Perfect Your Tennis Backhand in 8 Steps - Tennis Backhand Technique Lesson

What if I told you you could hit dominating one-handed backhands just like this by mastering eight simple steps in your technique? In today's video, I'll show you these exact eight steps that every great one-handed backhand has used to dominate with this shot. And within the next 20 minutes, you'll know exactly how you can go out by yourself and work on these key stages to transform your one-handed backhand into a real weapon. Now, the first stage to developing a powerful one-handed backhand is ensuring that you get the grips right. Now, for the grips, what I've done, you have to first get a better understanding of the actual grip structures in the bevel system. Now, a very brief explanation. Every racket will have eight bevels on it, okay? And bevel number one is the top bevel that lines up with the edge of the frame. As you can see there, that's bevel one. Now, going in a clockwise manner for a right-handed player, it goes bevel two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And every racket will have eight bevels on it. Now that we have a better understanding of the bevel system, now we will discuss the two reference points you have on your hand. And those two reference points are your index knuckle and your heel pad. And as you can see there, I've drawn the Xs in on my hand to really show where these two reference points are. Now, what I've also done, which really helps when you're finding grips, I've drawn a line here on my index knuckle. And you'll see in a second how this will be a good visual aid to see if I'm finding the right grip. But now that we have your two reference points, the question is, how do you now go about finding your grips? Now, the beauty of this system, you're basically just connecting the dots. So it's very simple and effective to find the right grip. But first, we gotta know what grip we're trying to find. And to keep it simple, you ideally wanna be close to bevel one for the topspin one-handed backhand. And that is where your heel pad, you connect the X up with the dotted line on bevel one, and then you connect the X up on your index knuckle. And just by doing that, you can see if I come close, the line on my index knuckle and on the grip connect. And there, I've found the right grip. Now, some of the grips you wanna avoid, you don't wanna go too extreme here over to bevel eight. That can really cause issues with your swing. And also, if you go to the other direction towards bevel two, that can also wreak havoc with the topspin one-handed backhand. So ideally, you wanna be close to bevel one. And if you're a little bit further over in each direction, that's fine. But that's what you're striving for. Now that we have your grips in place, it's time to move on to stage two, and that is all about your preparation and unit turn. But before we even get started on the preparation and unit turn, you have to first get into a good ready position. And some of the keys about the ready position, you wanna see that your feet are around one and a half to two shoulder widths apart. You push your hips slightly back, and you have a good, strong athletic foundation. The second key is from the side angle, you should see that the elbows are spaced away from my body. Very important before you complete the unit turn. Now from that ready position, you can complete the unit turn and preparation. And the key about the unit turn and preparation, it's done with the upper body. Meaning, as soon as I anticipate the ball is coming to my backhand, my first move is turning the shoulders away from the target. Looking at this from the side angle, you can see how little my arms are doing in the preparation phase. It's mainly just an upper body turn to complete this preparation. Now you'll also see throughout this shoulder turn, as I'm turning the shoulders away, the non-dominant hand is really doing most of the work. As soon as I see the ball is coming to my backhand, I simply turn with the non-dominant hand controlling the racket head as I turn. And that will really help you feel that the shoulders are doing the work. Now the most common issue we see on the flip side is club players anticipate the ball is coming to their backhand, and their first move is to take the arm back independently to the body. So they're not engaged in the non-dominant hand, and they're also not turning the upper body. They just take the arm back like this. And by doing this, it can really cause problems with your hitting arm structure, which we're gonna move on to next. And also, your hand now is not working in sync with the rest of your body. And that can really cause a loss of power. At the end of the unit turn, what you should see is your non-hitting elbow is raised just around shoulder level approximately. Your string bed of the racket, as a result, is pointing to the side fence. What you want to avoid is something like this, where the elbow dips in too close to the body, because look what it does with my racket head. It opens it up. And this now results in too many corrections to make to contact, and that's just inefficient. So non-hitting elbow raised, strings pointing to the side. Now key number two is the hitting arm structure is already