If you want to develop high-level tennis technique, then it probably works very differently to how you think it does. You've most likely watched hundreds of different YouTube videos that have all kind of broken down and told you about specific aspects of the forehand, the backhand, and the serve. But despite watching all those videos, you're probably still in a situation where you are maybe a little bit frustrated because you're doing what you think you should do and not really improving all that much. Or maybe you're just confused about what you should focus on, and there is a good reason for that. The way tennis is taught online is very compartmentalized. People focus on specific things, and they emphasize it, and that means it's very easy for you to be kind of led down the wrong path. So what I want to do in this video is lay out a bit of a framework and help you to understand how you actually have to approach developing high-level tennis technique. So hopefully, the video will be helpful for you. If it is, it'd be awesome.

If you give me a thumbs up, and if you haven't subscribed to my channel before, it's much appreciated if you could do that as well. So, obviously, when you're trying to develop level tennis technique, you do have to have an understanding of what the technique is. So, whether it's the forehand, the backhand, or the serve, and that's where it can be very useful to model high-level players, to watch what the best players in the world do, to kind of understand the biomechanics. But then, something that's going to be really important is understanding the difference between style and substance. Because for all of the different techniques, there is a lot of variety that you see. So, if you think about the forehand, look at the best players in the world. They use different grips, different preparations, different swing paths, different follow-throughs. Same thing on the back end, same thing on the serve. Some of the best servers ever, platform stance. Some of the best servers ever, pinpoint stance. So, which is right, which is wrong? What it comes down to or

the reality is it doesn't actually matter. There isn't a right or wrong way to do it. There are certain biomechanical principles that all kind of high-level techniques encompass or high-level techniques use, and then there's a lot of style elements to it. So, an example of a style element is going to be the way that you prepare. So, traditionally, people would prepare more like this on their forehand, on their backhand. It would just be kind of getting it straight back, or on the one-hander, getting it straight back, and then from there, it would be a relatively linear swing hitting through the ball. Nowadays, or 10 years ago, there was kind of a trend towards an ATP style on the forehand. The preparation would look a little bit like this, with the racket tip pointing up and the elbow a little bit away from the body. Nowadays, it's moved more to an ex-gen, where the elbow is much further away from the body, the racket tip is pointing down the core. So, three very different looking styles.

but in terms of the substance, in terms of the stuff that matters for most people, actually relatively similar. They all start with a good preparation, which generally involves getting the pelvis pointing to the side where they end up hitting from a neutral stance or whether they end up hitting from some variation of an open stance. It's going to be the same on the forehand and the backhand, an upper body rotation, so a unit turn that prepares the upper body in addition to the hips, and that does most of the preparing of the racket. And the reason that all high-level techniques both have a preparation that looks like this is because the way that we create rotational force speed is driven from the legs and then the torso. So we drive through the legs, then the torso, then the arm, and racket comes through, legs, torso, arm, and racket come through. If you were a baseball pitcher, same thing, legs, torso, arm comes through. If you play golf, same thing, baseball. It's just sound biomechanical principles. So when you're

Preparing for your shots, you have to do that as part of your preparation, and obviously, getting to the ball is going to be a really important factor in it. But this is stuff that's substance. You have to get to the ball, you have to set up in the right position, and you have to be prepared and have certain key features. But then the style components, you don't need those in the same way. There's no right or wrong, and often players are kind of getting distracted. They watch a YouTube video or they hear from a specific coach, Okay, this is the way that you need to do it, or This is the way that you need to do it, or You have to do a platform, or You have to do a pinpoint, and that stuff tends to lead to confusion. So, the first thing, yes, you want to understand the technique that you're working on, and then you really need to understand the difference between style and substance. Now, before we get to the next section, I just quickly want to let you know about a free live 5-day workshop that I've got.

coming up that's going to teach you how you can use brain-based training to improve your skill. Because obviously, the technique is extremely important, and practicing things in the right way is very important. But in the end, tennis comes down to hand-to-eye coordination. So, I'm running a free live 5-day workshop that's going to show you how to use brain-based training to improve your hand-to-eye coordination. So, if you're interested in that, I'll place a link down in the description. Once you understand the key biomechanical principles, the next thing you need to do is gather data. You need to record yourself playing, watch it back to work out what it is that you need to focus on within your practice. Because when you're trying to develop high-level technique, it's not about following the latest greatest tip. It's about figuring out what you need to do from where you are right now and addressing the underlying problem and the underlying limiting factors with your strokes, and then working on those in the right way to develop new habits.

