Serve help- Hey TT

[bt johnson]

Good news is I am hitting serves everyday and it has gotten much better IMO. Bad news is I am having trouble getting someone to take a video. Living in new city plus single = not a ton of options. Any ideas of how to tie an IPhone to a fence?

[bt johnson]

Originally Posted by LeeD

He is trying really hard to impress the camera, and us. He has a good serve nonetheless.
You are casual and warming up, care little about the camera.
Let's see some of your heaters.
You both have the form of a 5.5 level serve.
Me lefty, I liked PetrKorda's serve and game. Notice it's a mirror image of your service motion and form.

I remember Korda! He was a damn fine player. I never cared for him much because he gave my tennis idol (Agassi) fits at times. I was very very young when all thus was going on but I remember his haircut and I think he might have rocked a bandana at some point. Never picked up the fact he was a lefty.

[LeeD]

Flip Korda to rightie, he serves like Stich, Smith, and you.
Duct tape, stuff the camera behind in the fencing behind the baseline, just off center, 21' behind the baseline, use tape to hold the camera in place, about 5' off the ground. Stand on other side, hit first serves towards camera. Then from camera side, hit away to other side.
There is video of me hitting wide serves, right at the intersect of sideline/service line, where the ball hits a camera mounted on a 36" tripod on a IN serve. You's will go higher and faster, since I was 62 then, and couldn't run one step or push off with my back foot.

[bt johnson]

http://youtu.be/inmv-Cxxev4

http://youtu.be/nK52UeoXfF8

http://youtu.be/vi9Dn0SSANA

[bt johnson]

Okay so as promised I have got some more footage. I do not feel like I was serving as well today as I have been the rest of the week but let's see if I have progressed at all.

[bt johnson]

Also I used some surgical tape(idea compliments of LeeD) to film a hitting session with a friend who plays -6.0 here in Atlanta. He did not want to play a set because his arm was hurting him but we played some tiebreakers and did some other drop feed drills etc.

[LeeD]

Looks like warmup serves to me, but now from 5 on.
Your left leg clears the court by one inch. You don't spring up into your strikepoint with powerful thrust from your thighs.
You serve from waist up is as good as it get's.
Looking at waist down, you put no effort into it.
I'm 63, I don't have nearly your upperbody serve motion, but WITH a sprained ankle and twisted knee, both my feet come off the ground by TWO inches, and I end up almost 3' inside my baseline if I'm trying to serve fast.
Why don't you use your legs? Look at vids of Sampras or Roddick, Stich or Korda. Their feet are NINE inches off the court, at contact of the ball. Your's are ONE inch, mine twice as good.

[bt johnson]

Originally Posted by LeeD

Looks like warmup serves to me, but now from 5 on.
Your left leg clears the court by one inch. You don't spring up into your strikepoint with powerful thrust from your thighs.
You serve from waist up is as good as it get's.
Looking at waist down, you put no effort into it.
I'm 63, I don't have nearly your upperbody serve motion, but WITH a sprained ankle and twisted knee, both my feet come off the ground by TWO inches, and I end up almost 3' inside my baseline if I'm trying to serve fast.
Why don't you use your legs? Look at vids of Sampras or Roddick, Stich or Korda. Their feet are NINE inches off the court, at contact of the ball. Your's are ONE inch, mine twice as good.

Yeah I agree man. It's really frustrating me. I will go again in the morning

[bt johnson]

Hey LeeD this seems to becoming a two person thread but I am having trouble getting my practice match vid to fully upload to YouTube. Any suggestions?

[WildVolley]

BT,

Posting the side angle was helpful. Your toss looks to still be landing on the baseline, and you have little leg push as your forward foot doesn't even clear the ground on most serves.

You can work on both things separately before you combine them. First, I'd practice just with the toss and make certain that the ball is landing in front of the baseline. Next, I'd put something like a tennis ball lid in front of your left foot and then while hitting a relaxed serve, consciously hop over it and let the right leg kick back on the follow through. Don't worry about hitting hard, just try to get the hop to flow with the swing.

[LeeD]

Lots of knowledgable posters on here. But when one says the right thing, there's no need to pile on more answers and replies.
Just use more legs. You don't use your legs. Your waist up swing is as good as anyone's, and anyone's level.

[WildVolley]

Originally Posted by LeeD

Lots of knowledgable posters on here. But when one says the right thing, there's no need to pile on more answers and replies.
Just use more legs. You don't use your legs. Your waist up swing is as good as anyone's, and anyone's level.

Why so crotchety Lee?

You gave good advice, but my advice was more drill specific, so it isn't just piling on without anything to offer.

