Feedback on my serve technique

[Serve&Bash]

I wanted some opinions about my serve. I have been playing for a while and my serve is one of my best shots. However, it wasn't until I asked my friend to record a video of me serving when I realized how abrupt of a motion it is. Would you guys say it is technically sound? Or am I generating the pace with my upper body ("arming" it) ? I don't have much of knee bend.

http://vimeo.com/97804897

 

[heninfan99]

The quick action is surprising. Are you a Dolgopolov fan?

If you start using your legs you can add 15 mph.

 

[SouthboundAgain]

It's hard to judge your mechanics from that angle. Your motion is really quick but seems sounds to me. It doesn't look like you get a very deep racket drop (back scratch position), but again it's hard to see. I don't notice anything wrong with your knee bend: you're making contact up in the air and seem to have good balance when landing. Overall it looks pretty solid to me, but I'd like to see the serve from a rear view and also see what kind of variety you have (a kicker, a slicer, a flat one, etc).

 

[Chas Tennis]

Improving the Video Quality

The video quality could be improved:

1) Camera closer to you from behind looking along path of the ball's flight. Your image would be much bigger. Always cover from below the feet to above the racket at impact. If your frame does not include, especially the entire racket, repeat the video.

2) Video outside in direct sunlight. The camera has an automatic exposure control (AEC). Outdoor direct sunlight has a light level about 100X the light level of indoor court lighting. The AEC will select a faster shutter speed and there will be much less motion blur.

3) Video from behind along the ball's trajectory and also alongside perpendicular to the ball's trajectory.

4) If you have 60 fps as many new DSLRs do, use that with a very fast shutter speed (1/2000 sec - 1/5000 sec, the faster the better).

5) If you want to see the serve properly you need high speed video, 240 fps is excellent.

For other cameras and serve analyses comments search TW: behind camera chas tennis

 

[Lukhas]

It looks nice from afar, but the camera is on the "wrong" side, relatively speaking. It should be behind you so we can wee what you are doing instead of where the ball is going.

 

[cjs]

I like your action. Nothing wrong with fast motions. Nothing wrong with your knee bend.

I wouldn't be messing too much with your action unless there are specific aspects of your serve you want to improve.

I'm curious what you have variety-wise. I'd like to see different spins, placements, second serves, etc. Hard to to get a good feel for a serve from 3 flat belted serves from a distance.

 

[Curiosity]

I wanted some opinions about my serve. I have been playing for a while and my serve is one of my best shots. However, it wasn't until I asked my friend to record a video of me serving when I realized how abrupt of a motion it is. Would you guys say it is technically sound? Or am I generating the pace with my upper body ("arming" it) ? I don't have much of knee bend.

http://vimeo.com/97804897

To an extent, you answered your own question. I suspect you were a good baseball pitcher at some point. The serve is good. You could use it for as long as you wish. I wouldn't want to disturb it for small matters. I could tell you what features I would reflect on at some point:

You use a short racquet arc, that total loop the racquet makes from the ready to the hit. That's a choice. The benefit is speed from throwback to hit. The cost is that you generate a lot of the power with shoulder and arm muscle, relying less on UB rotation and length of arc travelled to generate speed during the racquet's loop under-back-up. It may simply be the right choice for you.

I say "a good pitcher" because you come around a bit wide, as opposed shoulder over shoulder. If this is a choice, good. If your shoulder ever gets sore in the second set, consider trying to come over with your hitting shoulder higher, tossing shoulder lower. I had to use brutal finger-foo to stop on the frame that showed your hitting hand a bit wide coming to it's peak. Your finish also says "pitcher," coming so directly down to your left side.

The two serves you filmed are effectively slice serves, due, I would guess, to the extent your arm goes a bit wide up to contact. The balls clear the net by a large margin, curves to your left, bounces left, and rises an average amount for a slice. This may be what you intended. If it is, good. If not, I would wonder how your technique serves you for a twist serve or very flat serve.

You asked for comment. I obliged. Don't let it change affect any element you are content with.

 

[Serve&Bash]

It's hard to judge your mechanics from that angle. Your motion is really quick but seems sounds to me. It doesn't look like you get a very deep racket drop (back scratch position), but again it's hard to see. I don't notice anything wrong with your knee bend: you're making contact up in the air and seem to have good balance when landing. Overall it looks pretty solid to me, but I'd like to see the serve from a rear view and also see what kind of variety you have (a kicker, a slicer, a flat one, etc).

It looks nice from afar, but the camera is on the "wrong" side, relatively speaking. It should be behind you so we can wee what you are doing instead of where the ball is going.

