I'll say this again and again because it's important: Don't get hung up on strength. That's why you can do it if you practice. Don't you think that you have to swing the racket big and hard to get the ball in the court? That's not true. Today, I'm going to teach you the secret to a soft hand that anyone can hit consistently. First of all, tennis is a sport where you have to keep the ball in the court, right? You can't win if you don't minimize mistakes. That's why I want to teach you the technique, or rather, the feel of it. Right now, it's gone out. It's gone out. You do n't have to swing like this. So the swing is unnecessary. To get the ball in the court, you just need to improve the position of your point of contact and the reproducibility of the movement of your arm. If you do these two things properly, it will go in most of the time. That's all there is to it. Honestly, that's why you do a lot of repetition practice. But doing things like this, putting force into it and facing the ball, is wrong. You're not exploring the feel. You have to hit ball after ball to strengthen that awareness, so your objective is off. If the goal was simply to feel good, that would be fine, but that's not the case, is it? Even so, if you do n't make the shot, you'll probably still be dissatisfied, so for those who are n't consistent, I'm speaking to people who make a lot of mistakes. For those who aren't consistent, first of all, don't focus on making your swing bigger or what kind of swing you should be, but start from the basics, the point of contact. Just doing this will make the ball go in. See, it goes in, does n't it? Some people might say, "That's obvious, I know that," but most people don't understand. This is how it goes in, but they do n't understand this feeling. For those who can't control it well, I'm hardly taking a backswing right now. It's a body rotation, a body turn. It looks like I'm pulling it back with a slight body turn, but actually I'm not moving my arm. I'm just turning my body and bringing it back. The racket is always in front of me like this. So this is almost an extreme example. I'm not saying you have to hit it like this, but it's important to understand this first. To hit the ball well, you need to know where the point of contact is, and how your arm is moving. When I was a junior, in the 6th grade of elementary school, I switched to a one-handed grip. Until then, from when I started playing tennis until the 6th grade, I had always used a two-handed grip. Switching from a two-handed grip to a one-handed grip is quite a challenge for a weak elementary school student. I continued to play in matches and had to win, so I didn't want to make excuses like "I lost because I switched from two-handed to one-handed." So, at that time, this is what inevitably happened. When you switch to a one-handed grip, you don't have much strength, and your armpit starts to open up like this. I didn't know how to apply force at first, so I was just swinging my arm around. What happens then is that your shoulder hurts, your elbow hurts, and so on. It happens to everyone. So, to improve the stability of my arm, I closed my armpit. I set my elbow close to my hip bone, like this. When you do that, it becomes easier to apply force. You can definitely apply more force this way than this. So, as a practice, I would go like this, get a good ball between my arms, and hit it. I used to hit the ball as it came to me, holding it between my fingers. That's how I first got the feel for it. I'd hit it from a closed position, then open it when I was done, and repeat that. Then I'd pick it up again and pull it back. When I did this, it became incredibly stable. Opening from a closed position—I did this as an exercise to improve the reproducibility of my arm. When you think you have to hit fast balls or balls that come a certain distance well, you might think you need to swing big and use extension to hit them, but when you do this, you realize that taking big movements reduces reproducibility, and then various other things start to happen, and that's where the movement of the joints gets out of sync. You can cover it up to a certain extent, but fundamentally it's difficult. Tension and various other factors come into play in a match, and that's when mistakes can suddenly appear, and you end up not knowing what's going on. You might think, "I'm not playing well today," but that's not it. It's the basics, moving compactly, stabilizing this foundation, this framework, that becomes incredibly important. That's why, within a compact swing... I want you to strengthen your senses. First of all, there's no way you can't hit it with this. With this, there's no way the ball won't go over the wall, or even over the net. There are zero people who say that. Well, it's impossible for babies, but if you can't even hold the racket or the ball won't go, it means you don't understand the feeling here. You don't understand how to use this part, how to use the racket face, the timing of applying force, or wrist work, so you don't have that sense. But you can do it if you practice. I'm hitting it a little harder now, right? Once you can do this, from here you can gradually increase the size of your preparation within your capabilities and awareness. Use your arm like this, make the racket head bigger, bigger than before, and move it in a larger circle. But it's difficult to do it at this distance all of a sudden, so first, do short rallies. In short rallies, first of all, don't pull back. You don't need to pull back. This is the most basic part of tennis, or rather, rallying on a mini court is the best way to practice. It's the easiest way to understand yourself. When the distance is short, you change the opponent's court with minimal force, so you learn what timing to grip the racket like this to change it properly. Try to get a feel for whether the ball will go into the court. Like this, it didn't go far. This clearly means it didn't go far, right? Either the timing of applying force was wrong or you weren't applying enough force. If you apply it at the right time, the ball will go into the court. Like this, the result is that it went in, so this is not wrong. Even if you're gripping it, if the force isn't being transferred properly, you'll make a mistake like this. And then there are quite a few mistakes like this, like this, "Oops, I hit it too hard." If you hit it too hard, or if the rebound is too strong, you can simply look at the result and see that you hit it too hard. So, if you applied too much force for just a moment, you just