the most important aspects to the game. We all know about it, we've all heard about

it, and it's creating massive amounts of topspin. I'll bet you've probably watched some of the

top pros in the world. Rafael Nadal comes to mind.

Their ball is clearing the net by almost four or five feet over the net.

They're hitting this ball extremely hard, and then it's turning down into the court

for a winner. Very hard hit shots are diving down.

In today's video we're going to talk about why we even need all that topspin.

We know that slider shots actually produce a little bit more power, so why even bother

hitting it so far over the net. Then the second part of the video is to get

everybody, even if you're an absolute beginner, you've not played a lot of tennis, I want

you to experience what a lot of topspin feels like.

I have a series of drills that I'm going to walk you through that will allow you to do

that. Let's go ahead and get started.

So the first thing we'll talk about is why we even need topspin, what is the real advantage

of topspin. Let's go over what happens when we hit topspin.

As we're making contact, let's imagine that I'm back at the camera, back at the baseline,

and I'm making a swing. As I'm making contact with the ball, my racket

is going to be around waist high somewhere. That's about the same height as the net, it's

going to be in that general ball park, obviously it's going to matter where the ball is hit.

As we're clearing the net though, as I mentioned with Nadal, his ball can be up to four or

five feet above this net and hit very, very hard, and it's still going turn down into

the court. Now with the topspin is what allows that ball

to curve down in the court since the ball is spinning end over end in this direction,

but there's more friction on the top of the ball than there is on the bottom of the ball

against the air. The felt catches that friction and makes it

dive down into the court. Now if we took a beginning player, maybe someone

that's never ever touched a racket before, and they still swung at that same speed that

Nadal was doing. Now remember his ball was starting out at

about waist high and clearing the net by about four or five feet, so that means his ball

took off from his racket at about an angle like this.

If we took a beginning player with no topspin at all, no experience with how to create topspin,

and they and swung with the same speed as Nadal, hit that ball and it took off at that

same angle with the same speed, it would clear the net by the same four or five feet.

But it would hit the top of the fence past the court, and it would probably land with

that same amount of speed, probably somewhere in the ballpark of 40 or 50 feet past the

baseline, so way too far out of the court. That's why you'll see a lot of beginning players

do that, they'll hit these really crazy shots that fly way past the court, because they

haven't learned that topspin yet. What happens is, as we're a beginning player,

let's say we're ripping these shots and we know that if we hit one up here, it goes 50

feet long, at the top of the fence. As we start to go lower, maybe this is 30

feet long, 20 feet long, 10 feet long, as we even hit a shot that clears the net by

just an inch if we're hitting it with that kind of speed and no topspin, it's still going

to clear long. There's no way we can hit with that amount

of speed and still get the ball to go in the court.

We have to then slow down our swing, take a lot of power off of it, and then we start

to hit it a little bit higher over the next without spin, and it starts to fly in the

court. So now maybe we only have a margin for error

of six or eight inches, as a beginning player, whereas Nadal has a margin of error of five

feet. What it's really about is creating a huge

amount of margin for error, and being able to swing hard and still have it go into the

court. That's the reason that we want topspin.

Now let's go over a series of drill that are going to allow you to do this, so you can

start getting this massive margin for error and be able to swing harder and still hit

winners.

OK, so to create this topspin, there's two things that have to happen from a scientific

that have to happen, two things that have to happen.

I have to create a difference in the direction my face is pointing and the direction that

my racket is moving. So here if I'm making contact square, and

for all intents and purposes when we make contact with the ball we want our racket just

barely turned down a little bit, probably pointing to the bottom of the net.

If I were to draw a laser line from the center of my racket, shooting out from the strings,

it would hit roughly at the bottom of the net.

Now if my racket is moving in the same direction, I'm not creating any topspin.

My racket now has to be moving in an upward direction, so if my racket overall is moving

upward in an angle like this, and my strings are pointed downward, that's creating a separation,

and that separation is going to cause that ball to have topspin on it.

We're going to focus on three individual areas that are going to help us to improve that

topspin. The first one is as my arm swings, to get

that upward angle, I want my arm to be moving upward as I'm making contact with the ball.

So the overall path of my arm needs to be up. You can imagine my arm is swinging as

a circle. As my arm moves farther and farther forward,

now my hand is naturally going to move farther forward.

I want to make sure that I'm making contact as my arm is moving up as I'm doing this.

The second piece in order to be able to do that, if I'm making contact late, where's

my arm going to be? It's going to be at the bottom of its arc.

I need to make contact with that ball early well out in front of my body so my arm is

naturally moving up and I don't have to try to create so much topspin.

If you're making contact late here, now your arm isn't moving up naturally, and you're

going to have to feel like you're doing all this stuff with your shoulder and your wrist

to make up for that. So piece number one, arm naturally coming

up by letting it swing from the shoulder socket, down and up.

Piece number two, making contact out in front so it's going to be coming up all on its own,

it's naturally going to happen. The third piece is my wrist. If you imagine

my hand here, as I'm making contact. If I take my fingertips and point them down

to the ground, and then I want to flick those wrist upward like this.

So as I'm coming into contact, I want to have my wrist flick up, where that's called the

windshield wiper. It looks something like this when you're making

the contact with the racket, it's going to naturally slip on over.

It's the same way you'd turn a doorknob to the left, same motion there.

Imagine this is a doorknob I have a hold of, and I'm going to turn that to the left.

That's extreme, we're talking about getting a lot of topspin on that ball, but that's

how you're going to do it, to get that to really kick up.

So those three pieces, arm coming up, contact out in front, and then we're going to have

that wrist flick up to add that last little bit.