relatively straight. Now you will see some pro players will be a little bit bent here at this point, but you ideally, if you're a club player and you're trying to learn this, try to get it relatively straight already, since it will simplify the swing for you. And then the final thing you'll see is I've turned the shoulders now to the point where I'm looking over the dominant shoulder, and I'm feeling I'm turning the shoulders against my hips. This is the end of the unit turn. Now that we have a good understanding of what it looks like to have a good and efficient unit turn and preparation, how do you work on it? My favorite drill is really feeling that you're turning with the non-dominant hand. And how this is gonna work, you'll get in your ready position, and you'll take your hitting hand off the racket. And you're simply now just gonna keep the non-dominant hand connected, and just turn the shoulders away. And by doing this, because my hitting hand is not connected, I really feel that it's really done with my upper body as I prepare the racket. And I just do this a lot of times, you're feeling that my hitting arm is basically disengaged. I'm just turning the shoulders to prepare the racket. And that's one of my favorite drills to work on this preparation. Now let's move on to stage three, which is all about your hitting arm structure. Now the hitting arm structure is really the most important element of an efficient one-handed backhand. So if you're gonna take anything from this video, take this. And what you'll see is, okay, I've completed the unit turn and preparation. Now what's gonna happen, the hand is gonna start to fall down into my slot position with gravity. But as I do that, I straighten the arm into the slot. And this is where it comes in now, this hitting arm structure. What you wanna see here is the hitting arm is fully straight, very important. One of the most common issues we see on the one-handed backhand is when players have a bent hitting arm. Now not only does this really kill the power on your one-handed backhand, it can also cause a lot of injuries in your forearm, which you definitely want to avoid. So the first key thing is that hitting arm structure is fully straight. Now you'll also see, with the hitting arm structure being straight, my wrist is also slightly cocked, so it's stable. I'm not doing this, I'm not collapsing my wrist. As soon as I collapse my wrist forward, look what happens with my arm, it bends. So I wanna ensure that my wrist structure is stable and the knuckles are pointing slightly up. And there is the hitting arm structure. And then what I do, I just maintain this as I swing out towards my target. I keep the arm straight. Now let's go on to a drill on how to work on the hitting arm structure. And it's a very simple one, but it really gives you the feeling of getting this arm straight. What you're gonna do, you're gonna start at the end of the preparation and unit turn already in your neutral stance. Your feet will line up with the single sideline. And now from this position, you're gonna feel that the hand and racket are gonna drop down to the slot position. But as I do that, I'm straightening the arm to the slot. So I start at the end of the preparation and I straighten. And I just do this a few times. Start here, straighten. And then after I've done this a few times, straighten into the slot, I now just continue to swing, feeling that the arm is still fully straight as I get to my finish position. There's no bending in the arm. So it looks like this. I straighten and swing. Would you like to reach the next level in your game with our help? For most players, this starts with either improving technique or movement. Those are the two most important areas of the game. And we specialize in helping players fix weak serves, forehands and backhands, or their movement as well with laser focused, personalized video feedback coaching. Most players that come to us start with technique, fixing a weak serve, forehand or backhand. But you can of course also work on your movement with our online coaching. And we have a lot of players doing that and it usually helps them reach a much higher level. So if you're interested in getting our help to take your game to the next level, there's a link below this video in the description. Just click that link, check out the details in the video and then we'd love to work with you. Now let's move on to segment four, which is all about your swing path. And for this, I've split the swing path into two components. The high-low-high swing and the inset-out swing. But let's start with the high-low-high segment. Now this high-low-high swing is a basic ground stroke principle you'll see on all the topspin ground strokes. And what this means is at the end of the preparation phase, the hands start in a relatively high position, just below shoulder level. Then they drop to the slop position, which is the low segment. This is where you really want to see that the hand and racket are beneath the level of the incoming ball. And then as I swing up and forward, I swing up to a high finish position. So if you trace the tip of the racket, it goes high, low, high. Now, why is that so important? It helps you generate consistent topspin and also