Fatso Tennis

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Legendary tennis coach Vic Braden is providing a massive
prize to benefit children in the Tennis ambassadors program.

Prize: Luxury trip to the U.S. Open

Check it out here:

http://tinyurl.com/US-Tennis-Open-Raffle

Thanks
Tom Antion, FatsoTennis.com

I stayed up really late last night to watch the latest ending match for women at the U.S. Open. Samantha Stosur defeated Elena Dementieva in some of the highest quality women’s tennis I’ve seen in a long time.  What I noticed during the match was the effectiveness of the wide kick serve Stosur hit repeatedly to the ad court.

Samantha Stosur hitting a kick serve to the ad court

Samantha is only 5′7 1/2″ tall (1.72m) yet she hit that serve over and over at a decent pace. Even though Dementieva got to the ball virtually every time, only once in a while was she really able to smack a back hand that took control of the point. Most of the time Dementieva was so far off the court that Stosur was able to take control of the point.

If little Samantha Stosur was able to take control of one of the most in shape, fast and fantastic groundstrokers ever by hitting a serve out wide, I think it might be a good idea if we practiced it too.

Just take a rope or extention cord and put one end at the centerstrap and the other end on the wide corner of the service box. On the ad side try to serve to the right hand side of the rope and on the deuce side try to hit to the left hand side of the rope. Hit slow at first and only increase your speed when you can consistently hit your target.

Put this into play in a match and watch your fat buddies scramble.

CBS, Panasonic & DirecTV add US Open Tennis to 3D Demo Days lineup

This is Panasonic’s second 3D tennis event of the season, but likely the first many of us will have a chance to put eyes on, especially if there’s another epic Isner/Mahut three day, 11-hour match. …

Publish Date: 08/25/2010 18:37

http://gadgetmania.com/2010/08/cbs-panasonic-directv-add-us-open-tennis-to-3d-demo-days-lineup/

Hi folks:

I haven’t posted for a little while because I have an extremely heavy workload right now in my business. I’m working early morning till late at night building a new Internet marketing school and speaking around the country on Internet Marketing. In case any of you ever wondered who the heck I am here’s one of my training websites. http://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com

The Internet has been good to me and I recently did a speaking engagement with 3 other star speakers at the http://www.CareSpeakersTour.com . One guy is a really nice guy. He was secret service agent Aaron Pierce from the hit TV show “24″.

Check this video out of us horsing around in Los Angeles doing a spoof of the opening of the 1960 Andy Griffith show.

And then I shot a message for my public speaking students at http://www.AmazingPublicSpeaking.com

These guys are totally in shape and young and they understand the importance of heat control. Check out this article about the guy who was in the longest match in tennis history.

Mahut defeats Falla, in a mere 83 minutes | Tennis

He fell behind love-40 in the first game of the third set before winning with a dropshot Falla couldn’t quite get to. Falla missed a passing shot wide, and then after an overpowering serve Falla hit his next return into the net. …

Publish Date: 07/07/2010 6:00

http://www.tennis.fm/2010/07/mahut-defeats-falla-in-a-mere-83-minutes/

I took my ball machine out to practice yesterday afternoon in Virginia Beach. It was 91 degrees when I left the house and over 100 on the courts. Like many hot days I was the only one there.

I had about 70 balls with me and I planned on doing two ball machine loads of forehands, two of topspin backhands and two of slice backhands. Then I planned to do flat serves and slice serves and call it a day. . . . at least that was the plan.

First load of forehands went very well and I noticed it was pretty darn hot.

2nd load of forehands went OK…..damn it’s hot!

First load of backhand topspin not as good as it should have been . . . did I mention it is extremely hot out?

2nd load of backhand topspins I just tried to go through the motions and sprayed balls everywhere . . . I’m hallucinating about a player on the other side of the net that has a pitchfork as a racket.

I skipped the backhand slice and guzzled some more water.

I pulled the ball machine off the court and got ready for serves. . . I should have quit while I was ahead. . . it was the worst display of practice serves since a coach a few years back had me doing serves with my eyes closed.

OK what just happened here? Well, I can handle the heat better than just about anyone on earth that’s as big as me and I want to be able to tough it out in hot weather so I can run the dickens out of the other guy and get easy points. The problem was practicing in super hot weather. . . . Not a good idea.

Right after the first load of forehands I felt myself getting lazy to try to preserve energy to get through the rest of my planned practice. This meant standing straight up instead of getting a good bent knee athletic ready position. Of course this is going to effect my swing path on any of my strokes. . . .in effect I was practing and reinforcing the wrong swing path or at least one that would compensate for my lazy lower body.

The results of this would be that when it was cooler or I was playing a match and in a good athletic position I taught my muscles to use strokes to accomodate a poor athletic position which would lead to errors when I’m not even tired…..this is dumb fatso tennis.

