Simulating the movement of one-handed backhand for beginners

Hi guys, how’s it going? I’m Javier from fitintennis.com. Today we are going to learn the one-handed backhand. Today we have a special guest who will help us demonstrate - our friend and student Silvia. The first video we are going to do will be without using a racket. What we will be working on is how to help a player learn to judge the right distance and height for this shot.

Silvia will stay here, put her racket away, and I will go to the other side and begin to feed her the balls. She just needs to catch the ball at waist-height, letting it fall whilst positioned sideways. Silvia will have to position herself sideways, simulating the one-handed backhand closed stance. She will have to let the ball drop more or less to waist-level, which is the correct height for this shot. Once she catches it, she will simply need to throw it back to me, simulating the swing and finishing with the arm up, lifting the back heel a little. These movements are enough to begin with. Remember to always do a split-step. Every time I take my arm back, you have to do the split-step. I’ll throw you the ball, you step back and catch it, and throw it back.

This is the first step, so the player sees and realises where they have to catch the ball and throw it, using the motion of the body, the arm, and simply being relaxed. Due to not having to deal with large distances or a racket, the player is more relaxed and learns to feel freer.

After having worked with Silvia on the basics, just using the hands - which makes it much easier for someone to understand the height and the distance, we move on to the next exercise. We’ll use balls that bounce very low, are softer, and larger, which means the player has more time, which allows me to make the exercise more complicated. This time we will be quite close, Silvia will go to mid-court, I’ll stay next to the net and from there I will feed her balls by hand. But now Silvia will start to hit them back with her hand, keeping her fingers closed. She will just turn sideways, the same position as before, putting the hand low, and all she has to do is push the ball with her hand underneath it, finishing in the same position as before. So to recap - keep the feet moving, then split-step, I’ll throw her the ball, she just needs to push it back to me and finish with her arm up like before.

In this exercise, the player is already starting to perceive the right distance because they now have to start hitting the ball back. It’s not just about having to catch it - she has to do the swing, with a moving ball. Like this, bit by bit, the player will begin to improve.

Now for the third exercise, we are going to use a medicine ball. It doesn’t have to weigh much, it’s better if it’s light, around 1kg so that it makes it more difficult for the player, but not so it slows them down too much. So, Silvia will take the ball with both hands, because even though the exercise is for one-handed backhands, it’s the movement that is most important, as well as the progression of hitting the ball from below and finishing - but now with more resistance. So, I will give her the medicine ball and feed her balls by hand. She has to continue doing the whole routine - moving, split-stepping, letting the ball drop until waist-height, and hitting it from below. Hit the ball at waist-level, and finish on the right shoulder.

All right guys, here we have seen the progression I use with my beginner students for the one-handed backhand. It’s very important that they start learning with their own body and their own weapons, because then they will adapt themselves bit by bit, and later, when they start using the racket it won’t be so difficult because they’ve already been using their hands, their arms, etc. In the next videos we’ll use the racket. Thanks guys, until next time!