Now I know recording yourself can be a little bit scary. I remember the first time I ever did it. I thought I was this supreme jovic-like tennis player that had a really wide, stable base. And then I watched myself back, and I'm like a stickman. I'm basically standing like that, and it's horrible to watch. And I also thought my strokes—I didn't think they were amazing, but I didn't think they looked awful. And then the first time I watched them back on video, I got a very strong disconnect because we're used to watching the pros play. Then when you see yourself back, it looks very different. But although it can be a little bit scary, it's such an important thing to do because the vast majority of adult tennis players don't have the best body awareness, and I was included in that. You think you're doing one thing, and you're not. So you need to watch yourself back to find out exactly what you are doing because then once you know what you're doing, you can create a plan.

to start moving forwards. Once you've recorded yourself, you need to watch it back, and you need to analyze yourself, and you need to try and identify the first problem, the first thing that's going wrong in the shot cycle. And this applies to the forehand, the backhand, and the serve. So let me explain what that means. If I use the forehand, we're going to start with a split step. We've got the preparation. We've got the footwork, the movement to the ball. We're going to hopefully set up in an ideal position. From there, we're going to start the swing. We're going to swing. We're going to make contact. We're going to follow through, and then we're going to recover. So that's the cycle, shot cycle on all of the backend, single, slice, double, exactly the same thing for the serve. It's a little bit different for the serve, the shot cycle. We start with the ball toss and the loading phase. Then we go into the racket drop, the acceleration phase, cocking phase, into contact, and then

we've got the follow-through and the recovery, so we break them down in slightly different ways, but it's the same thing. We've got a sequence of steps that happen one after another, and where things tend to go wrong for a lot of players is players are focusing on stuff that comes much further down the cycle. So, if it's my forehand, they're kind of focusing on the contact point and what they do there and the follow-through. Same thing for the backhand, and that's often not the problem. It's generally the stuff that comes before it that causes those problems. Another example is going to be the racket lag. So, on the forehand, all high-level players these days use an extreme racket lag. Same thing on the backhand, whether it's a two-hander or a one-hander, there's a racket lag component. And we have the same thing on the serve. It's just called the racket drop. It's the same principle. We are rapidly stretching the muscles using our kinetic chain so then we can

use the elastic and the muscles to create a massive amount of racket head speed without lots of hard physical effort. That's how we produce racket head speed efficiently. So high-end tennis, that's what it's all about. But it doesn't matter what high-end, high-level tennis players work on. You've got to work on what you need to work on, and that might be you. You might need to focus on the racket lag. You might need to focus on those things because you might be at that level. And if you are, that's what you need to work on. But if you're not at that level, if there are fundamental things going wrong before that, so if you're not split-stepping at the right time, if you're split-stepping and landing like this rather than with a wide, stable base, then you got to address that first. If your movement to the ball isn't good, so you've got really poor quality footwork, then you might need to address that first. If you've got issues with spacing, so on your forehand or on

your backhand. You get too close to the ball. Then you need to address that first because having no split step, having poor footwork, having poor spacing, all those things are going to cause issues that come later on, and they're going to prevent you from developing those high-level elements. And it's exactly the same thing with the serve. The most important things at the start are going to be the loading, the ball toss. So getting into this position here with a nice, consistent ball toss. If you don't get that part right first, you are never going to develop an amazing racket drop and wonderful rotation and long, long-axis internal rotation on your shot. It just doesn't work that way. It's a sequence of events: step one, step two, step three, step four, step five. You have to get it in that order, thinking the old cliche, learning to walk before you run. So you need to record yourself, you need to watch it back, and then you need to look for what is the first thing that's going wrong. What do I really need to focus on?

within my practice. Once you've identified the limiting factor within your stroke, it's then about practicing things in the right way to develop new habits. Because it's only once you've developed a new habit that you've properly improved your technique, and you'll be able to use it in matches. So you're going to be focusing on whatever your limiting factor is. So if your limiting factor is you're not doing a split step, then that's what you need to focus on. If your limiting factor is your footwork sucks and your spacing sucks, you get too close to the ball on your forehand or your backhand, that's what you need to work on. If your limiting factor is more advanced, your preparation is good, you tend to set up in the right positions, but now you're just trying to really drive through your hips and create more racket lag and use your kinetic chain more effectively to get that easy power, then that's what you need to focus on. There's no right or wrong, it's whatever you need to focus on.