consistent depth, which is obviously something everyone wants on their one-handed backhand. Now on the flip side to this, what we see with most club players, their swing is too horizontal. So what that means is they never really get down to the low segment of the swing. They start relatively midway between the high and low segment. And as they swing, they swing pretty much on a straight line to the ball and then follow through across their body. And this is why they struggle to generate that topspin, because they don't have the racket moving low to high around contact. Now, one of my favorite ways to work on this high, low, high segment is to take a couple of balls. And what you're gonna do is swing underneath the ball. And this will force you to get below and to feel this low to high swing. So how this will look, to make it simple, you can start already again in your neutral stance at the end of your uniton. You're gonna toss the ball underarm. And when you are doing it, you can give the toss just a little bit of more height to it, so it makes it a little bit easier. It looks like this. I toss a little higher, and then I swing underneath. I'm not actually hitting the ball. I'm just swinging under it. And what this will do, will force me to get below, as you can see. So I toss low to high. And I really feel that swing as I go through. And that's an excellent way to work on this low to high swing. Now, moving on to part two of the swing path, and that is the inside-out swing. The inside-out swing path is one of the major factors that are contributing to the effortless power on your one-handed backhand. But what is the inside-out swing? What this means, when your racket and hand get to your slot position, as you can see here, not only is the hand low, and beneath the level of the incoming ball, but it's close to the body. Okay, see the racket and hand are now close. Now, from this position, you swing away from the body to contact. This is the inside-out swing. So you start close on the inside, and then you swing to the out, away from the body. But what does it look like on the flip side when players do this wrong? What happens here is, players never really get to the slot position. So they turn, and now usually they don't engage the upper body enough, they don't turn enough, and they end up in a position where the hand and racket are too far away from the body. And then, as they start to swing forward, because they start too far away, they have to now swing across their body like this. So just as we saw in the merry-go-round analogy, if you start too far away, you end up coming in, and you lose racket head speed. But also, swinging from outside in, like this, really wrecks havoc with your consistency, because you're not able to generate true topspin. Now a great way to work on this inside-out swing, I've been using this drill recently, and it really helps players with this. What you're gonna do is, you're gonna set your feet up on the single sideline. Okay, just like so. And the objective here is, you're not allowed to move your feet. So you're not allowed to overstep the ball or get too close. And by doing this, when you toss the ball away from you, you have now spacing to contact. And then what you gotta feel is you're getting close, and then you're really swinging away to that contact point. So it looks something like this. I'll just toss away, and then I really feel that inside-out swing. Just like so. And by not moving my feet, I can really feel that spacing around contact. And even for me, that still feels a little weird every time I try it. But it's an excellent way to give you the feeling of the inside-out swing. Just make sure when you are doing it, that you're not starting from this position. Get on the inside first, then swing away. Now let's move on to checkpoint five, one of the most important points of your swing, and that is the contact. Now contact is really the most important part of any swing. You have to ensure that you can optimize your contact point for a consistent and powerful stroke. Now the first key to an effective contact point for the one-handed backhand is ensuring that contact is out in front of the body. Now you always hear coaches say this, contact out in front, out in front. But where exactly is that? What you ideally wanna see, a rough guideline is, contact will be just out in front of the front leading foot, as you can see here. The key you want to avoid is anything like this, where contact is in line more with the stomach or the back hip. That's when you're late, and that can really kill the power on your one-handed backhand. Now the other thing you'll see here, not only is the contact out in front, but the racket face. It's vertical, straight up and down. We want to avoid any variations where the racket is too open or the racket is too closed. We wanna see that the racket face is vertical when we reach that contact point. The next key part to a good contact is the height of the contact point. And this is especially true for the one-handed backhand. And what I mean by that is you wanna see that contact, you wanna be around waist to call level when you're striking the ball. That's the ideal contact. We all know how difficult it is to deal with these balls up around shoulder