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Only stress this if the player has great fundamentals already otherwise focus on other things. End of story! 9:53

My guess is “sideways” entered the vocabulary trying to guide beginners away from the common impulse to hit everything facing square to the net (no coil, arming). Beginners can get arming forehands over, but backhands (both one handed and two handed) need at least some shoulder rotation. Starting sideways, even without coiling provides some shoulder turn runway into contact. From neutral stance (feet and chest pointing sideways) … shoulders/torso rotate forward (no longer sideways) to say shoulder line more or less pointing to right net post (right hander). Then arm comes through with “some” rotation assist. If you watch a lot of pro one handed backhands, the shoulder line pointing more or less towards outside net post before rotation pause and releasing of arm is common. Obviously varies from down the line or crosscourt. So … getting the beginner to do the last half of stroke, and then adding the needed coil might not be the worse path from A to Z. It was a good choice to show Fed and Wawrinka. Fed is picture perfect with the uncoiling pause for arm release. Wawrinka on the other hand often looks like he swings right through any such pause. It challenges any rule of “don’t rotate through contact … let the arm finish on it’s own”, and only then follow through brings shoulders around more. After watching many pro one handed backhands slow motion, frame by frame … I made peace with it this way. The shoulder rotation doesn’t have to come to a complete rigid stop to efficiently pass the momentum to the arm. Just look for the efficient relay to the arm. Here is something I always found interesting regarding “coiling”. If a right hander is running forward and hits a forehand in stride off left foot … isn’t that more or less the standing sideways one handed backhand minus the weight shift and momentum? You didn’t coil on either. So … coil when ball is coming to you, but don’t coil when you are coming to the ball. 😁

It was always correct to turn the shoulders, and I remember a question/answer article in World Tennis or Tennis magazine in the 1970s or '80s in which some Australian champs (maybe Rosewall or Laver) said that the biggest flaw they see in recreational players is not rotating the shoulders enough on the backhand backswing. However, the advice not to open the shoulders in the follow-through was probably more useful back in the days when people still used correct (i.e. old-school) near-Continental backhand grips. If you're hitting a substantially flat backhand using a continental grip, there's nothing to gain by opening the shoulders in the follow-through, and danger of ruining the shot by opening the shoulders before contact.

I feel sorry for the students you instruct one-handed backhand to. Westermann students; get out while you can! Click over to the Tennis Doctor or 2 Minute Tennis.

Ona a different note: Why do you post on yet another channel than ET?

So what is your point here? Don't say sideways? A good coach will work with his or her student on BOTH coiling AND staying sideways. If you don't coil there is little risk of overrotation. But if you coil properly, overrotation happens easily. I play with a OHB and always had a good coil, but uncoiling I lost control of all that rotational power and my backhands flew all over the place. Staying sideways was the game changer. It helped me to gain control and spin.

Surely one should stay side on when hitting down the line, and open up more for a cross court shot?

Great observation! Well done! Keep up the great work!

Mep style is capped. 9:13 the best version of myself will not be pushing the ball back all game long

Assuming coiling is not the main issue with the players one-hander, I have found making contact more sideways can help get a little more spin compared to rotating more before contact. Something about being more sideways makes it more natural to get the tip of the racket to go up and around instead of just around. Just my two cents of questionable value.

Is this a crosscourt shot for federer?

My best guess is aesthetics. What they really want is some classic looking backhand in their view. They didn't update their tennis knowledge.

I agree with you on the staying sideways with a one handed backhand. 2 more points bother me on what the experts say: the hands separate and go in opposite directions (Wawrinka doesn’t do this) and the racquet head should be perpendicular to the ground before starting your swing ( Gustavo Kuerten and Richard Gasquet don’t).

They say the wrong thing. It is all about having body rotation but allowing the body rotation slowing down just before contact to transfer that power to your arm. So the body rotation actually has 4 phases. From the coil back the body has to accelerate the rotation, then just before contact the rotation speed down drastically to transfer that rotational power into your arm and after contact point the arm will pull the body to rotate again and slow down towards the end of the stroke. So the body rotation is accelerating twice and slowing down twice in one stroke. And it all has to do with energy transfer from the bigger muscles to the smaller ones. Like a whip I have the issue on my forehand that i don't have that energy transfer as i keep opening up my body. I'm working on that, but on my one handed backhand that's not an issue for me.

Personally, I think everyone is at a different level and needs to hear different explanations. After my 2nd year of learning a one hander, my coach explained to me that I need to try to hit 1handers in an open stance to get a new perspective. That change how I hit my backhand from there and I produce most of my power off the back of my left hip and legs. Now when it comes to staying sideways, I would like to think my foundation is sideways and everything else rotates around that foundation.

