FRV4 serves

[FRV4]

Thought I'd upload these again

Radar reading from serve that went into net

This next one is probably the fastest one, but a hindrance

I already figured out what I am doing wrong that causes for my racket to be angled incorrectly at contact. I wasn't pushing my hips into the court and tilting my shoulders enough. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, I have not been able to hit the courts for over a year. There is an indoor club, but they always look at me funny.

 

[LeeD]

Nice snap.
A lower hand position at trophy will give a bit more power.
Maybe a bit more V at hand to racket would allow more racket head speed.
Try to moderate the jerk on your fastest serves into a more smooth, but still fast swing.

 

[FRV4]

Nice snap.
A lower hand position at trophy will give a bit more power.
Maybe a bit more V at hand to racket would allow more racket head speed.
Try to moderate the jerk on your fastest serves into a more smooth, but still fast swing.

Yeah, the hand will be lower if I tilt my shoulders. I'm not sure if it'll get more power though. I'm guessing same power with more spin since a little bit of topspin slice will be added with an angled racket head.

 

[ballmachineguy]

You must be young. It has to be hard on your shoulder swinging that hard with your arm that straight. I’d try getting it to 90 degrees or maybe less before starting up to strike ball. You’ll get more variety from possible spins too.

Of course, it is hard to see the exact angle from behind.

 

[Nostradamus]

Thought I'd upload these again

Radar reading from serve that went into net

This next one is probably the fastest one, but a hindrance

I already figured out what I am doing wrong that causes for my racket to be angled incorrectly at contact. I wasn't pushing my hips into the court and tilting my shoulders enough. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, I have not been able to hit the courts for over a year. There is an indoor club, but they always look at me funny.

those are notoriously inaccurate

 

[Demented]

I just verified his speed manually. 13.5 frames from contact to bounce@30 fps. Distance traveled is approximately 62 feet since he hit the corner T. Math doesn't lie. That serve was actually about 111-114 mph.

 

[LeeD]

Every Male pro tilts his shoulder so higher toss arm and LOWER racket hand to create fast swing with high contact point.
Don't try for level shoulders, as that is a WTA trait.

 

[FRV4]

I just verified his speed manually. 13.5 frames from contact to bounce@30 fps. Distance traveled is approximately 62 feet since he hit the corner T. Math doesn't lie. That serve was actually about 111-114 mph.

Thanks. You can actually count frames more accurately if you go frame by frame in the slow motion part, that is 240 fps. You seemed to get the about the same reading as I did at 240fps using the 30 fps part though. I've debated my serve speed for hours and hours on here before.

 

[FRV4]

You must be young. It has to be hard on your shoulder swinging that hard with your arm that straight. I’d try getting it to 90 degrees or maybe less before starting up to strike ball. You’ll get more variety from possible spins too.

Yeah, I used to get major problems with the shoulder swinging like this. Eventually someone on here told me to use my legs to trigger the racket drop and my shoulders stopped hurting. I recently found out that I'm still doing some things incorrectly though, like not tilting the shoulders, which also changes the arm-racket angle at contact. Was very excited to give it a try but couldn't because of the pandemic. I did try it in my room though and I definitely find a change in the arm-racket angle. It is awesome when you learn something new in tennis.

 

[FRV4]

Every Male pro tilts his shoulder so higher toss arm and LOWER racket hand to create fast swing with high contact point.
Don't try for level shoulders, as that is a WTA trait.

I'm going to try and tilt my shoulders more, I just didn't even know I had this problem until recently. Who knows if I'll ever hit the courts again though.

 

[SystemicAnomaly]

I just verified his speed manually. 13.5 frames from contact to bounce@30 fps. Distance traveled is approximately 62 feet since he hit the corner T. Math doesn't lie. That serve was actually about 111-114 mph.

