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Welcome to the third part of the Roger Federer forehand video analysis series. In the first
part, we looked at Roger's forehand grip as well as the unit turn with which he begins
his swing. In the second video, we then looked at how Roger drops the racket below the level
of the incoming ball and then swings forward and upward to contact.
Today in the third video, I want to take a close look at the role of the wrist in Roger's
forehand which I know many of you are very interested in. Roger does make great use of
the wrist and that is the primary reason he has so much more racket head acceleration
on his forehand than most other players on tour. First let's take a look at how exactly
Roger uses wrist on his forehand, and then later I'll also talk about what that means
for your own forehand. The first thing Roger does in order to make great use of the wrist
is he gets into this position with the tip of the racket pointing to the right side.
From here, Roger's hitting arm is going to start moving forward, and at the same time,
the tip of the racket is getting positioned so that it now points more to the left side
behind Roger's back. This way Roger is creating a lot of pre-stretch in the forearm muscles
which then gets released towards contact and results in a lot of racket head speed. Let's
take a look at the key movement again. The tip of the racket is pointing to the right
side. Now Roger pre-stretches the forearm muscles and then releases the pre-stretch
towards contact. Now let's take a look at the same movement
from a different angle. Here Roger is moving to the right side in order to hit an aggressive
down-the-line shot. The tip of the racket once again points to the right side. And now
Roger lays the wrist back into an extreme angle so that the tip of the racket is pointing
more to the left side behind his body. From this position, the tip of the racket is now
going to travel a relatively large distance in a short period of time, which means that
the tip of the racket is moving really fast. So that's the primary reason that Roger can
generate more racket head speed on the forehand than most other players on tour. So what does
this mean for your forehand? Should you go out and try to copy this the way Roger does
it? My answer is that most of you definitely should not. This is a very advanced concept
that requires a lot of coordination. And what can easily happen when you try to copy this
is that you start framing many shots because you struggle to get the racket face square
at contact. Working on this movement as an average recreational tennis player would in
my opinion be very similar to an average recreational basketball player spending his time working
on a 3 point fadeaway jump shot. In reality, both should probably be working on fundamentals
instead. With beginning tennis players, I even focus on keeping the wrist relatively
stable in order to make sure that they get the racket face square at contact and manage
to get the ball over the net. In these images, you can see that Roger's racket face is square
or straight up and down at contact. If you enjoyed this video, I'd like to ask
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