Fundamental #1: Body Weight Transfer
Body weight transfer is fundamental for your groundstrokes. In this video, I talk about how body weight transfer helps you get in position to hit the ball. Shifting your weight from your back foot to your front foot will help you get more power behind your stroke.
Let me know if this video helps you!
Here it is. Coach Gene Molina presents one of the fundamentals of the game that you at home, your coach and your online tennis ‘pro’/ ‘guru'(sarcasm intended, unabashedly) might have missed it easily. Gene can easily create a series about true tennis fundamentals but the question remains can we take the plunge. Now you could be skeptical about this fundamental while you are pondering over it but while practicing please have 100% blind faith in it. Otherwise you are hampering the process and not allowing to let him lead you to where you deserve to be.
Thanks for the comment Navjot. You can only get what you put into it. If you position yourself to make your body feel balanced and able to put your weight into the shot, you will have a better chance of hitting the shot that you want. If you don’t get into position then you are at the mercy of your opponent. Fighting for position should be in everyone’s mind when they play and never have to wonder why they missed a shot. Some players are always wondering why they missed a shot. There needs to be a check list of figuring out why. Number 1 on the list is positioning. If you know you were positioned correctly then you’ll be well on your way to figuring out why you made a mistake. The checklist will be much easier to go by if you know the parts that are supposed to there when making a shot. Check your positioning, can you transfer? If you could then that wasn’t the problem. Then you could move on to the next thing which may be whether you hit it at the right contact height for yourself and so on. It’s a matter of figuring out whether you have all the fundamentals in the right order. I’m hoping to get many players to understand the process. The process is how we can get to where we want to be in a timely manner. Good luck and stay loose!
“Fight for position”, absolutely the proper mind set. The neutral position is absolutely the position to master. Brilliantly described and demonstrated you Gene. Thanks so much for what you do for the game. Pat
Thanks Pat, I truly feel that every tennis player, that wants to improve, needs to know about fighting for position. It’s all about who gets to transfer their weight into the shot first. It starts out with the first serve. It’s no wonder that someone with a strong first serve usually wins the point. It’s your first way to impose your will upon an opponent. If you miss the first serve now you give your opponent a chance to receive a ball that doesn’t have as much weight behind it and let’s them have a better chance at making the return. Once we get past the serve part now it’s about whether the returner returned with a transfer or a defensive type of return. If it’s defensive the server gets to transfer and if not then they may defend. This is how it’s supposed to go but when players don’t know about trying to position themselves so that they can put some weight behind their shot, they end up just hitting the ball back with nothing on it. Trusting yourself enough to swing free is the most difficult thing in tennis. Starting from the legs and letting everything else just go should be a great start to getting to the free swing you’ve always wanted to be able to do. Stick around for a wave that will have it’s ups and downs but once we get to our destination, it’s all calm seas from there. Good luck and stay loose!
Once, I saw this old timer that I’ve never seen before, in a jogging suit from 1980s, stepping onto the court with his college-age son (during the holiday school break?). Skeptical but I was in awe the moment the older gentleman fed the ball & started his groundstrokes. It was smooth acceleration, long extension, never rushed, & effortless power that his son was having trouble keeping up & made errors from trying too hard. The smooth motion is similar to what FeelTennis’ Tomaz Mencinger described as “sweeping the dirt on the floor with a broom” instead of smooshing or impacting the ball using jerky movements. I am truly inspired to play tennis at that higher level & all of your insightful videos are greatly appreciated!
Thanks Ken, you should have a chance at playing like you described. We all should be able to get the most of what we’re capable of. Part of the problem is we’re human. Humans like to make things more complicated. Not on purpose but that’s the way it is. We have a tendency to brace for impact when trying to hit an object. It’s easy to say stay loose or pretend there is no ball but that doesn’t work for most people. There are progressions that must be done in order to get the right parts of the body to work smoothly to make everything feel the way it should. The transfer of weight solves a lot of issues. The main one is to get into a balanced position before hitting the ball in your strike zone. Once in a balanced position you are capable of staying calm and letting things happen rather than rushing to catch up when you’ve set up late. I believe we need to get ourselves prepared to transfer some weight for the sake of our arms and shoulders. To many arms and shoulders are used to hit when it should all be coming from the legs. Let’s hope I can make this happen for the lucky few who want to work hard and fight for position on every shot. Most people will keep looking for an answer to why they missed a shot but the reality is going to be either they didn’t prepare in a balanced position to transfer or their opponent forced an error from them. If you know you didn’t fight for position then there’s no one to blame but yourself but it can make you feel better when you know your opponent hit a great shot that was difficult to get into a balanced position to hit. Mission objective number 1, fight for position! Good luck and stay loose!
Interesting video; it seems to be going back to the days when players like Jimmy Connors said that tennis was a game of forward motion. Do your ideas of weight transfer apply to the serve and the volley?
Thanks for the comment Chris. Yes, there will be more upward transfer on the serve than forward but there is transfer of weight on the serve as well as the volley. We just need to know that on the serve we are at the ultimate position for transfer because our opponent has no say in positioning to transfer. It’s all on us. As far as other shots go, they have a say in whether we transfer since they get to hit the ball at us with their transfer or not. The serve will have more upward transfer since we need to stretch the shoulder to maximize our power but there will be some forward transfer with our legs as well to make the arm go forward slightly. We don’t need a lot of forward on the serve just some. I will hopefully get to those soon enough. Good luck and stay loose!