But the math does lie a bit. Published serve speeds are for the ball velocity coming right off the racket. By the time the ball reaches the bounce point, air drag has reduced the ball speed by 1/4 to 1/3 (prior to the bounce). That is a substantial loss. A 120 mph serve is close to 90 mph by the time it is just about to bounce (according to Yandell?). The video below shows numbers for a 150 mph serve:

 

[Demented]

Huh? The 111-114 is adjusted upwards to account for drag. The average velocity is distance/time is obviously lower. Like 93 mph.

 

[FRV4]

Huh? The 111-114 is adjusted upwards to account for drag. The average velocity is distance/time is obviously lower. Like 93 mph.

He was just making a witty remark

 

[SystemicAnomaly]

@Demented @FRV4

Huh? The 111-114 is adjusted upwards to account for drag. The average velocity is distance/time is obviously lower. Like 93 mph.

Ok. From the wording of your post, I had assumed your were just calculating the average speed for the 62' trip (from racket to court). In addition, 62' is just the horizontal distance, correct? Does not include vertical displacement (for a true 3D distance)?

 

[Demented]

@Demented @FRV4

Ok. From the wording of your post, I had assumed your were just calculating the average speed for the 62' trip (from racket to court). In addition, 62' is just the horizontal distance, correct? Does not include vertical displacement (for a true 3D distance)?

No, the 3d distance is accounted for. The 8-9 feet of height translates into an extra static .5 feet added to the actual 2d distance. 61.5 feet is the center hash to the outside T and then tack on .5

 

[SystemicAnomaly]

No, the 3d distance is accounted for. The 8-9 feet of height translates into an extra static .5 feet added to the actual 2d distance. 61.5 feet is the center hash to the outside T and then tack on .5

Very good. Except I believe that my reach is closer to 3 meters (9.5 to 10 feet). I'm just under 6' tall and a contact of 9.5 feet is my estimate without accounting for a jump-enhanced contact height. So, pretty close to 3 meter. Not that the diff is going to have a huge impact on the calc.

OTOH, if I go airborne on my serve, my CP is probably somewhat forward of the baseline rather than directly above it. But I nitpick.

 

[SystemicAnomaly]

For it to be waiter's tray, he has to be lacking in pronation. He pronates immediately after his drop. This removes the benefit of less drag but still gives him the pronation force that high level servers need to speed up the racket head. A true waiters tray holds it in a forehand grip and never rotates the shoulder.

You meant the forearm? A WTE serve gets little or no forearm pronation but it does utilize some ISR (but, perhaps, not as much shoulder rotation as a proper, non-WTE serve).

 

[megamind]

This is a pretty good serve, good job OP

 

[Demented]

Very good. Except I believe that my reach is closer to 3 meters (9.5 to 10 feet). I'm just under 6' tall and a contact of 9.5 feet is my estimate without accounting for a jump-enhanced contact height. So, pretty close to 3 meter. Not that the diff is going to have a huge impact on the calc.

OTOH, if I go airborne on my serve, my CP is probably somewhat forward of the baseline rather than directly above it. But I nitpick.

The height doesn't really add much...the first 9 feet add .5 feet of distance..another foot up barely adds anything. The distance into the court does count and is hard to quantify for most of these. I just assume it's at the baseline and if we're a foot off then it only effects the accuracy by 1.6%.

 

[FRV4]

The height doesn't really add much...the first 9 feet add .5 feet of distance..another foot up barely adds anything. The distance into the court does count and is hard to quantify for most of these. I just assume it's at the baseline and if we're a foot off then it only effects the accuracy by 1.6%.

I think I estimated 59 ft or something when I initially did it. Can't remember, I just plugged in some numbers on don't hire eddy just now. But I wrote in the description I counted either 99 or 100 frames at 240 fps,

 

[travlerajm]

Nice serves.

 

[Demented]

We may be talking about different clips.. I did the math on the one that says 111 mph. It was out wide and hit the line. Obviously if you have a 240 fps clip it's much easier to find the exact impact moments.

 

[FRV4]

We may be talking about different clips.. I did the math on the one that says 111 mph. It was out wide and hit the line. Obviously if you have a 240 fps clip it's much easier to find the exact impact moments.

