Feet past parallel on serve

[PittsburghDad]

Are there any models for having your feet angled actually away from the court. Towards the back fence. Obviously, it would seem to lead to huge body rotation. And then once you're in the air you can still rotate back to hips facing net. Just curious.

 

[boramiNYC]

Horacio Zeballos

 

[Lukhas]

Lleyton Hewitt comes to mind. That said he's often "victim" of foot faults. His heels go over the service line which is sometimes more or less wrongly interpreted as actually touching the service line. Judge for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHQ1zc2hjeU

 

[sez]

If you want to use your rotated body to generate power you can adapt this serve a bit with the right leg pointed to the back fence to go over the 100% spring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixx-MCC7D88

 

[tennisdad65]

That would be even more extreme than McEnroe and very difficult to achieve. Most of his power came from uncoiling body rotation. He did have a good knee bend and hip thrust too, but all very natural. Even with his extreme stance IMO the most natural effortless server ever.

The great thing of this serve is the effortless power, without straining knees, hips, shoulder or back. Testament to this is his great serve remains even at age 50+.

The bad things: 1) extremely difficult to control with the toss rotated so much 2) Tough to hit twist or pure topspin serves. Easier to hit a slice or topspin-slice.

 

[GoudX]

It is pretty common for the rear foot in the platform serve to be 'beyond parallel'. Combined with the fact that the rear foot tends to be further to the left (from the point of view of a spectator behind a right handed player). This means that the hips are pointing slightly towards the rear wall, and that in the take-back the back is pointing towards the opponent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP-mufKFM8s

 

[tennisdad65]

^^ lots of players have the rear foot angled backwards (especially visible on AD side for righties). I think the OP is inquiring about the front foot.

 

[PittsburghDad]

Thanks for the replies. I am talking front foot. My seven year old starting doing it. Still smooth and killing it. I try not to mess around with anything she's doing too much. Let it develop. She's extremely good. So I'm not a newbie by now. Just trying to figure out if this front foot needs fixed. Otherwise I leave it and just make sure rotation and knee bend aren't adversely affected.

 

[Captain Karma]

Thanks for the replies. I am talking front foot. My seven year old starting doing it. Still smooth and killing it. I try not to mess around with anything she's doing too much. Let it develop. She's extremely good. So I'm not a newbie by now. Just trying to figure out if this front foot needs fixed. Otherwise I leave it and just make sure rotation and knee bend aren't adversely affected.

Post a video .... let's see if she really "killin it"


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[SinjinCooper]

Don't do this. Your seven year old, if she turns out to be the best player in the history of the universe, will be up to speed on standard techniques around the time she's a teenager. If that proves to be the case, let some elite level coach with multiple grand slam winners on his/her resume decide that your kid needs to radically shift away from the history of useful serving mechanics.

Since for the moment, there's never been a single female on the planet who's successfully employed anything even remotely approaching Sampras-level gyrations, I'd advise you to forget about it entirely.

 

[Limpinhitter]

If you want to use your rotated body to generate power you can adapt this serve a bit with the right leg pointed to the back fence to go over the 100% spring.

This coiling technique is very old school with the hips rotated forward and the shoulders back with the right knee bend slightly to the side and right heel up. It's almost a lost art. Too bad very few pros, and virtually no ladies, are using it today. Check out some of these classic pics:

Margaret Court:

Maria Bueno:

Billie Jean King:

John Newcombe:

Fred Stolle:

Frank Sedgman:

Lew Hoad:

Pancho Gonzalez:

Bjorn Borg:

Jack Kramer:

Don Budge:

Evo Karlovic is a throwback to a past era:

 

[PittsburghDad]

Don't do this. Your seven year old, if she turns out to be the best player in the history of the universe, will be up to speed on standard techniques around the time she's a teenager. If that proves to be the case, let some elite level coach with multiple grand slam winners on his/her resume decide that your kid needs to radically shift away from the history of useful serving mechanics.

Since for the moment, there's never been a single female on the planet who's successfully employed anything even remotely approaching Sampras-level gyrations, I'd advise you to forget about it entirely.

