Help with learning how to serve properly?

A few months ago I decided to try learning how to serve properly (with a continental grip, etc.), but frustratingly no matter how many baskets of balls I hit or how many serve progression videos I try to watch, I still can't seem to get it right. The biggest issue for me seems to be opening up the racquet face too early and not swinging up on edge, causing me to lose a lot of power. I think I'm also having trouble with lifting my left arm up enough on the loss, as well as a bunch of other issues you can probably see:

Please let me know if you have any advice about how to improve my serve from here, I'd really appreciate it!
 

golden chicken

Hall of Fame
This is the video I learned the most from as a kid:


That said, I did not do everything exactly as presented. Rather, I took little tips and concepts as needed. I'm sure if you've watched other serve videos, you'll note the older aspects of this approach. But maybe it contains a nugget of knowledge that helps you.
 

mclee025

Rookie
The serve is a difficult stroke to get down. You're doing well with your progression and will probably need to build it one step at a time. For a great next step, below is a link to a video that will help you improve your form.


Currently, your form is similar to the "palm open" form the instructor talks about at the 1:45 mark. Do the suggested fix and you'll be able to edge the racquet at the ball and eventually lead you to find more power, spin, and control.
 
D

Deleted member 776614

Guest
Start practicing from the service line, with your racket already in 'trophy position.' Also, try it without moving your feet. This should help isolate what you're trying to work on, as well as the pronation, proper contact point, and body rotation.
 

PKorda

Professional
Your toss actually looks pretty good even though ideally your arm would go up higher not sure I'd worry about that too much for now. As others have stated the palm down is key I would focus on getting that right first before moving on to anything else.
 

Dragy

Legend
Hey props for posting the vid and striving to improve - that’s respected!

I’d suggest that you work on 2 things:
1. How is you throwing? Serving is very similar to proper throwing at acceleration phase, and then you only need to guide the racquet head into the ball.
2. Shift your perspective on what you are doing with your racquet: stop trying to hit the ball from behind with a forward slap. You need to swing up at the ball - as steeply as you can for now - and then guide racquet head to pivot into the ball around the hand. With upward, not forward swing in mind you’ll have much easier time keeping left arm high as well.

As an extra note, don’t try to hit the ball flat. Accept at least minor spin for all serves - that’s better for control and quality of the shot.
 

WildVolley

Legend
...

Please let me know if you have any advice about how to improve my serve from here, I'd really appreciate it!

I second the person who mentioned hitting from a trophy position.

You currently have your hitting arm elbow far too low at the loading/trophy position, which is sapping your ability to generate power and hit with relaxation. The rule of thumb is that your hitting arm elbow should be in-line with your shoulders at the power/trophy position.

I suggest finding that position without trying to serve. Bend your arm to 90 degrees at the elbow. Then lift your elbow to the height of your shoulder. It is fine if you like to keep your palm facing down at the same height as the elbow(more of a Roddick-style) or you lift the hand above the elbow (more of a Raonic-style). Often the elbow will be in line with the shoulders when seen from the front as you do this. It is fine if, as seen from the side, the elbow is forward of the shoulder line. As you load into the serve motion, you can pull the elbow back in line before you swing up at the ball with your hand. Jeff Salzenstein calls drawing the elbow back in such a manner as "elbowing the enemy."

One quick way to get a feel for the basic serve motion is to learn how to throw a football.
 

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
FedPeteTrophyElbow.png

A few months ago I decided to try learning how to serve properly (with a continental grip, etc.), but frustratingly no matter how many baskets of balls I hit or how many serve progression videos I try to watch, I still can't seem to get it right. The biggest issue for me seems to be opening up the racquet face too early and not swinging up on edge, causing me to lose a lot of power. I think I'm also having trouble with lifting my left arm up enough on the loss, as well as a bunch of other issues you can probably see:

Please let me know if you have any advice about how to improve my serve from here, I'd really appreciate it!
Kool username. Welcome to the zoo we call Talk Tennis.

