There are major differences to both of them and are hard to capture with an untrained eye, many inexperienced or experienced tennis coaches also struggle with this all over the world and in Singapore.

When you Snap your wrist during your tennis serve (assuming perfect technique and grip), the racket head will finish with the top leading and the sides of the rackets parallel to each other.

When you Pronate to serve in tennis, the edge of the racket ( assuming correct technique and grip) will lead the swing.

Pronation is the only ‘right way’ to serve in tennis.

For me as a tennis coach from Singapore, I believe that there is only one way to serve in tennis and that is to Pronate during your tennis serve.

Issues with snapping the wrist on the tennis serve. Many tennis students, tennis coaches and tennis players say that using your wrist to dominate the tennis serve will give good feel, directional control and tennis racket head speed. That i feel, is false. And i want to give a few reasons why you should not use your wrist.

• Causes injury to wrist
• There is no proper directional control
• 99% of Male Professional players pronate
• Removes the kinetic chain from the ground up

By snapping on the tennis serve, your wrist takes the full extent of the force created by your kinetic chain, ( you drive your legs from the ground storing energy, building up to throw you arm)

At that point while your energy is moving from your arm toward the tennis ball, you snap your wrist, that movement stops the kinetic chain at the wrist, making your wrist take the full impact from your stored kinetic energy which means that there will be no energy transfer from the ground to the ball because it stops at the wrist. Which will cause injury.

Next, after u lose all the stored energy at the wrist, you now have to use your wrist and forearm to snap at the ball as fast as you can. Which will also cause injuries because, the tennis racket is heavy, and your wrist and forearms are small muscles and will not be able to constantly handle the weight of throwing your racket. Especially if your racket is 300g or heavier. You will definitely get wrist pains or forearm pains.

Lastly, there is no directional control because in the human body, areas like the wrist have a huge range of motion and that makes your tennis serve inconsistent because you cannot possibly control the minuscule differences in the movement. Even a tiny 0.1cm difference leads to an entirely different contact point.

Also, for shorter players, the snapping makes the ball travel downward at a steeper angle, which makes it hard for you to clear the net especially if you are 1.75m and below.

Pronation is the only way to serve in tennis

Why pronation is the only way to serve in tennis

When you pronate correctly on the tennis serve, you save your arms from major injury because you rotate your rotator cuff muscles while your arm is straight and slightly away from your face/neck.

This will help you to not get your wrist injured, and also to save yourself from shoulder impingement because your shoulder joint is further away from your neck while hitting the ball.

Next, you will be able to get the full force of the ground kinetic chain you have build up with your legs because that is no sudden movement change or chain stoppage.

Finally you will be able to control the tennis serve better because there is no large range of motion from the wrist, the shoulder has a minimum range of movement, just like when you hit your ground strokes, you want the shoulder to do most of the work because the differences in movement is small, thus you will be able to get used to being a certain distance away from the ball all the time, which will get you to be more consistent.

The pronation will also give you a less steep downward angle because it relies solely on the ball toss. If you toss the ball straight up the ball will travel in a straighter path, if you toss the ball infront of you inside the court, the ball will travel a more downward path.
So it is far easier to be consistent and to control the serve.

The biggest factor is the difficulty in learning the pronation for the tennis serve. One has to change their entire mindset because it does not seem possible to do. But with proper practice and determination, anyone can pronate for the tennis serve.

If you want to learn the right way to serve, come have a tennis lesson with us :) 

The simplest tactic in tennis, hitting cross court, is one of the most important skill to work on during tennis lessons or personal practice

Most casual tennis players are not aware there are patterns of play in tennis that have a higher percentage or success than others. intermediate to advanced tennis players might know it but rarely do they know how to execute or to use it well during a match.

Have you watched professional tennis matches on television and thought to yourself ” why the pros are hitting the ball back to each other instead of killing the ball ”
Most times professionals tennis players will get into a cross court rally, but why? The reason is that the tennis players are waiting for a higher percentage of success opportunity to change the direction of the ball.
It is much safer to hit cross court in tennis and wait for a better ball to change direction rather than mindlessly change directions because tennis is a game of percentages. The risks are too high without proper thought.