I'm talking about the same one, the 240 fps slow-mo comes right after the regular part. It was originally recorded in 240 fps in slow motion, but you can make it realtime in quicktime.

Ay....
(Oh man not this again)
Ay....

I be serving out wide, sly guy
Come to talk tennis just to go and pick fights (yeah)
Hard work, all hurts, when my back tell me I can't take flight
Slow motion, Yes I'm brown, still balling with no potion
Grew up an ashy kid, I had no keri lotion
Still I be delivering high speeds through my motion
slow motion, 240 fps
thumbing through the slides, no room to second guess
Send it back to realtime in quicktime, it was a sick sight
I grew up thinking I would never serve this high (yeah)
Still there's more to go this ain't my first rodeo (yeah)
I feel like the lessons learned, but I got way more to show

 

[FRV4]

There is passive, aggressive, and assertive. I believe I am on the aggressive side of things. I choose not to work on this.

 

[Deleted member 771407]

Yeah, I used to get major problems with the shoulder swinging like this. Eventually someone on here told me to use my legs to trigger the racket drop and my shoulders stopped hurting. I recently found out that I'm still doing some things incorrectly though, like not tilting the shoulders, which also changes the arm-racket angle at contact. Was very excited to give it a try but couldn't because of the pandemic. I did try it in my room though and I definitely find a change in the arm-racket angle. It is awesome when you learn something new in tennis.

Wait, was it my thread ? Probably not but that would be nice

 

[FRV4]

Wait, was it my thread ? Probably not but that would be nice

Uh sure, let’s go with that

 

[Chas Tennis]

Thought I'd upload these again
.....................................................................................
Radar reading from serve that went into net
....................................................................................

This next one is probably the fastest one, but a hindrance

I already figured out what I am doing wrong that causes for my racket to be angled incorrectly at contact. I wasn't pushing my hips into the court and tilting my shoulders enough. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, I have not been able to hit the courts for over a year. There is an indoor club, but they always look at me funny.

This technique, for a flat serve, has two characteristics that I've seen before for other posters:
1) The racket face more faces the sky.
2) It uses internal shoulder rotation (ISR) - as seen by the elbow shadows rotating - to move the racket head. The racket face mostly closes as it moves forward from ISR. This differs from the high level serve, where ISR mostly produces a side-to-side racket face rotation around a more vertical axis.

That technique probably gets good pace because the large and powerful muscles of ISR are being used. Since all of the pace of this technique is developed by simply closing the racket face as it moves forward, errors would probably tend to be in the high or low direction, in the net or long.

This technique will not be useable for a kick serve because there is no way to get the racket head to rise rapidly as it impacts the ball.

It is not a Waiter's Tray Error even if the racket face squarely faces the sky because the WTE does not use much ISR and the OP's serve does.

Signature of a high level serve (slice). The OP's serve shows differences between the two red arrows in this picture. The OP's racket face at a similar racket position to the lower red arrow, but more faces the sky than 'the edge facing the ball' as for this high level serve below. Toly composite picture of high speed video. This useful camera angle has the camera mostly looking along the path of the hand.

See frames of OP's racket moving to ball at 22 sec. (Does anyone have the technique of extracting a sequence of frames from videos, as pictures? To match frames approaching the ball as show above for the two red arrows.)

You can see the shadows at the elbow that indicate ISR.

The OP's technique has the arm tilted more to the side and the racket shaft more vertical at impact. The wrist does not move much, just holds its angle as the arm is rotated forward by ISR.

BigServeSoftHands had one serving technique that is similar. He said that he measured a serve of 131 MPH, I believe, using a his similar technique.

The OP should compare his videos to high level serves frame-by-frame. See post #55 to compare serves.

 

[blablavla]

Thought I'd upload these again

Radar reading from serve that went into net

This next one is probably the fastest one, but a hindrance

I already figured out what I am doing wrong that causes for my racket to be angled incorrectly at contact. I wasn't pushing my hips into the court and tilting my shoulders enough. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, I have not been able to hit the courts for over a year. There is an indoor club, but they always look at me funny.