Your advice is often too free-form: Use your legs more, act like you're trying, etc. Knowing that you need to change something and doing it can be different things. For example, I make my students hop over something to learn the proper leg thrust. I find that works better than just telling them "use your legs more."

[LeeD]

Yeah, my post sounds really crotchity, doesn't it?
OP is wondering why only I have been giving consistent responses. I say it's because there is no need to pile on any more info, OP just needs to use his legs more.
Tough advice to figure, that. Use legs more means what? Should he collapse like DerekJeter? Should he bend and then spring into a 12" high jump UP into the ball?
You decide, and post to him what you think.
Most of us know what this serve needs.

[xFullCourtTenniSx]

Originally Posted by bt johnson

This is the only feedback I disagree with so far. I do not see how you can say that I have a bad toss

You say the problem isn't in your toss? There are several probable locations for your inability to get your weight properly into the ball.

1) Your upper body motion isn't good. That's hardly likely because any healthy person can swing a racket upwards without falling off to the side.

2) The lower body motion isn't good. There's hardly any to begin with. How could it possibly be your legs when you aren't even using them?

3) Your toss isn't where it should be, and your body is compensating by chasing it, resulting in your body weight going backwards prior to contact as opposed to forwards.

Look at your first video alone. I don't care if they're warmup serves. Anyone hitting warm up serves should easily be able to maintain their balance. You fall over on the first 3 serves, hit 1 or 2 reasonable ones, then hit one where you stumble COMPLETELY out of the frame. Whether you try to argue that it was just a warmup or an actual serve, YOU'RE WAY OFF BALANCE HITTING THE BALL. Were you serving in 30 mph winds? If not, then WHY are you falling off to the side? This needs to be addressed before you think about landing further into the court.

Originally Posted by LeeD

Right leg swings out to the right because he's falling to his left, and needs the counterbalance to stay on his feet.

^

Originally Posted by bt johnson

http://youtu.be/inmv-Cxxev4

http://youtu.be/nK52UeoXfF8

http://youtu.be/vi9Dn0SSANA

Look at the first video alone and look at the difference in the depth of your toss. The ones where you get the ball 1-2 feet into the court results in a relatively balanced finish.

Then there are the ones that hover above the baseline, or even BEHIND the baseline, and you fall backwards (whether it be away from the baseline or deeper into the ad side).

Now, from the rear view, there are balls that fly well off to the left on you, and you still hit them. This should never happen if you, in-fact, have a good toss. When a toss flies that far off, catch it, and put it back up where it should be. Want proof of astray tosses? Second batch, third video, 1:00. First batch, first video, 0:55. First batch, second video, 1:00. First batch, second video, 1:10. First batch, third video, 1:45.

Now for the inconsistency of your depth? Let's look at the first and second videos of your second batch.

7 serves were hit in the first video.
1st was bad. 2nd was good. 3rd was good. 4th was bad. 5th was horrible. 6th was bad. 7th was bad.

9 serves were hit in the second video.
You failed to get a single toss inside the baseline, had a few floating BEHIND the baseline. The only one you came out almost completely on balanced was the one hit at 0:55. The one right after at 1:00 came close, but you were still finishing to your left. Neither had a toss behind the baseline (were above the baseline).

If you meticulously took down the data from these 6 videos, I guarantee you that there will be an approximate function that shows (with some outlying pieces of data, as with any real world set of data) that says the farther off your toss is, the farther to the left you fall.

There's 2 criteria for having a good toss:
1) It's consistent
2) It ALWAYS gets to EXACTLY where it needs to be

Your toss has neither of these characteristics.

How do you not see how I can say you have a bad toss? Because it leaves your hand? Because it stays within the reach of your racket? Because you consistently get strings on the ball? I'm confused how you could even have the illusion of having a good toss BEFORE even filming yourself. I'm even more confused how you can stubbornly believe that lie even AFTER seeing yourself on film. You HAVE seen your serve videos right? You HAVE attempted to analyze them yourself before you submitted them to us right? Or are you trying to have us do all the work in analyzing it then selecting the bits you like and throwing out the truths you deem ugly? Or are you going to just deny it under the pretense that they were just "warm ups"?

You want to get more pop into your serve and land farther into the court?

Lean into the court a bit with your hips. Instead, you have them sitting in the middle of your legs. Why do you not lead with your hips? 1) You've probably never been told to do so, and 2) it seems VERY stupid to lean your hips forward to hit a ball that is right above you, and it IS stupid. So your body sits back so you don't get that awkward situation where your body is a foot or two in front of the ball during contact.

