A Player's Insight, creates a better Stroke for him!

An amazing thing happened the other day, when I stepped on the court with one of my players and within 30 seconds after our warm up I had to rip apart my practice plan and ask my player "what in the world happen?!" Billy, the player who I was coaching, told me that he got on YouTube and watched his video analysis.  I was not only proud of the initiative that Billy showed, but his proactive approach demonstrated the power of video analysis.  He took what he had learned on his neutral backhand, visualized, improvised, and was now producing the corrections necessary on the court ( Billy's Original Video Analysis).  Let's take a look at what he did exactly.

Billy's neutral backhand had four deficiencies which he attacked.

#1 Footwork Pattern
We saw Billy's footwork pattern to be pretty poor prior to him evaluating his video.  As he moved to his backhand, notice the lack of rhythm steps to better adjust to the ball.  Below you will see how Billy's lack of movement disallowed his to make the necessary adjustments to hit the ball at the Ideal Contact Point.

Now let's take a look at Billy making the appropriate adjsutment to make sure he makes contact where he should.

Because Billy was able to add adjustment steps into his shot, he is now able to set himself up for the rest of the stroke.  His back swing, forward swing, contact point were all affected before, but with his stable base he now can start off on the right foot, no pun intended :-)

#2 Unit Turn

Billy's backhand unit turn was a bit of a mess and excessive.  As we saw him here, his racket was controlled very much by his hands and arms and not his shoulders.  Watch as he dips the racket down, then brings it up to his back swing.  This excess movement with his hands and arms produced inconsistency in the stroke.  Billy's backhand was erratic with many balls being hit off frame.  

and now...

... we watch what Billy changed, we can see the Unit Turn being controlled by the shoulders.  This will allow for a larger muscles to take control of the back swing, minimizing the ability of smaller muscles to come in and have inconsistent movements.  This change, along with adding rhythm steps has now given Billy a stable base at his feet and one above his waist.


#3 Back Swing
Billy really put himself at a diservice with his footwork pattern and the lack of a unit turn.  Below we will see how he had the tendency of bringing his racket up with is hands instead of back with his shoulders.  Remember, that smaller muscle groups have the tendency to make smaller movements which can result in inconsistencies as we saw in Billy's backhand results.

the change!

By engaging the shoulder's Billy has really minimized the amount of movement he had on his back swing before.  This will allow him to stay consistent with the back swing and his forward swing will begin from the same position every time.  This is crucial on the stroke as we want to achieve the same successful positions (nodes) every time.


#4 Contact point

All these negative habits really put Billy at a disadvantage to get into his contact point.  Sometimes he was too early, others he was late, and everything else in between.  As we see below, his contact was one that varied quiet often, which yielded inaccurate results.  Take his third backhand and notice that even though his contact point was at the correct height the ball is still jamming him not allowing for extension of the arms, particularly the left.

and the new one...

The contact zone that Billy has acquired is much smaller than what he had before.  This is actually a very good thing as he was too broad with his zone giving him the, not-so-good, ability to modify his swing for every ball.  This consistency in his contact point allows his swing to fall into the same pattern which will produce a very positive and non-changing result.

When Billy came to practice that day, I had no idea that he had acquired a better backhand just by looking at his video analysis on YouTube.  I was amazed, proud, and comforted that my players take their game very serious.  Billy has been playing with us for a short amount of time but his dedication will prove to be an immense asset as he develops.  Learn from Billy!  Talk to your coaches about video analysis, acquire the tape, and see how you can make those changes before your next lesson.





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