How To Diagnose Stroke Problems – Two-Handed Backhand Example

One of the most common mistakes on the two-handed backhand technique is the lack of hip/body rotation into the shot.

The player usually engages the shoulders and arms first and only then pulls the hips with them instead of initiating the stroke through the legs and hips.

Two-handed backhands like that lack power and consistency because the biomechanics of the stroke are incorrect and the stroke can never function well.

This technical problem may be obvious to a tennis coach, and the coach usually incorrectly assumes that the player knows in theory how the stroke needs to be executed and that, for some reason, the player is unable to move their body (legs, core, arms, hands) in the correct way.

So, it’s not that they have a mechanical problem with their stroke; rather, there is actually a psychological reason behind this incorrect stroke technique.

Why Does The Player Imagine The Stroke Incorrectly?

It turns out that, even though everyone now has a chance to observe a pro’s stroke in super slow motion and freeze the video at any point, many players are still unable to see the fundamentals of a stroke.

Tennis strokes are complex, and most players and coaches focus their eyes on the racket movement, which prevents them from noticing what the whole body is doing.

Players also like to observe footage of a pro in a real match where the pro is many times stretched to the limit of human abilities and has to improvise in many ways to still execute a stroke.

Therefore, players create a mental image of a stroke that is an improvisation rather than a fundamental.

It is much better to study the pros hitting in the warm-up session where they execute strokes slower and almost always demonstrate perfect fundamentals of a tennis stroke.

The Most Common Flaw Of The Two-Handed Backhand

So, how can we check and diagnose what the player’s mental image is – and why is that so important?

I will show you a very simple way of diagnosing an incorrect mental image with this example of the two-handed backhand. However, this principle can be applied to any stroke.

What I do is to simply hold a ball still a couple of meters from the player and ask them to position however they want for the stroke and stop their racket at the ball.

Since the ball is still and waiting for them, they have all the time they need to position according to what they believe is the correct stroke technique.

We can then observe in detail many elements of the stroke like:

• alignment to the ball (too closed, too open, too close or too far from the ball, etc.),
• balance (checking their feet and their stability on the ground),
• grip(s),
• head position, and so on.

As you see in the case of the first player, his position was too far sideways to the ball, which caused him to contact the ball to his side.

He is also very unstable in that position as he is reaching for the ball.

From this position, he can use only his arms as he is unable to rotate his body into the ball.

While a tennis pro may recognize immediately that this is not the correct two-handed backhand technique and alignment to the ball, the recreational player actually imagines the stroke like this.

If a pro does not realize that the player is imagining the stroke incorrectly, then the pro will have difficulty correcting the player’s technique because the player will keep reverting to his original mental image of the stroke.

It is, in fact, very likely that no improvement of the stroke technique will be made in the long term in cases like this.

They need to realize that their mental image is wrong. They need to understand where they got it wrong and what the right mental image is.

Only when the player sees/imagines the stroke correctly can we expect likely improvements of the stroke technique, assuming that the pro has the right methods to reprogram the old ingrained movements.

The player must also understand how the stroke works from the biomechanics and physics point of view, especially if we are talking about an adult.

Most adults want to understand things logically, even though that is not necessary for learning new movements.

How else could we teach 8- to 10-year-old children sound tennis technique when they don’t really understand biomechanics and complex explanations and they don’t even ask questions?

We simply teach them through correct progressions of physical feel-based exercises through which they acquire new movement patterns.

I understand that the majority of the readers of this website are adults, and I therefore explain tennis stroke technique in detail. Even so, keep in mind that I can teach a 10-year-old child very good tennis technique without such detailed explanations.

I just make them do drills and wait for the brain and body to adapt to the stimulus (exercises) done in practice sessions. Most of the explanations are about executing the drill correctly and not about the biomechanical complexity of the stroke.

Understanding The Issues With The Stroke Technique

Let’s return now to the two-handed backhand example where I hold the ball still for the player and they try to position their body and the racket in a way they think is right.

Because the ball is still and the player has lots of time to position it, they become more aware of the discomfort they feel when they are in an incorrect position.

Many times, the coach doesn’t even have to correct the player; they do it by themselves as they become aware of the problems like setting up too far from the ball and reaching or leaning so that they are out of balance and so on.

You may wonder why the player doesn’t realize these problems during rallies.

Most recreational tennis players play most of the time for points, and they are way too stressed and focused on tactics to recognize the discomfort of an incorrect stroke technique.

So, I really recommend that you play lots of free hitting sessions where you can become aware of the problems with your strokes yourself and correct many of those simply through awareness and adjustments.

Initiating The Two-Handed Backhand Through The Hip Rotation

As you saw, both players in the video above had the same mental image of the stroke (as most players actually do!) and did not know that they need to initiate the stroke through the hip rotation.

This is not just a matter of knowing.

So, while the stroke is much more effortless and powerful when we engage the whole body, the brain doesn’t naturally find that because it is initially much harder to put together complex body movements and time them accurately to hit a small, fast-moving tennis ball with a racket in the hand.

The correct way to hit a two-handed backhand is to position more behind the ball and initiate the stroke through the legs and hips first.

The goal of this video article is simply to show you how a tennis coach can diagnose an incorrect mental image of the player as the actual cause of the incorrect stroke mechanics using a two-handed backhand example.

If you want to dive deeper into the two-handed backhand stroke technique and learn the exercises that help you engage the hips into the stroke (and many other technical tips), then take a look at the Two-Handed Backhand Video Course.

In addition, I will soon publish a free two-handed backhand video article where I’ll cover the key technical checkpoints and progressions on how to develop a reliable and strong two-handed backhand.