Episode #77 Season 25: Shaun Boyce & Justin Yeo

On this episode of 10 Minutes of Tennis, world renowned tennis coach, Australian in Puerto Rico, Justin Yeo, shares 10 tips in 10 minutes about the "SMASH" and why it's not an "overhead!"

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Shaun Boyce USPTA: shaun@tennisforchildren.com

https://tennisforchildren.com/

Justin Yeo: https://www.instagram.com/yeocoach/

Bobby Schindler USPTA: schindlerb@comcast.net

https://windermerecommunity.net/

Geovanna Boyce: geovy@regeovinate.com

https://regeovinate.com/

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Hey, hey, this is Shaun with the GoTennis Podcast

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With that said, let's get started

with 10 minutes of tennis.

- We are gonna do 10 tips in 10 minutes,

Justin Yeo, thank you for being here,

Australian in Puerto Rico,

but I think now you're kinda in Florida more these days,

but I love the GoTennis shirt, there's that too.

So jumpin' right in, 10 tips today,

we're talking about overheads.

And we're gonna start with number one, number one,

read the play.

- Happy Tuesday, everyone.

Read the play, hopefully this will help you this week.

Read the play is basically trying to understand

when an overhead is coming.

I think a lot of players don't actually identify that.

And so they're one, not getting ready early enough

to get ready for the overhead,

so that they can get behind the ball

versus letting it fly over the head

because they weren't reading it's coming.

So I tend to say to people,

"Read the play, get ready for when it's coming."

- I would call that predicting the future.

I like that.

That's another good one is to predict the future.

Number two isn't much different.

Maybe it's part of the same.

Read the ball off the racket.

- Yes, actually it is a different one

because read the play is seeing someone in trouble

and know that it's coming

so that you're already starting to get ready

for the overhead early.

Read the ball off the racket, actually helps you.

Sometimes I tell people to close your right eye

because you left eyes, your depth perception.

So you're reading the depth perception

of the ball coming off the racket early.

So that's a really important one.

It's like playing baseball and softball

that as the bat strikes the ball

is when you have milliseconds to identify

is it hitting center field, behind center field

or in front of center field, right?

So that's where the contact to the racket

is really important to knowing how far back

you've got to get behind this

to ready for the overhead.

- Got it, sorry, but I should have seen that coming.

Number three, turn first.

- Yeah, so turn first.

I see it too often that people are back and up backwards

and if you make it a good habit to turn your shoulders

and turn first, you'll get into a better stance

to get ready for tip number four,

move with a cross stance and a cross step.

If you don't turn first, you struggle to get into

the correct stance to move correctly

to get ready for a decent overhead and generate power.

So a cross stance, which is number four,

you've got to try to move in what they call the karaoke

or I call it cross step.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, a lot of people say karaoke.

I actually prefer to think cross step

for the reason that you actually generate it

and use your cross step and learn front foot

or back foot behind so that you learn how to really generate

in a decent stance for your overhead.

And so learning the correct cross step

is really important to generate a lot of power into your overhead.

- Yeah, I would call that,

I like to rename these evidently.

Three and four, I'm just gonna tell you to turn and run

because that's gonna get cross step going

if you actually realize you're running back that direction.

Number five, behind the ball.

- Yep, get behind the ball is to actually say to yourself,

I'm gonna allow myself to get really behind the ball

so that I can actually get myself in a good position

to drive it up into the overhead.

'Cause that goes into technically number five tip,

which happens a lot for me is,

I don't wanna say it, but majority of the world calls it a smash.

The American's older than overhead

and it's actually the worst thing you can say

because you don't want the ball over your head.

You wanna be behind the ball

so you can drive it over your head like drive a smash.

So it's sometimes counterproductive, I guess,

is the word is 'cause, oh, I've got an overhead.

So I'm waiting for the ball to get over my head.

No, you wanna be behind the ball before

so you can strike it over your head but drive it forward.

So it's a, you know, I guess for the lower level people,

it can get caught because they wait for the ball

to get over their head, right?

At the higher levels, they're actually already seeing it

off the racket and they're getting back

behind the ball so they can drive the ball

that is technically over their head when they drive it.

So that's sort of why I like to say to people smash it

because you can't smash it when it's over your head,

you can smash it when it's in front of your head.