Excellent point. Like always it's beneficial to see yourself on video to determine what your doing and what might be missing ✌️

As beginners learn the closed/neutral stance backhand, they tend to over rotate their entire body as a unit, pivoting around their right foot, ending up with the left foot forward. The kinetic chain is broken from the ground up. The underlying issue is not the shoulders. The left hip moves ahead of the right hip before contact, causing imbalance and strings facing right. Coaches therefore tell students to stay sideways, which is obviously not a good fix : it leads to your student’s arm-dominant BH. Here’s what to do instead : see how Fed and Stan leave their left leg behind through contact. It stops the left hip from over rotating, which forces an efficient uncoiling of the shoulders and arm. Boom!

I play one-handed backhand and have been trying to find the best body movement for more power. To me upper body coil/uncoil is a must and I feel a better shot whenever I have time to coil in preparation. I would try to stay sideway at the moment of ball contact, especially when hitting down the line. That way I don't need to 'push out' the racquet away from body for directing the ball. Instead I just need to swing the racquet in front of my body and upward after. The Federer clip in your video might have been shot when he was hitting down the line and the Wawrinka clip when he is hitting across the court. Seems Federer stays sideway longer than Wawrinka after ball contact but I don't think it makes huge difference because the ball is already out at that moment.

It's probably similar to the kick serve tip about staying sideways. If you tell it to a beginner, you will ruin his serve. But if you tell it to an intermediate server who knows how to hit good slice serves, then this tip may help him add more topspin to his serve.

I believe more importantly is the height of the left elbow. Your student has no leverage on his backhand. When we create leverage it automatically causes the rotation to happen. I do like what u r saying , but raising the left elbow higher will cause the rotation u r speaking of

0:44 righty Shapo footage tells me you've done your due diligence on this topic 👍

WTF of course Federer is sideways when he hits that ball, his chest is almost parallel to the tram line! An your student has a shockingly poor single handed back hand and to say most people have backhand like his is so wrong. You must being seeing lots of crap students ! Perhaps tell them to rotate more and get them to learn their single handed backhand properly

I think the tip "stay sideways" has more to do with having a close stance through the 1h backhand rather than your whole body staying sideways. The tip itself wants to correct positioning with your feet rather than positioning your upper body. I think many "old school" tips get misunderstand cuz the phrasing is not complex enough, just like another comment said below with "just follow through" or "hit in front of you" and many others.

Hey Ian. I think you're nailing it with your points here. I have been actually looking at this for about 4 years now, with players of different levels at my club, anything from 3.0s to pros. Another thing that I can totally relate here to you is that I hear this from coaches as well (including Nik on youtube)...it's like the 80s thing where every coach would say "just follow through" on the forehands...something you still hear from older coaches who come from that era or have been influenced by it. Anyhow, I started noticing something funny enough with players from the 4.0 level and up that this idea can apply to. With their single handed BHs that are often late what happens is that they end up rushing the uncoiling, and actually have their chest totally opened up at the time before the ball is even hit, and the ball is often deflected off their racquets with a terrible side spin. When looking at this on youtube a couple of years ago, I saw this quite a bit again at the 4.0 to even 5.0 levels. Then again some may actually have this stroke progression ingrained by now that way, but who knows. I have even see our buddy Mark do this at times when he's trying his topspin backhands, seemingly when he's late. I guess in that sense the coaching would make more sense, but as usual it should be explained with a reasoning base. Cheers, M

The Art of teaching.

Hi Ian, the title is not true. It should be: Most Training aids do not work. Please try the gripfixer and maybe do a review. Excellent training aid that really works. As a coach I use it a lot.

Good video! For most people including myself, it is a long journey to understand this. Nowadays as a coach with a good stability and control with each shot, a deeper understanding of the game and tactics, an opponent like MEP no longer poses a real challenge. Most people have problems with certain shots and MEP is a master of uncovering these weaknesses. So I have a lot of respect for players like him even though my heart as a coach sometimes hurts at the sight of so much “wasted” potential. Thank you for the great content.

I agree with everything you said. If winning is the most important thing for your game and you have a game like Ben and you are successful at the recreational level? All power to you. I think what you said mostly pertains to the recreational level of tennis play, which is the majority of us watching or commenting here. Some will be offended to lose to players like this and say it's not fun. But at the end of the day, it's a style that I definitely consider to be a type of weapon that someone has. Mines is a big serve and aggressive net game, which works great in doubles, which is what I mostly play. Ben's weapon is being able to get a lot of balls in play with no particular rhythm so it makes it difficult for his opponents to find their timing. I look forward to seeing these match ups again. I think what you do well and sets your channel apart from the others is that these videos is capturing the commentary aspect of the game by the players and the analysts. THAT is what keeps me watching. :)

This is really well put. Tennis is an objective game which we tend to try to rationalize by making it subjective. I played as a junior 40 years ago and have recently started playing again. There have been plenty of times in both the past and present where I have attempted to rationalize through subjectivity vs accepting objective truths. Well said

You did the entire video without any video of tennis. Not worth watching.

