Will Hamilton: In this video, we're going to look at the fundamentals of smashing your tennis racquet on the court. The things that all top level players do when they smash the racquet. Now the fundamentals are which separate professionals level racquets smashers from club level racquet smashers. Professionals do a couple of things every single time they break the racquet, where club level players don't. Now we've analyzed the racquet smashers of a number of top pros on tour and we've come away with five fundamentals. They are the grip, four momentums into the court, the racquet drop, the release point, and then the defensive posture after broken your racquet to prevent it from bouncing back and hitting you in the face.
Now we're able to master these fundamentals is going to do absolutely nothing to improve your tennis game, but it will help tennis warehouse survive these troubling economic times. To help us demonstrate how to smash the tennis racquet, we enlisted Ian Westerman. Now runs the website a centraltennis.com, which is a great resource if you're trying to learn how to improve your game, but on top of being a great player and a great coach, Ian also has phenomenal racquet smashing technique, it's flawless. He is probably on the professional level I put him just slightly below Marat Safin. So, we've got him right here getting ready to smash his racquet. Let's just watch his first smash at normal speed.
Now you can hear from the audio in here that was a real solid smash you connected with the court. So let's now rewind it and really break down his technique. Now first of all, let's notice that he is holding the racquet with the continental grip, that's the grip you have to use, you can't use in the Easton backhand like you could on your serve that really makes it hard release correctly into the court. So have a continental, as he winds up he steps into the court because you want to have your body's momentum moving forward and add some patient powered your smash. Right about here, he gets to the racquet drop and you'll notice that the racquet is about parallel at the tennis court, it's not pointing straight down like when you are serving, but again that's because the contact point is now the court, and it's not about your hand. So this is what the racquet drop looks like when you're smashing your racquet.
Now as he begins to swing forward let's freeze it right about at his contact point, and he is going to let go on the racquets about the foot of the court and that's what we are looking for. Once he releases obviously, the racquet smashes on the court, but let's focus on Ian. Now Ian's momentum, even though, he was moving forward he stops moving once he releases it; in other words his momentum is not carrying him over the racquet. What you'll notice is that he has also turned the way; he is turned to face the way because he doesn't want the racquet bouncing back in your face. So that's really important, once you release the racquet you want to make sure you start moving forward and you want to turn your body, so that if the racquet requires you'll your back, hit your shoulder and it won't hit you in the face.
So let's watch Ian's technique one more time in slow motion, look the grip, look at the way, the racquet drop the release point, and then his defensive pasture. Those are the five things as you need to have in there to have a flawless racquet smash, just like Ian, just like Marat. Now that we understand the fundamentals of frame modification, let's see how this technique actually modifies the frame. So, we're going to go to the FYB TV screen and watch Ian smashes racquet in high speed. What you'll see is that, when the racquet hits the court the frame works and then it reclose a little bit, it obviously bounces off to the side. Now let's clip back to the HD we've got Ian holding the racquet in front of the camera, so you can see what exactly happen to the racquet. Those are pretty solid break here, but the racquet still sort of escaped shape. So that's not good enough, we need to do better than this in a lot of time you'll need maybe two to three repeated smashes to really modify the frame the way it should be modified.
So let's watch the second take of Ian smashing in high def. Now you can see the racquet is pretty much been destroyed and that's what's we're looking for. Let's go back to the FYB TV screen, watch it in high speed and this is real clear, I mean the racquet just sort of crunches into the court and then bounces off to the side. If we go back to HD, we go the racquet in front of the camera again and that doesn't even look like a tennis racquet anymore, that thing has been totally decimated. So, that's what you want, if you don't get it on the first try, I mean what Ian did on the first attempt was great, I mean that thing got smashed pretty well, but you can do it again, if you haven't totally decimated the racquet. So, one or two tries should get you know what Ian has just accomplished and that again is what you're looking for when you're trying to modify your frame. Quick PSA, what we just did was fun we had no racquet that we didn't need anymore. So we decided to smash it on tennis court. Well, I think it should be self evident and Ian and I really want to emphasize this.
Breaking a racquet in mass situation or just breaking your racquet when you're playing is extremely post sportsmanship, it's really scrape in the bottom of the barrel. So just don't do it, it's not what I'm about, it not what Ian is about. So, let's go there, have a good time and then if you have an old racquet that you don't need, maybe you can break it and if you do try and break it. Make sure you're smart about it, don't hurt yourself.
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