Critique My Serve: New Vid

zabarboon

New User
I'd like to thank everyone who commented on my last vid. I spent 10 minutes or so trying implement all of your guys' suggestions before I took this vid and I figured it might take a good bit repetition to adjust my muscle memory, so I'll put some more time into it later. Anyways, to everyone who noticed I fall to the left during my serve, here's a new vid to confirm your suspicions. I've always done that because I have trouble raising my arm higher than where it is during my current swing path. Not sure why, it just feels unnatural when I do.

Sidenote: I recognize the foot fault here. I always bring my front foot forward and I just have to remember to move back a little bit when I start my motion so that doesn't happen.
 
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Kevo

Legend
Yeah, that knee bend is asking for trouble. And stepping forward with the front foot is asking for trouble too if you play in tournaments where foot faults matter. Even if you move back, with that knee bend and a front foot step you're going to foot fault. Also if you get rid of most of that knee bend you can toss lower and that will also be less prone to going off in pressure situations. Still think most of it looks pretty good. There might be a bit of backwards bend in the wrist, but that might not be an issue. Sometimes it's hard to tell with small deviations in wrist bone structure.
 

Digital Atheist

Hall of Fame
You're bending your knees too much.
+1. In your case it's called a "potty squat". Removing that single aspect and replacing it by pushing the hips forward will save your knees a world of hurt over the long term. Good serve though, you are close to nailing it:

 

Curious

G.O.A.T.
Knee bend is not the problem, the upright torso during the knee bend is! Stop at 0:18 and see what it looks like then watch this video:


PS: the above post was 1 sec before mine!

 

movdqa

Talk Tennis Guru
I like it.

I think that your knee bend is deeper than it needs to be but you ticked off the things that I look for (I'm no expert though).
 

chic

Hall of Fame
I feel like dancing around with your feet that much is just adding a lot of unnecessary movement. The more extra movement in a serve the more chances to mess up and cause a fault.

A step in if you're going to pinpoint is fine, or getting on the front toe for a platform (although the latter shouldn't need the foot to leave the ground and come back down risking a foot fault) But I'd try to take out that extraneous movement asap.

Other things too, but that and fixing how you're bending will alter enough of the other aspects they aren't worth mentioning yet.
 

Chas Tennis

G.O.A.T.
Flat serve. To single frame on Youtube use the "." & "," keys. View full screen and use the time scales to compare.
There are text boxes on one or a few frames. View full screen and use the time scales to compare. Two monitors?

This video pauses for 4 seconds for the frames with messages. Find the same times in the Lisciki serve clip.

Flat Serve Fault. Lisciki has a pin point stance and you have a platform stance.

These videos have a countdown time scale in milliseconds. "0" is impact in both videos. Both were recorded at 240 fps. (Kinovea can adjust for different video recording rates.) I was not able to get the side-by-side on the same video for unknown reasons. You impact the ball 0.96 second after toss release. Lisciki about 1.06 after toss release. This time varies mostly because of the height of the toss.

Youtube down sizes my camera's 336 line resolution to 230 lines, Ugh!

You are very close. It is hard to pick out issues in the upper body from that behind camera view. A close up of you upper body showing the timing of your ISR by elbow shadows would be a good next step. The body tilt left shows and the excessive knee bend shows. A side camera view will show your body tilt forward, it looks much less guessing from the behind view. ?

I believe that your head position/angle may indicate that you do not tilt your shoulder girdle as much as Lisciki or most other high level servers. ?? Go look in the mirror and with your spine vertical tilt your shoulder girdle so that the hitting shoulder goes low then high. In other words, do some servers restrict their shoulder girdles and other servers move the shoulder more? Look at the Lisciki serve and find other high speed videos that show the tilt at impact. Is your shoulder girdle more perpendicular to your spine than for high level server's shoulder girdles? The shoulder blade rises also, too complicated for describing here. These tilts also lengthen the distance between the origins and insertion of the lat muscle and shoulder position can add stretch to the lat.
 
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ontologist

New User
Reminds me of gasquet’s motion a fair amount. As others have mentioned, the knee bend is excessive and renders your energy going too far up and not enough forward. Pretty solid and very workable, but you could save a lot of energy by fixing that. I don’t really think the foot adjustment is a big deal as long as you work on giving a little extra room, otherwise you will be called on it as you go on.
 

ontologist

New User
Oh and I think your “body to the side” analysis is good, but that’s just because you’re chasing your toss too far to the left...pretty common after people learn kicks to have trouble readjusting their toss for flat and slice serves. Tisitsipas and dimitrov both struggle with it still, so no shame, but try moving that toss a few inches to the right and in front of you and see what happens
 

JackSockIsTheBest

Professional
i

I'd like to thank everyone who commented on my last vid. I spent 10 minutes or so trying implement all of your guys' suggestions before I took this vid and I figured it might take a good bit repetition to adjust my muscle memory, so I'll put some more time into it later. Anyways, to everyone who noticed I fall to the left during my serve, here's a new vid to confirm your suspicions. I've always done that because I have trouble raising my arm higher than where it is during my current swing path. Not sure why, it just feels unnatural when I do.

Sidenote: I recognize the foot fault here. I always bring my front foot forward and I just have to remember to move back a little bit when I start my motion so that doesn't happen.
it's okay but you could do much better... good luck on trying to improve man!
 
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