Help on serve analysis

johnmccabe

Hall of Fame
Cartwheel:
How can I get more shoulder over shoulder motion? I read a lot of posts here. I get the concept, but when I look at my own video, I can't tell how much cartwheeling I have. Maybe I have zero? or I have it but it's not fast enough?

Contact:
When I look at the video frame by frame, I still can't see whether I'm making clean contact or not. My serve always has spin and I can't quite feel whether I hit the sweet spot or not. I don't even know how to hit a flat serve anymore.

Over-rotation:
do I still have over-rotation problem? I'm trying to tuck the arm. Freezing the video at contact point, I'm not facing the net. but not quite sure if I fix it or not.

Toss:
am I tossing high enough? I think I miss more frequently on relatively low toss. Should I intentionally toss more towards 12 o'clock?

Please comment!
 
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SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
Not sure exactly why it's happening but I can give you some possibilities. Perhaps a side view along with this back perspective might reveal more. I'm thinking your cartwheel is in the wrong plane (not angled enough -- it should be somewhat closer to the vertical plane for a shoulder-over-shoulder action). You need a steeper reverse tilt on your upward swing to contact.

Try driving upward (& over) with the right shoulder more. It looks like you're right elbow is getting ahead of your shoulder tilt -- that is the R elbow is getting way above the shoulder tilt line. The elbow is already high at a point where the shoulders have evened out (almost zero tilt).

Perhaps you need to pull your left arm down more. Tuck it into your gut as you make contact. This could help to get to the left shoulder down more to get the reverse tilt I mentioned above.

In your case, you appear to pull the left arm down to your chest and then it might be sweeping backward without ever coming down all the way to your gut. Not easy to see that with this back perspective.

In other news ... you may not be staying side on quite long enough -- your chest might be opening up to the net just a touch too soon. Not sure if your legs are fully extended at the bottom of your racket drop. They might still be slightly bent as you are starting your upward swing. Legs should be fully extended before you start your upward swing -- you should already be off the ground at that point (assuming that you intend to leave the ground at all).
 
You've got the physical basis for great serves.

Can you hit flat, topspin and slice serves?

Can you hit the locations? : "T", wide and body? to FH and BH sides?

Do you have a real second serve?

If you need help with any of the above find a really good pro who knows how to teach the mechanics to achieve the above.
 

ballmachineguy

Hall of Fame
I don’t see anything that wouldn’t be maybe just a bit better by tucking the left arm instead of letting it fly off to the left (video perspective). Your right arm can’t keep up the acceleration needed for a really high mph serve if your shoulders keeps rotating horizontally. Good stuff otherwise!
 

johnmccabe

Hall of Fame
Try driving upward (& over) with the right shoulder more. It looks like you're right elbow is getting ahead of your shoulder tilt -- that is the R elbow is getting way above the shoulder tilt line. The elbow is already high at a point where the shoulders have evened out (almost zero tilt).

Not sure if your legs are fully extended at the bottom of your racket drop. They might still be slightly bent as you are starting your upward swing. Legs should be fully extended before you start your upward swing -- you should already be off the ground at that point (assuming that you intend to leave the ground at all).

I have no doubt about your observations. I think I get everything else you mentioned, except for the elbow vs. shoulder tilt part....

Do you think my knee bent at trophy phase is too deep? One coach pointed that out to me earlier, but I wasn't sure about it and there were dozen things to correct at that time.
 

johnmccabe

Hall of Fame
I don’t see anything that wouldn’t be maybe just a bit better by tucking the left arm instead of letting it fly off to the left (video perspective). Your right arm can’t keep up the acceleration needed for a really high mph serve if your shoulders keeps rotating horizontally. Good stuff otherwise!
I'm committed to learn the shoulder move. may take a while though... I started learning serve with Fed style upper body coil. Do I need to ditch that and be like Zverev? Or my shoulder rotation problem has nothing to do with upper body coil?
 

johnmccabe

Hall of Fame
You've got the physical basis for great serves.

Can you hit flat, topspin and slice serves?

Can you hit the locations? : "T", wide and body? to FH and BH sides?

Do you have a real second serve?

