Relax-Arm Method of Learning the Swing

The relaxed arm method is a alternative method of learning how to swing the racquet. It has been useful for me when I have been stroking poorly from the back and straining too hard to get power. What it teaches is energy transfer from medial to distal parts of the body.

You can start off-court, without a racquet.

1. Get your arm loose, let it hang from your shoulder, swing it loosely from side to side

2. Raise your arm overhead... and let it drop. Notice the difference between letting it fall freely and controlling the descent. Your hand should slap your leg at the bottom.

3. Drop your arm from overhead again, but this time turn your body to avoid slapping yourself. Rotate back on the return swing to put your arm overhead again. Get a feeling for the rhythm of this movement, it should require very little effort to maintain.

4. When the arm is up, rotate your body such that the arm swings forward instead of back. Follow through across the body. Make sure to let the arm swing freely rather than trying to control the movement directly. You should only be controlling the arm swing indirectly by adjusting the initial movement of the torso.

5. Instead of a full follow-through, stop your body rotation abruptly when after 90 degrees of rotation. Note that the follow through changes into a whip like motion.

6. Repeat with racquet

7. Repeat with birds.

Teaching Body Rotation as Part of Footwork

My conventional approach in teaching the stroke-footwork for back court overhead shots is like this:

• footwork to the back (either steps or chasses, emphasis on a side-on position moving back)
• stroke (initiate with body rotation)

However, some common errors are:

• moving back facing the net
  

There are a couple of issues here. First of all, it is difficult to push off quickly moving backwards. Even if you do manage to generate some speed, there is a risk of tripping/falling over, or at least there will be difficulty/slowness in stopping yourself once you arrive at the back. Once you reach the back, your body will not be in a position to use body rotation to initiate the shot.

• initiating stroke with shoulder rotation instead of body rotation

Obviously, it is desirable for movements to occur from the proximal to the distal ends -> in this case body rotation to shoulder rotation. When shoulder rotation occurs first, it can "drag" the body into rotation, reducing the power delivered through the arm and into the racquet.

Proposed solution:

It may be helpful to separate the body rotation out of the start of the stroke movement, and into the end of the footwork movement. Instead of coaching

(right left right) + (turn & swing)

You could use

(right left right turn) + (swing)