Not easy to tell from the view you provided but your right elbow appears to drop too low for your trophy position. It should be in line with the shoulder tilt as shown in the image above. You do get a mild shoulder tilt, but the elbow seems to drop below that line -- considerably. This low elbow position can result in timing problems with the racket drop and it can also affect your ability to generate a higher racket head speed (RHS). This could mean less spin or less power on your serves.

A second issue with the right elbow is that it moves forward (to the R in the video perspective) as you are dropping the racket behind you. You should pull it back a bit more and keep it back so that you maintain a stretch in your right pectoral (and right shoulder). That stretch should not be released until later (during the upward swing). The forward elbow could contribute to the way you drop your racket -- it could be contributing to opening up the racket face for the dreaded WTE (waiter's trade error).

In addition to pulling the R elbow back more, you should also get your shoulders (upper torso, that is) to coil up a bit more for your trophy position. Your hips might be okay but you want your upper torso to twist (coil) a bit more than the hips.

You Left arm drops too early. (But you might actually tuck it about the right time as far as I can tell). In fact, your L hand never rises any higher than your release point. Again, refer to the images at the top of this post. Notice that the tossing arm has continued upward after releasing the ball and is nearly vertical. The vertical tossing arm will get your L shoulder higher to produce an improved shoulder tilt. The high L hand for the trophy phase should also yield a better spatial reference to the ball toss location. This superior reference should help you with your drop and swing timing. It could also help you locate the ball with respect to your body to help with swing path of your upper swing.

As mentioned above, you do exhibit a WTE on the drop. You do get it on edge a bit later in the drop phase and early part of your upper swing. But it is not on edge enough and it appears to open up too soon as you have speculated. I will provide some solutions to this and the other issues in my next, upcoming post
 

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
@WatermelonFelon

Are you familiar with the "salute" position? This R arm position is a similar to the trophy position but is actually a bit before the trophy position.

A couple of other posters have suggested forgetting about your right arm wind up and starting the arm and racket in the trophy position. I am suggesting a modification of that. Start with your elbow bent at 90°at the salute position (rather than at a conventional trophy position). Your R hand should palm down (and you should never have palm up during your service motion). The racket face should also be somewhat downward (facing your body) for the sleep position. This start should help to prevent the R elbow dropping too low as you move thru your trophy phase and drop.

From the salute position, you want to drop the racket with "comb the hair" motion. Both of these terms will be the demonstrated in the video below. "Comb the hair" should help to prevent WTE. Note that the elbow pretty much keeps the 90° bend during the drop.

For your upward swing, imagine that you were throwing an ax or a tomahawk upward at a steep angle (like 60° to 75° upward). Or imagine that you are cutting a branch directly above your head. This should help to keep the racket on edge a bit longer.

Late in your upward swing, your palm & racket face should be rotated somewhat to present the strings to the ball. (This rotation of the hand is the result of both forearm pronation and shoulder rotation). For a flat serve imagine that you are approaching the ball with the edge of your hand (or edge of your racket) but then, at the last split second, you high-five the ball. For a spin serve the rotation of the hand and racket face is quite a bit less so that you can brush across the ball rather than high five it.

 

ballmachineguy

Hall of Fame
I am not positive I am seeing it because of rear camera angle, but it looks possible………You will never have a great serve if your weight, specifically the lower body, is still shifting backwards after starting your toss. It would be like a basketball player throwing an “alley-pop” pass to a teammate that is currently moving away from the basket. The timing will frequently be off. Therefore, make sure your lower body has stopped rocking backward before tossing. All of the other great advice in this thread will be worthless without doing that.
 

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
@WatermelonFelon
I am not positive I am seeing it because of rear camera angle, but it looks possible………You will never have a great serve if your weight, specifically the lower body, is still shifting backwards after starting your toss. It would be like a basketball player throwing an “alley-pop” pass to a teammate that is currently moving away from the basket. The timing will frequently be off. Therefore, make sure your lower body has stopped rocking backward before tossing. All of the other great advice in this thread will be worthless without doing that.