I've been playing a little over a year now. I agree with all you said. I've pursued the tech approach to learning the game. I know I could have more wins if I just did what it takes to win. I lose to players who do this well (and they are better players). However, as a learner, I am seeing good, consistent improvement in my game. I take an occasional lesson and what's great is that I am COACHABLE. My pro can correct my game and build on it and I see myself winning easily now to players I used to lose to. Not to disparage the MEP's out there but unconventional play results in a limit on how much one can improve or learn.

I know a bunch of players that would beat him with little effort. Most of them are playing tennis as adults, having played football (soccer) before. Of course he will win beginner players who still don't know how to atack. But that's only for a while. And those who played all their life would simply destroy him.

This is pure clickbait. Just another RUclips channel trying to say something controversial to drum up viewers for their channel. Essential Tennis used to be good many years ago, but stuff like this just scrapes the bottom of the barrel.

Tennis can be a game simliar to rock-papers-scissors. Pushers may win against hard hitters, but not against players with average tool set (who lose badly against hard hitters). I personally achieve my best results against those who try to keep up with my pace, but I struggle a lot against pushers. At least that´s what I did in my wild times. Now I tend more towards a reasonable amount of pace. Requires more running, but works quite well. I don´t know if I can beat MEP. He seems to be the toughest pusher of them all. Good strokes are just one part of the tool box. He has obviously perfected all the others.

I have this talk with our juniors all the time!!!!!! Its brutal for kids to understand

Who tf is Ben??? I just want to watch his play style now 😅

I wish the usta would differ the ratings of singles and doubles. For example, I am a very overweight guy, knee problems, feet problems, etc. and have usta rating 4.5. In doubles, i do fine at that rating. But i like to play singles, I play practice singles matches often with 4.0 guys and they win the majority of the time because their fitness is better than mine, hit away from me, etc. Ive asked local usta representative for 4.0 rating every year for past 4-5 yrs but she continues to say no every year. What do you think Ian? Should the singles and doubles usta ratings be seperate?

Is this a repost video? I thought i saw this already like a year ago.

title of the video completely goes against the premise of the video lol

It's true. You don't need coaches. Just lace 'em up and compete.

Yeah. I definitely agree with the main philosophy. But I think the problem people have is that in other sports including all the ones mentioned, you can't win with bad technique. The two are intertwined. It's like the F1 racer having the worst engine on purpose and winning. Everyone would be like he shouldn't win with that. And that's true. And it would never happen. A soccer player who can't run or kick the ball well, is never going to score. But in tennis it's different. The person who has worked on their technique for years can still lose to someone who has no technical ability whatsoever. That's because it's a game where you never have to score any points. The other person has the ability to lose all the points. It's also a game where being a little to a lot better is not enough to win. To beat someone like MEP, you have to be astronomically better. He'll never score any points, but he'll also never lose any points. So as his opponent you either embrace his style and play a 27 hour match, or you have to literally win every single point. Something virtually no tennis player ever has to do except against Ben. And something that you can't ever expect an amateur to do (or a pro). Imagine a pro playing someone who always hit the ball back in play. They would also lose.

In 1924, the great Bill Tilden published a tennis masterpiece entitled Match Play and the Spin of the Ball. In the book, Tilden described two imaginary players, Old Joe Gettum and Young Pete Swattem. Young Pete had a splendid looking game with powerful shots but little control. Pete would consistently lose badly to Old Joe who was just a pusher. Today, Old Joe would be a good 4.5 player, and Young Pete would be an aspiring teenager with a great looking game. Tilden would use these two imaginary players as a means to describe the development of a tennis player. Young Pete would endure countless defeats to Old Joe until eventually through hard work and deliberate practice he would defeat Old Joe easily. Very few individuals could endure such a humiliating string of defeats. This hypothetical story is probably autobiographical because Tilden was unable to make his college team in his early 20’s and yet won the U.S. Nationals for the first time at the age of 27. Tilden went on to become one of the greatest players of the 20th century.

