4 Easy Tennis Drills to Improve Your Backhand (Beginner Tennis Lesson)

Hey guys,

welcome back to my channel.

Now,

in today's video,

I'm gonna be speaking to you about how to hit a double-handed backhand.

Compared to the forehand side,

the backhand is generally

the weakest side for most players,

and it's a side that takes the longest to learn and master for many tennis players.

Now,

I'm gonna be talking about the double-handed backhand in this video,

and the double-handed backhand is quite a

complex shot to learn,

and it's so complex because of the coordination

needed in order to hit the ball and as well,

having two hands on the racket

is a whole lot different to the forehand side with just one hand on the racket.

Now you've got your non-dominant hand

involved in the stroke too.

So, it takes a lot of coordination

and timing,

and it will take a lot of practice in order to develop

a really strong double-handed backhand.

So, in today's video,

I'm going to be giving you some really key drills

to learn the double-handed backhand.

And each of these drills are gonna be progressions on one another,

so you can just easily follow along to

this video to really progress your double-handed backhand.

So, before we get into the progressions,

the first thing that I want to talk about is the grip.

So, with your dominant hand,

you will want to find

the chopper grip

or the continental grip.

Now if you don't know your grips,

then I will link another video here that you can go and watch quickly

that will talk you through all of the different tennis grips in detail.

But for those of you that know your grips,

we're gonna go with the chopper grip

or the continental grip with your dominant hand,

and your non-dominant hand comes on top,

and you're going to find the eastern forehand grip

with your non-dominant hand.

This grip is great because it allows you to hit with both topspin and

you can hit through the ball to hit a flatter shot as well.

Some players play with a semi-western

grip

with their non-dominant hand,

including myself.

I use a semi-western,

more of a semi-western grip

somewhere between an eastern and a semi-western.

That's just because I play with quite a lot of topspin.

So, I find that more comfortable for my game to be able to brush up

the ball and really generate more heavy topspin

with my backhand compared to flattening out.

So, now we've discussed the grip,

we're just gonna get straight into our drills and progressions.

So, let's get into the first drill.

Okay guys,

so for the first drill,

you don't need your racket,

you're just gonna grab a tennis ball.

So, this drill is called the drop and catch drill.

And this drill is great for learning your timing and your swing mechanics.

So, with your dominant hand,

you're gonna hold the ball,

and with your non-dominant hand,

you're gonna catch the ball.

So, you're gonna start with your non-dominant hand up here,

as if you were

in the back of the takeback,

and then you're gonna find

a nice wide base so that I'm facing sideways on in a closed stance.

With

my dominant hand,

I'm gonna hold the ball out to the side

with a little bit

of an angle,

so if I drop the ball,

I'm imagining where I would make contact which is out in front and to the side.

So, I'm here,

I bounce,

I hit,

and I follow through.

My hand is acting as my racket here.

So, in tennis,

the racket is essentially an extension

of your hand.

So, if we can learn

the correct swing mechanic and timing

just with a ball and a hand,

then that's gonna really help us when we get to using that bigger racket.

You're just gonna be thinking to yourself,

what did I do with my hand?

The racket is an extension of the hand.

So, this drill is really,

really great.

And again,

bounce and hit,

so it really helps with your timing,

bounce and hit,

and you can even say to yourself,

bounce,

hit.

So, you can see

I'm starting here,

drop,

and then I'm following through.

And you could see as I

come

and come in to catch the ball,

my hip is rotating,

and my back foot

is lifting up.

So, this

mimics what you do with your real backhand.

Starting here,

bounce,

hit and rotate forward.

I'm finishing with my non-dominant elbow

up,

pointing

to the other side of the court.

Bounce and hit.

So, guys,

once you're comfortable with that,

once you've done 10 to 20 reps and you've really nailed that down,

you feel

that timing is perfect,

then now you can move on to the next drill.

Okay guys,

so now we need our racket in our hand,

a racket and a ball.

So,

this drill is called floor tennis.

Now,

you might have heard of floor tennis before,

it's really,

really great drill

for beginners

to

learn

swing mechanics without having

to worry too much about an incoming ball.

So, we're gonna put the ball down onto the ground.

Again,

we're finding our

sideways

position.

Close start,

turn to the side.

The net is in front of me.

And then from there,

we're gonna come a little bit behind the ball,

just a little bit and to the side of it.

And again,

we're gonna start

where we did

when we were doing the drop and catch drill,

and now our racket is here

with our two hands on the grip that I mentioned before.

So, from here,

we're gonna drop down

and swing through.

So, now we're hitting the ball,

but again,

it's really

ingraining the technique that we want.

So, we're starting a high,

and then we're dropping low

and then starting high again.

Now this high to low to high swing is what we need to generate topspin on

the ball.

So, getting this correct swing motion ingrained

from an early start into your tennis,

into your backhand will really help you to develop a good

topspin backhand later on as you progress in your tennis journey.

Make sure you take your time on these ones,

guys.

So, it's really important you set up

right.

So, I'm a little bit behind and to the side of the ball.

