Hi Slicepong, I think what’s really good is you obviously have a good understanding of all the technical elements from the way you talk about it and you are trying to be relaxed when bringing these elements together. The shot shouldn’t feel like a lot of effort for sure, perhaps not quite “effortless” as to need to bring in some power from the body and legs and of course this does require some feeling of energy release, but you should definitely be quite relaxed during the shot for sure. Getting to tense or trying to hit the ball too hard has a bad effect on timing and also the ability to accelerate quickly through the ball.
For me what is key is the areas you’ve mentioned using the core rotation and weight transfer and legs to create that whhip effect with the arm, this is key to generating power, you need to use the larger muscles like the legs and core to allow the arm to be more relaxed and move quickly. A quick hack to think about that I like to use on different shots is thinking about it in two parts, so part one rotating the body back, weight transfer back and also back swing then part two is uncoiling the body transferring the weight forward and swinging through the ball etc. But what you want to think about is a small pause between part one and two, of course this is a very quick pause as the time is limited, think about a spring being squashed and then the energy released as you let go off the spring.
This helps with timing and efficiency, I’ve found many players can become more effortless by trying to get this idea in their head. Other than that to be honest it sounds like you are doing all the right things, so just keep up the training and really just exaggerate the relaxed arm and whipping through feeling! I hope that helps. Tom