need to lower it. It's easy to see in short rallies, isn't it? So even in short rallies, if you can do this consistently for a long time, it means you've understood the feeling, and then you can gradually make it longer. At this distance, I said earlier that rallies on a short court don't involve a backswing, but if you do a backswing, you're accelerating from here, so first, short You do n't need to hit the ball that far in a rally. There's less of a backswing and swing, so it's easier to get a feel for it. If you pull back too far, you'll end up hitting the ball with the momentum of that swing, so keep it compact. Practice short rallies while being conscious of your wrist work and the strength of your power from the preparation stage. When it becomes a medium rally, you'll need to hit the ball a little further, so you'll put more power into it than before. Ideally, you should be able to exert maximum power with the smallest possible swing, but I'm not really putting in much power. You can really understand this if you do it with your other hand, even with your left hand. There are quite a few times when you get the amount of power wrong, so it's a little awkward, but if you're not used to the timing of impact, you'll end up making strange movements here. But try to avoid those movements as much as possible, and just find the timing of putting power into your wrist work at the moment of impact, and then you hit the ball. When I hit the ball now, I feel tension in my wrist, like a needle. It's no good if it becomes limp. If you lose, your face will waver, so it's really important that at the moment of impact, your face is properly facing your opponent and you're able to take the ball. If you can do this stably for dozens of shots in the middle rallies and at a good pace, then you can move back. What's important here is that compactness is of course important, so continue as before, but gradually increase the power. If you move back, you can use your opponent's swing to hit back, so you can concentrate more on the moment of impact. To hit back a fast ball with compactness, this is the only way. If you swing too big, this is what happens. If your swing is too big, you lose track of your own point of contact, so first pull back compactly and return the ball to your opponent. This is the absolute basics. Hitting in good form is something you can do after you can hit a reasonably deep ball with minimal motion. Pulling back big, swinging big, and hitting with plenty of spin completely ignores this, so the easiest thing to do is to use your pelvis in conjunction with small motions. If you gradually increase the size of your swing, you'll be able to hit stable, powerful shots. Trying to hit big shots all the time at home to achieve stability will lead to too many things to worry about and wo n't work well. Your consistency won't improve. When we make more mistakes, what do we do? We focus on the point of contact, use a compact swing, and just focus on hitting the ball correctly. That's why I want you all to practice this most important part a lot during ball-feeding practice. If you can do this, your mistakes will definitely decrease, and you'll be able to correct mistakes and recover faster. Really, if you want to be stable, you don't need to hit the ball hard. Men, in particular, tend to focus on power, so please be careful about that. I'll say it again and again because it's important: don't focus on power. Being able to hit strong balls doesn't mean you're good. This is a common misconception. First of all, stability is important. I understand you want to hit hard, but stability is essential for tennis to be a sport. You can't hit aces all the time, and most people who try to hit aces will make mistakes, so you'll definitely regret it afterwards. I'm always complaining while drinking beer, I'm sure. Isn't there something wrong with my racket? It's not my racket or anything, it's just me who's weird, so I'll just try not to feel that way and do my best. Today I'm going to introduce a supplement, Vita's Glutamine. Usually I introduce DAA or protein, but this time it's glutamine. It's a type of amino acid, and as for its effects, I think it boosts immunity and does n't leave you feeling tired the next day. When it's late at night and you're tired, I drink a lot of it and then I feel like I'm more relaxed the next day. More importantly, you can't drink it if it doesn't taste good, and this is really delicious, it's lemonade flavored, so I wanted to share the deliciousness with everyone, and I really drink it every night. It's really recommended after a bath. It's not good to take too much glutamine, so it says here is the recommended amount per day, but it also says how to take it, so I'll introduce a recommended way to drink it today. I bought sparkling water today, and if you mix it with sparkling water it becomes lemonade, that's right, it transforms into two things. Hey, sorry, but first, when you're dissolving supplements, even if you're not mixing them with carbonated water, try to put them in water first. It makes them easier to dissolve. Especially with carbonated drinks like this, if you put the carbonated water in first, it will overflow if you put the powder in first. So everyone should be careful about this. Is about this much okay? About this much. One scoop is 6g, so it's about a heaping scoop. This is it. This is it. Carbonated water, strong carbonated water is better. You can measure it with a spoon, but I prefer to use my hands. If you pour it in slowly and gently, it will overflow. Shake it lightly and it's done. Open it up. Look, look, it's fizzy and it's really delicious. It's really tasty. Drinks are n't tasty if they're not cold, right? Especially in the summer, so like this, put ice in, add carbonated water, shake it a little like this and it's done. You wouldn't think it's glutamine. No, sorry, but most glutamine supplements are unflavored, and I used to just drink them like this when I was a bodybuilder, but this product has changed my perception of glutamine. I used to take glutamine especially in winter, but ever since I started taking the glutamine that I received from Bata-san, that does n't matter anymore. I drink it every day regardless of the season. It's like a mental stabilizer that I rely on, it's really delicious so I can just drink it. If you're going to take a supplement, you might as well drink it deliciously, so I recommend that everyone try this glutamine before bed. This glutamine is currently on sale on Amazon, so please check the description box. That's all.