but then you have to practice things in the right way, and what that means is working on things at the right level of difficulty. It's kind of like the Goldilocks in the Three Bears story. It's got to be right in the middle. If it's too easy, you won't improve. If it's too hard, you won't improve. So, it needs to be challenging but not too challenging. So, depending on your level, depending on what you're working on, that might mean a different thing. So, if I think about a really, really, really common problem I see from a lot of players, they get too close to the ball on their forehand. Their spacing is off, and because of that, it throws the biomechanics off. So, say we've identified this as the problem that we need to fix. You have to practice it in the right way. So, the easiest variation would be someone drop-feeding you, and you're just thinking about your spacing from there. The next easiest variation is going to be a single feed into a certain position. So, maybe someone

basket feeding you working with a partner, um, or using a ball machine, and it's just an easy ball. I step in, I hit my forehand, and all I'm thinking about is focusing on this spacing. Then I work on different single feeds. So maybe I've stepped in and hit a neutral stance forehand, and now I want to work on, Okay, I'm going to be hitting an open stance forehand, but just a single feed so I can practice getting the spacing on that ball over and over again. So you do that with different types of single feed. Then you can alternate the feed. So now within my practice, I'm going to do one backhand, one forehand, and all I'm thinking about is the spacing on the forehand. The reason I've got a backhand coming to me is just to distract me, so then I have to reem to focus on the spacing on the forehand. The next progression is going to be a varied feed, so you don't know where it's going. You just have to figure it out, but you're still only focusing on

the spacing, and this is where kind of rallying with partners comes in. I could be rallying forehand to forehand crosscourt. I don't know exactly where it's going to go, but all I'm thinking about is, Okay, when it comes to my forehand, I'm just trying to think about my spacing. From there, we go to conditional points and to structured points, but you have to work through in this progression. And when you're playing your points, obviously, you're always going to be thinking about what your opponent doesn't like and patterns of play, but in terms of what you're concentrating on within your own stuff, you're thinking about your forehand spacing. So, your opponent's hitting their shot, you're landing your split step, and as soon as the ball leaves, you're thinking about the flight of the ball and thinking about your movement to the ball, thinking about your spacing. And this is how you progress through things and develop new habits. You start easy, then work through to more difficult, but depending on your level, that might mean

a different thing. If you're a more advanced player, you might be able to go straight in and make a change, just working on rallying crosscourt with a practice partner because you've already got the fundamentals. You've got a good split step, you've got a good preparation, you set up in the right position. Now you're just working on trying to get the timing component and your kinetic chain and the right level of difficulty for you is in a crosscourt rally drill situation with your partner. So there's no right or wrong, it's about whatever you need to work on, but this is the process you follow. You do enough repetitions going through the phases of learning, conscious cognitive through to autonomous, then you've got a new habit. Once you've got a new habit, now you've got a permanently better technique, and then you repeat the process. You go to the next thing. So say I was focusing on my spacing, okay, now that I've got my spacing, next thing I'm going to work on is driving through my hip.

do that build up the repetitions, and this is how you develop high-level technique. For some people, it might be a 5-8 year process because you're so low down on the spectrum. For other people, it might be 6 months to a year away because you don't have far to go. It also depends on what you consider to be a high-level technique, but the process is going to be the same for everyone. So, that's how you do it, but there is one more thing that's going to be really important, and that is addressing any underlying physical limitations that are preventing you from improving your technique. Look, it's a nice idea that if you practice perfectly, you do everything that I've just laid out, you're going to keep on improving and getting better and better and better, and eventually, you'll play amazing tennis. But in reality, we know that that is not the way it works. There is a skill component to tennis. It's all about hand-eye coordination. You have to be able to quickly read the flight of the ball so

that then you can set up in the right position. If your visual system isn't capable of quickly reading the flight of the ball, everything else after that is going to be a massively uphill battle, and there's going to be a ceiling on how good you can get. You also need tremendous coordination. Every single shot that you deal with is slightly different, no two shots the same, even if someone just drops it in front of you. So, you have to have the coordination to make the adjustments on your forehand, your backhand, your serve, to deal with the different types of ball that are coming toward you. And if your coordination isn't good enough, you don't have a good enough body control. That makes, gives you a feeling on the level of tennis that you can play and the type of technique that you can develop. The good news, though, is you can actually train and improve your hand-to-eye coordination. You can improve the visual skills. You can improve the coordination using brain-based training, and I want to teach you how to do it for free. I'm

holding a live Workshop. So, this is a neurot tennis challenge. It's a free 5-day live event. There's a link to it down in the description. If you really want to improve your game, then I would love you to join me on this Workshop. So, go into the description, click that link. It'll take you over to a different page where you can learn more about this free live Challenge, and then you can register for it. Okay, hopefully, this video has been helpful for you. If you have any questions or comments about what I've talked about here, look, I know it's not as sexy as going right hit the ball like feder it in five simple steps. Just do this one thing, and everything's going to be perfect. But the reason I don't make videos like that is because that's not how tennis works. It's about figuring out your underlying problems, structuring your practice in the right way, working on your body so that's capable, capable of doing what you're trying to do. Okay, hopefully, that makes sense. Any questions?

Leave them down below. If you like the video, give me a thumbs up. And if you haven't subscribed to my channel, again, always much appreciated if you could do that.

What coaches don't tell you about developing high level technique

Scripts