A friend sent me an instagram post or some sort, of what looked like an elite junior getting coached. Maybe a 40s clip. Coach says, 'many people think spin comes from the legs', then demonstrates a high to low swing path, along with using legs to assist. Then he demonstrates a low to high brushing motion with wrist/forearm/shoulder. Then says, if you're legs are moving up, as your are brushing (up), you negate some of the brushing action, therefore, when you swing, I want you to picture a roof over your head as you swing, and do not poke your head through the roof. Then she hits some shots. Good ones.
My friend thought it was a bit counter intuitive. He had always assumed you need legs for spin.
I told my friend, maybe she had a slight head bob in her stroke ( we didn't see anything prior in the clip), and coach told her that to make her correct her habit subconsciously, because surely she had tons of leg drive in her strokes (which she did, elite junior legs).
Then, a member of TT was video reviewing my forehand, and mentioned that elite level players have a ton of separation between torso and lower body, perhaps not seen in practice swings, but is the source of great power. I thought to myself, well, i'm at best a 3.5, I have bigger things to worry about than separation for elite players.
Then today, I was practicing on my topspin pro at home. And I decided to adopt a strange stance to check out what this separation was all about. I would take it to the extreme. Both my feet would point straight at the net, and I would twist my shoulder 90 degrees. HOLY SHIT. Suddenly, I felt stretches in places I've never felt before. I could feel my leg "load". I felt (and saw) the racquet pass in front of my body. I saw the outside in swing path.
Then I thought back to the video. Then I wonder, if the legs are not really intended to provide a vertically driving force (in the forehand). Perhaps as a driver, the more useful energy they provide is rotational. Or forget even about moving the legs. Just release the shoulder/hip separation energy, and use the feet as an anchor (I kind of like this description, especially since my shot is floaty and inconsistent).
And now, I just remember another forum post mentioning that the reason my forehand is wack is that even though I have shoulder turn, the turn is not rooted anywhere, ie, the energy is already transferd to my front leg and the shoulder rotates in the followthrough.
Wow long post.
The other thing i mentioned to my friend is that coaches advice might be appropriate for that student on that day of training. To think that tip is more generally applicable might be just plain wrong
Yes, it is great that you discovered how to use the hips for loading on your shots. This goes with the CTM idea of "Hip-shoulders-Hands". That said though, I'm a bit thrown off that someone could say that lifting from the legs would somehow diminish the "low to high" of the arms instead of augmenting it. Sure, for dealing with flatter bounce trajectories coming in, we match that with flatter swings to send the back out (and usually with less spin as well), but for the max spin production it is different. Yes we use the 'un-screwing' action as we unload into the shot, but on a ball dropping from the apex of the bounce, we are also LIFTING with the legs to meet and match the plane of that dropping ball. In this case we can generate Max spin levels by using the legs to add to the low to high action of the arm, used to create high spin rates on what should normally be a "lift and spin" drawing shot. Make sense?
Congrats, you've discovered one of ultimate power sources in tennis. Loading the outside leg and rotating off it. We call it "drilling into the court" because the legs push and rotate as if they're trying to bore a hole into the ground. Thanks for sharing