Weight primarily on the back foot is okay when the tossing hand is moving downward. But once that arm starts moving upward, the weight should start to shift forward. In the video, it appears that your weight is still on your back foot when you release the ball.

At the ball release, your weight should already be at least 50/50, particularly for a platform stance. Or slightly forward of an even balance, especially for a pinpoint stance.

The other thing I noticed is that your ball toss & release appears to be rather quick and a bit jerky. And your release point is very low. It looks like you are throwing the ball into the air rather than lifting it into the air. This might be happening because you are still on your back foot.

A smooth lifting action (with a forward weight shift) would be preferable. The release point will likely be somewhere between your nose and the top of your head. Open your fingers, like an opening flower, to release the ball. Let the left hand continue upward to follow the ball after it has been released.

The toss should be something of an arc (a narrow parabola) rather than straight up and down. While many pro servers toss the ball a bit to the left, you might be better off lifting it so that your contact point is somewhere between your midline and your right shoulder.

sampras_serve3.gif


(Note that this GIF was lifted from the
TennisPlayer.net site some yrs ago)​
 

Friedman Whip

Professional
Well my take is fairly simple. I think you're doing most everything right. But I would suggest maybe moving your grip a little more toward a backhand grip and away from a eastern forehand grip. Maybe about 10 to 15 degrees. This should help with your correctly diagnosed opening the racquet face too much.

And I'd also suggest tossing the ball just about directly over your head. Now you are tossing it to your right and forward into the court. This allows you to hit, as you do, a nice slice serve down the T. Which is okay and a pretty good serve and especially if your opponent is left handed. But in reality you really want to hit 80-90% of your serves wide to a right handed player's backhand. Tossing the ball over your head allows you to hit more spin which will bring the ball down into the court over the higher part of the net.
 
Your ball "toss" is too high.

Toss arm needs to go up higher to keep the head up--for full range of motion left should should touch cheek--read the number on the ball. Start the toss arm lower touching inner-thigh between the legs.

Don't move your feet.
 
Here's a recent thread on serving, whether your toss is too high or too low it doesn't matter--it all applies :

 
A few months ago I decided to try learning how to serve properly (with a continental grip, etc.), but frustratingly no matter how many baskets of balls I hit or how many serve progression videos I try to watch, I still can't seem to get it right. The biggest issue for me seems to be opening up the racquet face too early and not swinging up on edge, causing me to lose a lot of power. I think I'm also having trouble with lifting my left arm up enough on the loss, as well as a bunch of other issues you can probably see:

Please let me know if you have any advice about how to improve my serve from here, I'd really appreciate it!
Have you ever injured your shoulder? The range of shoulder motion is fairly small.
 

Chas Tennis

G.O.A.T.
You have a Waiter's Tray technique. This is the technique used by probably more that 60% of active tennis players. That is not the technique used by high level servers.

Search: Waiter's Tray Serve Chas

internal shoulder rotation Chas

Ellenbecker rotator cuff injury impingement Chas


Find posts with pictures and videos illustrating the serve.

To single frame on Youtube use the period & comma keys. Single frame through the racket approach to the ball.

The serve lasts 1-2 seconds and it does not take much time to compare serve videos frame-by- frame. Compare your serve and observe & list differences. I've posted on what to look for. Ask questions about those differences.

Compare your serve to the pro in this post, one above the other & single frame. Always select the Youtube video using alt key + left mouse click, otherwise the video starts playing.

There is a safety issue for the high level serve where the upper arm should not be held at too high an angle to the shoulder joint. Ellenbecker has described the issue in a video "rotator cuff injury". ATP servers all do internal shoulder rotation (ISR) and are almost always examples of good form regarding the advice from Ellenbecker. Search Ellenbecker rotator cuff injury impingement Chas

Your video camera will use a much faster shutter speed if used in bright sunlight, there would be much less motion blur on your racket. Video in bright sunlight.
 