Reasons why you hit cross court in tennis

Tennis is a game of percentages and angles. There are 3 main reasons why hitting cross court is important.

• There is more space to hit to. Every tennis court is about 23.8 meters in length. When you hit a down the line shot, that is about how much distance you have on average to get the ball above the highest part of the net and into the tennis court. The extra distance for a cross court ball in singles is about 1.4 meters. That is almost the height of an average person. Usually you miss your ground strokes by a shoe length or two, if you were smarter and aimed for the areas whereby you have more distance in between, you would have been able to continue hitting the ball without mistakes.
• The net is lowest in the middle. When you hit from corner to corner on a tennis court, not only are you using the largest amount of court space available, but you’re hitting over the lowest part of the net. You’ve now decreased risk in two different ways. At the net post, a regulation net is 1 meter. At the middle, it is 0.9 meters
• When you hit at an angle, your opponent has to work harder to get to the ball. Everything else being equal, when you hit cross court, your opponent will have farther to travel to get to the ball, as opposed to hitting down the line. The angled shot will travel farther and farther away from him or her the longer it takes for them to retrieve it, where as a ball hit straight will continue to stay the same distance from them through out its path.

Conclusion

Cross court is safer in every way, and your opponent has to work a lot hard to get to the ball just to return it. It does not make sense to just go down the line. However, here are a few reasons why the down the line shot may be useful despite the higher risk

1. If your opponent has a noticeably weaker side. It is better to put the pressure on a weak backhand or forehand. Wait for an easier shot, and then go for it.
2. If your opponent is well out of position. If they’re having a hard time recovering towards the middle of the court after a well hit angle from you, then down the line can pay off.
3. If you’re approaching the net in singles. When you hit down the line with an approach shot and follow the direction of the ball in, your opponent has lesser angles to exploit whereas if you approach with a cross court shot your net coverage will be lesser.
4. In doubles, once you get up in front of the service line and get an easy volley or overhead, often times you have a net player directly across from you also at the net. In this instance straight ahead and at the feet of the net player is a great place to aim.


Now that you have a better understanding of why cross court is in general better to hit when compared to the down the line. Go out there and put in some extra work into your cross court shots! One of the best ways to practice is to just get a 20 ball rally cross court and work your way up to 50, 100 even.

If you have difficulty understanding this, get in touch with us to arrange a tennis lesson, our tennis coach will teach you all you need to know!

More post on our official blog https://racketrenegade.com/

For the recreational tennis players out there! The ones that play with high intensity and focus, challenging themselves every second on the tennis court. Those that are serious on self improvement during tennis lessons or practice sessions.
” **** you are so bad at tennis, that was your point you ******** ” every call yourself names, used foul language, tried to destroy your racket after missing a point? I have done some of these and have seen many people do it, at varying intensities. I myself have only cracked a racket once by accidentally throwing it on the metal pole of the back fence, and i regret that mistake, money wasted !


It is OK to get angry but not THAT angry.


Here are some reasons why it is ok to miss.

Everyone loses

In tennis losing is normal. You can't always win, even Federer, one of the greatest of all time has losses. Without putting yourself out there to lose, then winning would not feel that great. If you plan on competing, eventually you are bound to suffer some defeats and that does not make you a bad player!
You have to learn to accept this or the negativity will affect your mental stability and severely affect your ability to play well. I have been there and it is very hard to recover from. Seek to manage your anger and forget your previous “miss or error” and focus on the next point or next match.

Tennis is a difficult sport

Unlike sports like badminton, basketball, soccer which are easy to learn but hard to master. Tennis is hard to learn and hard to master. There is no way a random person can pick up a tennis racket and start rallying or serving unlike some other sport where you can immediately play with someone else at a basic level.

In tennis, every stroke takes a lot of time to truly master, even at an intermediate level, it takes months or years to be consistent at a specific stroke. And you have to also train to be able to use it during your matches, not only during rallies or ball fed drills. Which can be very frustrating for many as there are no short cuts to it, except spending a lot of time to gain the experience. Many people think tennis is easy because the professionals make it look easy, but the amount of time put in is tremendous.

