Beginner Serve Practice - Should I practice with lean/coil or stationary AND How firm of grip for practice

[Niwrad0]

Still wondering why my serves are not consistent - have three aspects to think about for my own personal serve, addressed one with an instructor but not so sure about the other 2, which are:
#1 Coiling -
Defined: In my view, I define coiling as the leaning forward and making the hips go over the baseline. Not sure if there's another term but this is what I think about when performing the action
When I coil, I feel it's much more effortless to land the ball in the service box. And by effortless, I mean I hit dead center in the box, not even a question of missing it. Supposedly having less body movement such as a stationary serve should make it easier to land the serve, but for me, it's not the case. Is this reasonable?
Q: Should I lean every time while learning or just focus on just the upper body motion while practicing serves>
#2 Grip firmness
Defined: Basically how tight to hold, from scale 1-10 on effort. 1 being loose enough to nearly drop the racquet, 3 is normal for me right now for everything except for - 5+ to hold racquet for volleys.
I was playing mini-tennis with a coach for 2 hours, doing forehand and backhand volleys, and I noticed at the end when I wanted to practice a serve, having the slightly tighter grip made it more effortless to land dead center, when usually I have it more relaxed with a 3/10 effort. I ask because I saw some videos online saying grip should be somewhat firm but relaxed by gripping with only 4 fingers, leaving the index finger very loose for a loose wrist
Q: How much effort should I grip on serves? 1- very loose -3-normal 5- volleys 10-iron grip

Issue #3 I'm aware of - ball toss - and will NOT hit bad ball tosses and making sure it's high and at the 1-oclock position and slightly in front.

 

[golden chicken]

I define coil as the amount of shoulder turn or trunk twist (Chas would call it separation) relative to hip alignment.

Leaning the front hip over the baseline is hip thrust to me. If you need it to put the ball in the box consistently, then I think you should keep it in your practice routine and only do isolations if there is a specific sub-motion of the serve you want to tweak.

Grip pressure to me is dependent on the specific moment in time during the serve, or any stroke, really. That is, I increase my grip pressure as the forces of accelerating the racket to the ball increase. But if I had to describe it along your defined scale 1-10 it would probably be a 3 to start, increasing to 5 as I swing up to the ball.

 

[SystemicAnomaly]

I generally advise starting with the grip force of 2 or 3, even for volleys. (At 0, the racket falls out of your hand. At 1, the racket is on the verge of falling out of your hand). Normally I rarely consider increasing the grip force cuz it's pretty much automatic. About 50 ms or so prior to impact, we normally increase grip force to a suitable amount (rarely more than 5, according to studies done with elite players).

Bottom line: Keep the grip pressure relaxed for the most part. You will normally increase the force, as needed, without conscious effort. Just be sure that it is relaxed again after contact on the servo or any other stroke.