How Early Should I Prepare for my Groundstrokes?
by: Mark Winship @ In Touch Tennis

Regardless of how much tennis you have played or how much coaching you have received, I am willing to bet that you are more than familiar with the advice "Get your racket back early". It was probably one of the first suggestions made to you by your coach or practice partner and the logic of it still holds true. If we are late with our preparation we will be unable to make a solid contact with the ball or generate a full swing. But how early do we actually need to take our racket back? Is it really a case of 'the earlier the better'?

Well, my answer would be no. We should strive to time our preparation so that we can begin our forward swing towards the ideal contact point with no pause in the action. Allow me to explain. The most important aspect of a backswing is that it pre-stretches the muscles of the arm, shoulder, and trunk. This 'pre-stretch' stores elastic energy in these muscles that can be used to generate the swing. The tricky thing about elastic energy is that it can only be stored for a couple of seconds. So if we are to reap maximum benefit from this elastic pre-stretch we should not prepare too early, and risk having to wait for the oncoming ball. Neither should we prepare too late for the reasons outlined earlier.

What we need to do is study the speed, spin, and flight of the approaching ball and adjust the timing of our backswing accordingly.

In fact many of the top players are now learning to get the best of both worlds by preparing early but then tagging on an extra twist and rotation (to set the muscles in pre-stretch) immediately prior to starting the forward swing. Good examples of this would be Andy Roddick's serve and Serena Williams' backhand.

The only potential danger of this particular technique is that it may result in a disjointed swing, and it should not be attempted until you are completely comfortable with the concept of elastic pre-stretch and with being able to time your swings in order to make maximum use of it.