The hips play a crucial role in transferring forces from the ground, up through the body and out into the racket. The role they play is a fundamental one in striking sports.
Here is a video of my 3 year-old son swinging a 26 inch racket two-handed. Without even knowing it he is learning how to use the hip in this manner.
The serve is probably the hardest thing to work on at home but the trophy or power position is one thing that you can improve upon. Below is a video of some exercises I have been doing at home with an aerobic step and bands.
Also look back at the series I did on serve technique:
If you have an aerobic step at home here are some great exercises you can use to work on the ability to load and explode with the legs. And don’t forget to do your shadow swings and cover some ground laterally. This quick accelerations and decelerations are easy to practice at home and something that gets missed without playing points and sets.
This post is applies to everyone but it is aimed at those working with young kids especially. The ability to create rotational power is a natural movement pattern for the human body. In the video below I use an 8 Board (developed by fellow tennis coach Jack Broudy) to demonstrate how the hips are the engine for rotational power. Developing good tennis strokes is directly related to being efficient at this movement pattern. I am not even sure if the 8 board is still in production. I have had mine for a while but it has been a fantastic teaching tool because it allows you to feel the movement.
Now for those of you working with little ones this is my son using a full size racket hitting off an air tee in my driveway. If you put relatively heavy things in kids hands and allow them to experiment with swinging it you will be amazed at how quickly they get the rotational power movement. This is why I steer people away from light aluminum rackets and to heavier 25, 26 and sometimes even 27 inch rackets. Small light ones can be easily swung with just the arm but with something heavy the body is forced to use the hips and that is what you want for the foundation of a tennis stroke in the long term.
Last week I made a video about how to properly use the lower body and internal rotation of the hitting arm to get power in the serve. In this post we take a look at the role of the core in tying it all together.
And no one did it better than Pete Sampras!
The serve is the most complex motion in tennis by far. These two videos are aimed at explaining the 2 main sources of power. First, we start with the lower body and look at how to load the legs properly. Second, we look at what I think it the most important power generator in the serve, internal rotation of the arm. Everything that occurs with the legs is designed to maximize the speed of internal rotation. It all the comes together at the point of contact and we look at how important the angle of the racket and arm are to transferring power into the ball. These are elements all great servers have in common.
A coaching mentor and friend of mine, Coach Chuck Kriese, often says to his players, “The legs are the engine and the hands are the steering wheel.” This simple phrase is packed with wisdom. Here is a video explaining how power on the backhand is generated from the ground up and the arms play a role more focused on directing the swing path (more vertical for spin and more horizontal for power).
Here is a video post explaining the more advanced technical aspects of a forehand. Levers and lag in particular are the fancy things that get a lot of attention and they are essential to having a high level forehand. But as I discuss in the video the foundation of developing coordinated power from the ground up and just basic athletic skills in general, like hand-eye coordination, are what the more advanced technical aspects of the forehand are built upon. You have to think long-term and not skip any steps along the way.
I was listening to a podcast with Lee Taft while riding the spin bike the other day. I was introduced to the Lee Taft’s work over a decade ago and he changed my coaching life showing me what really happens in multi-directional movement. Footwork in tennis is essential because you have to both get to and recover quickly from every shot you make. The podcast inspired me to make a video on the importance of the split step. It it critical to understand the use of elastic energy (stretch-shortening cycle), the angles of force that are applied into the ground, and the directional step. One of the best ways you can improve your split step at home right now is simply jumping rope.
My wife and I workout together in our cozy little home basement gym. She has been crushing it for some time now and getting strong! She normally doesn’t ask too many questions and just does what I program for her. And I do have a method for programming workouts that involves what I am about to tell you about.
However, the other day she decided to do one of those follow-along video workouts. There was a lot of plyometric jumps involved which sparked some conversation over dinner about a little known concept called the Strength Deficit. I am going to simplify the concept for you and if you are a tennis player it is absolutely critical to maximizing performance through off court training.
There are two kinds of strength you need to understand before we can move on to defining the strength deficit.
The first type is Absolute Strength. This kind of strength is the absolute maximum amount of contractile force a muscle is capable of producing involuntarily. In a laboratory setting we could stimulate your nerves with an electrical impulse causing the muscle fibers to contract. In doing this experiment one could theoretically measure the absolute maximum contractile force your muscles are capable of producing. Absolute strength is closely related to the size of the muscle fibers. In other words, the larger the muscle is the greater the absolute strength potential.
The second type of strength is the Competitive Maximum. This is the maximum amount of contractile force a muscle can produce voluntarily. In other words this is the force you are capable of creating under your own control. The competitive maximum is related directly to your central nervous system (CNS). The stronger the impulse your can send through your nerves to the muscle fibers the more forcefully you can get them to contract.
So now that you understand that the absolute maximum is involuntary and the competitive maximum is voluntary we can get to the Strength Deficit. The strength deficit is simply the difference between the two. It should be noted that the absolute strength will always be higher than the competitive maximum because you will always be able to involuntarily contract muscle fibers to produce more strength compared to what you can do voluntarily.
What the strength deficit tells an athlete about their current state is amazingly insightful. And if you know how to interpret the information it gives you a roadmap for how to continue making strength gains.
If the competitive maximum is close to the absolute strength you have a small strength deficit. A small deficit means that an athlete is able to send strong messages to the muscles and stimulate a strong contraction. This is a very good sign because it means they are capable of utilizing most of their capacity for strength. If an athlete with a small strength deficit wants to improve they need to focus their efforts on muscle hypertrophy or growth in order to raise the level of absolute strength.
If the competitive maximum is further from absolute strength you have a large strength deficit. This means the potential for strength is there but the CNS is not capable of creating a strong enough signal to excite the muscle fibers to utilize it. This tells an athlete they have room for strength gains without putting on more muscle. Gains can be made by specifically designing explosive training sessions to stimulate CNS development. Focusing on gaining more muscle mass will only increase absolute strength and the strength deficit further.
Now before I go any further the strength deficit is a fairly advanced concept and I do not want you running out and applying this to kids or beginners. You really need to know what you are doing and this is just a overly simple blog post explaining the bigger concept. If you want more information I recommend reading a highly complex book translated from the work of Russian Sport Scientist Yuri Verkhoshansky, Super Training. With that being said if you are just getting started lifting weights you will see improvements in both absolute strength and competitive maximums quickly. Beginners just have more room to make adaptations and improve. However, if you are hitting plateaus, it is a good idea to look at your strength deficit and see if you should focus your efforts on gaining more muscle size and absolute strength potential or finding ways to stimulate the CNS and its ability to maximize muscle fiber contractibility.
First, tennis players need explosive and powerful muscle contractions. They need to swing the racket with amazing accelerations and speed. Players need to be able to sprint, change directions, and reaccelerate again. These skills require a great deal of power without having an enormous body building style muscular frame that can slow an athlete down. By now you should be able to guess that tennis players should have a small strength deficit. Tennis players want to be able to maximally contract the muscle fibers they have. That is not to say that there is never a time to build bulk and absolute strength because there is. However, once muscle hypertrophy or mass is gained it should be followed up with a block of training to stimulate the CNS to utilize that new found strength potential fully. Players like Djokovic, Nadal, and Federer are incredibly strong and I would bet they also have a small strength deficit.
Questions or comments leave them below and I will be happy to answer them.