Beginner Serve Help Day 4 - Swing Path > Results

[will_ling_motivation]

Goals for today:

1. Incorporate Knee Bend and be more loose and relaxed AFTER the toss
2. Follow through with right foot inside baseline after the hit
3. Focus on the Swing Path, not the result of the hit. Who cares if it goes in the box or not, learn the swing path and technique first
4. Pre-Serve Warmups with:
   1. Tube Sock with Tennis Ball Swing Practice
   2. Ball Toss practice

 

[ballmachineguy]

Looks like you have taken a step back. You need to make sure your grip is continental. Looks like you may be a bit too eastern. Shoulders are flying open again. Must have missed where someone suggested having right foot in front of left on follow through. Boris Becker maybe? That is why the shoulders aren’t able to go right OVER left.

 

[Mungo]

Yeah, I don’t like the footwork here. I would focus on having stable feet right now.

 

[a12345]

Goals for today:

1. Incorporate Knee Bend and be more loose and relaxed AFTER the toss
2. Follow through with right foot inside baseline after the hit
3. Focus on the Swing Path, not the result of the hit. Who cares if it goes in the box or not, learn the swing path and technique first
4. Pre-Serve Warmups with:
   1. Tube Sock with Tennis Ball Swing Practice
   2. Ball Toss practice

It's definitely an improvement.

You're not quite finding the ball at contact. I'd recommend using your index finger to find the ball.

The middle of your index finger in continental grip should be resting against bevel 3 on your handle.

What this also means is your index finger is resting on the same plane as the racket face.

So if you know which direction your index finger is facing at contact you'll know that's where the racket face is facing as well.

 

[Deleted member 761442]

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[Dragy]

In the sock drill, you want to whip it to reach the peak as arm is at peak as well - not drag through with arm swinging already forward and down. Arm up - sock whips up - sock pivots down - finally, arm drops down. No windmill action.

That’s exactly why you do this drill. To learn to whip the racquet instead of raising it and trying to hit the ball from behind with all-arm motion.
Your arm should swing up at the ball. It may feel almost stopping around here with only racquet head pivoting at the ball:

 

[PocketAces]

Watching your reps for the sock drill, it looks like you're whipping the socks with your arm and losing control of your body. Here's a video demonstrating the sock drill:

The objective is to have a flowing and relaxed motion. In general, when you first try to learn a new movement pattern, it's best to practice it at half-speed so that you can have greater kinesthetic awareness of what your body is doing.

My suggestion would be to get a decent shadow swing of the serve down before you hit any more balls. Do shadow swings in front of the mirror or record videos of a few shadow swing reps so that you can compare them directly with your stroke model. After you have a shadow swing that reasonably approximates what you're going for, then you can get on court and hit some balls. Alternate between shadow swings and hitting the ball. Ideally, you want both reps to feel the same.

Realistically, you should probably spend several consecutive practice sessions focused on making one thing a habit instead of bouncing between multiple things every day. Supposedly it takes 3000-5000 repetitions to make something a new habit.

 

[Deleted member 761442]

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[SystemicAnomaly]

Seeing issues in just the first 75 seconds of the new video. The 1st issue that stood out happens with your shadow swinging (with the weighted sock).

Since your left foot is not leaving the ground, you might be better off angling it more toward the net. Less stress to your foot, ankle, lower limb and knee. It might help facilitators more fluid movement as well. The other option is to come off the ground slightly so that you can easily turn the foot without any weight on it. Not suggesting a significant jump at this point -- just a minor lift off

But the larger problem here is with your right leg. It swings way out to the right and then you take an awkward & excessive step around with that leg.

Notice the orientation of your right foot after that step. It points waaay off to the left. This causes your hips to rotate too much late in your motion. If your hips rotate too much, this late, there is a good chance that you are not transferring enough of your power to the upper body. The upper torso should actually rotate more than the hips do. They will coil a bit more at the front end and then uncoil more than the hips on the follow-thru.

It is okay for the R leg to move somewhat to the right, but not as much as you are doing here. The R foot will initially stay back but then swing straight forward, after contact, as you take a step in the direction of your serve. Both feet should be pointed pretty much in the direction of your serve after contact..

 

[WildVolley]

During your toss practice: Don't pull the hand down after the ball release. Let your hand continue up and point up at the ball or, like many of the pros, almost straight up at the sky.

 

[SystemicAnomaly]

Also see a significant problem with your tossing warm up. It looks like you are throwing or chucking the ball up into the air rather than lifting the ball into the air. You want to get the feeling that you are placing the ball rather than launching or catapulting it.

It also appears that you are priming the pump to get the ball up into the air on some of those tosses. Instead, slowly bring the ball down (only once, not a pumping action) so that the back of your left hand touches your left thigh.

From there, lift the arm at a moderate speed. If the arm speed is too slow the ball does not leave your hand. Or barely leaves your hand. If the rising arm moves too fast, your toss ends up being a lot higher than it needs to be. For now, shoot for a moderately high cost that is just a little bit higher than you can reach with your racket (say 20-30 cm or a bit less and then a foot above your racket reach).

Let your arm continue upward after you release the ball. You still need to get that arm up nearly vertical for reasons stated in your previous thread. At some point, in front of your face, open your fingers to release the ball but then let that hand continue upward to follow the released ball. With the arm fully extended upward, you should see the ball rise no more than a few feet (<1 meter) above your outstretched hand.

It looks like you are quickly tacking on a knee bend after you have released the ball. Don't do that. If you are going to bend your knees at all, that knee bend should start to happen before you even release the ball. The only players who wait till after the ball release, have a very high toss -- not recommended. So, as your tossing arm is starting to rise, your body should start to lower -- this is known as contrary motion -- arms move up as the body moves down

 

[SystemicAnomaly]

Some players find that a weight shift forward facilitates a smooth and effortless toss.

 

[WildVolley]

You are sometimes over-rotating on your actual serve. I don't normally worry about over-rotating a lot when warming up, but when actually serving, rotating too much at contact will cause you to lose power and racquet-head speed.

In this video, Milos Raonic shows how you should slow your body/shoulder rotation at contact, as that allows the energy to be transmitted to the racquet head.

You are showing some good improvement.