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The Heavy Swing

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Jim McLennan, Senior Editor, TennisONE

Click here to see animation of heavy swing.

Ever wonder how some people seem to hit so effortlessly, and others wear elbow bandages, grimace when they swing, and seem to produce little obvious power? The secret is in the relaxed and "heavy" swing.

A golf example may shed some light on the heavy swing. An experiment was conducted to test whether golf swings were ballistic. That is, when a bullet leaves the barrel of the gun its flight is predetermined by the rifling of the barrel, the velocity at which the bullet leaves, and the direction the gun is pointed. Similarly, do golfers steer their swings or are they "ballistic?"

Professional golf instructors were positioned indoors at a practice tee, and swung away at the ball. At various points during the swing the experimenter turned off the lights within the building. They found (with nearly all the professional subjects) that if the lights were turned off during the backswing, the pros had great difficulty hitting the ball squarely. But, when the lights were turned off during the downswing as the pro accelerated into the ball, contact was much more square and relatively undisturbed. The experimenter inferred that the golf swing was ballistic, predetermined, and on the downswing there was little or no steering of the club at the ball.

Now back to that elusive "sweet swing" where it feels like you have cracked the ball with little or no effort. The key is in the one-two rhythm, where the body leads the racquet on the count of one, and the arm and racquet glide through contact on the count of two. While a student of Tom Stow (see my series of articles on Stow, former coach of Don Budge and many others), he asked me to practice without a racquet, and swing with a one-two count, but carefully feel whether the blood rushed down my arm and into my fingertips as my hand approached the imaginary ball.

Click here to see animation of heavy swing.

When tight, I could not feel the blood rush. When steering or not swinging freely--again no feeling of the blood rush. But when relaxed, and really getting my body involved during the count of one, the two count felt heavy, forceful, and again there was the sensation of the blood rushing into my fingertips.

A word on steering. Notice while driving your car that turning or steering off course will always decelerate the car, slightly but always. Similarly, steering the racquet as it approaches the ball again causes a similar deceleration. So to go back to the one-two rhythm. The longer you can wait to step, the more sure you will be about exactly where to swing. Turn early, move your feet, position for the ball, wait until the last split-second and then step-and-swing, hitting freely, heavily, effortlessly. After all, that is what tennis is all about.

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