Ann Louise's forehands

Thanks Ann Louise for sharing your videos on the blog.
There is so much you can see about your own technique although the video quality is not the best since the footage was recorded at night time.

You've done already a massive improvement on your forehand. Now your left hand holds the racket longer and therefore your shoulder turn has improved quite a lot. Your swing looks much more compact since your racket head now doesn't sweep the ground as before.
I'll be analyzing your swing in the next coming days but for the time being I hope you have time to study your own swing and have your own interpretation of them. I leave my own forehand below your videos so it is easier for you to compare them and maybe help you to find the clues for your own technique.



As always the first thing to analyze in anyone's technique is the Unit Turn, by far the most important element to achieve for any shot in tennis (maybe excluding serve). The Unit Turn is still quite unknown in the tennis world and it is not quite well understood. One of the reasons for this ignorance is that the Unit Turn is not easily seen without high speed video.
To have an efficient swing we need to turn the whole body (feet, hips, hands, shoulders) in a continuous fluid way without any independent movement of any of the parts. The biggest difference between a swing of a pro and a swing of a common social player is the Unit turn. For players who have an efficient Unit Turn, the speed of the racquet head, during the preparation phase, is exactly the same as the speed of the shoulder turn.
Players should intend to move their racquet as slow as possible (at shoulder turn) while turning their shoulders without moving their arm and the racquet independently. This is the number one element to improve in 99% of all social players.
Let's see what's happening with your forehand, Ann Louise:



On most of the shots you waste precious time with the shoulders still parallel to the baseline. By the time you start turning the shoulders you already seem late. Your racquet then begins to go back faster than the turn of the shoulders, although it is much better than before because now you are holding on the racquet throat with your left hand and that forces your swing to become more compact with a better unit.

You will be improving your forehand when you succeed to shorten the use of your right arm independently from the rest of the body. If you freeze the video when the ball bounces you will see that your shoulders stopped rotating more (roughly perpendicular to the net), but your right arm kept traveling back more for quite a big journey.

Imagine your forehand of the future. When the ball bounces you will reach your power position. Your shoulders will be positioned a bit more than perpendicular and your racquet hand will not go back more from that point...

You'll get there, you just need to imagine it first.



There are more things about your forehand. The next thing you need to imagine is to hit the ball with topspin.
You have been working on it already and I can't wait to record you again...







My swing: