Help me get more action/kick/pace on serves?

[BirdWalkR]

My serve is just a point starter right now. I want it to be a weapon. Video has some flat serves and spin serves. My flat feels unnatural and inconsistent so i dont like to use it a lot. Can someone please help me to get some kick and action on my spin serve?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qMiuh_jZCE&feature=player_detailpage#t=71s

 

[LeeD]

Your swing has improved lots, but still jerky and hitting hand too high at prep, losing you tons of power, but worst, timing.
If you lower your hitting hand, you can complete your swing just as you hit the ball, and everything else after is basically not needed.
You really need to relax.
Looks like you're filling out nicely, so will soon pummell serves like TaylorDent.

 

[BirdWalkR]

Your swing has improved lots, but still jerky and hitting hand too high at prep, losing you tons of power, but worst, timing.
If you lower your hitting hand, you can complete your swing just as you hit the ball, and everything else after is basically not needed.
You really need to relax.
Looks like you're filling out nicely, so will soon pummell serves like TaylorDent.

Thanks! Worked hard at fixing my motion so hopefully soon I will by pummeling my serves but what do you mean "lower your hitting hand?" Are you reffering to my hand holding the racket or my tossing hand? and addressing the jerkiness maybe higher ball toss and not going through trophy posistion so quickly?

 

[Funbun]

Haha, I never know what LeeD is talking about, so let him translate it for you. No offense to LeeD, he's pretty cool.

It's already a good serve. Are you sure you are relaxing your right hand wrist at full extension, at the point of contact. If your wrist is relaxed at full extension, the upward direction of your arm will allow your wrist, and effectively, the racquet, to brush up the ball.

If you didn't understand that, think about having your ENTIRE arm as a strand of spaghetti, with the end of the spaghetti being a racquet. Now you throw your spaghetti arm up at the ball. It should be a natural throwing motion. Why does your spaghetti arm keep moving up over the ball after hitting the ball? Because it's loose!

Same thing, keep your wrist loose, and it'll naturally go up over the ball, and, because you're holding the racquet, will have the racquet naturally go up over the ball, too.

At this level, I don't think you should go for a flat serve, intentionally. If you get your serve down, you can bomb every serve, with spin, too. Whenever I hit flat serves, it's usually by accident. I just try to swing fast and hit hard every serve because I'm certain that the looseness of my wrist pronation will allow my racquet to naturally brush up the ball hard every time and have the topspin to bring it down into the court. After you get the looseness and relaxed wrist down, you should go for hard, spinny serves every time.

Also, you might want to straighten your tossing arm. You might get an inconsistent toss if otherwise. You're rushing the trophy pose because of this.

When in trophy pose, try to move your hip up and into the court, like a bow. You'll get a bit more power.

 

[LeeD]

I suspect OP plays for his high school team.
Your right hand should lie lower than your right shoulder during the trophy position. Since the torso is supposed to be tilted to face the sky, your right shoulder is lower than your left, naturally, and your hitting hand, the right, needs to be lower than the shoulder.
Consider throwing a ball far, NOT like a catcher. In every case, the body is tilted to face upwards, the throwing hand, your hitting hand, lower than the back shoulder.
Currently, your hitting hand is higher than your shoulder, about level with your head, which means in some of your serves, higher than even your ball toss shoulder!

 

[Limpinhitter]

My serve is just a point starter right now. I want it to be a weapon. Video has some flat serves and spin serves. My flat feels unnatural and inconsistent so i dont like to use it a lot. Can someone please help me to get some kick and action on my spin serve?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qMiuh_jZCE&feature=player_detailpage#t=71s

I know this is an old video and the dialogue is hard to hear. But, I would suggest that you listen closely to what Tilden says to the kid in this video about what the serve is based on, and try to appreciate the difference between what they are doing, and what you are doing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMyQkN2KoWs&feature=player_detailpage#t=422s

 

[Ballinbob]

More racket speed should help you a lot, you look a little stiff in those serves. Keep loose and accelerate

 

[fuzz nation]

Lots of pieces-parts to synchronize with a decent serve, so as you work on things, try not to alter more than one or maybe two components at a time.

The good news is that you're headed in the right direction... literally. Looking at where your feet end up, your momentum drives right at your target. That means that your getting good energy now, but you may be able to eventually add a little more upward drive through contact. Nothing drastic - you're already doing okay.

As far as the "smoothness" factor goes with your motion, I noticed that you really bury the racquet down in your palm when your set up at the baseline. That can make for too much tension and steering of the racquet that you don't need for your best serve - the idea there is that tension kills motion. I put more of my hand around the grip for my topspin/kick serves, but I have to be careful to not overdo it.

