JediJesseS development, recommendations for slowing down

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Finally, footage of a couple games from the weekend! I am closest to the camera at the beginning and first to serve. I left all the embarrassing stuff in so tear it apart. There are a countless number of things to work on but big picture I see (just to pick a couple):

Many serves end up too high over the net
Lazy recovery after serve
Hesitation, low swing speed on many shots
Too upright as the point goes on, could use more legs and weight transfer

A big technique thing I've been noticing is I start the back swing too late and then lean back away from the ball to give myself a little extra time. Big loss of power and spin, also makes it harder to recover as the center of gravity is off. Have fun watching and let me know what you think!


I see a lot of positive things in your game. But, one thing which could step up your game is to work on loop. By that I mean to increase the brushing contact for your FH and BH. If you put deliberate effort into that, your serves would naturally improve as well.

If that skill set improves, there is clear chance that your game level steps up by 300-500 points.
 
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Finally, footage of a couple games from the weekend! I am closest to the camera at the beginning and first to serve. I left all the embarrassing stuff in so tear it apart. There are a countless number of things to work on but big picture I see (just to pick a couple):

Many serves end up too high over the net
Lazy recovery after serve
Hesitation, low swing speed on many shots
Too upright as the point goes on, could use more legs and weight transfer

A big technique thing I've been noticing is I start the back swing too late and then lean back away from the ball to give myself a little extra time. Big loss of power and spin, also makes it harder to recover as the center of gravity is off. Have fun watching and let me know what you think!

JJS,

The embarrassing stuff can be insightful as well. I've done pretty embarrassing things too and they can either give insights or be pure accidents. I let the coaches decide as the embarrassing thing can be the extreme result of something that is marginally okay on my good shots but should be much better. Cutting out mistakes is a very important part of improvement.

You play pretty well and what you decide to focus on depends on what you are trying to do. There are many areas you can focus on but I think what would generally help you is getting a better understand of whip mechanics and how it applies to your serves and your backhand. If you can improve the whip mechanics on your serve and backhand, it might improve your forehand as well, which is good as is. I feel as if you are muscling your serves to generate racket head speed. Because you straighten your arm a bit on your forehands, you get decent whip there but this isn't available to you on the backhand and serves so you have developed some coping mechanisms that are suboptimal. Your backhand push is good and your block is sometimes good, but the topspin just lacks whip.

Here are a couple of videos that may help with understanding the bigger issue. Cocking your wrist when hitting a backhand is probably easier and can generates whip by itself if done properly. By cock, what I mean is the backswing you see in the slow motion of William Henzell in the first video. OF course, transitioning between forehand and backhand when you do things like that is always an issue.


Will discuss more in response to your questions if any. Cheers.

 
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Thanks NextLevel! I've been focusing on introducing some whip into the backhand and I can already feel it starting to make a difference. I've watched the TTEdge videos and they are superb for understanding the underlying mechanics. Focusing on the whip throws off the timing of the stroke frequently for me, but I know it will pay big dividends if I can get over a couple learning blocks.

I am finally starting to feel some real weight shift on forehand loops against underspin, but something is still off. Often there is a "hitch" where the full stroke doesn't feel smooth. I think a lot of the time I'm too close to the ball and end up leaning away.

Lesson learned for the week that might help other newbies: In working on the backhand, I found that if I concentrated more on the left-to-right movement instead of the back-to-front the balls had more spin and consistency. Not sure if this is proper, but maybe it will help someone else.

Bringing the camera to training tonight.
 
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