Tennis Weight Transfer Tip Better Than “Bend Your Knees”

One of the key elements of effortless tennis strokes is weight transfer.

But tennis players often misinterpret the idea of transferring their weight because they tend to lose their balance in their attempts to transfer weight into the ball.

Today we’ll take a look at a simple mental image that helps you transfer your weight correctly without losing your balance. In the process, we’ll also “upgrade” the usual instruction of “bend your knees”.

Not Using The Legs Properly When Hitting Groundstrokes

Let’s first take a look at the most common mistakes players make with their legs as they hit forehands and backhands:

• No Legs – the player hits a groundstroke while keeping their legs more or less extended/straight. There is an obvious disconnect between the lower and the upper body.
• Legs Extend Too Quickly – the player seems to use their legs, as they do bend their knees and extend, but they tend to extend the legs too quickly. This results in them hitting the ball again while having their legs completely extended, so there is no real energy transfer from the legs into the stroke.
• Legs Stay Bent – the player does bend their knees as they hit lower balls, but they stay down as they are hitting the ball and, in some cases, actually move downward while hitting.

A Simple Mental Image For Synchronizing The Legs

When players are instructed to bend their knees as they execute their forehands or backhands, they tend to follow that instruction literally and just move up and down.

If they time that movement right, then that can help a bit and bring some power into the stroke, but they are still missing the actual weight transfer that makes hitting much more effortless.

Rather than visualizing bending your knees, it is much better to use the mental image of moving your pelvis through space in the same shape as your swing.

Of course the movement is not as big in space as is the swing, but it follows the same shape and moves in sync with the swing.

That’s what really helps transfer weight into a tennis groundstroke.

The legs will simply execute the movements necessary to move the pelvis in space like you imagine.

That frees your mind from thinking about your legs, resulting in smoother movements with a horizontal element, which is the weight transfer into the shot.

The downward and upward element (vector) of the legs and pelvis movement helps with adding lift and topspin to the ball.

Note that this way of moving your legs and pelvis (in sync with the swing) only applies to flat and topspin strokes and not to slice strokes.

Also, all demonstrations above were done in a neutral stance where the weight transfer is more obvious and more important.

You might be wondering if you can use the same mental image of pelvis movement in space as you hit open stance forehands and backhands.

The answer is yes, but in a much smaller way.

If you try to transfer weight too much forward while you are in an open stance, you will lose your balance and fall forward.

Therefore you need to prioritize balance and stability while you try to move the pelvis in sync with the swing. The movement is still there, but it’s smaller than in the neutral stance.

In conclusion, using weight transfer in tennis is one of the keys to hitting strokes effortlessly, but players tend to do it incorrectly.

They either fall over the front leg in neutral stances or just move up and down with their legs, following the ineffective instruction of “bend your knees,” which doesn’t add any forward force.

A simple mental image of moving your pelvis in space in the shape of the swing helps you engage your legs as well as transfer weight into the ball.

The more your lower body syncs with your upper body, the more effortlessly you’ll play.

I have described another way of transferring weight into the ball in the past so follow the link to learn more about it.