Learned to Pronate at 57

[Baxter]

I've been playing 4.0 (lefty) since right after college and have always used an Eastern forehand grip for my first serve and a continental for my second. I've heard about pronation but never really understood it until I started teaching my daughter a few things to help her make the HS team this fall. I never pronated on either serve, I just used the continental grip on the second to add spin.

After a few weeks of using the continental grip and real pronation on both serves, I now have the best serve of my life. My first serve percentage is so high now that I find myself really cranking it and going for the corners. I'm actually getting a few aces a match, but more importantly, gobs of service winners. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? I am one old dog and I have a really neat new trick. My daughter? Well the local college coach showed up during our last pronation lesson and tried to help out, but she's having a hard time getting it. He told us that teaching girls how to pronate on the serve is one of the toughest things to teach. But she'll get it eventually.

 

[Attila_the_gorilla]

Congratulations mate! Well your daughter will get there eventually sure. I think the bigges difficulty with pronation is that it makes it harder to contact the ball first, so you wanna slow down your swing and control it, which is counter productive.

So in my opinion the serve (and groundstrokes too, by the way) should always be learned without a ball, as silly as that sounds. What you want to achieve is a nice fluid and comfortable upwards throwing motion, with the whole internal shoulder rotation etc. Pronation will be a natural part of it. Maybe try getting her to just throw an old racket, and there she can get immediate feedback how her action is going and what effect a good trophy pose and loose follow through has on her throw.

When I started playing last year, I went out to learn to serve (with balls) just based on online instructions. And for some reason thought that pronation was this uncomfortable twisting of the arm, shoulder, wrist etc. Completely missed the trick about internal shoulder rotation and was just forcing it. Was far from effortless. Hurt my shoulder a bit too.

After that I got a total serve, started practicing with that, felt much better and nowadays I practice heaps just swinging the racket without hitting a ball. Now my serve is really effortless without any discomfort at all. And it's a weapon, at my level at least.

Once your daughter feels the serving motion, then she can try serving with balls. She regularly needs to practice the swing without balls, to remind herself what a good swing feels like, and tinker mainly with her toss to time the ball well.

 

[charliefedererer]

^^^Great advice Atilla - learn the arm motion away from the court without tossing the ball - it is too easy to fall back into the "old" motion until some "muscle memory" of the new motion is developed.

Then, "toss into the swing" as you advise.


A helpful video to help your daughter learn what is going in in developing a racquet drop well to the right side of her body (rather than in the wrong "back scratch" position in the middle of the back) is given by Coach McCraw: McCraw Serve Fundamentals http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuIgTyh4aDs


Does your daughter really understand what she is trying to accomplish with the swing motion? If not, going over Toly's photos step by step may get the visualization of what she should be doing.

If she doesn't have a good swing form without tossing a ball, try "the serve doctor's" approach to building up a good service swing:
Breaking down a serve "hitch" and rebuilding... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um5q7Lx107k
[She doesn't have to have a hitch to profit from this step by step approach to building a solid serve motion.]


Once she has started to develop a feel for the motion, have her try Coach McCraw's suggestion of starting much closer to the net to start to get the swing learned on the tennis court:
McCraw explaining a serve pronation exercise http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iONY6fcqZGg

[And congratulations on your learning how to finally pronate yourself. Enjoy the magic!)

 

[Baxter]

It really is "magic" isn't it? We did the racquet throw drill just a few days ago coincidentally. She can do the motion correctly in slow motion, but when she goes for a real serve you can tell almost no pronation is going on because of the ridiculous amount of spin, the ball going way left, and the total lack of power. We will try some of your suggestions on our morning session today.

 

[Attila_the_gorilla]

Don't need to rush serving with the ball, just keep shadowing it and make her feel what creates the speed of the racket.

In my opinion you shouldn't try to control much of what happens once she starts the actual swing. If she gets into the correct trophy pose, then the swing will almost take care of iself. Make sure she's not muscling anything, just feeling and using the momentum of the racket. Pronation sounds like this difficult magic trick, when it's secret is that there's nothing to it at all. It just happens naturally if you're not muscling the racket, just feeling its momentum.

 

[Frank Silbermann]

Try the Tom Stow tennis trainer idea. Hang a ball from a tree limb so that she can just barely get her racket on it at full stretch. Have her stand under it and bop it with her racket by turning her arm. Show her how to do it first. Since the ball is just hanging there, she can start with a very slow motion and gradually speed up.

But don't let her pronate too hard. You throw the handle-heavy racket upwards and let the momentum cause the arm to pronate so that the handle can keep going after the arm reaches its full height. That should cause the racket head to whip through.