If you need help with any of the above find a really good pro who knows how to teach the mechanics to achieve the above.
I'm self-taught with youtube mostly. was able to hit different serves very unreliably. The past couple of months, I've been trying to start from scratch, learn the fundamentals, and forget about spin or placement or mph. this is basically where I am now. Had a couple of private lessons recently but not sure this coach (a really good one) is the best fit for this type of problems.
 

ballmachineguy

Hall of Fame
I'm committed to learn the shoulder move. may take a while though... I started learning serve with Fed style upper body coil. Do I need to ditch that and be like Zverev? Or my shoulder rotation problem has nothing to do with upper body coil?
No. It is fine (the coil). It is the unwinding that you go a bit too far with. Watch some YouTube vids of pros and see what the left arm does after it drops. You won’t see many that fly behind the body as yours does. Try tucking it in to your stomach like you are taking a bow after a performance. If you ask me, your knee bend is pretty much at max. It is fine as it is, just don’t go any lower.
 

Dragy

Legend
Check the timing for leg drive and upward swing. You are supposed to be at the bottom of your drop here:
L1VOvLg.png


Model:
fed-serving-tip.bmp
 

Chas Tennis

G.O.A.T.
Gail Monfils high level serve with ISR. His ISR is so strong that the muscles of his arm lag behind the ISR that his bones do.

Take a similar close up video of your elbow area and observe your ISR prior to impact.

To understand the serve and ISR -
Forum Search: internal shoulder rotation Chas
 
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SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
I have no doubt about your observations. I think I get everything else you mentioned, except for the elbow vs. shoulder tilt part....
For reference (trophy phase):

FedPeteTrophyElbow.png



Racquet drop alignment:

1st_drop.jpg


Tennis-Player.jpg


Shoulder tilt & elbow during cartwheel:

At the trophy position, note the alignment of the (hitting) elbow with the shoulder tilt line. As the tilt changes, the dominant elbow, for the most part, continues to stay in this line (it might rise slightly above it in some cases).

At full drop (& start of upward swing), the shoulder tilt line is nearly horizontal -- the front shoulder has dropped while the back shoulder has risen as they move to the cartwheel action. The elbow is still in line.

As the tossing arm is pulled down further toward the belly, the front shoulder also drops more. The back shoulder continues to rise during the upward swing. Elbow still aligned (3rd image in each sequence).

In your case, your shoulder line is horizontal at full drop but your right elbow has started to rise above that line. As you continue with the upward swing, the elbow is still higher than the shoulder tilt (now a reverse tilt)

The cartwheel for elite servers is typically steep -- not quite vertical but much closer to vertical than to the horizontal plane. OTOH, your cartwheel rotation is much closer to the horizontal than it is to the vert.

Full sequence:

 

johnmccabe

Hall of Fame
Check the timing for leg drive and upward swing. You are supposed to be at the bottom of your drop here:
YES!! I suspected that I have a problem coordinating the timing of these different motions. There are several possibilities that I can think of. 1) Up swing too early, 2) initiation of leg drive too late, 3) timing of leg drive initiation is fine but not explosive enough to compensate for my deep knee bend. Which one you think is more likely to be the cause here?
 

Dragy

Legend
YES!! I suspected that I have a problem coordinating the timing of these different motions. There are several possibilities that I can think of. 1) Up swing too early, 2) initiation of leg drive too late, 3) timing of leg drive initiation is fine but not explosive enough to compensate for my deep knee bend. Which one you think is more likely to be the cause here?
Upswing I guess. You want to make shoulder relax between trophy pose and end of leg drive. Natural reaction may be to tighten everything up and make the swing as you start explosive leg motion. But you should learn to sequence it.

Maybe try to “noodle” your shoulder and arm (don’t care if you hit the ball well), and then to only take control over that spaghetti right into contact. Leave upswing to happen, whatever it ends up being :rolleyes:

If it helps, focus on straightening the arm by contact and meeting the ball. Delivering the arm to “elbow up” position is all torso’s duty. Power, RHS - absolutely disregard. Let it be whatever it is.
 