Yes, I apologize for that. There is a reason for recording the videos in this fashion, me and my friend were crazy about to calculating our serve speeds using that app and we wanted to make sure we could estimate the exact landing point of the ball. It was a silly obsession we had a few months back.

I will definitely keep this in mind in the future when recording videos.

 

[Serve&Bash]

I like your action. Nothing wrong with fast motions. Nothing wrong with your knee bend.

I wouldn't be messing too much with your action unless there are specific aspects of your serve you want to improve.

I'm curious what you have variety-wise. I'd like to see different spins, placements, second serves, etc. Hard to to get a good feel for a serve from 3 flat belted serves from a distance.

Thank you, cjs. And you are right that 3 serves isn't a good feel for the serve, but I wanted to make sure that I hadn't developed a technically flawed serve over the past 8 years which somehow ended up giving me good results. Is there any disadvantage to striking a serve before the ball drops? I was curious about this because almost all good servers that I see playing at the tennis courts seem to let the ball toss drop before striking it. Does having a higher ball toss and slower motion make a serve more unpredictable? Those are just some questions I had.

About the variety... I always hit a kick serve on 2nd. I'll admit it is not a great 2nd serve, far from it, but I can kick the serve into my opponents weaker wing to prevent them from attacking. As for the slice serve, I'm working on it. Sometimes as a change up on my 1st serves, I take a huge sideways cut at the ball to generate a very off-speed but heavily sliced serve and if I'm lucky I sometimes get a shank return. I call it my "junk serve". With that said, sometimes when I go for a flat serve out-wide to the deuce court, it ends up having quite a bit of sideway movement which I never expected the ball to have. That is the one serve I am trying to become more comfortable with hitting.

As I explained earlier, me and friend were trying to get speed readings on our serves using that app and we didn't bother hitting any other types of serves. Next time, I will be sure to get more varied footage.

 

[Chas Tennis]

Here are 3 sequential frames

Note: Viewing on Vimeo, this video will single frame by holding the SHIFT KEY while using the right or left ARROW KEYS.

The motion blur and poor contrast makes the racket invisible. The ball can be seen. At impact there should be some angle between the forearm and racket. I guess some is there with this video form the arm and ball positions ...but you can't see the racket..?....

There is a slight bend in the elbow on the first frame and that soon straightens in the next two frames. Looks reasonable. The arm straightens out for internal shoulder rotation to occur and drive the racket to impact.

In a high level serve, acceleration to the ball takes less than 30 milliseconds. A 30 fps camera captures one random picture every 33 milliseconds and, therefore, it often will catch just one frame - randomly placed during the 30 milliseconds of acceleration to impact. The motion blur in your current video prevents that one frame from being seen. What is the frame rate of your camera?

Is the racket-forearm angle correct?

UPDATE - best image near impact

This appears to be the racket approaching the ball within a few milliseconds of impact. Not sure if there is enough angle between the forearm and racket. ? How this angle appears depends on camera viewing angle and also the exact time that the frame was captured relative to impact. Would guess a slice or flat serve since the racket probably won't go much higher after impact. ?

You serve might use ISR well but it needs high speed video to see it. Maybe outdoors in bright sunlight will catch a few informative frames.

Low cost basic high speed video camera -
http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?t=484212&highlight=black+friday+sale
NOTE- This camera is now on sale for $119.
http://shop.usa.canon.com/shop/en/catalog/powershot-elph-110-hs-red-refurbished

The shoulders probably are OK according to the Ellenbecker video. Get better videos. You have to study the Ellenbecker video and evaluate for yourself.

Search: camera behind chas tennis
for poster serve analyses and camera suggestions to get this one useful frame very close to impact from 30 fps cameras during the fastest part of the serve.

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Sometimes a duplicate "http://"s appears such as
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[Serve&Bash]

To an extent, you answered your own question. I suspect you were a good baseball pitcher at some point. The serve is good. You could use it for as long as you wish. I wouldn't want to disturb it for small matters. I could tell you what features I would reflect on at some point:

You use a short racquet arc, that total loop the racquet makes from the ready to the hit. That's a choice. The benefit is speed from throwback to hit. The cost is that you generate a lot of the power with shoulder and arm muscle, relying less on UB rotation and length of arc travelled to generate speed during the racquet's loop under-back-up. It may simply be the right choice for you.

I say "a good pitcher" because you come around a bit wide, as opposed shoulder over shoulder. If this is a choice, good. If your shoulder ever gets sore in the second set, consider trying to come over with your hitting shoulder higher, tossing shoulder lower. I had to use brutal finger-foo to stop on the frame that showed your hitting hand a bit wide coming to it's peak. Your finish also says "pitcher," coming so directly down to your left side.

