The SECRET to Effortless FOREHAND POWER

What if I told you the power in your forehand doesn't actually start with your arm? It starts from the ground. Today, I'm training with three-time national champion Luka Vukovic to learn how to use ground force to build a faster, heavier, and more effortless forehand. Luka breaks it down into four simple steps, and along the way, we discovered one mistake that was stopping me from getting the most out of every shot. Don't muscle it. Hit muscle the last couple with the wrist. With exclusive slow motion footage and tips straight from a national champion, we'll see exactly how that power travels from the ground all the way into the racket. And by the end, I'll put everything together and test just how much of a difference ground force can make to my forehand. Nice, that last one was the best one. So one big thing we're gonna talk about today is building from the ground up. A lot of the time, people think of using the upper body, but if we don't build the power from the ground, we're actually not gonna have that much power. Even if we swing fast with our arms, but if our legs stay behind us, we're not putting anything into the shot. First step is how to build the power from the ground up. So when we move to that forehand side, we wanna try to build the power from the feet. So we're gonna talk about the heel-to-toe balance. So if my balance is on my heel, my body weight is gonna go backwards, and that's not what we want because we're not releasing in. But if I go heel-to-toe, my balance is leaning in, and then I can add into the shot. Good, up, couple more, good, one more, good. Okay, your balance to me was like here sometimes, here sometimes, here sometimes, it was all different. I see. So every time I'm gonna move out this way, I'm gonna step onto my left, and I'm gonna go heel-to-toe before I hit. So it's important I do this before the shot so I can go into the ball. So heel-toe, a bit more, that's good, good. Kind of noticed what I was trying to do. You pretty much had a transition and loaded your weight before you hit. Yeah, I like to think of the heel-to-toe because even if we just plant this leg, if our balance isn't on our toes and we're planted, we can still go backwards essentially, even though we've taken that step forward. So if you go here, here, pull the freeze at the end. Okay. That would mean that you've probably done it right. And if I didn't do it right, what would it look like? If you didn't do it right, it would look like this. I would be back here. Something like this, something. A good freeze would be the right leg coming in front of the left leg. Okay. So that would be a good finish, finishing point. Okay, let's try it. So heel-to-toe, freeze at the end. Okay, try to be balanced, good. Heel-toe, a little more heel-to-toe. So move out there, step, that was good, nice. So really step on it. Heel-toe, nice. And then hold that freeze. Beautiful, there you go, two more. Heel-toe, nice. No lift. Good. I can feel I'm doing it more. You're doing it more. I do feel I'm not doing it enough. You're not doing it enough because at the start, sometimes you're just taking the step. A good way to think of it is we do it with movement. So if we kind of do it static, we won't sometimes go heel-to-toe, but if we move a little, we do it a little bit with movement into the ball and then hold that freeze. A good orientation is that right foot just coming a little bit in front. Like we talked about that freeze, but if you go like here, that's almost just like unrealistic. There was times where you did the freeze and you were kind of here with the freeze or a little over. Just try to just, it should just come a little bit in front of that. So if I get my freeze at this position, then it should mean that I loaded correctly. And if I came over, what does that mean? It means you pushed a little too much because this is like overextending yourself. And that's pushing with my right leg. That's pushing with your right leg rather than this. Right, and if I didn't do enough, then that's not enough load. Yeah, got to feel comfortable. We don't want to feel like something's forced. So try to move heel-to-toe and then just let that back leg follow through. It's almost like it just circles around. Step. Good, without lifting it. Heel, toe, go. Yeah, better. Just comes in front. Nice. Yep, that was a good one. Nice, no lift. Two more. Good, one more. Heel, toe. Good. The heel-toe thought actually helps more than I thought. If I didn't do heel-toe, if I just did all down, I could not be on this leg. No. And all toe, not on this leg. But heel-toe specifically makes you come on the leg. Makes you come on the leg, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Now that I understood the heel-to-toe method, I thought I was finally using the ground properly. But when I tried putting it into my forehand, Luke had noticed something was still missing and it was stopping all that force from actually transferring into my shot. It's important that our swaying and our body are going through. And now we're gonna work on releasing the back hip, so uncoiling into the ball. So this motion is very important. So when we get here, we've loaded this front leg with the heel-toe. We've coiled our body, like turn the rotation that we've talked about. Now we're gonna uncoil the hips towards the direction we're trying to hit. And then the point you're uncoiling, is it the separation between the lower body and the upper body? Yeah, the separation between lower body and upper body. So the lower body and the upper body, it's almost like we're throwing it together. If you think of a medicine ball ever, I don't know if you've ever like thrown a medicine ball around. So it's kind of like the same time. So we're thinking of the racket in essence as a medicine ball or a golf swing as well. Like if we go with this, like almost the same time with the swing and hip, we're gonna gain a lot more power. Okay, we can try it. Okay. Yup. Now just don't lift it. Throw it forward. Yup, there you go. Heel-toe forward. Yes. If you're finding the video useful, hit like and subscribe. Click on our playlist to watch your