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
Do you think my knee bent at trophy phase is too deep? One coach pointed that out to me earlier, but I wasn't sure about it and there were dozen things to correct at that time.
Your knee flexion is a bit on the generous side. It might be fine for you or you might do with slightly less knee bend. The optimal amount of serve knee flexion for an individual has a lot to do with muscle type profile (fast twitch & slow twitch muscles) as well as other anatomical considerations. What is best for one player is not necessarily what is best for you.

It does seem that your leg drive might be slightly mis-timed. Leg extension (leg drive) should start as the racket begins its drop from the trophy phase. The leg should be fully extended at the bottom of the drop as you are about to start the upward swing. You should actually be off the ground a bit at this point. Can you get any more vertical (height) leap from your leg drive? Focus a bit on on driving upward (but both upward and forward)

If you can't get any more vertical on your jump, that is fine. Just make sure that you are timing the leg drive properly and that it is robust enough to help achieve a good racket drop (external shoulder rotation)
 

a12345

Professional
Fundamentally it looks good, but as others have said the sequencing is slightly off.

One thing youre doing is driving the legs and cartwheeling at the same time.

Instead you need to drive the legs up, then cartwheel when youre at the peak.

fed-serving-tip.bmp


1st_drop.jpg


You can see here in the above 2 pictures that theyve driven the legs up, but have not even started to cartwheel yet.

The sequence is to drive up first > then cartwheel at the peak.
 

Chas Tennis

G.O.A.T.
For reference (trophy phase):

FedPeteTrophyElbow.png



Racquet drop alignment:

1st_drop.jpg


Tennis-Player.jpg


Shoulder tilt & elbow during cartwheel:

At the trophy position, note the alignment of the (hitting) elbow with the shoulder tilt line. As the tilt changes, the dominant elbow, for the most part, continues to stay in this line (it might rise slightly above it in some cases).

At full drop (& start of upward swing), the shoulder tilt line is nearly horizontal -- the front shoulder has dropped while the back shoulder has risen as they move to the cartwheel action. The elbow is still in line.

As the tossing arm is pulled down further toward the belly, the front shoulder also drops more. The back shoulder continues to rise during the upward swing. Elbow still aligned (3rd image in each sequence).

In your case, your shoulder line is horizontal at full drop but your right elbow has started to rise above that line. As you continue with the upward swing, the elbow is still higher than the shoulder tilt (now a reverse tilt)

The cartwheel for elite servers is typically steep -- not quite vertical but much closer to vertical than to the horizontal plane. OTOH, your cartwheel rotation is much closer to the horizontal than it is to the vert.

Full sequence:


I look at the upper arm angle at impact. And consider that for the Ellenbecker recommendation. That is what I did for the OP.

What is seen in ATP videos. At impact Federer's upper arm is high sometimes, ~30 degrees up. That does not fit within my recollection of Ellenbecker's recommendation in the video, "Rotator Cuff Injury". Other ATP players may be higher, Opelka?, but most are say 10-20 degrees higher than the line between the two shoulders. At impact, almost none are in line, 0 degrees (90 degrees abduction up from the side of the body).

My interpretation of the Ellenbecker video was that the upper arm should be limited in how high it is throughout much of the service motion. But I use the angle at impact for a yes or no warning to the posters as for the OP.

For the issue of whether the upper arm is too high, do you always look at the Trophy Position upper arm angle, but never at impact?
 
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SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
Fundamentally it looks good, but as others have said the sequencing is slightly off.

One thing youre doing is driving the legs and cartwheeling at the same time.

Instead you need to drive the legs up, then cartwheel when youre at the peak.

fed-serving-tip.bmp


1st_drop.jpg


You can see here in the above 2 pictures that theyve driven the legs up, but have not even started to cartwheel yet.

The sequence is to drive up first > then cartwheel at the peak.
Good insight / perspective. Actually, it is a different way of looking at observations made by @Dragy and me. I was saying, in effect, that the leg drive was his timed and was late relative to the upward swing (and cartwheel action). But you are saying that the cartwheel action is too early relative to the leg drive. Both seem to be valid ways of looking at the same issue.

