How To Get Powerful Strokes

(Andrea)

Hi,

I've been playing tennis for about 3 years now. I am 43 and I would like to play better. I play about two times a week.

I feel that my strokes are not powerful enough, I somehow don't seem to be able to put my "weight" into the shots.

It is very frustrating as I seem to have a fairly good serve (club level, of course), and I feel I could do better but I am stuck. Do you have any advice?

Thank you in advance.

Andrea Mihajlovic

Answer

Hi Andrea,

Great question. There are many ways to get power in your strokes and weight is one of them :)

To get the weight into your stroke. You firstly need to have good base position. This involves planting your feet so that your weight is ready to be transferred. If you are off balanced it is difficult to get power behind your strokes as you cant transfer your weight forwards (also looses control but thats going down a whole new road :))

So back to what I was saying, make sure your weight is centered beneath you then just before you hit the ball you push off (upwards and forwards) into the ball! It does take a little practice to get it just right!

Secondly, you must be relaxed. A common reason for lack of power is because the player is tensing too many muscles! The body knows the muscles needed to hit the shot and so many players try to control the muscles needed. Inevitably they control the wrong muscles and it usually slows down the shot!

Try snapping your wrist while tensing all your muscles as hard as possible then try it with a loose wrist. The later should have more pop.

Finally, it can be very beneficial for power to hold the racquet slightly more loosely. The pros really don't hold there racquets very tightly at all and this allows for a lot of wrist acceleration. You should hold it like you are holding a small bird :) not too tightly to crush it but not too softly either.

I actually wrote a page on how to serve fast as there are several neat little steps involved :) Here is the link for that..

How to serve fast!

I hope this has helped and all the best with your tennis!

Max