 

[Chotobaka]

I've been playing 4.0 (lefty) since right after college and have always used an Eastern forehand grip for my first serve and a continental for my second. I've heard about pronation but never really understood it until I started teaching my daughter a few things to help her make the HS team this fall. I never pronated on either serve, I just used the continental grip on the second to add spin.

After a few weeks of using the continental grip and real pronation on both serves, I now have the best serve of my life. My first serve percentage is so high now that I find myself really cranking it and going for the corners. I'm actually getting a few aces a match, but more importantly, gobs of service winners. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? I am one old dog and I have a really neat new trick. My daughter? Well the local college coach showed up during our last pronation lesson and tried to help out, but she's having a hard time getting it. He told us that teaching girls how to pronate on the serve is one of the toughest things to teach. But she'll get it eventually.

If you live to 150, you should be just fine.

 

[spinovic]

Don't need to rush serving with the ball, just keep shadowing it and make her feel what creates the speed of the racket.

In my opinion you shouldn't try to control much of what happens once she starts the actual swing. If she gets into the correct trophy pose, then the swing will almost take care of iself. Make sure she's not muscling anything, just feeling and using the momentum of the racket. Pronation sounds like this difficult magic trick, when it's secret is that there's nothing to it at all. It just happens naturally if you're not muscling the racket, just feeling its momentum.

I don't see how you could hit a serve with a continental grip without pronating.

I agree, that it feels extremely weird when you first do it, and that it is quite cool when it finally clicks. But, for me, I just switched to the continental grip and forced myself to do it. The pronation just happened. That was my takeaway anyway - all the talk about pronating sort of threw me off because I felt like it was something I had to consciously do vs. the reality being that it was something that just naturally happens if you have the right grip and service motion.

But, I think you're right in saying if she gets in the correct trophy pose - I suppose if you started compensating for the continental grip from the start of the service motion, you could hit it in some different way.

Anyway, good luck and she'll get it eventually. I've tried to teach a friend of mine, but he won't do it. My wife actually picked up on it pretty quick, but she just doesn't get to play enough.

Next you can try serving with the eastern backhand grip to get more spin.

 

[Attila_the_gorilla]

I don't see how you could hit a serve with a continental grip without pronating.

My idea is to learn the serve without a ball, so in that case there's no direct feedback of whether you hit the ball or not, and where it goes. The only feedback is how fluid, comfortable and efficient the swing feels.

 

[spinovic]

My idea is to learn the serve without a ball, so in that case there's no direct feedback of whether you hit the ball or not, and where it goes. The only feedback is how fluid, comfortable and efficient the swing feels.

Repetition and muscle memory are your friends when learning tennis strokes.

I agree.

 

[Baxter]

The good news is the one video about fixing a hitch really helped me a lot. The bad news is that this morning my daughter and I - she's 14 BTW - got into a bit of a tiff about the whole thing. We worked on her serve for about 15 minutes and she still wasn't hitting anywhere near flat. The balls were going everywhere but in and loaded with spin. She became frustrated and said, "Dad, let's just play some points."

He first serve was a pancake (it landed in of course but that's not the point) and I told her she couldn't use that serve anymore. Bad idea. End of session. It's too bad because I'm divorced from her mom and we don't get all that much time together an we were having a great time until this whole pronation/conti grip came up. She was supposed to spend the rest of the day with me but insisted I drop her at her mom's. Bummer.

 

[LeeD]

Why don't the two of you watch vids of pro women, and men, playing tennis?
Look at their grips, and the strokes they use?
NONE use eForehand on first or second serves.
Most use a continental volley grip for all serves, and some use almost an eBackhand grip for second serves.
Now stand face up against a wall, hold the racket at impact point, and see how you flatten the face for flat serves.

 

[Baxter]

Why don't the two of you watch vids of pro women, and men, playing tennis?
Look at their grips, and the strokes they use?
NONE use eForehand on first or second serves.
Most use a continental volley grip for all serves, and some use almost an eBackhand grip for second serves.
Now stand face up against a wall, hold the racket at impact point, and see how you flatten the face for flat serves.

We've been doing exactly that for the past week. She is not a "natural" and everything she has accomplished so far was at the expense of LOTS of court time with me. Her brother was the exact opposite. We were playing tournaments together by the time he was ten and he went on to do well in HS. Maybe I should just give up and let her hit it the way she wants to.

 

[LeeD]

Out of 100 top WTA women, less than 15 are naturals.
Out of the top 100 ATP men, more than half are NOT naturals and had to LEARN to hit forehands and servces, and volleys, of course.
Learning to do something wrong so she can do it now is stopgap technology at best.