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SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
There are actually quite a few things with the serve motion that can be corrected or improved. There are a couple of minor things that I did not mention because I didn't want to overwhelm you with every little thing. There are a couple things I don't believe that anyone else has mentioned either.

Work first on the things that will be easiest to fix and those things that will have the greatest impact on improving your serve. Some of the finer details can come later.

First, fix the toss & weight shift. To simplify everything, start with your right arm and racket in a salute position (or a modified trophy position). Next, after the toss, move from your salute position to your trophy position and drop by executing the "comb the hair" motion..

Other refinements to your serve can come later -- after you fix the toss & weight shift and the flawed drop (and upward swing hand rotation).
 

golden chicken

Hall of Fame
You can also get extra reps in with your toss by sitting or kneeling on the floor at home and tossing a ball towards the ceiling.

I would do this during commercial breaks.

Pick a spot on the ceiling and aim for it and try to get the ball to just touch the ceiling. You can work on raising your tossing arm so that it points at the apex of the toss and then catch the ball with your tossing arm extended upwards.

This will help your toss consistency, both in location and height. It'll be more effective because you'll be just focusing on the toss and not worrying about the rest of the serve.
 

J D

Semi-Pro
You are doing a whole lot of things correctly. You just aren’t keeping your arm relaxed and letting it go through its natural motion.

The instructor in this video uses an effective technique to learn how to relax and get ISR and forearm pronation:

Once you have it down, you’ll get more power with less work and stress on the shoulder/wrist. Then make another video because there are still one or two small tweaks that will help you.
 

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
We might be wasting our time here guys

Hit and Run...


Seems that the OP, @WatermelonFelon, posted the OP some 3 days ago. Stuck around for a few hours for a couple of responses and then has never checked back or even logged in since then. So, apparently has not seen anything here after post #5. What a royal waste of our time!
 

PocketAces

New User
We might be wasting our time here guys

Hit and Run...


Seems that the OP, @WatermelonFelon, posted the OP some 3 days ago. Stuck around for a few hours for a couple of responses and then has never checked back or even logged in since then. So, apparently has not seen anything here after post #5. What a royal waste of our time!

If it makes you feel any better, I've been working on my serve and I found the advice helpful.
 

PKorda

Professional
We might be wasting our time here guys

Hit and Run...


Seems that the OP, @WatermelonFelon, posted the OP some 3 days ago. Stuck around for a few hours for a couple of responses and then has never checked back or even logged in since then. So, apparently has not seen anything here after post #5. What a royal waste of our time!

I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it, I think a lot of people benefit from the posts on here that aren't the OP.
 
@SystemicAnomaly So sorry, I didn't mean to leave you and everyone else hanging. I really appreciate all the time you guys spent replying to try to help me. I've been checking back without logging in, and I was busy with playing on Thursday and Friday as well as with work so I didn't get the chance to reply yet. I also ended up pulling something in my shoulder (near the bottom of my shoulder blade/scapula, so not a rotator cuff injury) on Thursday while trying to fix the waiter's tray so I wanted to take a break for a few days from serving baskets of balls. I guess I might also need to work on my shoulder flexibility to fix this issue like @BallChaser alluded to, although I've never seriously injured my shoulder before.

The other thing is that I feel like I understand how to serve correctly with swinging up on edge and have already seen most of these videos you guys sent, I just can't really execute it correctly when I go to hit a ball... I guess I will keep trying from the salute/trophy position in a few days once my shoulder is a bit better to try to build the muscle memory for this.

Overall thanks everyone for all the advice, I really appreciate it and I really didn't mean to make it seem like you were wasting your time. I totally didn't realize the issues with weight transfer (which I've never really paid attention to before) and how high/off my toss is (I didn't think it was that high lol @tennis tom ) which is really helpful.
 