level. Okay, it is really tough to deal with those balls. So we really wanna feel that we're defending this strike point around waist level. And to do that, you can either, very quickly to fix it, move back a couple of steps if the ball is coming in so it falls back into your strike point, or the harder option, take the ball a little bit earlier. But ideally, you wanna try to contact the ball around waist level as much as possible. And then the final thing you wanna see with that contact is what I call the spacing, and that goes into that inside-out swing. You really wanna see that your hand is diagonally away from your body at contact. You're not like this, where you can't see my hand or my arm. That means I'm too close to the ball, and that limits that inside-out swing. So feel that you're diagonally away from the body at contact, so you maintain that space to the ball. Now, an excellent drill to find and master your contact point is to actually use a fence. And what you're gonna do, you're gonna set up again already in your neutral stance at the end of the unit turn like this. You're around two feet away from the fence, one to two feet. And then what you're gonna do, you're gonna swing to contact, and you're gonna see that at contact, you have all the checkpoints. So the first checkpoint is contact is out in front. Next checkpoint, racket face is vertical, straight up and down. It's not too open, not too closed. The hand is spaced diagonally away from my body, and also the contact is around waist-to-core level. And you can just swing to the fence, stopping every time, feeling that good contact point. Now moving on to stage number six, which is all about lifting your shoulder and lengthening your hitting zone. Now, before we even get into lifting from the shoulder, we first gotta understand what is your hitting zone and why is it so important? The hitting zone is essentially the length of time that your strings lift forward and upward out toward your target. The best players in the world, they lengthen that window of where they can strike the ball. So they keep everything stable and they lift the strings out of the target longer. So then they're not relying on timing so much. Doesn't matter then if you wake up on the wrong side of the bed or you're having a bad day, you can still have a consistent backhand because you have a long window of where you can strike the ball. Now, where lifting the shoulder comes into this is from the slot position, if I keep everything intact with my hitting arm structure, as we spoke about in part three, if I now just lift from the shoulder and I lift away from the body and continue to lift up, it allows me to naturally lengthen that window of where I'm striking the ball. So my hitting zone is lengthening just by lifting up from the shoulder. So it's a very effective way to get this follow-through through contact what you're looking for. From the slot position, lift up from the shoulder. Now, one of the most common errors we see with this segment of the hitting zone is players, when they get to contact, they watch the pros in regular speed and they see this. They see the finish position where the body is opened up like this. So what they end up doing is they try to pull the racket across to the finish position and then they break in that hitting zone. So they are the contact, the strings are only pointing to their target for a minimal amount of time because right after they start to do this, they pull across. And that just means you have to rely heavily on timing. And if your timing is off for that day, then your backhand is gonna break down. Now, an excellent way to work on this lifting from the shoulder is to essentially isolate the swing. So you're already gonna start from your slot position and you're gonna toss the ball over the hitting hand. And when you hit the ball, all you're gonna think is I'm lifting up from the shoulder and having the strings of my racket go out to my target. It looks like this. I toss, lift, and really lengthen that window of where you're striking the ball. Toss, lift up. Show you one more. Toss, lift up. That one was a little bit close to my body. But that's really what you wanna feel here. From the slot, you're lifting up from the shoulder. Now, it does also ensure that you're extending forward through the swing too. It doesn't mean that you're just lifting directly up like this very steeply. You're lifting forward and upward out to your target. Now, moving on to checkpoint number seven, which is all about your finish position. Now, in the finish position, you wanna see two key checkpoints. Checkpoint number one is the hand is in a high finish position. You really want it nearing head level or even above head level. You really wanna lift high to that finish. You don't want to go through contact and finish low like this. The other key thing you'll see in the finish is how I keep my body sideways. One of the most important elements for the one-handed backhand, again, is as you swing through contact and you go up to the finish, you really wanna see that your chest is pointing still to the side. Okay, so you're not opening up the body over rotating like this. And one of the best ways to ensure you get that is keeping the non-dominant hand