@FatHead250
can we see something similar from you?

 

[FatHead250]

@FatHead250
can we see something similar from you?

I'll record my 125 serve on first opportunity

 

[blablavla]

I'll record my 125 serve on first opportunity

are you lacking a mobile phone?
or tennis balls?
it takes you soooo long.

 

[Demented]

Here's a highlight reel of my last match... ignore the swing vision speed listed, that's the average speed not the initial speed. The slowest serve is about 104 and the fastest is around 112. Notice, I'm not exactly tall, only 5'9". If I was just trying to light a radar gun up, I might be able to squeeze out 115-19 now.

 

[Chas Tennis]

Thanks. You can actually count frames more accurately if you go frame by frame in the slow motion part, that is 240 fps. You seemed to get the about the same reading as I did at 240fps using the 30 fps part though. I've debated my serve speed for hours and hours on here before.

We may be talking about different clips.. I did the math on the one that says 111 mph. It was out wide and hit the line. Obviously if you have a 240 fps clip it's much easier to find the exact impact moments.

Sometimes on Youtube when the period key is used to advance one frame, it does not work properly and it will skip a frame or more. Usually the original video on your computer does not skip frames.

 

[FRV4]

Sometimes on Youtube when the period key is used to advance one frame, it does not work properly and it will skip a frame or more. Usually the original video on your computer does not skip frames.

I counted on the original video

 

[FatHead250]

are you lacking a mobile phone?
or tennis balls?
it takes you soooo long.

well no. its just in casual match play i rarely serve over 115, but in tournaments i warm myself up towards 125-130. Its no joke and i dont want to get myself injured trying to please some people on this forum. So the next time i will be practicing my serve or have time to record durign a tournament ill surely report

 

[nicklane1]

Kudos to you for putting yourself out there for everyone to see. Lots of respect that you can hit 110+ mph serves. It might not look like most pros' serves. But you can hit 40+ mph faster than probably 99% of all rec tennis players. That is quite an achievement and something to be very proud of.
Some replies here are just motivated by meanness or jealousy, but hopefully the others are real concerns for your health. Even though nobody here really knows if that technique is harmful or not.

 

[travlerajm]

A lot of the FRV4 serve power is generated from forward velocity of the body’s center of mass. The evidence for that is that the front foot lands 2 feet inside the court, and the second foot follows through further forward. This degree of inside the court launch is typical for an ATP pro, but rare for a rec hobbyist.

 

[FRV4]

Kudos to you for putting yourself out there for everyone to see. Lots of respect that you can hit 110+ mph serves. It might not look like most pros' serves. But you can hit 40+ mph faster than probably 99% of all rec tennis players. That is quite an achievement and something to be very proud of.
Some replies here are just motivated by meanness or jealousy, but hopefully the others are real concerns for your health. Even though nobody here really knows if that technique is harmful or not.

What gets on my nerves is I already stated in the OP the technical flaw I most need to work on. There will be no ghost waiter tray once I incorporate that. I say “ghost” because it’s not an actual waiter tray. But people are just pointing out flaws that are already about to get fixed if I hit the courts again. It just shows me they either didn’t read what I wrote or don’t actually have an idea of how a serve works.

 

[travlerajm]

What gets on my nerves is I already stated in the OP the technical flaw I most need to work on. There will be no ghost waiter tray once I incorporate that. I say “ghost” because it’s not an actual waiter tray. But people are just pointing out flaws that are already about to get fixed if I hit the courts again. It just shows me they either didn’t read what I wrote or don’t actually have an idea of how a serve works.

