Fatso Tennis

Hi Folks:

I just got back from spending several days one-on-one with the legendary tennis coach and researcher Vic Braden in lovely Coto de Caza, California the home of the original Vic Braden Tennis College.

Here's Vic Braden and me on site at Coto de Caza tennis facility

Besides increasing my serve speed by 30 MPH (yes, I know that sounds ridiculous especially since he did it in only 1 hour….more on this in an upcoming post) Vic was telling me story after story about pro tennis from the old days when he turned pro right up to the minute. Vic is still to this day right on the cutting edge of human performance. In fact, Vic was the only one sanctioned to video tape using three hidden cameras at the latest Indian wells tournament (apparently the obvious presence of a camera changes on court performance….that’s why they’re hidden.

Before he took me on one-on-one I sat in on his lecture for a doubles clinic being held that day.

OMG! The research he rattled off in 90 minutes was mindblowing….It really was mindblowing. He was talking about how we make the best decisions when our brain is working in the frontal cortex. It’s our job as tennis players to get our opponents playing in their back brain while we stay in the front brain. He told us many ways on how to do this.

If you want a complete breakdown of what was covered in that session visit Richard Neher’s coverage of the session for the Examiner.

Vic Braden, Richard Neher tennis reporter for "The Examiner" and Tom Antion just after Vic's lecture at his doubles clinic at the Coto de Caza, Tennis Club

Watch for my exclusive video interview with Vic Braden coming up this week and I can’t wait until you hear his story about Bobby Riggs and an elephant beating Vic and Anita Bryant.

Hey everyone. I’ve been missing in action for a little while, but still playing regularly. I’ve got a big surprise. I can’t give you all the details yet, but I’m heading to California Tuesday evening and I’m going to be spending time with a legendary tennis pro that’s going to give me some coaching and let me interview him on video.

Watch for my report coming up.

Plus.

A former top 50 player is going to grace Fatso Tennis with a posting on approach shots pretty soon.

When I’m at the club I see people pounding the ball on almost every shot. There is a lot to be said for hitting the ball easy. Not only does it save your energy, but an easy shot usually causes your opponent to burn lots of extra energy.

How does this happen?

Let’s take the drop shot. . . . When you hit the ball really easy, your opponent has to put out maximum energy to get to the ball. If he/she doesn’t, then you probably shouldn’t have hit the drop shot.

An easy sharp angle passing shot . . . Let’s say your opponent made a great approach shot that got you scrambling and the opponent is poised at the net to kill whatever you can throw at him. What would happen if you did a little flick dipping easy ball that just cleared the net cross court? (Federer does this all the time) Your opponent that was so comfortably waiting to kill your next shot now has to scramble toward the sidelines and get to a dipping ball…..maximum energy spent while doing it.

Opponent is deep in court and so are you. . . . If you know your opponent is not comfortable at the net, hit an easy short ball designed to get them charging forward. If they do get the ball back without overhitting, you now have them at the net where they aren’t comfortable.

Even an easy serve  . . . . can totally throw of an opponent’s timing. This is called a “changeup” in baseball. You see this on the tennis channel all the time when the server puts in a slow first serve and the returner hits it into the side stands because they were so early on the return.

So, don’t be afraid to hit easy and get a load of easy points.

This past week I was a guest at the Beverly Hills Country Club. It just so happened that the temperature in Los Angeles was 110 Degrees. The person who invited me was 15 years my junior and she was the fastest girl I’ve ever played. I really think had she started younger she could be on the women’s tour.

The Beverly Hills Country Club is still gorgeous even at 110 Degrees

She was questioning my sanity for wanting to play, but since I was traveling it was the only time I had, so I didn’t hesitate a bit. (I did look around for some indoor courts, but apparently they don’t exist in Los Angeles. If anyone knows of any, please let me know.)

I’m a voracious water drinker so just like every day, the day before I was pumping in water and I actually drank more than usual knowing it was going to be very hot the next day. You see you can’t really hydrate the day you play. You are actually maintaining hydration.

That morning I pumped in water. When I got to the court it was scorching hot. Maybe 120 on the court. There was one little sliver of shade on one side of the court so, being the gentleman that I am I gave that side to her.

We started rallying and I saw how lighting fast she was and she had told me she liked to run. So being the gentleman that I am I obliged her. I’d hit short to bring her into the net, then either pass her or lob her. On the base line I’d run her back and forth.

It wasn’t ten minutes before I could see she was having extreme trouble with the heat. Now this is a girl that probably weighed dripping wet all of 115 pounds and didn’t have an ounce of fat on her.  She had told me beforehand that she could play for hours, but that the heat really got to her. She was asking for breaks for water and basically falling apart before my very eyes.

I went to half speed so we could stay out longer, but I could see if I didn’t stop this, she was about to faint which she later admitted that she was going to faint if we didn’t stop.

She told me afterward that she went home. Was exhausted for the next two days and drank so much water she felt she would float away.

Ahhhhh. There’s the ticket. When I told her how much I had hydrated she said she hadn’t had anything to drink all day until the first break. She hadn’t had much water the day before either.

So let’s look at this. I weighed about 310 pounds the day we played. She was nearly 200 pounds less than me with no fat on her and she fell apart within minutes.

What’s the lesson? When I tell you to hydrate…..HYDRATE!

Last week I showed you a video of coach Mauro Marcos hitting forehands for accuracy. I decided to take the same kinds of drills to the service boxes.

I slowed everything way down and simply aimed at targets that would pull someone WAAAAAAAY off the court.

Yes, I’m sure we all love to see a 125 mph out wide serve, but truly I’ve been beaten terribly by a 60 mph serve that took me so far off the court I’d need a bicycle to get back.

Get yourself some cheap cones at Sports Authority or simply use tennis ball cans. Put them at 3 feet from the service line on the wide side line of the service box. Swinging nice and smooth try to hit the target area consistently.

When I slowed way down I was able to hit angles that would run the opponent into the next county. Like coach Mauro said, “Accurcy first, power later”. I’m going to hit really slow for about a month until I can at will hit those targets. Then I’ll add a tiny bit more power. If my accuracy suffers, I’ll go back to hitting slower.

I really believe this exercise will help you devastate your opponents with wide serves.

Are you seeing the drop shot lob combinations Roger Federer is using against Robin Soderling? Roger is serving for the match right this moment, but in the third set roger hit a drop shot and then a backhand slice lob into the wind and had Soderling running around like a puppet. It’s triple match point and just ended with an Ace.
Yipee.

Get out there and practice those kill patterns!

As I watched the US open this week I started to notice something. When a pro gets a floater and crushes it into the open court, nobody seems to notice. The pro is expected to put it away with authority and generally there is no instant replay.

What I noticed was that there would almost always be multiple instant replays on precision shots. Virtually always you would see instant replay on good passing shots. That tells me the tennis world, even though enamoured with 144 mph serves actually puts more stock in shots that are hit exactly where they are supposed to be hit.

So, I’m going out and practice today the drills I learned from Coach Kyril and Mauro Marcos. Take a look at the video below and you’ll see what I’m doing today.

And keep in mind what coach Mauro Marcos always says, “So what if you have power if the ball goes in the woods?”

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