The overhead is a crucial shot to your tennis game because it provides you the ability to end points when you put so much pressure on your opponent. Just think about it this way. Most of the time when you're going to get overhead, it's because it's the last thing your opponent's trying to do to keep themselves in the plane.

They're trying to lob the ball to keep the point going. And so by having a strong overhead, it's going to allow you to make sure they don't get out of it. You can finish the point and win the point. So let's talk about the fundamentals of the overhead and what's really important. Number one, you have to have a great grip. 

The grip for the overhead is the continental grip. The reason why the continental grip is the grip for the overhead because it gives you the most flexibility to arrange the racket  face so you can hit any location on the court. And so with the continental grip, what we want to do is just simply take our pad right here and put it on the top flat and then one over to the right if your right handed. 

So you have a flat here and another flat, and that's where I'm going to put it. Another really easy way of finding the continental grip is acting like you're holding a hammer and just act like you're striking a nail.

And that's how you would use the continental grip. Now again, because you have the continental grip and allows you to place your racquet in a position that allows you hit down into the court.

So let's now talk about the motion for the overhead. It's very similar to serve, but depending on how you might serve, it might be different. And what I mean by this is that the easiest way to get your rack up is just to turn and get the racket up into what we call a trophy pose position. This is going to save you a lot of time compared to if you do a full motion on your serve, you wouldn't want to do a full motion on your overhand.

 It's just really simple to get the racket up and making sure that when we get the racket up, we don't have the tip of the racket up, OK? We don't want to have it sitting behind your head. A lot of times I see students, they learn hitting overhead like this. And what that does is it takes away your ability to create power because by having it up, you have this momentum to come down and come back around and create more power compared to having it down and then really having to muscle and overuse your body to create power that you could just use the momentum for.

The next thing when you're talking about your motion is making sure that not only your right hand or your racquet hand goes up, but also your opposite non-dominant hand. The reason this is important because your non-dominant hand is going to help you locate the ball and get you in great position.

 I see a lot of players go out there and they get the racket up just like this. But when the ball finally comes down to the strike zone and hit it, they're scrambling at the last second, is because they didn't use their non-dominant hand by getting both the racquet and the non-dominant hand. My non-dominant hand tells me where I want to get the ball and now this is super important because I want to hit the ball, not over my head, but over my hitting arm shoulder, which for me, being a right handed player is going to be over my right shoulder here.

 Most players have this idea that we want to swing over our head, and this just isn't true. This is very awkward to hit an overhead over my head compared to hitting it over my hitting arm shoulder. 

And now this makes more sense when you think about getting my racket up and my non-dominant hand up because my non-dominant hand is going to line up with where my shoulder is going to be at contact.

And so if we think about the rest of the swing after we get the racket up, the rack is going to go down and come back around, reach up to contact and then go across my body. Now the next really important fundamental for hitting a great overhand is understanding the racket face of contact. If the racket face is too open at contact, you're going to send the ball long. 

If it's to close the contact, you're going to send the ball in the net. The proper alignment for having the rack head is thinking about reaching slightly forward to hit your overhead so you don't want to hit it here here. The reason being is you notice the difference of when my rack is straight up, my racket face is pretty much vertical.

 And if I make contact with this, there's a big chance that the ball might go long or very close to the baseline. We want to ensure and have a little bit more margin, so by reaching forward slightly, it points to my racquet head slightly into the court. Now we don't want to overexaggerate this and have it too far because then I'm going to start sending balls to the net. 

So you want to realize your timing is to have your contact be slightly more in front of you than you would probably for your serve. And that's the essence of hitting a great overhead, making sure we have the right grip, making sure that we get the racket up and we have a non-dominant hand up, which is going to help us find the ball.

And then when the ball gets close enough, we're going to swing making contact slightly in front and come down and around our body. And this is so important that you prepare as soon as possible. As soon as you see the ball. 

Getting your hand and your racket up will help you locate where the ball is going to be and make sure you can get in a great position because positioning is most of the battle. 

If you can't get in great positioning for the overhead, you're going to find it really hard to have a nice, smooth and fluid swing. Now it's time to take some action on your overhead. The two main components we're going to focus on is the swing path and the contact, making sure that you have your swing down and you're making correct contact where the racket face is headed, where you want to go.

 So remember, the very first step we want to take is when the ball comes, getting our non-dominant hand up and rack it up from here. I want you to work on this part of the swing. One of the biggest mistakes with the swing is players tend to do this, and by opening up when we swing towards the racquet, you can see how the rackets open.

