The Pendulum Theory

I was at the tennis wall today trying to hit my backhand and finding, wow, couldn't seem to do it. A tennis wall, for those who are curious, is merely a wall that is very tall (one hopes) and has a line painted for the net (one hopes). It is used in place of hitting with another person or a ball machine. There aren't many good walls around, but I live near one. Hitting against the wall has many problems, but the one advantage it has is it's not a person. Therefore, you don't have to worry about irritating the person as you practice a shot yet again. You have time to sit, reflect, contemplate.

My purpose for being at the wall today was to work on my backhand. Although it may not be that obvious, there's more than one way to hold a tennis racquet. If you were to grab a racquet as it lies flat down, palm first, you would be holding it in a semi-Western grip (most likely). If the racquet were sideways so it was sitting on the edge and you put your palm on top of the racquet, then that would be an Eastern backhand grip.

I had been using a grip called the Continental grip, not so much because I wanted to use that grip on my backhand but because I was already using it for sliced backhands (this is where you hit a ball with underspin) and volleys (balls hit without bouncing, very close to the net).

I looked at a video Saturday night and either misunderstood it (very possible) or disagreed with the way they suggested I hold the racquet which might be described as a Western backhand grip. This grip is so rarely used for the backhand (sometimes it's called an extreme Eastern grip) that the name Western backhand is not that enlightening.

The Western backhand grip is actually a Eastern forehand grip flipped over to be used as a backhand grip. I realized I was holding it roughly in this style, and it felt awkward.

Once I figured out how to hold an Eastern backhand grip, I began fiddling with how my thumb should be placed. A racquet grip is usually just small enough that the thumb and index finger jockey for the same space. There are several ways to deal with it, and eventually I figured out how it is (roughly) done by players like Federer and Gasquet.

Anyway, the point is, I had changed my backhand grip and I wanted to try it out on court. The problem was that it felt awkward. Worse still, I was gripping it way too tight. Tennis is about staying relaxed, so I knew I had to loosen the grip some more. But I couldn't swing the racquet properly in a mini-tennis drill against the wall. It just felt wrong and I had no consistency.

Mini-tennis is when you hit tennis between the service line. The court has several lines. The two far lines parallel to the net are called the baselines. Halfway between the net and the baseline is the service line. If you play between the service lines, that's mini tennis.

Mini-tennis is meant to teach you to hit very softly while still practicing good technique. The idea is if you can hit the ball this softly with good technique then you should be able to hit faster balls with good technique.

I knew one problem was that I wasn't taking my racquet back enough. So I recalled some lesson that suggested that, and it helped a little. Now today was a sunny day, and on sunny days, I can see my shadow on the ground, which is a poor man's mirror. The shadow lets me see what I am doing in enough detail that it provides useful feedback.

So I began swinging the racquet a bit like a pendumlum. Back, forth, flipping my wrist at the nadir of the pendulum swing, so that when the racquet was reached the apex on my left side, the back of the racquet (where I'd hit my backhand) was facing forward (away from me), and when the reached the apex on my right side, the other face of the racquet (where I would hit a forehand with) was facing forward (away from me).

I figured this rhythm of going back and forth in this manner would help my mini-tennis drill. I would swing forward to the wall as part of the pendulum, then as the ball went to the wall, I would start to swing the racquet back the other direction. That's the pendulum in the other direction.

I had just watched a presentation at TED, an organization that invites smart, engaging speakers to talk about interesting topics to other smart, engaged audience members. In this talk, Steven Strogatz talks about how, despite the increase in entropy (i.e., disorder), there is also a strong tendency towards order or synchronization.

To demonstrate this idea, he took two tiny metronomes, two bottles, a pamphlet, and placed the two metronomes on top. Although they were out of sync to begin with, the motion of the metronomes were synchronized by the surface. Here's an example with five metronomes getting synced up.

Anyway, that thought was in the back of my mind. The body wants to synchronize against something, and this pendulum idea would create that synchronization.

To be fair, I do have some idea how to hit a backhand. I don't know if this idea would work out that well for someone completely new to tennis who hasn't built up a lot of the muscle memory of hitting a backhand.

I decided to apply this to the forehand. However, with my forehand, I wanted to work my body more into the shot.

Too often, beginners in tennis think of tennis as a shot that is hit by the arm. They don't know how to get the body involved more. The reason you want the body to be involved more is momentum, and that of a physics variety. Momentum is mass times velocity. When you swing the arm, you may have great velocity, but you don't have great mass since the arm isn't very massive.

Now I've tried to figure out ways to get the body more into the shot, and it's been partly successful, though awkward too. My shots look very stiff, and tennis is, as I've mentioned before, about staying relaxed.

One way to stay relaxed is to do twists. To get an idea of this, put your feet about shoulder width apart. Put your hands on your hips. Rotate your shoulders and hips so that you face to the left. To do this comfortably, when you face left, you should lift your right heel up so that only the point of the right toe is touching the ground. The right foot should have rotate some so that the shoelaces point left.

Then, twist so you shoulders and hips cause you to face to your right. Your right foot goes from being on tip to being flat. Your left foot comes up on tip. Just go back and forth several times. That provides the pendumlum action.

Now add the racquet to this. As you rotate right (for a right hander) get the racquet to point straight back. As you rotate left, hit a windshield wiper motion. The whole body is involved in this motion. The shoulders, the hips, the feet, and the racquet. By practicing this pendulum motion, you are incorporating your body into the shot and it's done at a nice relaxed, repeatable fashion.

And that's my pendulum theory of tennis.