You might want to try some practice serves where you only grip your racquet with your middle and ring fingers along with your thumb. That minimal grip will let you lock in above the flare at the butt cap while still allowing your wrist a lot of freedom. Take a few full practice motions before even trying to hit a ball with this modified grip - yes, some players actually use it to maximize racquet speed with their serves. This might force you to use a more progressive move to the ball and weed out some of the jerkiness that you don't want.

That smoothness may also be helped with modifying not how you toss, but when you toss. If you can get your motion a little more loaded up and ready to release up through contact before tossing the ball, that can save you from any rush up to contact - it should feel much more smooth over the top that way. It can take a little work to alter exactly when you toss, but a later toss can save you from having to resort to an excessively high toss that can make for some other problems.

 

[gmatheis]

Does anyone else think his toss is a little low?
Seems like he isnt very extended when he actually hits the ball because of it.

 

[decades]

the motion seems a bit rushed and herky jerky to me. too "noisy" if that makes any sense. try to find the video of J C Ferrero serving and of course Roger. Focus on their balance and the economy of movement. more can go wrong in your delivery than theirs. Also your trophy position seems a bit collapsed to me, instead of one where the chest is stretched and pointed up at the sky. When you toss, which could be a little higher, make sure you extend the left side fully (arm follows the ball up). Slow things down.

 

[josofo]

1 obvious problem is your wrist is to forward. you need to bend it back. this wil allow you to put more spin on the ball and it was also allow you to hit the serve anywhere in the box.


so fix that.


after that you need to improve your balance. your back leg ends up to high.

 

[BirdWalkR]

Should I continue with platform or pinpoint?

the motion seems a bit rushed and herky jerky to me. too "noisy" if that makes any sense. try to find the video of J C Ferrero serving and of course Roger. Focus on their balance and the economy of movement. more can go wrong in your delivery than theirs. Also your trophy position seems a bit collapsed to me, instead of one where the chest is stretched and pointed up at the sky. When you toss, which could be a little higher, make sure you extend the left side fully (arm follows the ball up). Slow things down.

I think the reason I look so jerky is because of my pinoint stance. I feel like once i bring my feet together I'm leaning into the court and i need to hit the ball quickly. I used to use a platform stance for a little bit (maybe a few month?) but never really worked hard at learning the balance and proper upward momentum.

Would anyone here recommend me going back to the platform stance? I always liked using platform better.. just never really got extremley comfortable with it. Noted my much higher ball toss and much more relaxed look. Although I do see a few things i could correct. Heres an old vid from December with me using platform. Not going for much but you get the idea of the basic motion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLCXIV24Zaw&feature=player_detailpage#t=46s

 

[TennisCJC]

Your platform stance serve seems stronger than your pin point stance to me. It seems less rushed and a bit more balanced. You also seem to get bigger shoulder/hip rotation in platform - you are more back to net than in pin-point. Federer, McEnroe, and Sampras all have huge shoulder and hip rotation.

Work on balance in whichever you decide to use. You rear-end should be balanced over your heels before you push up and rotate into contact. Go to Youtube and find Federer (platform) and Ferrer (pin-point) serving and look how balanced they are before they start their forward swing. Stop the video in their trophy pose - balance will be perfect. Weight can be slightly forward in balanced position but they don't let their shoulders get ahead of their hips. In your pin point stance, it looks like you sometimes almost fall forward rather than push up and forward. Federer especially seems to keep his weight back until he explodes into ball.

As many said above, try keeping grip, wrist, arm shoulder relaxed. Keep pace of motion moderately slow until you start push up and into contact. Then let it accelerate quickly and naturally into contact.

2 drills: 1. as stated by someone above, try serving with fingers hanging off the butt. Don't try to kill it at first as you may lose your racket until you get the feel. I hit a few with my pinky hanging off when I hit buckets. Also, putting the racket into your fingers more with it barely touching your palm can help get the feel of a relaxed grip. 2. try a slowly accelerating motion where you start the upward motion with the racket edge approaching the ball. Then you rotate to open the strings to the ball. I will probably get crucified for suggesting you try to serve slowly but you can get a fair amount of power just by approaching the contact zone on edge (racket edge pointing at ball) and then opening (pronating) thru contact. If you do this drill slowly to get the mechanics of approaching on edge and then rolling/snapping to open the strings to the ball; then you can try speeding it up after you get the feel. I think slow acceleration on edge and then roll/snap up and thru for this drill. Racket is on edge to contact when it is above head - roll/snap/pronation happens late.

Good luck - you have a very good start.