Racket Back

The second step of the two-handed backhand progressions is to start with your body sideways and the tennis racket pointed at the back fence, the “racket back” position. You can see what this position looks like at 0:13 in the video above. I have the tennis racket pointed back at the back fence, my body is sideways, and from here I am going to swing forward to my contact point and then follow through by using the same mechanics we talked about in the previous video.

If we go back to the racket back position, you can see that as I swing forward I rotate my body back towards the net (as we mentioned in the tennis backhand fundamentals section), I get the heel of my back foot up, so I am transferring my weight forward onto my front foot. This makes sure that I get my weight behind my shot.

Let’s now see me hit some tennis balls using this technique at 0:55. I start with my body completely sideways and the tennis racket pointed back at the fence. When I hit, I rotate back towards the net and follow through using the same mechanics as the previous video. Notice that I am still freezing when I extend out in the follow through.

From the back view, you can see that when I rotate my body back towards the net, I get the heel of my back foot up to transfer my weight onto my front foot. This is a key element of proper two-handed backhand technique.