the ball, he would have to bend his elbow and lose all his power. This is why Federer starts moving, where does he move? He moves away from the ball, right? If the ball was going to land right at him, he's moving away from the ball. He's taking multiple steps away from the ball so that he can step in, right? And that he's behind the ball and that the ball's there. And he's also hitting this ball slightly on the rise, right? But it helps because now he's making contact with a straight arm. If he was any closer, if he stood where exactly he was before, which was right here where my mouse was, he would be hitting the ball with a bent elbow and he would just lose all his power. You've got to keep your arm straight all the way through most of your shots and then finish off your shoulder. And then the last thing I'm going to mention here to help distinct is I recently made a video of how to hit a forehand like Rafael Nadal. Rafael Nadal and Federer have both two different forehands and this is super important. Nadal hits with a lot more topspin heavy, he hits with a lot more height over the net. Federer hits a lot more as you would call a drive, a flatter more aggressive shot. He still hits with a lot of spin but he hits a little bit flatter and a little bit more aggressive because Federer in general is a little bit more of an aggressive tennis player than Nadal. With Nadal forehand, I was showing how to add more topspin, you got to make sure your racket is down and then your contact is up. You got to have an inclination. With Federer, as you can tell, his is a little bit less inclination. For example, his racket drop is right here. His racket is right here where my mouse is. I'm going to keep my mouse here just so you get an idea of where his incline is. And then he makes contact where? Right there. So look how much of an incline this is from here to here. See how it's a slight incline but not huge? That's because he's adding topspin, quite a bit of it, but he's also driving through the shot. Whereas in Nadal, he would drop his racket down to here because he's trying to get more incline. The more topspin you want, the more incline you get. The more of a drive shot you want, the flatter shot you want, the less incline you get. So if you're more of a flathead or more of an aggressive tennis player, you want to get your racket a little bit less of an incline. You still want an incline. For example, you don't want your racket back here where my mouse is because then you'll just go straight across and that's going to hit completely flat. It's going to go over the place. You're going to miss so many shots. You want some spin. So the best, probably average, would be Federer. I think Federer hits a little more flat. Maybe Djokovic might be the best average forehand, but he hits a little bit more drive. So if you want a more aggressive shot, you want to get from here where he's dropping his racket face to contact. So see how much of an incline that is? There's still a big incline. He still has a very big incline. Not as much as Nadal, but still a pretty big incline because he's still adding spin and that's super important. Whereas if you're trying to hit flat, which I would not recommend, you'd want to go back here, which nobody does. Maybe Jack Sock occasionally with his forehand does that, but most of the time it's here. Federer hits probably the most flat out of you could say the modern tennis players. I mean, kind of. He was kind of mixed between both generational eras, but basically he hits probably the most flat and he's still having a quite a bit of incline. So that's super important because a lot of tennis players don't have an incline at all. They hit straight to straight and it just comes out flat. You want to have some inclination on your shot. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Make sure you subscribe and turn on notifications and I will see you guys in the next video.