Glad to have helped, Chris, keep in touch!

Thanks, Tomaz. You seemed to really understand my problem so clearly based on scant information. Of course that shouldn’t surprise me given what I know you know about the nuances of tennis. So I will work on it and look into your course, too. You may solve what pros for years have told me but given few real techniques for overcoming. Will report back. Cheers, Chris

Hi Chris,

The left arm simply shows whether you feel the shoulders as one unit or not.

When the shoulders are not connected and you don’t feel the leverage you get by shoulder rotation, then you use the right arm mainly to swing the racket.

When you do that the left arm becomes passive and then it gets in the way of the right arm.

When you rotate the shoulders through the shot then the left arm is active.

I have a whole lesson on shoulder axis and the role of the left arm in my forehand course and a series of drills you can do to start feeling the shoulders.

https://www.feeltennis.net/effortless-forehand/

It’s impossible to explain all that in words here.

You can try this one: just shadow swing with no ball and in the follow-through catch the racket with the left hand and also RELEASE the racket with your right hand. Don’t hold it any more.

Then use the left hand to prepare the racket to the side and that’s when the right hand takes over again.

So you go back and forth like this for 5 minutes per day. There should be some change in 1-2 weeks of practicing that.

This lesson is very helpful since I am 50 (4.0-4.5 player) and learned in the old days of almost all forehands being neutral and swing path back to forward more. About 6 years ago I learned open stance with more heavy topspin up and sideways swing path and rotated my grip a bit.

But a bad habit I have trouble getting over is what to do with my left arm. My left arm and even shoulder tend to squeeze in toward my right at contact instead of moving out of the way and with the body rotation.

If I hit forehands with my left hand in my pocket or behind my back, I get more power and do fine. I’ve tried catching the racket.

But in pressure situations, I still go back to contracting, sort of out of hope of having better directional control I think.

Any clues on what might break me (other than taping down my arm or hypnosis!?)?

Thanks, Q. As for advanced search option, it will depend on the development of this particular wordpress theme.

Hopefully they will implement that in the future.

Thanks, Fred, will keep your suggestions in mind.

Thanks

Q