People have tendency to focus on what makes you a rec level server. But we already know you are not a pro. It’s more interesting for me to look at what makes the serve surprisingly effective. I look at your serve, and the first thing I notice is... hey, that’s some pretty unexpected pop. Forget the radar gun, I’m paying more notice to what the ball does. It reaches the fence on a flat serve at pretty nice height. The next thing I look at is the legs. And I notice that you start with the same closed stance as Sampras, and your feet land with similar foot positioning relative to the baseline as Sampras. The starting and ending positions of your feet are objective data points that directly affect power.

 

[yossarian]

You have a good serve. Certainly good enough and respectable for any rec level player as is. Go ahead and try your idea out if you think there is something to improve, but I’d bet that 95 percent of people here would kill for a serve like that

Don’t get caught up in the biomechanics of the serve. People learn best implicitly with an external focus of attention. Focus on the sound of the ball off the racquet or the height of the bounce on the fence. Trying to get your hips and shoulder tilt ironed out is fine, but please don’t get bogged down in the biomechanical mumbo jumbo

 

[FRV4]

You have a good serve. Certainly good enough and respectable for any rec level player as is. Go ahead and try your idea out if you think there is something to improve, but I’d bet that 95 percent of people here would kill for a serve like that

Don’t get caught up in the biomechanics of the serve. People learn best implicitly with an external focus of attention. Focus on the sound of the ball off the racquet or the height of the bounce on the fence. Trying to get your hips and shoulder tilt ironed out is fine, but please don’t get bogged down in the biomechanical mumbo jumbo

The hip and shoulder thing is a pretty big piece to the puzzle though. It changes the racket-arm angle to mirror the pros and will apart some topspin slice to the serve, making it more consistent. What I don’t know is if it will cause me to lose mph.

 

[Dan R]

This technique, for a flat serve, has two characteristics that I've seen before for other posters:
1) The racket face more faces the sky.
2) It uses internal shoulder rotation (ISR) - as seen by the elbow shadows rotating - to move the racket head. The racket face mostly closes as it moves forward from ISR. This differs from the high level serve, where ISR mostly produces a side-to-side racket face rotation around a more vertical axis. .

That technique probably gets good pace because the large and powerful muscles of ISR are being used. Since all of the pace of this technique is developed by simply closing the racket face as it moves forward, errors would probably tend to be in the high or low direction, in the net or long.

This technique will not be useable for a kick serve because there is no way to get the racket head to rise rapidly as it impacts the ball.

It is not a Waiter's Tray Error even if the racket face squarely faces the sky because the WTE does not use much ISR and the OP's serve does.

Signature of a high level serve (slice). The OP's serve shows differences between the two red arrows in this picture. The OP's racket face at a similar racket position to the lower red arrow, but more faces the sky than 'the edge facing the ball' as for this high level serve below. Toly composite picture of high speed video. This useful camera angle has the camera mostly looking along the path of the hand.

See frames of OP's racket moving to ball at 22 sec. (Does anyone have the technique of extracting a sequence of frames from videos, as pictures? To match frames approaching the ball as show above for the two red arrows.)

You can see the shadows at the elbow that indicate ISR.

The OP's technique has the arm tilted more to the side and the racket shaft more vertical at impact. The wrist does not move much, just holds its angle as the arm is rotated forward by ISR.

BigServeSoftHands had one serving technique that is similar. He said that he measured a serve of 131 MPH, I believe, using a his similar technique.

The OP should compare his videos to high level serves frame-by-frame. I'll post two videos here later.

I agree, I bet he not only has a hard time hitting a kick serve but a slice serve too. While the over all technique is very good, he's pronating to early and the racket isn't coming up on edge but is coming up with the face pointing to the sky. I suspect this will take some dedicated practice to fix, but he'd get a lot more power if he did and would be able to hit kick and slice serves too. Again the technique in general is really good.

 

[Demented]

I used to early pronate as well. The only way to fix it is to really work on slicing the ball a little bit with every first serve. That way you know if your doing it or not.

 

[Happi]

Here's a highlight reel of my last match... ignore the swing vision speed listed, that's the average speed not the initial speed. The slowest serve is about 104 and the fastest is around 112. Notice, I'm not exactly tall, only 5'9". If I was just trying to light a radar gun up, I might be able to squeeze out 115-19 now.

