Maybe you’ve never thought about this idea, but your racket is basically a trampoline. It is designed so that the strings bend as they contact the ball and then spring back through their elasticity and therefore bounce the ball off with a lot of power.
Over the years, I have observed an interesting fact: if you feel your racket as a trampoline, then you will use it that way. The strings will actually respond that way, and you will get very easy power out of the racket.
When a player is not really feeling and realizing that a tennis racket is a bouncy trampoline, then the player also won’t use their hands to engage the trampoline effect of the racket.
Funny enough, the racket won’t really respond in a bouncy trampoline way; instead, it responds in a much stiffer way, which then requires much more effort to hit the ball powerfully.
How To Get A Feel For The Trampoline Effect
The simplest way to get a feel for the trampoline effect is to just the bounce the ball upwards with your racket without letting it hit the ground.
It may look silly at first but really do bounce the ball up a few times to become aware of the feel in your hand that makes the ball bounce off.
Just hit the ball gently upwards and play with it, noticing how small the hand movements are.
Don’t consciously make the movements. Instead, just observe them and also notice how it feels to bounce the ball off the racket like that.
You are now feeling the trampoline and using your hands in such a way that the strings and the racket respond in a very bouncy way. It requires very little effort to bounce the ball quite a lot.
Now that you have the feel and a clear idea how this works, apply this in the horizontal plane as the ball is coming towards you.
Effortless Forehand Power
I suggest you start with the forehand side, as it’s the most natural for the hand to move freely and allow you to apply that little “pop” on the ball as you hit it.
Give the ball a nice easy "pop" with your hand then try to incorporate that in the whole forehand stroke.
You can experiment in two ways:
- First, just execute your forehand as usual and visualize how you incorporate that little “bounce off” with your hand into your whole forehand.
- Second, try to really exaggerate the trampoline effect by stopping your racket immediately after the contact, simulating the exact way you hit the ball when you were just bouncing it upwards slightly. Once you can feel that you have a really good bounce off the racket with just a small hand movement, then incorporate it into your whole forehand so that it executes smoothly.
Important: I am not suggesting that you whack the ball and let it go, then you will have no control. So do not “fire the stroke”, just add a gentle “trampoline effect” into your existing forehand stroke.
Effortless Backhand Power
You can use the exact same approach on the one- and two-handed backhands. First, try to feel the trampoline effect by bouncing the ball upwards a few times (just hold a Continental grip if using a one-handed backhand).
I am just about to "pop" or "slap" the ball using my wrist / hand...
Once you get the feel, apply it in the horizontal plane as the ball is coming towards you.
In case of a two-handed backhand, first bounce the ball up with your non-dominant hand, as that will be the one that will “pop” the ball with a short jab move for the trampoline effect.
And now I am going to use more of my left hand to bounce the ball off the racket.
Apply this again in the horizontal plane as the ball is coming towards you and then smoothly execute the complete backhand.
Effortless Volley Power
Can you apply the trampoline effect on volleys as well? Yes, of course, the exact same procedure applies.
First, bounce the ball upwards a few times to get a feel for it, and then try to incorporate the same feel into both the forehand and the backhand volley.
It's the wrist and the hand that "pops" the ball on the forehand volley and ...
It’s important that you don’t just punch the ball with this trampoline effect but that you also extend long after the contact towards the target area in order to control the volley.
… the same principle applies to the backhand volley. It’s not a stiff stroke but it’s hit with feel.
If you don’t do that, you will of course get a nice “pop” on the ball and easy power with it, but you won’t control the volley well.
Effortless Serve & Smash Power
The same idea can be applied to the overhead type of shots, specifically the serve and the smash.
When a player doesn’t really feel the trampoline effect off the racket on the serve and the smash, they will tend to move their whole arm fast from start to finish without really applying pronation in the serve.
The pronation that you see after the contact suggests that the player used the racket like a trampoline.
Once the player is feeling the trampoline effect, then they will also use the pronation move much more effectively and get much more power from it.
Why Some Players Don’t Really Feel (Or Find) The Trampoline Effect
I’ve worked with many tennis players over the years, which helps me notice patterns along the way.
Players who don’t feel the trampoline effect are usually those who picture topspin groundstrokes in a similar way as they are hit in table tennis.
When we hit a table tennis forehand topspin, for example, we simply set the wrist and therefore the racket angle at a certain angle. Then we pull up through the ball without doing anything with the wrist. In table tennis, we get enough power hitting like that and of course very good control of the ball.
When players set their wrist like this and they keep it stiff through the contact then they can't get any trampoline effect out of it.
But, in tennis, the topspin doesn’t work that way. It’s a more complex movement that involves a wrist lag first, which then allows us to move the wrist forward slightly while hitting the ball.
In this way, we get the trampoline effect, and at the same time we can pull up on the ball with the whole arm or with just a wrist turn for extra topspin.
In a tennis forehand we let the wrist (and racket) lag and that allows us to accelerate the racket forward and "pop" the ball.
So, the movement is more complex and therefore more difficult to master in tennis. Once you do master it, you get access to very easy power that was missing before.
I invite you to play with the trampoline effect idea with all your strokes and then let us know in the comments below how it worked for you.
Great video , I love the idea of “ pop and stop”, it makes allot of sense, cheers, Charlie
Thanks, Charline, put it into action and let me know how it goes! 😉
Great video- so much more fun to hit the ball that way. Thanks,
Mark
Thank you for the trampoline effect tips. I agreed that pop will give extra speed vs like the Table Tennis stroke. I also believe we don’t use wrist in tennis but arm and now I can see the new snapping effect. So I believe the relax wrist will do the snapping effect automatically without us knowing it and we need not purposely incorporate in the trampoline stroke by purpose. Otherwise we will have a habit of using wrist too much as priority in the stoke if we too aware of such trick.
Hi Kelvin,
The relaxed wrist will not do snapping effect unless you know how to decelerate the hips, body and even arm in order to get transfer of momentum. For recreational level that is basically unattainable.
We do use the wrist actively as we snap / pop into the ball. We will not get into habit of using too much because we are focusing on ball control and we see what happens with the ball depending on the force of the wrist snap.
Through trial and error and repetition we figure out the right amounts of sources of power to use in order to hit a good shot but keep it inside the court.
The sources of power for groundstrokes are legs, hips, core rotation, shoulder rotation, swing, arm extension and wrist snap.
These all learn to work in harmony to efficiently produce the right amount of force needed in each particular situation in order to control the ball well.
Great video Tomas and you have great ideas, explained very simply. Thanks very much
Incredibly useful tips and article! I developed this feeling yesterday in my practice so I searched online for explanation. And then this article pops out and it’s so clear in explaining why!! Thanks Tomaz! Also the unit turn article is so so so helpful.
Thanks Tomas, good tips. You keep it simple. I appreciate the way you avoid the “overly technical” approach many teaching pros use.