The Pros Take Back Differently Than You (With Real Examples)

Unfortunately, you've been taught the racket flip incorrectly on the forehand because you were never taught the correct checkpoint that is needed for all of the biomechanics to flow and work smoothly together. So that causes you to feel inconsistent on your forehand, causes you to miss for no reason, which can be really frustrating. The fix is to get into this take back position with the racket facing the side and almost a 90 degree angle in the wrist. All the pros are doing this and in this video I'm going to go over exactly how to do this and exactly why it works and some of the mistakes you're likely doing that are stopping you from being able to get into this position in the first place. There are a few mistakes that you're probably making that are stopping you from getting into the correct position. So the first one that I see is that players never actually get into the position of having the racket as far back as you can on your take back with your racket head pointing towards the side fence. Wrist is almost at a 90 degree angle. They never actually get into this position because they open their racket head and their racket face too early. They start their swing too early. So this is the starting position. This is the turn. This is the take back. The swing starts once you start going down and forwards. So they won't get the full take back position. Instead they'll do their turn and then on their take back they'll already start their swing like this or like this. Doesn't matter. Either way they're opening up this wrist angle which is really important and we'll go over that later. So that's mistake number one is they're opening up their swing too early. They don't do the correct take back. And mistake number two that I see is that on their turn they'll keep their racket head too vertical. So this is the starting position. This is the turn. With a lot of pros you will see well with every pro you'll see that they keep their racket head a little bit tilted forward. Some do it more than others though. So if you look at my forehand I'm tilting it way forward. If you look at Alcaraz's forehand he's tilting it way forward. If you look at Sinner's forehand he does it a little bit. Either way they're all tilting it forward a little bit. Why? Because it helps you get into that later on the correct take back position. So if you start here your turn if your racket's already a little facing forward then you just need to bring it back a little more. It's already in that position makes it way easier. Now some players might do their turn keep their racket head vertical which is the mistake by the way. It makes it harder for you. And then they might bring their elbow up and tilt their racket forwards when they do their take back. It's an extra step though. There's no reason to do that. You're just making it harder on yourself. Well Matias then how do you do it correctly? I'm glad you asked. I'm gonna show you and it's really really easy. So basically everything I'm gonna tell you today if you understand this one thing you'll be able to do it and your forehand will feel a lot better, more consistent, more power. So it doesn't matter what footwork you do. It doesn't matter if you do open stance, neutral, closed stance. It doesn't matter. As long as you get... So this is the starting position. This is your turn you could do with open stance whatever you're just turning towards the side. Your racket is still basically in front of your chest. This is the take back. So on the take back this is the position that you want and if you don't do this your forehand is going to suffer a lot. So basically you want your racket head. This is the racket head here. You want it pointed towards the side fence. That's the side fence over there. How far you bring your racket back depends on the player. Most players are going to bring it back as far as they can comfortably and usually that means there's a little bend in the arm and that's fine. So not fully extended. That would be kind of awkward. Looks kind of rigid and weird right? So take back as far as you can. Racket's facing towards the side fence and you want your wrist to be a bit cocked. If we look at this camera over here you can maybe see it a bit better. So my wrist is not at completely 90 degrees. This would be more completely 90 degrees. It's a bit too much. However if you think about it just as a concept imagine the wrist is kind of at 90 degrees. I know it's not. I know it's more open than that but if you think about it like that it helps. This would be you know 180 horizontal neutral and this happens when you start the swing but you want on your take back this position here is to have your wrist a bit cocked. Wrist is a bit cocked. Racket is pointing towards the side fence. If you can get here you can do the rest of the swing. Everything else this is probably the most important tip and cue is this position here because I can do whatever. It really doesn't matter. I can do whatever I want here at the beginning and as long as I get into this position it's going to be a good swing and I mean I don't want to say you can do whatever you want in the follow-through but I mean for the most part there's different things you can do. You can finish different places but basically that's how you do it and the reason why this works is because you're getting yourself in that starting position to be able to do the correct racket flip. So this is the racket flip. This is the take back the correct take back and then as you start your swing forwards your racket's gonna as you bring your elbow and arm forward quickly your racket's going to naturally flip to this position as you drag it forward. So you've probably seen in videos slow motion ones you know bring the the butt cap towards the ball. I don't think that's a good cue at all. Don't worry about that. Just get into the correct position. We're trying to make it simple here right we're trying to develop a forehand that you don't need to think too much. You just kind of get into a position you swing and it goes in right that's what we want. So simple stuff that's simple stuff that works in matches because it's simple. So here and then just pull forwards and as you pull elbow and arm forwards you'll get that racket flip. I really wouldn't worry about it just think about getting into the right position and then pulling forward and it'll happen automatically. It's not something you need to think about. You don't think about racket flip. However if you've watched a video of yourself back in slow motion and you see that you're not doing a racket flip then you're probably doing one of the mistakes I mentioned already in this video. And the reason why this works is because let's think about it so if you want to do a forehand in tennis it's kind of like a throw from the side so like that right you know a serve is more like a throw from uh like a regular throw a forehand in tennis is more like a throw from the side so when you're throwing a ball do you do this do you open up your arm and then throw so do you do it like that or do you keep it more I don't know how to say it closed or whatever or in the in the correct position with your arm facing sideways a bit and then do your whole swing all together yeah of course you do it the second way because why because you get more like a whipping motion right you don't want to stop the whip when it's back you want to start with it forwards and then let it do its thing kind of whip forwards so that's the reason why is because you're netting you're letting the racket naturally do its flip and