HHowever, I would not say that the cartwheel action after the leg drive (is complete). To my mind, there should actually be an overlap -- because, as I see it, the cartwheel action start during the drop phase. At the trophy, the front shoulder is higher than the back shoulder = shoulder tilt. But as the racket head is dropped from the trophy, the shoulders are leveling off --the back shoulder is moving up with relative to the front shoulder. This constitutes the 1st phase of the cartwheel.

But I do agree that the bulk of the cartwheel action should occur after full leg extension (aka leg drive)
 

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
...
For the issue of whether the upper arm is too high, do you always look at the Trophy Position upper arm angle, but never at impact?
I look at the whole service motion when I consider if it might potentially be overly stressful to the shoulder (&/or other body parts)
 

RVT

Rookie
I was looking at this and trying to figure out why it looked almost right...but not.

Then it hit me: your forearm pronation during the stage when your arm starts to move forward is almost non-existent. I think that's why you end up kinda "rushing through". While it looks like your opposite arm is moving too fast, I think it's a byproduct of the hand no elbow forearm rotating back. Some of the posted photos above do a good job of showing the difference.

The tricky thing is how to implement this. I think this comes naturally to those who grew up with ball sports, particularly baseball. One drill we used to do at one camp I worked at in college was to have kids just throw old rackets over the net. Not sure why, but it did help with the forward pronation and extension. I think there may be better ways to teach this, but not sure....
 

johnmccabe

Hall of Fame
Gail Monfils high level serve with ISR. His ISR is so strong that the muscles of his arm lag behind the ISR that his bones do.

Take a similar close up video of your elbow area and observe your ISR prior to impact.

To understand the serve and ISR -
Forum Search: internal shoulder rotation Chas
I find it hard to practice or improve ISR. Maybe there are some drills but I can't find good ones through quick search.
 

johnmccabe

Hall of Fame
I was looking at this and trying to figure out why it looked almost right...but not.

Then it hit me: your forearm pronation during the stage when your arm starts to move forward is almost non-existent. I think that's why you end up kinda "rushing through". While it looks like your opposite arm is moving too fast, I think it's a byproduct of the hand no elbow forearm rotating back. Some of the posted photos above do a good job of showing the difference.

The tricky thing is how to implement this. I think this comes naturally to those who grew up with ball sports, particularly baseball. One drill we used to do at one camp I worked at in college was to have kids just throw old rackets over the net. Not sure why, but it did help with the forward pronation and extension. I think there may be better ways to teach this, but not sure....
"it looked almost right...but not" lol this is so brutally true

Does the late pronation have anything to do with serve type? I decided to not worry about serve types and just learn the core mechanics first. End up with slice most of the time sometimes kick.

I'll have to try throwing old rackets... heard about it many times, maybe the reason I keep hearing about it is because there is no good alternative
 
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johnmccabe

Hall of Fame
Fundamentally it looks good, but as others have said the sequencing is slightly off.

One thing youre doing is driving the legs and cartwheeling at the same time.

Instead you need to drive the legs up, then cartwheel when youre at the peak.

fed-serving-tip.bmp


1st_drop.jpg


You can see here in the above 2 pictures that theyve driven the legs up, but have not even started to cartwheel yet.

The sequence is to drive up first > then cartwheel at the peak.

WOW, I think I finally understand my problem now. This is so helpful!! The question then is whether I can do anything about it8-B
 

johnmccabe

Hall of Fame
Can you get any more vertical (height) leap from your leg drive?
I can jump quickly with height when I play at the net to block incoming ball. But on my serve, my arm feels jammed at contact if I really jump. if I want my arm to feel fully extended at contact, my feet often barely get off ground. This leads me to wonder whether my toss is high enough. There is downside in tossing too high, so I'm slowly experimenting tossing a bit higher. Maybe this has nothing to do with tossing height. I just need to get more fluid and faster with the whole backswing and racquet drop? I have a hard time deciding whether I should change my toss to fix this issue.
 

ballmachineguy

Hall of Fame
johnmccabe, the reason you get little height on your jump is because you leave your feet to spin. If your focus is to spin, you get little height. If you jump for height you find it harder to spin. SystemicAnomaly is right, focus more on up. The “up” is what aids in power. It forces your arm into a better position to drive up to the ball powerfully. Spinning is not part of the serve. No spinning! Swinging at the ball gives a server all the rotation needed.
 