You want to land into the court?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTXgMbyjMuU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRsmm0qV02o

Look how far into these two lean into the court with their hips. Look at where their toss is. Look at their contact. Compare that to yours. They launch their upper bodies into the court. You launch yours backwards. The most significant differences between your serves? The toss and the hip action. Their tosses are in the court, yours is either above the baseline or behind the court (not even in a consistent location either). Their hips lean WAY into the court and in front of their bodies. Your hips sit in the middle of your feet. There's a cause and effect for everything. The cause of your problems is your toss. You want the quickest way to improve your serve? Improve your toss. That alone will improve your serve since you can more efficiently channel the energy of your motion directly into the ball. After that, lean into the court with your hips, creating a larger load of energy to be directed into the ball.

How can you look at your service motion and say that there is anything wrong with it other than your toss? Your serve has nothing else that needs to be changed. Your motion is a solid base with which to add little improvements to (knee action, leading with the hip, shoulder rotation). But you can't do that efficiently without first improving your toss. You can have a great serve if you have a great toss and a bad motion. Even if you have a great motion, if you have a bad toss, it's all wasted and becomes a bad serve.

[bt johnson]

Ok so I think I might know the problem. I have switched the way I align my feet. By doing so I rotate my upper body to toss the ball to the side/above as opposed to further in the court. I understood that by twisting my upper body to toss the ball I would create my upper body rotation. Is this incorrect?

[charliefedererer]

Yes, as LeeD says you've got to explode up from your legs more.
It looks like you are getting a reasonable knee bend, just not exploding up.

But you are much improved on "dropping your left shoulder".

Getting better at your serve will take time, but you are on the right track.

You still are bringing your right leg forward, although not as dramatically swinging it out to the right [thanks for SA for the correction of legs] now that you are "dopping the left shoulder" more.

You may want to try just "shadowing" some serves without tossing a ball to get the feel of launching yourself up and landing on your LEFT leg with you RIGHT LEG KICKING BACK.
Leg Kick on Tennis Serve http://blip.tv/fuzzy-yellow-balls/le...-serve-1190196

I really think if you could just feel the power of launching yourself straight up, and landing this way by shadowing swings without a ball will form some "muscle memory", making it easier to incorporate into your serve.
(And you will fell great just having that sensation of really launching yourself up.)



Another topic:

Perhaps you don't understand how to toss more into the court.

Check out this overhead view of the Sampras serve toss:



For a first serve toss you have to start with your hand/ball close to your back foot (pic one) and end up with your hand/ball near your front foot at ball release (pic 4) arm.


I warn you, however, that this forward sweep of the tossing arm is counter to the backward lean with your upper body as you need to form the bow shape.

It takes real concentration on bringing the arm forward not to let your upper body lean forward into the court, or else you will end up with a "reverse" bow shape.


So notice that Pete doesn't allow himself to lean forward at all, even as he brings his arm forward.





Final note:

And note also that it is AFTER ball release in pics 7-10 that he is getting that really big movement of the left hip into the court as I earlier advocated, and xFullCourtTenniSx did in his recent post.

That big lean back with upper body/forward hip out really helps launch yourself "up the mountain" when you reverse the bow shape even more violently.

[WildVolley]

Originally Posted by bt johnson

Ok so I think I might know the problem. I have switched the way I align my feet. By doing so I rotate my upper body to toss the ball to the side/above as opposed to further in the court. I understood that by twisting my upper body to toss the ball I would create my upper body rotation. Is this incorrect?

With proper toss technique, the toss should be almost independent of the positioning of the feet, hips, and shoulders. Notice how balanced Sampras is when he releases the toss even though he is turned far away from the court. His "archers" bow comes later. Even with servers who have a low toss (e.g., Goran Ivanisevic) the body is balanced when the ball is released.

In my opinion, you should work on your toss by itself with whatever foot position you prefer. Just make certain that your body is balanced over your feet at the release, you cup the ball in your fingers (don't let it drop to the palm) and you control where it is directed. Don't hit it and let it bounce in the court to see if you're hitting your target.

The good thing about working on the toss in isolation is that you can do thousands of repetitions without wearing out your hitting shoulder.

[LeeD]

I don't like all those pics of Sampras. Sampras's serve has little similarities to OP's.
Stich and Smith rose 9" off the court, measured at their toes.
OP rises 1" off the court. That is the problem.

[bt johnson]

Hey guys I have been super busy at work so far this week and have not had a lot of time to film myself. My shoulder needed a break from hitting serves everyday last week anyway but I will have more footage up tomorrow.

[5263]

Originally Posted by LeeD

I don't like all those pics of Sampras. Sampras's serve has little similarities to OP's.
Stich and Smith rose 9" off the court, measured at their toes.
OP rises 1" off the court. That is the problem.

What about where you told him to get the toss more into the court?
Still not doing it and part of why he cant use the legs better.