The two serves you filmed are effectively slice serves, due, I would guess, to the extent your arm goes a bit wide up to contact. The balls clear the net by a large margin, curves to your left, bounces left, and rises an average amount for a slice. This may be what you intended. If it is, good. If not, I would wonder how your technique serves you for a twist serve or very flat serve.

You asked for comment. I obliged. Don't let it change affect any element you are content with.

Curiosity, thank you for your response. I appreciate your analysis. Unfortunately, I am no good at baseball. Last time I played was in 5th grade during PE class, but now that you mention it, maybe I should have played baseball.

You know, about an year ago my serve was extremely inconsistent and the reason was that my shoulder became fatigued after hitting a few games of serving at full intensity and after that point I could only manage kick serves on my 1st. However, over the past year I have completely moved past that limitation. I now have no issues going for 1st serves even after 3 hour tennis sessions. I think a big reason for that is that I have gotten rid of a lot of the exaggerated movements I had. I used to swing like a caveman on 1st serves trying to get extra pace behind the serve and land awkwardly inside the court. Now I try to keep it simple (no extreme knee bends and leg drives like I used to) and I get much better results.

Are you sure those serves are slice serves? I can understand the first one. Whenever I try to flatten a serve out wide into the deuce court, I end up getting some slice on the ball. The next two serves were intended to be flat, but now that you point out the low bounce height, I guess I sort of hit flat/slice hybrids. Interesting observation though, I'm going to go flip through other serving videos to see the bounce height of the ball after landing.

 

[Serve&Bash]

^^ Please excuses the grammatical mistakes. I do not have editing privileges yet.

 

[cjs]

Thank you, cjs. And you are right that 3 serves isn't a good feel for the serve, but I wanted to make sure that I hadn't developed a technically flawed serve over the past 8 years which somehow ended up giving me good results. Is there any disadvantage to striking a serve before the ball drops? I was curious about this because almost all good servers that I see playing at the tennis courts seem to let the ball toss drop before striking it. Does having a higher ball toss and slower motion make a serve more unpredictable? Those are just some questions I had.

About the variety... I always hit a kick serve on 2nd. I'll admit it is not a great 2nd serve, far from it, but I can kick the serve into my opponents weaker wing to prevent them from attacking.

Firstly, a disclaimer: I'm not a coach - but I was coached intensively from a very young age.

My feeling is its easier to hit a stationary ball than a moving one. Likewise its easier to hit a slow moving ball than a fast moving ball. Hence most people hit the ball just after its reached its peak and before gravity starts increasing the ball's downward velocity.

Regarding low toss verse high toss, I also have a fast motion with a lowish toss and my feeling is my serve is less affected by windy conditions than those with high ball tosses. Toss a ball too high and you've got wait for it to drop (creating hitches). Furthermore, toss a ball too high and you are increasing the likelihood of your toss being inaccurate, forcing the server to go chasing after it or abort the serve entirely. A good example I always think of is Berdych - I find his serve so ugly and he's been known to have horrible serving days in the wind. However, toss a ball too low and you may not reach maximum extension or optimal contact height off the ground. And if you hit the ball while its still going up then you have to deal with the difficulty of timing contact with a moving object, and to me everything about the serve would feel rushed if I was hitting a ball on the way up.

Regarding variety on your serve, the reason I asked was because with that ball toss over your right shoulder it would be very difficult to hit a kick serve. But many people vary their toss between first and second serves. However ideally I think its best to have a similar ball toss for all serves to aid with disguise.

 

[Curiosity]

I now have no issues going for 1st serves even after 3 hour tennis sessions. I think a big reason for that is that I have gotten rid of a lot of the exaggerated movements I had. I used to swing like a caveman on 1st serves trying to get extra pace behind the serve and land awkwardly inside the court. Now I try to keep it simple (no extreme knee bends and leg drives like I used to) and I get much better results.

If you are no longer getting fatigued in the 3rd, and nothing hurts afterward or the next time you hit, life is good. Change nothing. I'll stick with the view that I saw (some) slice in both serves. However, you can adjust that. You might even prefer it, serving to the deuce court. What's not to be content with? If you ever do want to come over the top more for any reason (spin variation, shoulder protection), I'm sure you would find it simple to do without going back to the caveman swing. You have control of your new swing.

 

[Tight Lines]

Really nice looking serve. I wish I could serve like that

The only thing I notice is that your tossing seems to be a bit abrupt probably due to your quick serve motion. After you release the ball, your arm stops abruptly. That means your arm started decelerating before releasing the ball. That could lead to inconsistent tosses. If you find that tossing is an issue, you may want to look at that. If not, then I wouldn't change a thing.

Harry