HeavyRacket97

New User
Not sure exactly why it's happening but I can give you some possibilities. Perhaps a side view along with this back perspective might reveal more. I'm thinking your cartwheel is in the wrong plane (not angled enough -- it should be somewhat closer to the vertical plane for a shoulder-over-shoulder action). You need a steeper reverse tilt on your upward swing to contact.

Try driving upward (& over) with the right shoulder more. It looks like you're right elbow is getting ahead of your shoulder tilt -- that is the R elbow is getting way above the shoulder tilt line. The elbow is already high at a point where the shoulders have evened out (almost zero tilt).

Perhaps you need to pull your left arm down more. Tuck it into your gut as you make contact. This could help to get to the left shoulder down more to get the reverse tilt I mentioned above.

In your case, you appear to pull the left arm down to your chest and then it might be sweeping backward without ever coming down all the way to your gut. Not easy to see that with this back perspective.

In other news ... you may not be staying side on quite long enough -- your chest might be opening up to the net just a touch too soon. Not sure if your legs are fully extended at the bottom of your racket drop. They might still be slightly bent as you are starting your upward swing. Legs should be fully extended before you start your upward swing -- you should already be off the ground at that point (assuming that you intend to leave the ground at all).

Just adding to what johnmccabe said, for beginners that don't have the leg strength to drive forwards and upwards with both legs like more advanced players it is very helpful to kick your right leg (right hander) outwards and back to initiate the shoulder tilt. Watch this video by J Jeff Salzenstein. It should be time stamped.

The leg kick will help you get the correct racket drop without you having to over-rotate or open too early, but your arm action looks mechanically fine. The leg kick should help you with both your spin and flat serve, just experiment with the direction your back leg kicks back.
 
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johnmccabe

Hall of Fame
johnmccabe, the reason you get little height on your jump is because you leave your feet to spin. If your focus is to spin, you get little height. If you jump for height you find it harder to spin. SystemicAnomaly is right, focus more on up. The “up” is what aids in power. It forces your arm into a better position to drive up to the ball powerfully. Spinning is not part of the serve. No spinning! Swinging at the ball gives a server all the rotation needed.
Okay. I should leave my toss alone for now?
 

HeavyRacket97

New User
Okay. I should leave my toss alone for now?
Assuming you add the back leg swing you would need to toss into the baseline, your toss looks like it would land on the baseline. You look like your going for a federer style serve so take a look at this video, federer's trunk is tilted pass the baseline and his contact point is maybe around a foot or two from the baseline.

Everything has to work together on the serve, if you add the back leg swing that Jeff Salzenstein mentioned, your toss would naturally have to be more forward because your trunk would tilt pass the baseline.

Also note: that when you toss into the base line you are able to stay side ways for longer and make contact for flat, kick, or twist serves with your left shoulder still in front of your right shoulder. The video is commentary by Raonic, note his trunk angle and back leg angle. You are missing those in your serve.
 
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johnmccabe

Hall of Fame
Check the timing for leg drive and upward swing. You are supposed to be at the bottom of your drop here:
L1VOvLg.png


Model:
fed-serving-tip.bmp
It's so hard for me to have upper chest facing sky instead of side fence... Is this doable for rec player without doing a lot yoga?
 

HeavyRacket97

New User
It's so hard for me to have upper chest facing sky instead of side fence... Is this doable for rec player without doing a lot yoga?
I wouldn't compare end range motions like the racket drop to professionals, because they have done it so many times that they have more elasticity quicker shortening and lengthening cycles on their motions. But your arm motion looks alright, I believe you just need to focus on ball toss (inside baseline), legs (swing the back leg backwards or outwards), and trunk tilt (like a side ab crunch like LeeD mentioned above).
If you don't have the ab strength or leg strength you can just swing the back leg towards the back and side to get a similar trunk tilt and it's a sideways trunk tilt, not a forward trunk tilt.
 

Chas Tennis

G.O.A.T.
Cartwheel:
How can I get more shoulder over shoulder motion? I read a lot of posts here. I get the concept, but when I look at my own video, I can't tell how much cartwheeling I have. Maybe I have zero? or I have it but it's not fast enough?

