The Forehand Press Slot
This position is magic on the forehand. I call it “the press slot,” because it’s the moment when you fully engage your stroke’s final powerful muscle group – the chest – in order to press your racket through the contact.
In this article, you’re going to learn:
- Exactly how the chest powers the stroke,
- What the final part of the stroke, during which you press out of the press slot, looks like,
- How to start your swing by throwing the racket into the press slot accurately.
How the Chest Powers the Forehand
Human beings have a big, strong muscle group in their chests, known as the “pectoral muscles.” These muscles are responsible for pressing the hands and arms forward. Therefore, in order to recruit these strong muscles to hit our forehand, we must design a swing such that, at some point, we can press our racket through the stroke.
This works best when you press from the positions you see the Big 3 in above: the torso is roughly facing the target, and the elbow has just passed in front of the hips.
Pressing forward with the chest results in two kinds of shoulder motion:
1. Horizontal Shoulder Adduction
The angle between the upper arm and the chest closes as the hand moves forward. You can tell when a player has started pressing with their chest by when their humeral-pectoral angle starts rapidly closing.
2. Internal Shoulder Rotation
Another natural consequence of pressing your hand forward is that your shoulder wants to internally rotate. This is extremely useful on the forehand, because internal shoulder rotation causes our racket to rotate upwards through the hitting zone, which ultimately creates a topspin strike up the back of the ball. The reason the chest drive powers forehand contact so well is that we get to both drive through the ball, creating velocity, while simultaneously causing the shoulder to internally rotate, creating topspin.
Pressing from the Press Slot
Once our body arrives at the press slot, we press with the chest. Our shoulder horizontally adducts and internally rotates, and if done right, the motion creates a comfortable, clean, high velocity strike through the ball.
Setting up this final drive through contact is critical on the forehand. Though your kinetic chain physically starts from the ground, the swing’s intention starts with the final drive. The early part of the swing must be executed in such a way so as to set up the late part of your swing – you know you’ve done it right if you can comfortably drive through contact at the end.
The Press is Brief
Before we move on to when to press, I want to be clear on how to press. The final part of your swing is a brief, explosive, transient push. Inject as much force as you can (or want to) into the swing in as small an amount of time as you can.
The final part of your swing is a brief, explosive, transient push.
Your goal is not a long, slow movement, akin to a one-rep maximum bench press. Instead, you want a short, explosive movement, as if you were trying to bench a lighter weight into the sky, sending as much force into the bar as you possibly could, before the weight ultimately flew off your hands.
When/Where in space is the press slot?
I see many players fire their final pressing action too early, which desynchronizes the entire stroke, making it extremely difficult to control the contact. For most players, the optimal press slot arrives shortly after the elbow passes in front of the hips, and, critically, it is away from the body.
As we can see in the image above, Carlos Alcaraz’s shoulder-chest angle doesn’t change much before he reaches this position, but between it and contact, it closes almost a full 90 degrees. This massive chest activation is one of the reasons he’s able to drive the ball so hard.
At the correct press slot, it is comfortable to press forward with the chest. You don’t feel jammed, tight, or awkward, but rather, it feels perfectly natural to generate force once you get there. Here’s how to find yours using a wall.
Novak Djokovic’s press slot, with the elbow slightly in front of the torso. At this moment, he will begin to actively power the stroke with his chest, and his humeral- pectoral angle will begin to close.
The most important part of the press slot is whether you can really feel it. Can you feel this position, a position close to contact, but not quite at contact, from which you have supreme confidence in your ability to drive your racket through the ball? The rest of your swing is built off of this phenomenon.
Throwing Into the Press Slot
The early part of your swing exists in service to the late part. Your early leg drive and torso rotation must fling the racket into the correct press slot, such that when you get to it, you can press out through the ball on the vector you desire.
Your early rotation is critical to your ball-striking accuracy. It must be aimed, intentionally and visually, towards the ball, in order to send your arm into the right press slot. If this initial rotational explosion isn’t accurate, it won’t be comfortable to press through contact during the final part of your swing.
Balance and core strength both play critical roles in mastering early rotation. You need to feel the ground through your load foot, and be able to send your bodyweight in any direction you want. Your core needs to be strong enough to twist your body, quickly and accurately, into the press slot – even more so under time pressure.