If you need professional help, join our tennis lessons ! Contact us and a suitable tennis coach will be ready for you!

Use it as a tool for improvement

Making mistakes help to improve your tennis. Every single time you miss, there is going to be a reason why. Maybe your feet are not in position, maybe your technique is wrong or maybe you were too slow.
Try to find the reason why you make majority ( don’t analyze every shot ) of your mistakes and work on them. Don’t get angry, instead try to analyze yourself and work toward improving and fixing those that you have identified.
Try not to fix everything first but work on the majority of what is wrong. Lets say you hit 10 forehands long because your racket face was open, work on that instead of thinking about that one back hand down the line shot you missed.

Making errors can either hamper your game or help you improve. Your attitude and the way you see them are the keys to unlocking your potential.

If you are looking to improve on this, contact us for tennis lessons and a tennis coach will be contacting you in no time!

As a full time tennis player and a now a full time tennis coach, i have seen a wide array of attitudes on the tennis court every single day. “yes i work 7 days a week 😀 ” What is an attitude that would lead to the most success in a career of a tennis player?
Lets check out 2 different extremes, both that will affect your improvement and enjoyment of a game by a huge margin. Having the right attitude also affects your improvement during tennis lessons.



The happy social tennis player We have the pure social tennis player. Everyone who goes to a tennis club, or public tennis centers know this kind of tennis player very well.
Most of the time they play for the purpose of getting out of the mundane everyday life, meeting friends or new people and exercise to keep healthy. I have seen some people who even go to the tennis courts with a racket in hand just to talk with their friends, never actually hitting a single ball.


It is possible for a social player to improve if they play often, but usually they are not serious or have little focus on how they play / their technique. But there is nothing wrong with this, everyone has their own reason to why they want to play tennis and it does not matter unless you are trying to go professional.


The social player really has fun on the tennis court and really enjoys tennis because there is no pressure being put on themselves. If you are a social player, it will be great if you could find a group who thinks the same way so you can have a really great time on court together.

Anyway, the most important thing playing sports is to have fun, no?



The 110% serious tennis playerNext, we have the really serious tennis player, who takes everything too seriously. This tennis player expects 110% from him/herself, and anything lesser than that will make them go insane.
Because of their perfectionism, they have huge focus and concentration on what they want to achieve, with goals set for themselves consistently.


This type of tennis player improves really quickly, making huge steps at a time. However they may not feel that they enjoy tennis as much because of the high expectations they set for themselves constantly.
Some may even quit halfway. They are always stressed unless they are at the top form of their game. It is not easy for them to mix with players who just want to enjoy the game and may cause misunderstandings with them.



ConclusionIn truth, the best attitude for most of the people who play tennis is about 50/50. The balance of both sides are extremely important, you want to be improving but enjoying the process at the same time.


You do not want to be burning yourself out while playing because at the end of the day, you are not trying to be an ATP ranked player.

Do not stress over the small things and try to enjoy the game, it is understandable to be frustrated over expectations of yourself that cannot be met, but tennis is a long process and permanent immediate results are not easy to achieve, so why not enjoy the long process it takes to get there instead!


All athletes have to realize that most days, you will be performing your average. It is hard to accept for some people but the reality is that it is impossible to be on your top form all the time.
Take it from me, I have been there, stressing over if I will be on my top form for today’s match in my tournament. It gave me a huge amount of pressure because of the uncertainty, i could not control whether i would be on good or bad form. In the end the secret was learning to just play with how i felt and what i had on the day.


There are a few things that you can control however…Your effort, your focus, and your determination to get better. Control these things during your practice or tennis lessons.


By choosing a better attitude towards your results, you can not only get better but have more fun and enjoyment along the way. If you can keep a close eye on those three things, your “average” performance will continue to raise. Which means you would be improving so much that your previous top form would now be your average form.


