[timtennis]

hi! my name is tim and i just started playing tennis again after a 6 years break!
so i have a question. my coach tells me the wrist must not move through the movement of the forehand and the backhand.. but i watched a slow motion video of pros in youtube and i can see they hit the ball with their wrist laying back!! so what should i do?? plz help!! thank you in advance.

[Bernard Black]

Originally Posted by timtennis

hi! my name is tim and i just started playing tennis again after a 6 years break!
so i have a question. my coach tells me the wrist must not move through the movement of the forehand and the backhand.. but i watched a slow motion video of pros in youtube and i can see they hit the ball with their wrist laying back!! so what should i do?? plz help!! thank you in advance.

Hmm, well you certainly use plenty of wrist action on the forehand in order to whip behind the ball and generate extra racquet head speed. Although you will see some clunky techniques which use mostly the arm. You need a more stable wrist for the backhand.

I've had a slight wrist injury for a while now and it mostly affected my forehand and serve as you'd expect, just can't get that same wrist snap. My backhand and volleys have been fine though.

[GlennMirnyi]

You don't pronate the wrist. You rotate the wrist. In fact you rotate the arm, the wrist rotates with it.

[Kolya]

I believe some players bend their wrists to get more spin or to hit low balls.

Watch Bruguera's forehand.

[Bernard Black]

Originally Posted by GlennMirnyi

You don't pronate the wrist. You rotate the wrist. In fact you rotate the arm, the wrist rotates with it.

That's a really good point, I hadn't thought about it like that. With that in mind, the only shots in which you consciously utilise wrist movement for are serves and overheads - it's impossible to keep the ball in otherwise.

[GlennMirnyi]

Originally Posted by TidusZidane

That's a really good point, I hadn't thought about it like that. With that in mind, the only shots in which you consciously utilise wrist movement for are serves and overheads - it's impossible to keep the ball in otherwise.

Exactly.

My coach that taught me like that. The wrist angle with your arm never changes when you're hitting a forehand, let's say. What changes is that you rotate the arm and it seems like you're using the wrist, but the angle hasn't changed. In fact, if you close the wrist to hit baseline shots you'll fuck up your wrist pretty soon.