you're letting that whipping motion take effect so of course you're going to get more spin on the ball of course you're going to get more power but interestingly it's not just spinning power it's also consistency too and I can't explain exactly why you'll get more consistency if you do the correct take back but it's likely to do with timing the timing is so much better if you get your racket in the correct position on your take back if you're starting it too early here and then you kind of open it up or here you open it up either way you open up that wrist angle the wrist angle is really important there you open up that wrist angle too early throws everything off then you're like oh well forehand feels inconsistent forehand's going out all the time feels weird I don't know why this is likely why so try this out really simple fix and we're going to go over some drills progressions on how to get this going so the first drills that we want to go over are shadow strokes okay this is the first progression now all you're going to do pretend like there's a ball coming you can do this at home too pretend like there's a ball coming and we're going to pretend like we're going to hit it cross court and so you want to you can do your usual starting position in turn just focus on the take back right now so do whatever you normally do do whatever footwork you normally do get that take back correct okay you want your elbow far enough back anywhere usually is fine with the elbow how far should I get it back it depends on the player depends on your grip but most people are gonna get their elbow at least in line with their the side of their their right side oftentimes they'll get it further behind them behind them so it'll be on the back side now the thing I want you to focus on is keeping the racket facing this way and keeping your wrist cocked a bit think about that 90 degrees I know it's not 90 degrees but it's just a cue that helps and then what you want to do once you get in this position is just swing forward just start start your swing here this is before you started your swing this is the take back now start your swing and you can follow through however you want really what's important here is just practicing the correct take back position and that's going to help you out the most and you can do a few of these with movement take back positions correct and you want to freeze there make sure it's correct so here take back and you can look at it you can look at and then come forwards with it do about at least five of these you need to get used to the position so five stationary not moving not moving your feet just here boom here boom then you want to do at least five where you're moving and then getting into the position okay so do five of those I'm going to do two for time's sake okay now we want to get some with a ball and you're going to feed it to yourself or you can have your mama feed it to you it doesn't matter your friend so we can do some here stationary again get into the back position here this is most important you can already start here you don't even need to do the rest of this stuff as long as you're already back here this is where the swing starts anyway feed boom feed it nicely to yourself not like I did that was kind of kind of a bad feed I only have so many balls so I'll just do two do five yourself now we'll do some you can feed them yourself you can have someone feed you you're going to move a little bit here feed it to yourself get that take back and you want to do at least five of these again these are the ones with the ball we're going in order here progression feed it to yourself get in that position okay next we're going to do them with some live balls so you can do this with a partner or you can do this with a ball machine we're just going to go cross court okay so we need to go cross court and you need to focus on the take back so cross court only focus on the take back how many of these should you do at least a hundred at least a hundred I've said in my videos before it takes me about 400 balls until I feel like I'm like okay I get what I've been working on I've made improvements in my practice so you should do at least a hundred of this just forehand cross court next what I want you to do is forehand down the line so forehand down the line and focus on that take back this is the only thing you're focused on right now is that correct take back okay don't worry about nothing else just that take back and get used to it the timing should feel better it should actually help you make it easier for you get more power okay next drill after you've done at least a hundred of those at least a hundred now we want to go one cross and then one down the line this is teaching you change of direction with this take back okay and you got to go in order I wouldn't skip the order of these because you're not used to I'm assuming you're not used to doing a take back like this and is it going to help you long term yeah it's going to help a lot but you got to get used to it and I wouldn't expect to be good at this that that early okay it's going to take hundreds of reps hundreds of reps of volume people are too impatient you know they learn something that I know this is going to help you I know it's going to that's why I made this video but they might try it a few shots you're like ah it's weird now it doesn't feel good and then they might stop so don't do that and don't get discouraged if it doesn't feel good right away it's not gonna unless you're some prodigy one out of a million I guess it's very rare to feel great after hitting a few balls know what to work on and then go out there in volume reps the correct reps too in order all right last one oh I think I almost out let me do again all right that's it I hope you enjoyed the video guys try this out I know it's going to help you I I'm sure I threw up a bunch of proof on screen of pros doing this it just works it just makes it easier for you and that's why I make these videos to show you how to improve your forehand as easily as possible and in ways that actually work during matches this is just going to make it easier for you to hit good forehands and matches develop that weapon that you can then win matches with that's what wins wins matches is weapons really so that's what I want for you guys leave a comment down below I need to know what you guys are struggling with because I don't know I need I need your comments I need your feedback what are you struggling with in your game right now if it's forehand related leave a comment I mean that's I'll make a video on how to improve it what are you struggling with is it consistency is it not enough power are you is it breaking down under certain pressures like if you're being pulled out wide is it inside out forehand is it moving to the left and hitting a forehand moving right moving forward moving back you know what is it let me know guys so I hope this video helped you but this is only part of the riddle here the upper body right what do you do with the upper body but if you don't know what to do with the lower body specifically when you're moving backwards in the court which is like the hardest shot to hit I know I struggled with this a lot when I was younger I didn't know the correct footwork to be able to hit those balls correctly when I'm moving backwards you know when you get that deep ball from your opponent what do you do well I made a video covering just that where I go over exactly what to do what footwork the pros are using and how to regain in the point when your opponent makes you move back and hits that really deep ball so I'll see you over there