Good advice. This thread is from two plus years ago when I was learning and had yet to get around highly qualified coaches. I was scrambling to educate myself quickly. I did forget about it.

Thread was only revived because this Captain dude keeps going through my old threads asking to see videos of my kid.

I stopped obsessing over her feet in general. And what I found was, and the better her coaching got, the more she did everything else right, the more her feet just naturally did what was best.

 

[Crocodile]

I would tend to focus on the bio mechanics of things and work on ensuring the following:
1. That each stage of the serve is included and no parts are omitted.
2. That each stage of the serve us performed in the correct sequence (from the feet onward)
3. That each chain of the serve is performed at the correct tempo.
5. That each chain of the serve is performed at the right amount.
Other considerations to consider are:
1. Is the serve being performed with good consistency and power. Is it effective.
2. Is the serve beneficial or detrimental to the anatomy of the athlete. How likely are they to get injured from doing something.
3. Does the serving style match the body type of the athlete. Some athletes are more suited to foot back technique while others do better with step up serves.
4. Don't forget that ball Toss is king. Crap ball toss equals bad serve irrespective of how good everything else is.

Finally on another level of consideration I'm a great believer in simplicity in serving. Less moving parts equals less to go wrong. Relaxed natural actions are better than complicated styles.
Hope this helps

 

[InSydeOut]

If you want to use your rotated body to generate power you can adapt this serve a bit with the right leg pointed to the back fence to go over the 100% spring.

Reviving this thread because I serve exactly like the girl in the video above and my trophy position looks like those old school pics. When I drag my right foot up it ends up going past my left foot so that my feet are parallel to the baseline basically but still shoulder width apart.

Is this considered more of a platform or pinpoint stance mechanics? I would like to transition to one or the other. Any helpful points to achieve this would be appreciated!

 

[ballmachineguy]

Reviving this thread because I serve exactly like the girl in the video above and my trophy position looks like those old school pics. When I drag my right foot up it ends up going past my left foot so that my feet are parallel to the baseline basically but still shoulder width apart.

Is this considered more of a platform or pinpoint stance mechanics? I would like to transition to one or the other. Any helpful points to achieve this would be appreciated!

Well, if you ask me, there is nothing to be gained by doing this. What the hips opened, by having your feet this way, and the shoulders closed provides, is called separation angle. If this was an actual thing in serves, why do you not see it being touted by anyone? There isn’t any horizontal acceleration to bring the arm through contact quicker, when serving correctly. If you look at the legs of most pro servers, they are next to each other showing the jump is straight up with the lower body providing no rotation into the shot. The upper body should only move as dictated by where the arm goes. The serve doctor is just trying to make lemonade out of lemons with this one. The legs being like this only makes it harder to serve correctly IMO.

 

[nyta2]

Reviving this thread because I serve exactly like the girl in the video above and my trophy position looks like those old school pics. When I drag my right foot up it ends up going past my left foot so that my feet are parallel to the baseline basically but still shoulder width apart.

Is this considered more of a platform or pinpoint stance mechanics? I would like to transition to one or the other. Any helpful points to achieve this would be appreciated!

love the serve doctor vids...
imo there are at a few places to get power, but let's focus on 2, using the [user]serve doc[/user] analogies... the poleVault and the coiled spring...
i've experimented with varying how much power i get from both, IME, when i try to derive too much power from the "coiled spring", it leads me to being more unbalanced more often, and the quality of my serve is more spin centric (slice)... so for that reason i stopped "stepping past parallel"... now just do narrow platform (no stepping)
when i combine "poleVault" with "elbow the enemy" (which to me is a milder "coiled spring" (compared to stepping past the front foot).... i find that it's easier to hit all serve types (flat, heavy slice, topSlice/kickSlice, kicker)... that said it took me a while to find the feeling of the "poleVault" power source (lots of vids, 3 diff coaches saying same thing 3 diff ways, and lots of experimentation) - so prior to that, the "coiled spring" was the only power source i understood/could-feel.

to me:
platform: no step
pinpoint: step
narrow platform: feel closer (even touching), but no step (thx to @J011yroger for pointing this out to me)