This does not mean that you will not have bad days ever again on the tennis court. It just means that your level of bad will not be bad anymore, good in fact. Do not ever let a bad day, a bad match or a bad experience affect your focus and effort. Try to understand that it is going to happen and you have to learn to live with it.


So strive for a good attitude for your tennis, and in your life in general. Things that are done just for fun are fine, but don’t expect to ever become great at them.


Things that are done with the expectation of personal perfection will probably give good results, but very little satisfaction and a great deal of frustration as you chase a never ending higher goal each time.

If you have any thoughts on this and want to talk to our tennis coaches about it, feel free to during or outside your tennis lessons.

Hi students! One thing i learnt while training and growing as a tennis player, is the importance of depth in your tennis ground strokes. As a young tennis player i struggled to understand how important it was to hit deep ground strokes, often hitting fast but short balls, wondering why they had no effect on my opponent.


So Why hit Deep?
As you get better as a tennis player, it is really important that you understand the reason to why hitting deep shots are much better. The deeper your shots are, the further away you keep your opponent away from their baseline, which in turn gives u a chance for them to return a shorter ball for you to take advantage of.


Your role is to ensure that you constantly pressure your opponent by keeping them behind and giving you easy balls to attack.
Now, there are a few points on why hitting deep shots are important.

1. Hitting deep pushes your opponent back so he has to return defensively.
2. Hitting deep gives you more room for error as you are always hitting to the furthest parts of the court instead of the angles.
3. Hitting deep gives you more time to prepare for you opponent’s next shot.

Now that you know why it is important, let us move on to what kind of deep balls we are talking about.
When hitting deep balls, it is important to make sure it bounces high as well and should not be slow.

Why? Because if you hit a low net clearance deep ball, your opponent does not need to move far back because the ball is in their strike zone, especially if you are playing with someone tall. Also, it cannot be slow as it is easy to go for an on the rise shot when a ball is moving slowly. It will be easy for the opponent to cut in to take it on the rise.


Some deep ball drills for your tennis lesson or personal practice

1. putting a 1.5 racket length line above the net, practice to hit over this line.
2. ensure that your balls are hitting 3/4 court, just past the service line is still too short.
3. set targets at the 3/4 court area

Just doing these drills during your own practice of with our tennis coaches during your tennis lessons with either rallies or ball feeding will improve your game tremendously. Keep it up and work hard ! Our tennis coaches will strive to ensure you reach your goals during our tennis lessons ! 

NO, please rest !

Definition and Overview
Pneumonia is an acute medical disease that is characterized by the presence of an infection in the lung parenchyma. It is typically caused by bacteria or virus, and usually affects the alveoli.

Cause of Condition
Pneumonia typically begins as an upper respiratory infection. Viruses and bacteria are usually responsible, but infection with parasites and fungi may also occur. 

Most Common Symptom
The most common symptom of pneumonia is productive cough. It is usually associated with the production of yellowish or greenish sputum.

How to Return to Tennis Lessons After Pneumonia
Pneumonia can take a few weeks or several month to recover from completely. When your fever subsides, chest feels less pain and mucus production drops, it is a sign that your pneumonia is improving.
You will most probably still feel weak and tired, please still get plenty of rest. Do not smoke or allow others to smoke around you. Stay hydrated, follow your doctor’s instructions and take medications as prescribed.

Failing to do so may result in a relapse or complications such as respiratory failure or lung abscess. If your symptoms worsen or your fever returns, consult your doctor
Exercise increases your respiration and will be difficult until your lungs heal. Start slowly when you get back to tennis lessons with your tennis coach after your doctor has cleared you. From there, start at about 30-40% intensity and slowly increase the duration and intensity of your workout whenever you feel comfortable.

• Start with Mini tennis
• Don’t hit too hard on your first day or two
• Be patient don’t rush to get back your fitness or skills

Contact your tennis coach
If you are sick please let your tennis coach know 48 hours before your tennis lesson or you will have to pay last minute cancellation fees of 50%-100% ! If you have a package with your tennis coach there will be no cancellation fees but you have to finish your tennis lessons within the 7 weeks of the package duration !