To me this looks like a classic WT serve, 115-119 is very impressive.

 

[Happi]

@FRV4 good serve man, interesting how video can be deceiving as your serve looks much faster than the ones of @Demented but according to measurement they are about equal. Hmm.......

 

[FRV4]

@FRV4 good serve man, interesting how video can be deceiving as your serve looks much faster than the ones of @Demented but according to measurement they are about equal. Hmm.......

maybe the angle of the video

 

[Demented]

yeah, I hang my camera on the top of the fence which causes the ball to look a bit slower. The courts I play on also have very deep areas between the baseline and fence, around 20 feet which can make the ball seem slower since you're a good bit behind. Even with the 20 feet, I can still make the ball impact 3-4 feet up the fence.

 

[Nostradamus]

This technique, for a flat serve, has two characteristics that I've seen before for other posters:
1) The racket face more faces the sky.
2) It uses internal shoulder rotation (ISR) - as seen by the elbow shadows rotating - to move the racket head. The racket face mostly closes as it moves forward from ISR. This differs from the high level serve, where ISR mostly produces a side-to-side racket face rotation around a more vertical axis.

That technique probably gets good pace because the large and powerful muscles of ISR are being used. Since all of the pace of this technique is developed by simply closing the racket face as it moves forward, errors would probably tend to be in the high or low direction, in the net or long.

This technique will not be useable for a kick serve because there is no way to get the racket head to rise rapidly as it impacts the ball.

It is not a Waiter's Tray Error even if the racket face squarely faces the sky because the WTE does not use much ISR and the OP's serve does.

Signature of a high level serve (slice). The OP's serve shows differences between the two red arrows in this picture. The OP's racket face at a similar racket position to the lower red arrow, but more faces the sky than 'the edge facing the ball' as for this high level serve below. Toly composite picture of high speed video. This useful camera angle has the camera mostly looking along the path of the hand.

See frames of OP's racket moving to ball at 22 sec. (Does anyone have the technique of extracting a sequence of frames from videos, as pictures? To match frames approaching the ball as show above for the two red arrows.)

You can see the shadows at the elbow that indicate ISR.

The OP's technique has the arm tilted more to the side and the racket shaft more vertical at impact. The wrist does not move much, just holds its angle as the arm is rotated forward by ISR.

BigServeSoftHands had one serving technique that is similar. He said that he measured a serve of 131 MPH, I believe, using a his similar technique.

The OP should compare his videos to high level serves frame-by-frame. I'll post two videos here later.

Why don't you compare this speed by using the Iphone app called Serve Speed. and see if the numbers match up. if they do, this radar is fairly accurate

 

[Demented]

All it takes is demonstrating your big gun once or twice right off the bat and then they'll backup a few feet and you can go to work with wide slice. If they creep up then you jam them hard with a heater. I might hit 10 serves in a match over 100 to make sure all my energy saving serves don't get crushed.

 

[MaxTennis]

are you lacking a mobile phone?
or tennis balls?
it takes you soooo long.

Even if he had a mobile phone, I'm not sure he would know how to use it

 

[socallefty]

All it takes is demonstrating your big gun once or twice right off the bat and then they'll backup a few feet and you can go to work with wide slice. If they creep up then you jam them hard with a heater. I might hit 10 serves in a match over 100 to make sure all my energy saving serves don't get crushed.

True if they take the bait. I never back up on 1st serves against a big server over the age of 30 because I know that is exactly what he wants me to do so that he can serve his wide slice or wide kicker. As a former cricket player with decent capacity to handle pace coming right at me, I’d rather take my chance to block back the flat, hard ones - I might stand slightly wide to have more spacing against the hard body serves. Most guys over the age of 30 don’t want to serve 100+ mph flat serves all match long and are just trying to set up their wide slice/kick - just stand wide near the intersection of the baseline and sideline and watch their 1st serve % and speed slowly go down.