 

[sundaypunch]

We've been doing exactly that for the past week. She is not a "natural" and everything she has accomplished so far was at the expense of LOTS of court time with me. Her brother was the exact opposite. We were playing tournaments together by the time he was ten and he went on to do well in HS. Maybe I should just give up and let her hit it the way she wants to.

Yes, or have someone else teach her. It's not worth spoiling the little amount of time you have together.

I have two kids. The oldest loved getting input from me. The youngest sounds like your daughter. We would often end up fighting when I tried to "help" her. I learned that, with her, I needed to just keep it fun when we played. She does great with input at lessons but does not want it from dad.

 

[Baxter]

I played my first singles match with my new serve today with excellent results, 6-3, 6-0 against I guy I usually have trouble with. I was cranking first serves right into the ad corner with absurd consistency.

More importantly, I also made up with my daughter and we will be playing again this evening. In the spirit of compromise, I'm going to "let" her serve with a grip in between conti and eastern FH. She can go full continental later.

 

[myservenow]

Baxter:

A few years back I was having terrible tennis elbow and bicep problems to the point I had to stop playing altogether. I had a pro look at my strokes and my serve. Strokes were fine. As soon as I started serving he ran and got his video camera. Clearly, on my serve, I was breaking my wrist to direct the ball. The muscles in my arm were doing all they could do NOT to pronate.

Since then, I have tried to pronate on my serve but it is not the easiest thing to feel confident about. I "think" I pronate more now because I no longer have massive arm issues.

My question is what finally got you over the hump and into the pronate mindset as you serve? Is there a swing thought or mechanical move you make prior to the serve?

Finally, I have the hardest time getting through my head how to pronate on an attempted slice serve. I know how it works, but am tempted to swing and carve around the outside of the ball using my wrist instead of pronation.

Any advice?

 

[Baxter]

Baxter:

A few years back I was having terrible tennis elbow and bicep problems to the point I had to stop playing altogether. I had a pro look at my strokes and my serve. Strokes were fine. As soon as I started serving he ran and got his video camera. Clearly, on my serve, I was breaking my wrist to direct the ball. The muscles in my arm were doing all they could do NOT to pronate.

Since then, I have tried to pronate on my serve but it is not the easiest thing to feel confident about. I "think" I pronate more now because I no longer have massive arm issues.

My question is what finally got you over the hump and into the pronate mindset as you serve? Is there a swing thought or mechanical move you make prior to the serve?

Finally, I have the hardest time getting through my head how to pronate on an attempted slice serve. I know how it works, but am tempted to swing and carve around the outside of the ball using my wrist instead of pronation.

Any advice?

You're doing what my daughter does with that carving. I just walked around with a racquet doing the motion over and over and I really try to keep my motion fluid and continuous. My first serve is not flat, so I'm not pronating as far as I could, but the spin works great for me. For my second I try to add even more spin and kick.

 

[Baxter]

Just an update: My daughter is off to boarding school and never really got the pronation thing down; her serves have so much spin and so little power that they barely make it to the net. I hope her new coach doesn't let her go back serving with an eastern.

My serve just keeps getting better. In doubles against my regular 4.0 partners I am kicking butt on serve. I served two aces in one game today (lefty up the middle of the duece court), and that has never happened before in my entire life.

 

[fuzz nation]

Excellent advice from our pal Attila in post #2.

It's not reasonable to simply put this new move to work for an actual serve until we get comfortable with the new move. Once that starts to happen, then it's time to "put the toss in the way of that motion" and develop decent contact. Once the player can use that proper windup to put the strings on the ball with consistency, then it's time to figure out how to direct the shot.

Without a decent feel for a new, foreign action that will put the racquet on the ball, we typically run for cover when trying to place the ball on a spot. That placement becomes the top priority, so our brains will shelve the strange new swing and cling to crummy old habits just to steer the ball and get a desired result.

In my opinion, it's not even necessary to specifically focus on pronation in the arm/shoulder. It should be more of a result than a specific deliberate action. With the right setup, windup, swing path, grip, etc. in a service motion, "pronation" will occur just fine. Exaggerating it can stress the arm or shoulder, place unnecessary tension in the server's arm or shoulder that can kill a lot of racquet speed, and draw attention away from the other fundamentals in a strong service motion.

Encourage your daughter to make a complete mess of her serve while she's learning this new move (the loop and release over the top). If she understands that this has to happen for her serve to develop, it won't be nearly as discouraging when she sprays it all over the joint. That's a clear sign of change and if she's working toward building better habits, that's a good thing. Patience will pay off big time!

 

[Baxter]

Update: She hates everyone in her new school except for her tennis coach, his assistant coach, and a senior boy who went to Bollitierri! Now I'm worried about much more than her pronation.