If this initial rotational explosion isn’t accurate, it won’t be comfortable to press through contact.
This early rotational torque is also transient. During the late part of your swing, from press slot to contact, the torso continues its rotation only passively. If you keep actively twisting through contact, your stroke will lose much of its fault tolerance.
As we see below, Carlos’s torso only rotates about another 10-20 degrees between the press slot and contact. Active torso explosion is an early swing phenomenon, that exists to quickly and accurately accelerate the racket into the press slot. After that point, the chest takes over the stroke’s force production, pressing the racket through the ball.
Like almost everything in tennis, the press slot is a visual concept. You need to learn where, in space, you need to throw your hand and elbow to, based on the ball you’re seeing in front of you, in order to make the final part of your stroke work. If the ball is lower, your press slot will be lower, and if it’s higher, your press slot will be higher. Flexibility on the forehand is the ability to throw your hand into a wide variety of different press slots, accurately and with velocity, and then seamlessly press out of them through the ball.
Two Parts, One Motion
The forward swing can be understood as two related goals, which are seamlessly connected to produce an efficient swing:
- Send the racket into the press slot, with velocity.
- Press through contact with the ball.
Many people internalize the forehand, instead, as only one motion – “swinging towards the ball,” but that can often lead to issues with your acceleration rhythm. The early part of your swing is a rotational explosion, and the late part is a linear explosion.
This is why the Out, Up, and Through idea is so important. The stroke’s final pressing action is up and through, while the act of throwing into the press slot requires allowing the racket to travel out, and often even down.
The act of throwing into the press slot requires allowing the racket to travel out.
Work Backwards From Contact
The most critical part of the forehand is contact. Work backwards from contact to design your swing.
How do I create force through contact? Press with the chest.
How do I press with the chest? I find the slot in space from which I can press – where my arm feels comfortable as I press it forward, and that pressing action sends my hand back-to-front.
How do I add even more velocity? Use the hips and abs to fling the racket accurately into a comfortable press slot behind the ball, and then drive through the ball from there.
That’s the forehand.
2 Comments
September 1, 2024
How conscious is this idea of pressing? How can we use weighted shadow swings to help better gain an athletic understanding of pressing? The up and through part of the shadow swing gives us the pressing, but how does one practice getting into the press slot off the court? I feel as though consciously thinking of how to rotate into a certain position, or push with the chest, will only hinder a player’s play.
September 12, 2024
Good question. You’re absolutely correct that thinking directly about these biomechanical concepts will bring mixed results while actually on court. For some, they might provide great insight, while for others, they might feel confusing and cause tension. Try it. See if actively thinking about pressing makes your stroke better. Everyone has different kinks and inefficiencies in their particular stroke, and if one of yours happens to be not pressing, then this particular conception is probably gold. If it’s something else, then it won’t help all that much.
For rotating the torso into a certain position, medicine ball work really helps. Specifically, the work should involve acceleration and deceleration. For example, throwing the medicine ball out to a partner (acceleration), but also stop the ball when it’s thrown to you (deceleration). Practicing that will help you habituate the feeling of rotating your torso accurately, without having to actually think about “rotating your torso accurately.”
I’ve had great results with students utilizing the weighted shadow swing. Your goal is to comfortably send the weight along a vector in space, and in order to do that, you’re going to have to press. For many people, you don’t need to verbalize “pressing” in your mind – you’ll just do it naturally – but for others, the insight that the swing ends in a press is critical. The articles are meant as a starting point to design your practice, not as the practice itself. For example, I’ve never said the words “pectorals” or “shoulder adduction” to an 8-year-old. Instead, I design an exercise to make them feel the position or movement on their own. One I’ve often used: I’ll take a rubber line (the ones you put on the court to show kids where to stand) and hold it in the air, next to a ball I’m holding in the air. “Make the weight move through the ball along this line.” That almost always works. I’ll also have them stand somewhere, and then I’ll demonstrate by swinging the weight straight towards them. “See how that weight was going straight towards you?” Then, I stand somewhere, and I have them swing straight towards me. The point isn’t the exact exercise – the point is experimenting until you feel confident in your ability to generate force in a particular direction on command.