All is forgiven, no worries. You have a pretty good serve, we're just trying to get you into the world-class like a Roscoe Tannner or Pete Sampras. Your toss is a bit high but not in the Steffi Graff rocket launch category. Now that you've been given advice by a committee and about fifty elements of the serve, seek out a pro with a reputation for knowing how to teach service technique to sort out all the elements into a smooth kinetic chain.
 

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
@SystemicAnomaly So sorry, I didn't mean to leave you and everyone else hanging. I really appreciate all the time you guys spent replying to try to help me. I've been checking back without logging in, and I was busy with playing on Thursday and Friday as well as with work so I didn't get the chance to reply yet. I also ended up pulling something in my shoulder (near the bottom of my shoulder blade/scapula, so not a rotator cuff injury) on Thursday while trying to fix the waiter's tray so I wanted to take a break for a few days from serving baskets of balls. I guess I might also need to work on my shoulder flexibility to fix this issue like @BallChaser alluded to, although I've never seriously injured my shoulder before.

The other thing is that I feel like I understand how to serve correctly with swinging up on edge and have already seen most of these videos you guys sent, I just can't really execute it correctly when I go to hit a ball... I guess I will keep trying from the salute/trophy position in a few days once my shoulder is a bit better to try to build the muscle memory for this.

Overall thanks everyone for all the advice, I really appreciate it and I really didn't mean to make it seem like you were wasting your time. I totally didn't realize the issues with weight transfer (which I've never really paid attention to before) and how high/off my toss is (I didn't think it was that high lol @tennis tom ) which is really helpful.
Glad to see you back. Sorry to hear about the shoulder issues. Overhead sports like badminton, tennis (serve & OH), volleyball spiking & baseball (pitching) can be extremely stressful to the shoulder area. After TE/GE & wrist strains, the shoulder is probably the most common injury area in tennis -- especially in rec players. After that, probably knees and hip.

A bit more knee bend at the trophy and a greater leg drive during the drop, should help to produce power &/or spin with less stress to the shoulder.

More relaxation, a better elbow position, shoulder tilt, more coiling of the upper torso and a proper weight transfer will probably also help to put less stress on the shoulder area.

Even the extended tossing arm for your trophy could later help to accelerate your right shoulder (and torso uncoil), with less stress to that shoulder, later in your motion.
 

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
@WatermelonFelon

Pros / cons for the higher toss. It worked quite well for the likes of Pete Sampras, Steffi Graf, Tomas Berdych, JM del Potro & Sam Groth. The greatest advantage with the high toss is that it produces more spin on the serve -- especially topspin.

Pete Sampras had a pretty fast serve but not the fastest. But it was considered one of the heaviest all of all time because of the massive amount of spin on both his 1st serve & 2nd serve. But that said, I would probably go no more than 60-75 cm above your expected contact point if you opt for a high toss.

The biggest problem with high tosses is that it makes swing timing quite a bit trickier -- more critical. For a low toss, at contact height or a little higher, the ball is barely moving and remains in your hitting zone for quite a while. (For a low toss you can hit the ball on the way up, at the stationary peak or as the ball just starts its decent). For a high toss, the ball is moving through your WOO (window of opportunity) very quickly. This is much easier to mistime -- especially since your tossing hand never rises above the release point and extend upward to provide a decent spatial reference.

A very high toss can also be trickier to place accurately. And, of course, windy conditions or the Sun can make a high toss much more problematic.
 
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Chas Tennis

G.O.A.T.
@SystemicAnomaly ........................ I also ended up pulling something in my shoulder (near the bottom of my shoulder blade/scapula, so not a rotator cuff injury) on Thursday while trying to fix the waiter's tray so I wanted to take a break for a few days from serving baskets of balls. I guess I might also need to work on my shoulder flexibility to fix this issue like @BallChaser alluded to, although I've never seriously injured my shoulder before.

