Banged Up Backhands

Worked so hard on my backhand during practice, I bore a deep blister into the heart of my palm.  Needed it drained and taped to continue training in the gym.  It wasn't too cool having a needle stuck into my hand.  But it had to be done.

Slightly bigger than a 1 cent coin.  I think it's about the equivalent of a Singaporean 5 cent coin.  And a bloody pain to play with.  After the physio pricked it, it swelled again, and only burst as I played through it the next day.  Thank God it popped neatly.

Here is its deflated version in its all too glamorous side view, pocket included.  Because I can't cut away the skin (too deep), I kinda feel like I'm carrying a pita pit around now... pun intended.  Haha.

The bright side, though, is that after three days of screaming at myself about my backhand, it's finally getting better.  Been working on it for the past two days with Angel, one of the senior coaches here.  I like working with him--simply because he is intense and always drives and yells at you to do your best on court.  He also bothers to explain the rationale of the drill too--and that always helps.

For my backhand, we were working on controlling my body as I hit the shot.  I have a tendency to move away as I am hitting my backhand, in anticipation for the next shot.  A little like putting the cart before the horse.  Obviously, this habit has proven extremely catastrophic--I don't finish the shot properly and my arms either end up flailing or turning into windshield wipers.  My stance also tends to be a little too far from my backhand sweet spot.  In other words, and I am left with a nice, a half-ass backhand.

Angel got me to stand with my shoulders perpendicular to the court.  "I am going to feed you short and long balls.  I want you to move forward and backward with your shoulders always perpendicular to the net."

"What about recovery?"  I questioned.
"How relevant is this exercise to my game??"  I wailed.

Angel finally drilled into me that the point of this exercise was not about recovery.  The aim was the get me to hit without turning using any other torso muscles aside from those directly related to the shot--my arms.  Not even my shoulders!

"Keep it simple."  He kept saying.  "Just think about using your arm and finishing the shot.  Don't move your legs when you hit the shot.  Keep them still."  I thought of drawing strength from the ground.  Makes sense, somewhat, no?

Still, in all honesty, I didn't know how much of his advice to trust.  It simply doesn't make sense to hit your backhand with only your biceps and triceps when they are such a small muscle group compared to your abs or your quad groups.  He didn't even want me turning my shoulders (which I usually do).  "Just use your arm, Sarah.  Just use your arm."

So I did.  But has I hit a hundred backhands with Angel, I also kept in mind to constantly let my natural swing do the work.  I believe this saved my arms, because I wasn't forcing anything.  If anything, I was trying to hit with my sweet spot while executing the correct technique.

And how do you know if you're using the right technique?  To me, it includes two important things.

1) Feel.
The best is to feel that your shot was effortless.  That means having the right technique--arm, body and supporting posture included.
2) Sound  As much as the hit has to feel clean, it should sound right.  It's hard to describe exactly, but it usually is a mix between a clean "Pock!" and a resounding "Boom!".  But the best judge of it is hearing the sound after you feel that you've hit it right.

True enough, after about a hundred balls, I started feeling my sweet spot better.  And each time I screwed up, Angel would stop the drill and ask me that horrible, self-prodding question:

"What went wrong?"

At the start, I didn't know.  "Errr... I was too far from the ball?"

More than half the time, it was because I was using too much of my left to power the shot, instead of allowing my right to do the work.  After another fifty or so more balls, and about seven more "What went wrong?" questions, I started feeling my body better.  Sometimes I screwed up because I was too far.  Sometimes it was because of my arms.  At others it was my shoulders, or the final direction I ended my follow-through in.  And as I gradually got it better, Angel looked pleased..

I've been looking at a number of David Nalbandian videos to get inspiration, and am still working hard on my backhand.  Nalbandian has the best backhand on the ATP.  I told myself, if I was going to even try, I should at least aim to make it the best backhand in the Academy.  Certainly no half-assed attempts here.