To whom, who is really trying in tennis but still think that playing against pushers is a good idea for your mental game or that MEP is "a great player but with ugly technique" because he is successfully had beat somebody somewhere... Guys, I want you to check and simply fast-forward two videos with the same guy playing. In the first video he is beating Federer at his (Roger's) prime: ruclips.net/video/QCRZgFynTlE/видео.html In the second video he is playing all sorts of pushers, junk-ballers, dinkers, moon-ballers or random people from public courts who can barely hit a ball: ruclips.net/video/MNhPUMRIXVQ/видео.html I want you to focus on his technique on both videos and answer (to yourself): where is a real tennis and where is just a random tomfoolery? And don't even start "he wasn't playing those people for real" thing. Pro-athletes have a huge ego. Remember, that Andy Roddick once beat an amateur with the frying pan just to prove the point. It is not just how you play, it is also WHO you play and that is affect HOW you play. Just don't turn your game into a circus show unless you got paid. If an 8+ feet tall guy serves like an 8-year old without any particular reason (aka this his first time ever on the tennis court), then let him play his age group according to his skills. Trust me, there is plenty descent players to hit with at every level. Those levels doesn't mean much anyway. Let the pushers have every shiny plastic trophy that was ever shipped from China. Forget your ego and focus on your form. This is way more important. Even a highest level pro will look like an amateur if he is playing an amateur.

He's definitely not better than me. Pusher noob with no weapons is never going to beat me.

Does anyone remember Brad Gilbert when he played? Author of the book, Winning Ugly... Ben is an advanced student of that book. Gilbert reached the top 20 in the early 90s despite not having anything resembling a weapon. I once watched him beat Boris Becker at the Legg Mason in DC. Becker was yelling obscenities in German.. Ben is a modern day Brad Gilbert at the 4.0 level.

I don't wanna play him but I think I like the guy.

something I've also noticed that's interesting is people care way less about "bad, ugly technique" if you're using it to be aggressive, it's only an issue if you're defense oriented, then you're being cheap somehow. I have a short takeback on my forehand, kindof a whippy slap, and it's not "proper" technique but everyone thinks its awesome when I crunch a hundred mile an hour forehand. I've had good players at 4.5-5.0 level say the short take back makes it hard to read and the power is a big issue. All compliments, no whining about how my technique is "flawed" or "not real tennis." I just find it interesting how fickle some players are.

The object of tennis is to get the ball back. You do that more than your opponent you win. If you cant beat someone like this then it says more about you then them.

Just one thing I’d like to add maybe hot take: I am a player who learns traditional techniques and would probably lose to Ben fair and square. However, I also know that our goals are different. Ben isn’t interested in moving up, he just plays to win. Which is fine, but I doubt when he loses he takes it in and tries to refine his technique. He focuses on only taking advantage of the next player who has weaknesses they haven’t addressed in there form or mental game. That’s why I’d make the argument, that in that aspect, his style is not sustainable style of play. It’s a valid style, he wins on paper and it’s fair and square. But if people with that style refuse to correct there form when they lose, and instead opt for keeping it since they can continue to take advantage of other up and coming players with weak traditional form, then they are not really adapting to their input. In that aspect, I also don’t respect it as a style of play. Since instead of also course correcting after loses, they opt to keep the form that works since it can continue to win against other more amateur players before they learn how to beat them. Is it ok to feel that way and not desire to improve? Absolutely. Do I respect it? No, since it takes work to get better. And players like this usually don’t opt for that, instead taking the easy route of keeping what works. This can also go both ways. If you lose to a MEP as a traditional player and don’t desire to improve, then it’s also problematic in my view.

Ian, this is the same idea you had been forcing in your past videos and it helped me with my mental game a lot. Thanks for that! I've watched it several times. And... I just stopped playing pushers. If we are "amateurs" then we play for fun, right? But there is no fun to play pushers, so what is the point? Why we just don't let them run each other to the death? LOL If I want to run, I'll just put more comfortable type of shoes on, grab my air pods and I don't need to text someone else to set up the location and time. Anyway, since I had stopped to play them on a regular basis my game had improve A LOT. And if I accidentally bump into them at low level tournaments that I play sometimes, I'll just destroy them! Maybe... 🤣 "Pushing" is NOT TENNIS. That is not my opinion, but an opinion of the coaches whom I respect and 100% agree with. And there is nothing to do with "aesthetic" of the shots. Daniil Medvedev's shots are ugly but he is not a "pusher". Pushing has it's very limits. And the best proof of that is that Sinner holds Cincy trophy, but not MEP or some other dude, who purposely had never seen a proper tennis coach in their entire life (even a RUclips one). Yep, the kid who hits 100 mph forehands, and not the guy, who dinks, moon-ball or each time can came up with a shot that 80 year old pickleball-er haven't seen in his entire career. The idea of "pushing is tennis too" is just wrong. All it does is endorses laziness, lack of self-motivation and dedication to our beloved sport of tennis. There is a whole world of pickleball was created for pushers, but even there it has its limits... And yes, there is nothing better to watch, when a 14 year old kid with a muscle mass of a house cat destroying an ego of a full-grown man who dedicated his entire life to dinking and winning every possible plastic trophy at the club level. Isn’t something to remind you what this game is really about? The proper TECHNIQUE, maybe? Something, that you have been making videos about for years?😂