good point. and the reason im not putting my tossing arm up straight is because my toss is too short and rushing through the stroke
wierd that you say i wasnt getting any pace because i was hitting it harder than i have in a while--most of them went in and hit the back fence without bouncing other than in the service box..
but i get what sayin with wasted motion..this partly because i woke up 10 minutes before i went out there, partly because im using my friends racket and its the first time i hit with it..and mostly because im goin through the motion WAY to fast which is making my form very sloppy
Don't make excuses, make revisions.
Oh God man, if that's harder than you've hit in a while, then when we're done with you, you'll have a missile on your hands. You look to be what, 15,16? I can't really tell since we really can't see you. Either way, try to follow these instructions, and anyone feel free to disagree with me. Get out a notecard, and seriously take notes on what people in the thread say. It's INVALUABLE for when you're out on the practice court and can't figure out why something isn't happening; just look at the card and see "ahh, keep wrist relaxed" and everything comes together again. Finally, here's my suggestions in order of necessity:
1. Go out to the court with two racquets, preferably yours and one you don't care about (your friend's would work well
). Take a ball out to the service line, have your racquet in hand, and the spare nearby. Practice your motion with your toss, but don't hit the ball. Instead, let the ball drop to the ground while you're doing the motion, and once you find where the ball lies best in the air (should be out in front, a few inches to the right of your ear) let it hit the ground and mark that spot. Put the head of the racquet on said spot, and stand there and practice tossing until you get 50 balls land on the face of the racquet. This is going to help you get your toss consistent which is the number one thing to give you greater accuracy and pop on your serve.
2. A good serve is a series of steps blended together into one fluid motion. You have the introduction, the toss, the load, the explode and the followthrough. The intro is where you get to the line, bounce the ball, act like Nadal and pull your tights out of your ass or do whatever it is to get you ready. The toss is self explanatory. The load is a vital step that you're neglecting as it's the only time when the motion should actually slowdown considerably. You want to toss THEN load up your legs, not at the same time. You want to hold the load to build up potential energy so that you can explode with more force. The explode is where you actually hit the ball and dictate where it lands. You should have NO pain at impact. If you have any at all, you're doing something wrong. I don't care if it's a kick serve or slice serve and you think that the motion requires a twinge of pain; it doesn't. Followthrough is a vital and overlooked step. Your followthrough can determine whether or not you win or lose the point if the ball comes back. You need to practice how you will finish your serve if you want to rush the net with a S&V approach, or stay back on the baseline.
2a. The load. A proper loading requires the use of the core and leg muscles. After tossing, extend your tossing arm up to the ball, while bending your rear leg SLIGHTLY more than your front. This will allow you to keep your front shoulder higher than the rear and will give you that textbook trophy pose that people talk about. Again, keep the tossing arm up, bend the knees with the rear shoulder down. You'll know you've loaded properly (practice this) when you can go through the motion and after you've loaded and go to stand back up, you involuntarirly move forward. It's because you're loading your body to take you up AND into the court since the toss will be above your head.
2b. The explode. From your loading position, don't jump up to the ball, simply try to shift your center of gravity (your trunk) upwards to the ball. Again, practice this separartely. There is a crucial difference between exploding and jumping: jumping gives you no power. As you're going up to the ball, make sure that your body is perpendicular to the net so that you can do the next step in the explode, the shoulder turn. You don't want to be arming through the ball, rather you want to generate a good portion of the pace through rotating your shoulders while doing the actual swing. It takes a huge load off of your shoulder and gives you a substantial amount of pace. You want to imagine that your shoulders are forming an arc, with the left shoulder being the center and the right shoulder being the end of the radius. The left shoulder shouldn't be moving, so the right shoulder therefore must come over top of it from the dropped pose from the loading stage. This is only possible if you do what I said and bring your torso up to the ball.
2c. Followthrough. This is another vital step. You need to end up inside the court, not back where you started. This is an easy way to tell if you're wasting energy. You also need to be landing with your left foot first. I don't know how it's possible to land right foot first, but believe me, I've seen it. You'll end up about 3 feet or so into the court. Any more and your toss was too far out in front. The reason that's poor technique is because you do not want to be caught in no-man's land with the only option available to you being a net rush especially off a poor serve. So again, left foot first, right foot lands 3 feet inside the baseline.
That's about all I've got, so I hope it helps. If you wan tto see what I'm talking about in each step, here is a video of me serving. Go to the end where I've put in the slow-mo so that people on here could actually critique my own motion, but I guess it'll serve as a "teaching aid" in this case. Do not copy my rear shoulder drop as it isn't significant enough, but everything else is about on. Hope this helped
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FbSdunVwvw
