I wrote an article before, identifying tension as a joy-disrupter on court and suggested five ways to achieve looseness and heighten joy (read over here). In this article, I would like to further purport that staying loose – together with wholeness – also contributes to the technical side of things (not just the emotional – but surely also positively affecting it), namely your overall stroke technique and execution.
“Overall” is rightly and intentionally emphasised because sometimes we focus too heavily on a certain component of a stroke technique (say your ball toss position on the serve, the hip turn on the forehand, or the dropping of the racket head on the backhand, etc) to the detriment of wholeness (the whole stroke), smoothness, and resultantly, effectiveness. I am not saying that it is wrong to focus and isolate a certain part of a stroke when practicing – that is vital – but oftentimes what this does is that it “chokes up” the whole stroke – yes, you may now be able to repeatedly perform a certain motion in your stroke (e.g. the hip turn) but then your timing of the ball might be off – and even worse than before!
So, what then lies the panacea? Is it to give up identifying, segmenting, and practicing a certain part of the stroke that needs work? Most certainly not. So I say, do that IN the context of the whole stroke BY keeping loose. The former can be thought of as the (holistic) vision and the latter, the (magic) touch which together brings your stroke to wholeness and fixing it!
I would like now to suggest three practical ways of keeping loose and making your stroke whole in order to fix it:
1. Loosening up
Release tension in your body by shaking it up whether it be through bouncing on your feet, twirling your racket, swinging your arms loosely, or even shrugging your shoulders – do it. If anything, the pros often do so themselves:
2. Shadow Stroking
Shadow stroking is the practice of performing strokes without the ball. This seemingly detached action might seem “useless” but it is anything but. In fact, shadow stroking not only helps integrate back your isolated “problem” movement into the whole stroke but also aids in building muscle memory and strengthening visualisation. Oh, and because it is done precisely without the ball, the stakes are lower and it helps one to relax.
3. Take Courage and Commit
Are you surprised that this is included here? Why, we should be if not for the fact that hitting loosely takes as much if not more courage than hitting tensely “with control”. For the feeling when one hits the ball loosely is that control is remiss and thus it is a common tendency for one to tense up and hold back. Sure, one may miss a few balls hitting loosely but when one takes courage to do so and to commit to the shot (and not just hitting without intent), the results are sometimes astounding and the experience, transformative.
What does this look like in practice? Here are three videos below incorporating the three aforementioned tips above:
Vision and touch,
Both whole and loose,
Is the golden pair
To fixing your stroke.
If you’re looking to develop a smoother, more effortless forehand, I’ve created a step-by-step Solo Forehand Guide covering technique fundamentals, solo drills, and follow-along videos in 7 days! Explore the Effortless Tennis Series here.
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