Contact:
When I look at the video frame by frame, I still can't see whether I'm making clean contact or not. My serve always has spin and I can't quite feel whether I hit the sweet spot or not. I don't even know how to hit a flat serve anymore.

Over-rotation:
do I still have over-rotation problem? I'm trying to tuck the arm. Freezing the video at contact point, I'm not facing the net. but not quite sure if I fix it or not.

Toss:
am I tossing high enough? I think I miss more frequently on relatively low toss. Should I intentionally toss more towards 12 o'clock?

Please comment!



Compare and take some time. List all differences. Most accurate to compare similar camera angles. Work back starting at impact. One brick at a time.......

The post below has instructions on how to compare serve Youtube videos one above the other, single frame in a forum post.
Compare your serve to high level serves, one above the other and single frame below. Single frame on Youtube by stopping and using the period & comma keys. Always select the video with alt key + left mouse click, otherwise the video starts playing. For most accuracy, select videos taken from the same camera angle. Start at impact and single frame back and forth. List all differences that you see and the time of the pro video to identify it later. You can go full screen and come back down and the video stays on the same frame.

To see internal shoulder rotation look only at the upper arm between the shoulder joint and elbow. It rotates very fast as in the first Djokovic serve in the compilation, see 0:59.

Agree with @golden chicken on the Waiter's Tray.

Search forum: waiter's tray internal shoulder rotation Chas

Hi Tech Tennis Waiter's Tray Error

Racket face to sky on left_________________Racket edge toward ball Nalbandian serve.
andre_serve.jpg


If the racket face faces the sky, it's not a high level serve and is most likely to be a Waiter's Tray technique. The majority of active tennis players have a WT technique.

You need to study this issue of technique. The pros use internal shoulder rotation - a defined joint motion. There is a safety issue on orienting the upper arm to the shoulder joint to reduce the risk impingement. This issue has been discussed in a video by Todd Ellenbecker.
Search: Ellenbecker "Rotator Cuff Injury" Whiteside Chas

I have written many posts on the subject of impingement, the serve, internal shoulder rotation, Waiter's Tray, Ellenbecker. Please search.
 
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johnmccabe

Hall of Fame
Gail Monfils high level serve with ISR. His ISR is so strong that the muscles of his arm lag behind the ISR that his bones do.

Take a similar close up video of your elbow area and observe your ISR prior to impact.

To understand the serve and ISR -
Forum Search: internal shoulder rotation Chas

ISR is achieved by contracting which muscles? the muscles lagging behind the ISR can't be the ones driving the ISR.
 

HeavyRacket97

New User
This might be one of the few videos on youtube where the instructor can actually explain how to do the ab crunch or cartwheel mechanics which lead up to contact, just incase you need a bit more detail about the mechanics.
 

RVT

Rookie
"it looked almost right...but not" lol this is so brutally true

Does the late pronation have anything to do with serve type? I decided to not worry about serve types and just learn the core mechanics first. End up with slice most of the time sometimes kick.

I'll have to try throwing old rackets... heard about it many times, maybe the reason I keep hearing about it is because there is no good alternative

pronation and serve type really aren't related. The swing should really be nearly identical (you typically want to stay turned just a bit longer on a kick serve, but that's more a function of the ball toss).

I had a hard time explaining what I (and I think a couple of others) are trying to express--but I think it comes down to "elbow and hand lag", for lack of a better way to put it. When your hitting shoulder starts to move forward, you elbow should be lagging behind. With some players it even slightly moves back at first as the shoulder moves forward. Then, the wrist lags behind even more as the elbow starts to come up. Eventually you should end up with your forearm parallel to the baseline. Some high level servers actually have the hand below the elbow. Look at Thiem and Medvedev in particular:

In your case, your elbow is actually coming ahead of your shoulder, vs. behind. SA mentioned this in his first post, but I think it got lost in the noise, and this stuff is tricky to convey over the internets. That issue right there is what's causing everything else to be out of sync, imo.