So that's sort of why I was saying

all of these things are setting up ready to play,

read the ball off the racket, turn first,

move with a cross-stand, it's a cross-stand,

so you really get yourself in position

to drive into the smash

versus waiting for the ball to get over your head.

- So the overhead is the situation.

I mean, a situation where the ball is about to go over my head,

the shot I'm going to hit is a smash.

- Yep, yep.

So that's why you're learning to,

when, I mean, I grew up in Australia where,

if that ball went over your head,

that my opponent felt like he was dead in trouble

because I was gonna crush it no matter what.

So you learned very quickly to prepare, get ready,

and just overhead after overhead,

learn to crush it anywhere in the court.

And my opponent, anytime it was above my head,

he knew he was in trouble.

So he better put it way, way past me,

otherwise always gonna hammer it.

So that's sort of why I'm trying to give you tips

to get more prepared and more ready to give yourself

every opportunity to smash that ball

versus just give it an overhead,

like I've seen with many people.

And then that's tip, next one is obviously focus on your feet.

I see a lot of people not moving their feet enough

while that ball is traveling.

And it's the movement in your feet

that's preparing you to not only drive up,

but to be able to move while the ball's moving

'cause it's so high in the air,

if it's wind or sun or spin,

there's all these things that factor into being able

to literally drive into that overhead.

And your feet is what's positioning you.

So I tell people,

"Is on that ball's moving your feet are moving?"

If I was moving, feet are moving.

They will have to have its own,

they'll have its own 10 tips right there.

Number, use your back foot and lose grip tension.

How do those two combine?

They combine because by getting back and driving

into the back foot allows the right hip drive

up into the overhead and drive the overhead.

And then lose grip tension is keeping it nice and loose

so you can ready for a snap.

I've seen so many people, I'm snapin' and I'm snappin'

but I'm almost ripping my shoulder apart

and I'm not getting any drive

and it's purely because of too much grip tension.

They're holding it too tight

when they should be holding it loose.

So I try to tell people,

let's make sure the turn is there,

the back foot's there and the loose tension

it gives you all these opportunities.

The one I probably should have talked about

too a little bit is left hand towards the ball.

So you've got good shoulder tilt, trophy stance

up into the ball.

The left hand tends to also keep your head up

onto the ball versus allowing your head to drop

because your left arm dropped.

So that sort of goes into the preparation as well

with back foot, loose grip tension,

left hand towards the ball.

Left arm towards the ball.

We'll call that tip number eight and a half.

So you get an extra one there.

There you go.

Iron, trunk rotation is key.

Yeah, so I've seen, I've seen to see people,

they go to get ready,

but they really don't turn the full trunk to the ball.

They tend to be slightly open

and because of that,

they can't get any trunk rotation.

So they're really just snapping with their shoulder

and their elbow and they wonder why

they're not getting any power

or they're not gonna be able to put the ball anywhere

they want.

The trunk rotation really has to happen all the way around

so that allows then the full rotation

when you're snapping towards the ball.

So I see a lot of people say,

"Yeah, I'm prepared.

I'm prepared and I'm doing everything you said

in those five eight tips,

but really they're not.

They've got to be fully rotated

and you've got to be comfortable with that

while you're moving so that you can drive

that whole rotation with the back hip into the overhead."

And last but not least,

number 10, reach and snap for power.

You already mentioned snap,

but you're not getting reach.

- Yeah, some people let the ball drop too far

and because they let the ball drop too far,

they don't really get a full reach and a full snap.

If you think about a pronation and snap,

you need full stretch of pronation

to get really a full snap.

And so I always tell people,

make sure you feel like you're reaching for the ball

so that the last thing that can really happen

if you're reaching for the ball is the snap.

So really feel like you have to reach

if you're not and you're waiting,

then you're eventually not gonna be getting

the full power of the overhead.

And so I'm trying to mostly give a lot of these tips

to make a really effective, powerful overhead

versus just, you know,

"Hey, I'm hitting an overhead."

- Or in your terms, hitting a smash.

- Hitting a smash, that's it.

- Just everyone's, everyone's,

smash is from here on that is awesome.

- We're now calling it a smash.

I like adjusting, yeah, thank you so much.

This has been 10 tips in 10 minutes.

We'll see you again next week.

Thank you, sir.

- No, 10 is the city.

- Well, there you have it.

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