So, what did I do today to fix this? Instead of practicing in the late afternoon when it was the hottest, I got out there at 10:00 am this morning. It was 10 to 15 degrees cooler than yesterday afternoon and I limited my practice to one load of forehands, one load of backhand topspin and one load of backhand slice and then flat serves and slice serves.

Results: I didn’t get lazy to preserve energy. I practiced like my life depended on it. Forehands were great (well great for me). Backhand topspins were great and backhand slice was great. I still had energy for the serves and the new technique I learned from Coach Mauro last weekend is starting to gel on both the flat and slice.

So, practice hard in cool or cooler weather or indoors to create the proper muscle memory and technique for your lower and upper body and then practice in the heat to push yourself to handle higher temperatures, but only to the point where your technique holds up. When you start practicing the wrong way because it’s too hot, it’s time to go home, put your feet up, drink something cold and watch the Tennis Channel.

30 Year tennis coaching veteran Coach Mauro Marcos invented a special technique just for our blog. Check it out below:

I’ve been off the radar for several days and man was it worth it. Coach Mauro Marcos and Coach Kyril Popoff came to Virginia Beach to do a video shoot with my production company. Not only did I get 36 hours of training by watching them in action, I got a bunch of private lesson time with them that literally was unbelieveable.

L-R Coach Kyril Popoff, Fatso Blog Owner Tom Antion and Coach Mauro Marcos

 It was an extraordinary experience to find two guys teaching tennis that are massively passionate about the sport PLUS highly competent to teach. Kyril, publisher of “Secrets of the Power Serve” and Mauro, 30 years experience teaching mechanics of the strokes to celebrities, top juniors and business people around the world, inspired and coached me to even higher levels.

After flying all night and having no sleep, Mauro took me out on my home court and it only took him minutes to lay out a plan of what I needed to work on over the weekend. My volleys went from pretty much pitiful to decently competent in less then 30 minutes. I still can’t believe it.

I’ll have more and more stories in the coming days about what I learned and hopefully later today I’ll expose a new technique that Mauro invented just for us.

Here's a brief look at the tennis video shoot we just completed in Virginia Beach.

Watch for more either later today or tomorrow. You can see Mauro and Kyril in action at http://www.coachKyrilTennis.com

Well, I’m heartbroken again. Roger lost to Robin Soderling who certainly deserved to win. Did you see him pounding serves and forehands? Which brings me to the post I had in mind for today anyway.

I haven’t been happy with my forehand because when I hit really hard the ball goes long. So yesterday I experimented with a more western grip. This put more topspin on the ball and I could hit pretty hard and still keep control.

Ok, no big deal. A little grip change, so what? The very simple yet important point I want to make is that I could have changed a couple things like dropping the racket head lower at the same time changing the grip. By doing this I wouldn’t have known what worked or what didn’t. I just took my time and tried the grip change with everything else being as similar to my old stroke as possible.

In my next practice session I’ll try the old grip, but lower racket head and see what that does.  Then maybe I’ll try both and hit even harder. The point is to be patient and experiment with only one thing at a time.

BIG NEWS: Coach Kyril from http://www.coachkyriltennis.com and his main colleague coach Mauro Marcos are coming to my house to shoot videos and give me private lessons. I’m more than psyched! I should have video and still shots of the training next week. Watch for it.

Well I’ve missed a few posts in the last week primarily because we adopted a new tennis dog. She’s really terrible at fetching tennis balls and you will know why in a moment. Some a**hole took her to the shelter and asked that she be put down because she was blind. Thank God the vet there had a conscience and refused to do it. This dog looked like a Bichon Frise to the shelter people so the local bichon rescue got a call. ( We support them with one of my sites http://www.IAmNOTaPoodle.com ) They put it out on their emergency bulletin board and we immediately went to see the Dog. Pixie (her new name) is a super loving 14 year old poodle/bichon mix in wonderful health for her age. She just can’t see anymore.

Tom is determined to teach Pixie how to fetch a tennis ball.

She craves human affection so the first day I made this makeshift sling out of a sheet so she could be close to someone while she acclimates. In the first two days she is learning how to go up and down stairs and the special commands not needed on a sighted dog. I’m learning all kinds of things on how to care for a blind animal like make different smells in different rooms so she knows where she is. For fetching a tennis ball I’m either going to find one with a bell in it or I’m going to make one by cutting one open and putting a bell in it. Anyway, even though she’s only 9 pounds and doesn’t even come close to qualifying for being part of this blog, she’s going to be the FatsoTennis mascot and a beacon of hope for all of us. If she’s blind and can fetch a tennis ball and go up and down stairs and find her way around a big house, then we ought to be able to get up off our big behinds and improve at tennis.