Thing is, I think it's a tricky thing to learn (hence throwing rackets, etc). You can't actively flex back in that direction. The real key is keeping the arm loose, and letting it whip back, so the hand drops as the elbow starts to move forward. In baseball, it's the difference between throwing the ball and pushing the ball. You're pushing the ball. And yeah, the racket toss may actually be helpful to you.
 

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
Just adding to what johnmccabe said, for beginners that don't have the leg strength to drive forwards and upwards with both legs like more advanced players it is very helpful to kick your right leg (right hander) outwards and back to initiate the shoulder tilt. Watch this video by J Jeff Salzenstein. It should be time stamped.

The leg kick will help you get the correct racket drop without you having to over-rotate or open too early, but your arm action looks mechanically fine. The leg kick should help you with both your spin and flat serve, just experiment with the direction your back leg kicks back.
@johnmccabe does not appear to be going for a kick serve in his OP video. He doesn't stay sideways (side on) or hit up on the ball in a manner that suggest a kick serve attempt. The OP serve is more of a garden-variety top spin-slice serve (with a strong slice brushing action). And where does John M say that he lacks leg strength? (Was that another thread of his?). From what I am seeing JM does not appear to be lacking leg strength.

Can't say that I'm a fan of this particular video from Jeff Salzy -- at least on the goofy side kick with the leg. I like 95% or more of the stuff from Jeff -- but not this. He is exaggerating the side motion of the right (dominant) leg waaay too much.

Yes, with kick serve implementations, you will sometimes see high level players swing the leg out to the side a bit before it kicks backward. But this is not what you are seeing with many rec players. With their exaggerated kick to the side, you will usually see the player a leaning to the left too much and then falling to the left for their follow-thru. Players should drive upward and then "fall" directly forward (toward the target area) rather than off to their left -- even for a kick serve
 

Chas Tennis

G.O.A.T.
ISR is achieved by contracting which muscles? the muscles lagging behind the ISR can't be the ones driving the ISR.

Google: internal shoulder rotation muscles

Google: internal shoulder rotation muscles picture

The lat and the pecs are the biggest muscles that do ISR.

Do internal shoulder rotation.

Bend your elbow and do forearm pronation.

Google: internal shoulder rotation Youtube

Google: how measure internal shoulder rotation Youtube

Do the same for all defined joint motions.
 
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SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
I can jump quickly with height when I play at the net to block incoming ball. But on my serve, my arm feels jammed at contact if I really jump. if I want my arm to feel fully extended at contact, my feet often barely get off ground. This leads me to wonder whether my toss is high enough. There is downside in tossing too high, so I'm slowly experimenting tossing a bit higher. Maybe this has nothing to do with tossing height. I just need to get more fluid and faster with the whole backswing and racquet drop? I have a hard time deciding whether I should change my toss to fix this issue.
Other than a more explosive leg drive, the advantage of getting higher off the ground is a higher contact point so that you can more easily access (more of) the service box.

But also important to note that letting the ball drop a bit more will facilitate more topspin for a topspin serve (including top-slice) or a kick serve.

Note that at contact the arm can either be fully extended or nearly fully extended (comfortably straight rather than hyperextended).

But this does not mean the arm needs to be straight up / vertical. Quite often the arm will be angled off a bit to the right while the racket is angled off to the left. This is a slightly lower contact then if the arm and racket were both extended vertically.

serve-contact-position.jpg
 

Dragy

Legend
It's so hard for me to have upper chest facing sky instead of side fence... Is this doable for rec player without doing a lot yoga?
It’s not top priority. Fed pic is likely a kick serve with toss quite a bit back over the head (11 o’clock). If he goes for flat serve, he’s not open to the sky that much:

CQRAHv0_d.webp


So I think you are ok. Focus more on timing. You know it’s good when it clicks for effortless power, efficient whip, etc.
 

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
It's so hard for me to have upper chest facing sky instead of side fence... Is this doable for rec player without doing a lot yoga?
No, it does not require a whole lotta yoga. A moderate arch in the back will do. Note that Roger has suffered from lower back issues since his youth, yet he manages enough of a an arch to get his chest to drive upward.

Doesn't necessarily need to be a substantial upward drive of the chest -- you might even try driving the front part of your hitting shoulder upward.
 
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