favorite videos back to back and join our YouTube membership to support our channel. Everything's in the description down below. Now back to the video. Doing it pretty well. Nice, that last one was the best one. Feeling wise, one thing I did that helped a lot was I tried not to come up by imagining my head had to stay at the same level. Yeah, like you're stuck under like, I don't know, like a roof or something. Like you gotta get down. But when I was hitting it, I didn't feel so much lower rotation. It was more still upper rotation. It was upper rotation, but your lower rotation was going. As long as this is going and it was starting to go faster and faster without, like you said, going up. Right. Because if we can get it to go faster and faster, connected with our arm, we're gonna just get more and more power on our shot. And also one thing I'm starting to realize is if we don't come up, don't we have to rotate? Otherwise the only thing that stops it from rotating is coming up. Yeah, is coming up. So if we stay here the whole time to hit the ball, we have to rotate through. That's one of the hardest things though in tennis is not to go up. Because the better you get, the faster the ball is gonna come. And the more we're gonna want to go up because it's really hard to keep our body stable on fast shots. I already knew that keeping my head level helped me rotate through the shot, but Luca showed me there was more to it than just keeping it level. Let's talk about what the head is doing. So if my head rotates this way, the shot would go right and I'm just opening up and I'm late opening up my whole body. So I'm really like, I don't know where my racket is. I don't know where my timing is. We're gonna focus on now. Another important thing of staying still with the body is not moving the head around. So when we rotate the hip and arm, we're gonna try to focus on we're hitting and our head staying on that right side of our body until after we finish the shot. Then when we're done, we can look forward. But why is the head such an important part of the whole swing? Because the more the head moves, the more we lose the balance of the body. I guess the head determines whether you move laterally or vertically or up down. The head signifies any type of movement. And when you think of a golf swing too, if you move your head, this becomes disconnected. So it's the same. In tennis, like obviously it's not as big, but the more we move the head, the arm, the left arm and the swing become disconnected. So we'll go with a little bit of movement. Just go like recover to here. And then same concepts. Just try to add the head. Nice. Heel, toe, hip, head. Nice, release the legs. Good. Head still. Yeah, that was a good one. Head on the right side. Come on, come on. Stay down. Yes. Last couple. Yep, one more. Nice. A little bit of miscontact on my strings, but those are really consistent. Even the lower ones? Even the lower ones, yeah. Some of them, the ones that were miscontact, went a little bit off it. It was all pretty good. Like even though you miscontacted it, it still was consistently in. And your balance looked good. I mean the head thing, I think it just fixes so many things. When we set up in golf, we set up the way we want to hit already. But in tennis, a lot of the times, people set up straight and go like this. But if we can set up in that turn, now we're already in that sideways position. We gotta maintain the set. And then at the end, we're trying to throw from that set around. Now I can generate the force from the ground and transfer it through my rotation. But Luca showed me there was still one final piece needed to complete the entire forehand. Let's just really try to focus on the last step. But we're gonna try to throw this like in a circle around without popping up. So this, throw in the circle, this just ties into that building from the ground up. Okay, let's give it a try. Here we go, in front of you. Load, unload. Yeah, better. Keep that head still. Nice. Load. Come on, heel to toe. Heel, toe, go. Nice. Little bit late. Yes. Give me one more. Here we go, here we go. A little bit late. Ah, I can feel it. When I hit it bad, it's usually because my set was not in the right position. And then if I'm just following through a bad position set, then the whole thing is bad. When the set was late, you're just lifting up and then the balls, there was a couple in the net are short. So this comes down to tempo. When we're moving, try to move right away with the set so that when the ball is coming there, you're trying to time the heel toe and the swing going forward. But if we're still trying to do the swing heel toe, we can get very late. I was trying to set as I'm heel toeing. Yeah, maybe let's try a couple more. Ready? Nice, I like it. A lot of power. Yes. Rotate, go. Yep. Rotate, heel toe, go. A bit earlier, don't muscle it. You muscled the last couple with the wrist. The first three were great. The harder I try to hit, the more tension that usually comes in too. The more loose you want it to be. The first three were really good because you just kind of let your arm go, but you weren't like really swinging hard at all. The last two, it looked like you were trying to swing hard, but then you kind of forgot. Well, once I start miss hitting, my brain starts panicking and I start trying to adjust it, but that causes more and more problems. Yeah, yeah. It was like, it was good. We just got to find a way to connect it more. Well, I think it's like being able to do it one time is understanding. Being able to do it every time is practice. It's practice. It's just practice. It just takes time. I think you understand the concept. It's just like doing it all the time. So it just becomes automatic. For me, how I understand it, I broke it down to one, two, three. One is just set. Two is my transition. And then three, I hit. Yeah, perfect. That's good. He broke it down. He found something that works for him to keep it simple. If you enjoyed this video, make sure to like and subscribe. Check out the next videos over here. And if you want some extra help with tennis, Coach Luka Vukovic is available in our link down below.