Now let's go ahead and go over a several-part drill that's going to help you to feel this.

Now I have you a four-part drill that's going to help you to do this motion.

It may take a little bit of time for those of you who are beginnings.

But I really want you to work through these drills, make sure you do them correctly, so

you can experience in a short period of time, what all that topspin is really going to feel

like. From there, you can go onto my topspin forehand

series which is really going to teach you these moves in much more detail.

So we're going to kind of fake it, we're going to cheat to get a little bit more topspin

on there. Just so you can feel it today, then you're

going to go to that series and watch that so that you can learn how to do it correctly,

and learn how to do those motions properly. To start out we're going to use a continental

grip. You can imagine that as if I were going to

grab this racket, and I was going to hit this racket and I was going to hit this like a

hammer, straight down into the ground, that would be my continental grip.

Also my index finger knuckle, my bottom knuckle on my index finger here, is going to be on

the second bevel. Bevel number one is going to be the top bevel

if my racket is up and down. The next bevel over to the right is bevel

number two, and my index finger is going to be on that.

That's your hammer grip, your continental grip.

From here, this is a very difficult grip to create spin.

I want to make sure I'm using this grip so I'm making as tough as possible, and I have

to manufacture the spin my using my arm correctly, and using my wrist correctly.

So again, I'm going to make a couple practice swings here, and I'm going to feel like I'm

letting this racket come back high, and I'm letting it loop down under, and I'm making

contact out in front when my racket hand is moving up.

As I'm coming back, my hands are high. Watch my right hand, it turns under, and then

I'm making contact as it's coming back up. If I add the racket, it's going to look something

like this. Coming back high, looping down, so I'm making

a loop, and then I'm coming back up to contact. Now we're not getting really detailed on the

biomechanics, I get much more into that in the topspin forehand series.

But here we're just going over the general idea. So hand goes down and then back up.

Check that grip, make sure you have that correct, and now I'm going to do that same thing, where

I'm letting it loop back up. That ball just kind of floated on me, didn't

have a lot of topspin. Now I really want to focus on getting that

racket to kick up with the wrist, and that's going to add that second little boost of topspin

on there, so that that racket is really moving upward as the face is still pointing downward.

We're really trying to get a lot of topspin on here by doing so.

I'm going to stand four, five feet behind the baseline, toss a couple balls up, focus

on those three keys to try and manufacture as much topspin as I can on there.

Now one that I want you to keep in mind, is make sure that you keep this continental grip.

The second thing I want you to keep in mind is this is very difficult to create topspin

this way. Very, very difficult drill.

The reason that we're doing this to start out is because I want to make it as difficult

as possible for you to create topspin so that you have to use the arm moving up, and you

have to use the wrist kicking up, and we don't simply just turn the grip right away, and

start to try to manufacture it, or cheat into it.

We're going to get into a little bit of that later.

The first thing I want to do, is I want to make sure I make it as difficult as possible,

so that I have to use the arm and the wrist to try to force myself to create that topspin.

I'll go ahead and hit a couple more here, and again, as I mentioned, I'm going to even

mess up on these, because I'm not used to having this grip at all.

But you're going to try to create as much topspin as you can.

So I didn't really create a ton on those, you probably won't either because of that

grip, but I want to try to get as much as I can as I'm starting out.

Now the second piece to this, I'm going to turn it one bevel to the right.

So bevel number two is the first one to the right, the second one which is on the flat

side, bevel number three, I'm now going to put my index finger knuckle on bevel number

three. Essentially what I'm doing is turning down

the face a little bit. Now it's easier for me to swing up and get

that level face, and the difference between that angle and my racket is moving the angle

that the face is pointing. It's going to be a lot easier to create spin.

This is your stock forehand grip. I'm going to focus on those same three things.

Another 20, 25 shots, getting more topspin, you can see those are diving down a little

bit more as I'm starting to hit with those. Again, I want to make sure that I make contact

in front of my body out here, really extend out in front so that my arm is naturally going

to move up. After we've done about 20, 25 of those, you're

really trying to create as much spin as you can.

Now we're going to move it even farther over to bevel number four.

Now we move it over to bevel number four, that's going to be called a semi-western grip,

so really turning this racket face down. Now I can really hit up on this thing very

easily, and create a lot of topspin. You'll see Nadal using a semi-western a lot

of times. I'm going to do the same 20 to 25 swings,

trying to get as much topspin as I can and really get comfortable with that curving down.

I'm going to swing hard, I'm going to try to really get this ball to turn down, and

you'll see it's much easier. I'm just tossing these balls, I'm not worrying

about hitting them with a partner or any of that kind of stuff yet.

Focusing on arm moving up, contact in front, making that wrist really turn up.

The final piece here, and this is where I think everybody's going to feel the topspin,

we're going to go all the way over to bevel number five which is at the bottom of the

racket, way down here. Your hand is going to turn completely underneath

the racket, and now the knuckle of your index finger is going to be no other choice with

this grip but to swing up on the ball. Because if you swing level at all, what's

going to happen if I swing level, that ball is going to go right down into the ground

because I've closed this space so much. So I'm going to have to really swing up on

this ball a lot, and this is kind of a cheater's way of getting topspin.

The disadvantage with this long-term is you're not going to be able to create enough speed

doing this, so it's going to be very difficult to create speed.

You're going to have to swing extremely hard to get any pace on the ball.

But for now, to feel this topspin, we're going to try this out, and we're going to see again

this is very hard, that ball turned down a lot!

But it is very hard for me not playing with an eastern most of the time, very hard to