Backhand Tennis Drills

This first of the backhand tennis drills that you should practice is called the "backhand volley". It's called a volley because the ball never touches the ground on your side of the net. In this exercise the student first stands with his stomach touching the net. He then backs away from the net using three steps. For the actual practice the student should use the following methods.
1) Grip-The grip for the backhand volley is called the continental grip.
2) To make the Eastern grip if you are a right hander, hold the rackett straight out in front of you with your left hand, the handle parallel to the ground, the racket face perpendicular to the ground and the butt of the handle pointing towards your stomach, place the thumb for your right hand against the strings on one side; your fingers against the strings on the other side; then just slide your hand down to the handle as far as it will go; that should be the Eastern grip. For left handers, just reverse the process.
3) When hitting the ball, you should take one step forward. On your follow thru, your racquet should end up right about where you took one step back from the net.
4) You need to take a step forward when you hit because you are hitting balls on the fly before they have time to bounce off the ground, so the ball tends to have some zip to it.
5) Also, when you hit the ball, keep your wrist as straight as possible in order to prevent wrist injury and your arm should be bent inward slightly as you bring the raquet back. Your arm should be straight from the time you hit the ball all the way through the follow through. If you're using the two-handed backhand, both arms will bend during the follow through until the racket is behind your head. Since the ball is still moving at a pretty good velocity because it hasn't hit the ground yet, you should be able to just hold the racquet out and just let the ball bounce off the strings and back over the net. Try to concentrate on making the ball hit in the center of the strings.

Note: Shorter people might want to take less than three steps away from the net while taller people might want to take more than three steps away from the net.

Since as they say one picture is worth a thousand words, here is a short video to illustrate what I have said. Backhand Volley

The next of the backhand tennis drills that we are going to talk about doesn't really have an official name so I'll just call it the drop and hit drill.
1) Your grip will be one called the Eastern grip. You will use that grip to put just a little bit of topspin on the ball. If we wanted to use a lot of topspin, we would use the "Continental" grip. But that's another lesson.
2) This time you will be standing on the baseline with your shoulders and hips perpendicular to the net.
3) You need to have a friend help you by gently tossing tennis balls in front of you.
4) They should bounce up in front of you so that you can hit them over the net. You should take a small step forward like you did in the first drill, but the main thing to concentrate on is rotating your hips and shoulders as you hit the ball. This will give you more power and speed.

It's important to practice backhand tennis drills often, if possible, but only for about five minutes at a time. Why so short a time? Believe it or not, our brains have to "sleep on it" when trying tofx improve a physical skill. I saw this phenomenon first hand when I was working on my pilot's license. I remember one day when I practiced landings for an hour without getting a single decent landing. I finally gave up and went home. The next day when I flew, my first landing was perfect!

I saw first hand what "sleeping on it" can do, so I firmly believe that this technique works. I've also read that researchers found this technique to work, but they don't understand why. Just another mystery of the brain I guess.

If you would like to improve your backhand, a good place to start would be to get a copy of