I'm finding

my racket here,

so my strings are pointing to the side,

a little bit of bend in my knee,

so I'm looking athletic.

And then I dropped down,

I'm finished high.

And I'm rotating

forward so that my body is facing

the net as I finish.

Now if you have a practice partner,

you can play this game together,

rolling the ball back and forth to each other along the court.

And you can make it a little bit more challenging for each other,

so

you can play games such as goalkeeping,

so then you're

working on your direction,

changing direction and hitting

maybe more down the line or cross court

to

get the ball past your opponent.

So, this

drill can be

adapted and progressed

if you have a practice partner.

Even if you're on your own,

you can set targets out for yourself,

two cones,

for example.

And you have to try and roll the ball between

those two cones.

So, that's a really great drill to start to develop

hitting

in specific

directions,

so changing the direction of the ball that you're hitting.

So guys,

once you've

worked on that for maybe 5 to 10 minutes and you're feeling comfortable,

you've progressed into changing the direction of where you were rolling the ball,

then now you can start

in the ready position,

and then turn

and then roll.

So, now we're gonna be looking a little bit more like a real backhand.

So, we're in our ready position with our racket head above our grip level,

it's not down here.

It's nice and upright,

a little bit of bend in our knees,

looking ready.

And then from there we turn our shoulders,

step forward with our dominant leg,

so for me that's my right leg.

And then we found our position that we were in

earlier,

and from there you're gonna drop down

and hit.

Ready position,

turn the shoulders,

step forward,

and hit.

So

guys,

again,

once you've done a few reps of those and you're feeling confident,

that you've got that swing,

maybe even record yourself so you can see yourself on camera

and compare it to myself to see if you're getting that correct motion.

Okay,

so the next drill that we're going to do is

we're gonna hit left-handed forehand.

Now you might think,

what are you talking about Gemma,

we are trying to learn the double-handed backhand.

Well,

yes,

but in fact,

the non-dominant hand on the double-handed backhand plays such a crucial role

in power production,

in control,

in accuracy

that learning

your non-dominant hand forehand

is actually really,

really important

to develop the double-handed backhand.

So, your non-dominant hand plays such a crucial role in extending

the racket coming into contact and extending

the racket forward and through the ball.

So, it's super important for the power of production

and control and accuracy on the backhand side.

So, as I said earlier,

with your non-dominant hand,

you're gonna use the eastern forehand grip and you're gonna choke

up the racket,

so where your

non-dominant hand would be

if you take

your dominant hand off.

Simple.

So from there,

again,

like we were doing at the start,

we're gonna have the ball in the dominant hand,

rack it

back here,

and again,

we're gonna drop to ourselves

and come and hit a beautiful

left-handed forehand.

Holding the grip quite nice and loose,

drop

and hit.

So, finding that timing,

finding that coordination

of hitting that ball with your left hand.

So, if you really try and feel

as you're doing this,

you're extending

through with that left hand.

Extend,

send,

send,

and up.

So, if you're a beginner,

you don't need to try and put any topspin on this ball at all.

It's just about bouncing

and hitting and finding that contact point

nice and out in front of you and extending

all the way up

and across your shoulder.

So, once you've done about 20 reps of that,

then now you can move on to the last drill that I'm gonna show you.

Okay guys,

so now we're actually gonna start hitting

double-handed backhands.

If you don't have a partner to hit with,

don't worry at all,

because I'm gonna show you what you can do if you don't have a partner,

you can simply just drop the ball to yourself

and hit backhands and really learn how

the swing mechanics work.

You're gonna hold the ball in your non-dominant hand,

finding your

chop a grip with your dominant hand,

and from there

you're gonna find this position,

the ready position,

you're gonna bounce the ball in front

and hit.

So again,

you're just gonna drop the ball to the side and in front of you

up,

rack it up

and hit.

So, try to throw the ball up a little bit high so that you have enough time

to put the hand onto the grip,

take the racket back,

drop and swing through.

So, the key focus here is to find that back

position that we've been finding in all the previous drills,

and from there

you want to drop the racket

down,

low,

finding the contact point around

waist height

in front and to the side of you.

And then from there,

you turn

and

finish over your shoulder.

So, with these shots,

try and think about your net clearance.

Try and think maybe about trying to generate some topspin,

so getting low to high on the ball and brushing up the back of the ball.

I know there are a lot of things to think about there,

guys,

but if you go through each of these drills one by one and focus

on each of the points that I've been saying,

then slowly but surely you'll be able to progress

into

a really solid backhand

that will help you to win more matches,

and you won't feel like you have to rely only on your forehand side,

you might even find that your backhand turns into a weapon for you.

So guys,

that's the end of this video.

I hope you really enjoyed it.

If you did,

then please give this video a like and subscribe to my channel for more videos.

like this one to come.

Also,

if you want more help with your double-handed backhand,

then down in the description box below,

you can download my free

guide

that talks you through each essential step of the backhand stroke

with visual aids and instructions to help you really master the stroke.

So guys,

thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.