back behind you. This hand is your counterbalance. It stops you from over rotating. Now, I know a lot of you watching right now will be saying, what about Wawrinka, one of the best one-handed backhands in the game, 100%. But the first thing with him, his backhand grip was a little bit more extreme, which caused him to open up the body a little bit more. But as he goes through contact, he still keeps the body still and he stays sideways through this element of the swing here as he swings through contact. And then as he nears the finish position, then the body can open up like this because the ball now is already going to the target. But that's the key. When you're practicing this, you have to really ensure that you stay sideways throughout contact. And then when the ball is going to the target, then you can naturally release the swing and let it finish where you want it to finish. Now, one of the most effective ways to work on staying sideways is really to learn how to use a non-dominant hand. And the best way to learn it is to actually use a fence again. And what you're going to see here, from the slot position, I'm going to swing up to my finish position, get into a nice high finish, but I'm then going to try to touch the fence behind me as I get to the finish. So it looks like this. I swing and I touch the fence. By touching the fence, it prevents me from opening up. But also, if you do open up too early and you swing across your body, you'll look like this. You'll hit the racket against the fence, which you don't want to do. So you just go from the slot, get to the high finish and touch the fence. And then you can come back out onto the tennis court and feel that you're doing the same thing. Imagine that you have the fence behind you. And as I get to my finish position, I'm trying to touch the fence behind me. Looks something like this. I can toss, hit, touch the fence behind me and see how it helps me keep my body sideways. Watch one more. Turn, hit, stay sideways. Now finally moving on to the last checkpoint and that is using the body. So the final part is all about how you use the body and this is really gonna help you generate that effortless power on your one-handed backhand. Now for this, I split it into two components. The first component is that unit turn in preparation. And what you're doing in the unit turn in preparation, you're turning the shoulders past the level of your hips. So here's the line of my hips and you can see I've turned the shoulders past that line. This is what we call disassociation. When you turn the shoulders against the hips, you're stretching the muscle. And when you stretch the muscle, you're storing what we call elastic energy. And when that elastic energy is released around contact, it gives you a lot more racket head speed. Part number two to using the body is after you've completed this turn in the shoulders against the hips, you then engage the lower body. And for that, you really keep it simple. You feel that you're sitting down in a chair as you go down to the slot position and then you're standing back up as you hit. This comes from Brick Brayden. You sit down and you stand up. So you put them all together, you turn the upper body against the hips, you sit down into the slot and you stand up as you hit. So then the whole body is working in sequence with the arm. One of the most common issues we see is players don't engage the body at all. They just are too arm dependent and they swing with the arm and they really lack power. But also their consistency falls off a cliff because they overcompensate with the arm. Now a great way to work on this is to actually use something simple like a bucket or you can even use a chair. And what you're gonna do, you're gonna feel that as the racket hand are going down to the slot position, you're sitting down on that bucket. Now obviously the bucket, to be honest, is a little bit low, especially for a tall person like myself. But I'm trying to get as low as I can. So I sit down and then I stand up as I hit. You just do a couple of shadows like this. You go down, up. And one more. Down, up. And then I can move the bucket away. I add the ball in the equation but I feel like the bucket or the chair is behind me and I'm trying to sit down again. So it looks like this. Down, up as I swing. So I'm really engaging that body and I feel that the energy is being transferred up from the ground. And so that wraps it up for today's video on the one-handed backhand. And I really hope that it gave you a clear breakdown on the key objectives you're looking for if you're going out and working on this swing. Now in my humble opinion, I think it's definitely the best looking shot in the game. It's my favorite shot. Let me know in the comments if it's yours. And yeah, I really hope it helped you. As mentioned earlier in the video, if you're really looking to improve your game, you feel stuck and you just feel like nothing really is working, then book a call with one of our team members and they can really help you and just go through some options to help you along your journey. And other than that, a big thank you for watching. If you did enjoy it, give it a quick like and subscribe to the channel. I look forward to seeing you in the next one.