The other thing is that I feel like I understand how to serve correctly with swinging up on edge and have already seen most of these videos you guys sent, I just can't really execute it correctly when I go to hit a ball... I guess I will keep trying from the salute/trophy position in a few days once my shoulder is a bit better to try to build the muscle memory for this.
.......................................................

You have an unknown injury, maybe near your scapula. Please stop playing tennis and especially experimenting with your serve. See a well qualified Dr.

A tendon tear, which sounds like one possibility from your pain location, can heal defectively in a very short time, 2-3 weeks is one estimate based on animal studies. This defective tendon healing is more likely and can become much worse, especially if the new injury is stressed while it is healing. Search - Tendinosis. Search - Tendinitis Understand the difference. Don't stress your injury and see a Dr.

See thread Tendon Injury Nuthouse. Tennis players tend to play with pain to see 'how they will do'. There are a great many older tennis players with chronic injuries, like tennis elbow (tendon). With a new injury, you have a brief window for best healing and it does not include stress on the injury.

Don't do stretches or exercises with a unknown injury. See a Dr.

Google: shoulder injury scapula pictures
See if you can locate your pain. For your information, but don't diagnose or treat yourself.

Research the time necessary to heal a new tendon injury as well as any other possible injury. It's not days, not weeks, it's longer. ......see a Dr.

If you have to use words to understand the service motion, I don't believe that it can work. See high speed videos.

"....to serve correctly with swinging up on edge..."
How does "internal shoulder rotation (ISR)" fit into your words?
 
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ChimpChimp

Semi-Pro
@WatermelonFelon

Are you familiar with the "salute" position? This R arm position is a similar to the trophy position but is actually a bit before the trophy position.

A couple of other posters have suggested forgetting about your right arm wind up and starting the arm and racket in the trophy position. I am suggesting a modification of that. Start with your elbow bent at 90°at the salute position (rather than at a conventional trophy position). Your R hand should palm down (and you should never have palm up during your service motion). The racket face should also be somewhat downward (facing your body) for the sleep position. This start should help to prevent the R elbow dropping too low as you move thru your trophy phase and drop.

American or British salute?
_80060794_harrysalute_get.jpg


They seemed facing the racquets to side fence, so British?
pShoenn.png
 

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
American or British salute?
_80060794_harrysalute_get.jpg


They seemed facing the racquets to side fence, so British...
Haha, NO.

Really thought that only Benny Hill saluted that way. I do not know how it developed that way but I'm thinking that the British salute might be something of an anomaly. Chinese, Russian and vast majority other salutes I've observed are very similar to the American salute.

The Indian Navy Force and Navy also employ a palm down salute. However the Indian Army uses a salute similar to the palm out British salute. This might have come about as a gesture to show that the weapon hand is empty.

However, the more common palm down salutes supposedly harkens back to the days of the knights -- where the knight would use the hand to lift visor to reveal their face and indicate that they were not "a hostile".
 
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SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
maxresdefault.jpg

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American or British salute?
_80060794_harrysalute_get.jpg


They seemed facing the racquets to side fence, so British?
pShoenn.png
The serve images you show are not palm down but nor are they are as extreme as the British salute that you show.

It is certainly possible to certainly possible to execute a high-level serve with the racket face orientation that you show -- almost vertical or only slightly closed. I have seen images & videos where Roger appeared to have such an orientation. Note that Roger often does have a mild WTE (slightly open racket face) during the early part of his drop. However, he reorients his racket during the drop and is "on edge" for most of his drop face and for a good part of the upper swing.

OTOH, I have also seen images of Roger where his racket face assumes more of an American salute position (as shown in 2nd image at the top of this post). This is much closer to the preferred palm down position that is encouraged to avoid the dreaded WTE.

A "palm down salute" with a "comb the hair" drop is much more likely to avoid a WTE than a palm out orientation during the trophy phase. As I mentioned above, the latter can be utilized for a proper serve. But it is also more likely that students will end up with a palm up orientation, during the drop, that is never properly resolved.
 
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