The Mystery of the Continental Grip
Look at the two grips above. By some definitions, both can be considered the “continental” grip. Both have the index-knuckle on bevel 2 (marked by the yellow line), and yet, in spite of that,...
A Primer on the One-Handed Backhand
The one handed backhand is a simpler stroke than the forehand. If that doesn’t seem accurate to you, chances are you’re executing the shot incorrectly. There are only a few fundamental tenets of the...
Stop Losing Winnable Matches
One of the beautiful things about learning a fundamentally sound, fault tolerant forehand, is that the speed of said forehand can be easily dialed up or down, without fundamentally changing the swing. The grip...
5 Goals for 5-Year-Olds
The primary goal of a tennis lesson isn’t to make your student a better player in the single hour you have with them. If that happens, great, but it’s a secondary bonus, not the...
Is “Coach-You” a Terrible Match Coach?
We’ve already discussed how to play better in matches twice before. Here are those two articles, if you’re interested: Vision Will Transform Your Match Play Great In Practice, Bad in Matches Today, we’re going...
The Serving Throw Vector
The serve is a throw. The serving motion in tennis utilizes the exact same throw chain as all the throwing motions across sports. The baseball pitch, the volleyball spike, the NFL touchdown pass –...
Wait Then Fire – Success in the Absence of Rhythm
The final phase of forehand preparation is a waiting period. The forehand swing is not a single, continuous motion. There isn’t a uniform, rhythmic flow from from preparation to forward swing. Instead, preparation and...
Vision Will Transform Your Match Play
Vision might be the single most underrated tool in every tennis player’s toolbox. Sure, every coach tells their students to “watch the ball,” but what does that really mean? And why is it that...
All Forehands Are Inside-Out Forehands
I work with a 10-year-old girl named Anna who presents with an interesting issue. When she’s pulled out wide on the forehand, her stroke looks great, but when the ball comes right to her,...
Flat, Spin, and Everything in Between
The primary way you adjust your forehand is by altering the tilt of your torso through contact. As we’ve discussed before, there exists only a small range of optimal movement patterns that allow for...