And so we want to make sure the racket goes down and comes around and reaches up. So the easiest way to do this is just start with your racket here, and all I want you to think of is taking the butt of the racket and your elbow and how it's pointing in this direction.

 We're going to point it up towards the ceiling, this direction so you can notice just by having this direction. And then pointing the racket, this direction, what it does to the racket, it turns the racket down, and if we relax a wrist as we're relaxing and letting the racket come down and then turn, this turns that swing into a loop. 

So it goes from here down and turning the elbow and the butt of the racket. And so I just want you to practice this motion enough times until it feels very natural that you're going from here. Relax down here. Relax down here. Relax down here.

 Now, once we lead with the edge of the racket at the very last second, you're going to flatten out the grip. And so we're going to take this step by step here. We're going to go down, relax, lead with the edge and at the top. And this is how we want the racket to flow compared to having the racket go like this, where we couldn´t make contact here and send the ball up.

We want to send the edge of the racket and at the very last second, flatten it out. So how this would look is getting ready with the racket up down, relax and at the top. This is so important because it's going to add that much more acceleration to your racket because your rack is coming down. 

Part two is we're going to start talking about the contact point. This is where you're going to need to toss the ball a little bit and by tossing the ball, tossing the ball slightly in front so you can reach up and do your swing and hit it in front. And the reason I'm doing this is because I'm shorter in the court. So which means I can start aiming slightly down in the court compared to when I'm on the baseline. 

I need to make sure I don't aim too far down because I'll hit the net. So from here, we're going to put it all together by making sure when we toss, come down and around and make contact slightly in front. And this is how to look. Rack it up. Toss. You can see how it's very smooth. I'm not muscling anything at all. Just focusing on dropping, letting this momentum. Take the racket up, flattening out at the top and coming around and making sure in between.

I'm making that contact slightly in front and this is a great drill. So you can go out and practice by yourself, just tossing balls up and hitting, tossing balls up and hitting one other area that you want to focus on for your overhead is making sure you're using the proper footwork, and the proper footwork means starting off with the drop step.

 The drop step is simply when we see the ball coming up and we're going to take this foot and drop it back. This is very much like you would see a quarterback getting ready to throw ball and drop it back. The reason this is so important is because a lot of players tend to not drop step, and when the ball comes, they're going back on their heels.

 This is dangerous and it's inefficient, dangerous being that you can fall back and hit your head inefficient because you're not going to be able to cover a lot of ground by using a drop step this way and turning your toe, and now allows you to move faster.

So if I wanted to cover more court, I could simply keep running this way to cover more court with my racquet up. After you finish doing your tossing and you're making sure you're really consistent, hitting the ball in front, we're going to make sure we use our drop step now.

And so how we're going to do this is really simple. Start off, we have a little room to move back. Your first step is going to be split and then do your drop step. Get back toss and then go back in the court again. So making sure that here I split, drop, step, get back with the racket up toss and then go back in the court. 

The most ideal situation is that you get back and with your racket up and your hand up, you get a chance to move back in the court to make sure you can transfer your power back into the court and you don't have to swing that hard. 

But there are some situations where you might find yourself still going back and having to hit in the air, and that's fine, too. But again, the optimal situation is to be moving forward when you can hit their overhead. In summary, for the overhead, the number one thing you have to have is the right grip, and that's the continental grip. 

Making sure you have the continental grip will give you access to sending the racket up on edge and accelerating with the right racket face at contact.

Number two, you have to make sure you turn so many players instantly when the ball comes. Just get the racket up and they don't turn and they go back like this. You don't want that.

You want to make sure you turn, which puts you in a great position with your racket, but also puts your feet in position to go back and get the ball. After that, you want to make sure as you turn, you get your left arm up and you get your left arm up over your hitting arm shoulder. Obviously, if you're a right handed player, so by getting my left arm up over my hitting arm shoulder, it helps me align the ball. 

As the ball's coming, I'm lining it up with my left hand to make sure when I'm ready to swing, I'm in the right position by being in the right position with my left arm, meaning that the left arm is over my hitting arm shoulder. It puts me in great position. When I make contact, the contact is over my right shoulder, which means I'm going to have a great contact point, which leads us to. 

The last thing is making sure that you make contact slightly in front by making it slightly in front for the overhead. It means you're going to hit down into the court, allowing you to really maximize the angle you have by being further in the court. Now you know the main parts you need to know to have a great overhand and go out and finish points when you have your opponent on the ropes.