I've been working hard on my serve and in particular on what happens between the racket drop and impact. I've been using this video as a guide. Originally, I wanted to incorporate into my serve the left to right loop (for a righty) at the bottom of the drop - the racket tip at the bottom of the drop moves in an arc from left to right before it elevates. It's one of the things you see in every high level serve, but that I rarely see in club players. I think it's key to getting real power. What causes that loop?
I "think" it's caused by a combination of some elbow bending, shoulder tilt, but mostly external shoulder rotation. The result is a distinct elbow up position prior to impact. Every one of these guys loops the racket to the outside (especially on the flat serve) and has the elbow pointing up.
I was somewhat misled by advise to keep the elbow forward. The elbow is forward in the sense that it is ahead of the hands prior to impact, but it's not forward in the sense that the elbow is in front of the shoulder. That's the waiters' tray position. The angle between the upper arm and shoulder is relatively constant during this phase of the swing, and they are inline with each other. The elbow is not moving forward it's moving upward.
Once I figured this out and focused on getting the elbow pointed up with shoulder tilt and getting the racket tip down and to the right with ESR, things fell into place. With the elbow moving up you then elevate the forearm with ISR toward impact and the upper arm hits a natural stop (the shoulder stops it from moving up at some point) the forearm however does not stop. It picks up the momentum from the kinetic chain and snaps up, over, and through. I'm able to hit with much more power, but it's still a work in progress.
I can't find much at all about ESR in the serve. So, does this sound right? Usually it's about a 50/50 proposition when I come up with these things on my own. Any exercises to increase ESR flexibility?
I "think" it's caused by a combination of some elbow bending, shoulder tilt, but mostly external shoulder rotation. The result is a distinct elbow up position prior to impact. Every one of these guys loops the racket to the outside (especially on the flat serve) and has the elbow pointing up.
I was somewhat misled by advise to keep the elbow forward. The elbow is forward in the sense that it is ahead of the hands prior to impact, but it's not forward in the sense that the elbow is in front of the shoulder. That's the waiters' tray position. The angle between the upper arm and shoulder is relatively constant during this phase of the swing, and they are inline with each other. The elbow is not moving forward it's moving upward.
Once I figured this out and focused on getting the elbow pointed up with shoulder tilt and getting the racket tip down and to the right with ESR, things fell into place. With the elbow moving up you then elevate the forearm with ISR toward impact and the upper arm hits a natural stop (the shoulder stops it from moving up at some point) the forearm however does not stop. It picks up the momentum from the kinetic chain and snaps up, over, and through. I'm able to hit with much more power, but it's still a work in progress.
I can't find much at all about ESR in the serve. So, does this sound right? Usually it's about a 50/50 proposition when I come up with these things on my own. Any exercises to increase ESR flexibility?