Kick Serve video

guedoguedo

Semi-Pro
Its taken me a few months to learn the motion and get consistent contact. I still shank one every once in awhile, but getting much better. Some guys on here were calling me a 3.0 and saying my serve was a liability , so i figured id upload a video...I am left handed and 4.0s and 4.5s have trouble keeping it in in the court.

http://lucky.phpwebhosting.com/~chkelly/kicknov12.wmv
 
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Its taken me a few months to learn the motion and get consistent contact. I still shank one every once in awhile, but getting much better. Some guys on here were calling me a 3.0 and saying my serve was a liability , so i figured id upload a video...I am left handed and 4.0s and 4.5s have trouble keeping it in in the court.

http://lucky.phpwebhosting.com/~chkelly/kicknov12.wmv


Beautiful!

I saw in your last video the kick you were getting on your serve and was very impressed. This one is even better. Your mechanics are oustanding.
 
The serve is nice, although the velocity is a little low.

What I'm really curious about is how you have such a high quality video was SUCH a low size. I'm interested in uploading my own videos to tw.com, but the filesizes are way too big. I have a sony minidv camera and 14 minutes of captured video turns out to be like 3gb. I can compress it down to about 160 with xvid, but the quality suffers a lot. Hopefully you know what I'm talking about and hopefully you can help me...and yes, I know, this is the wrong place to post this, but your video was just too perfect, I had to ask.
 
its a minidv camera transferred using windows movie maker. I saved it as the highest quality WMV file you can get, which i believe is 2mb/second. When you go to save and you get all the options, do "local playback 2mb" I believe it is.

In response to your comment, how does one get more pace on a kick serve?
 
JCO! question for youu...You can see when do the takeback, the strings are facing the net as i bring my arm up. I was looking at SAFIN serves, when he brings the racket up he turns his wrist so the strings are facing the side. Do you think this makes a difference? I remember you made a comment how during the racket drop my racket is in the wrong position...
 
Hey that quality is astounding! Gee I've never seen anything so clear and low size.
Hey maybe you could make another highlight video or even a whole match?? Would be great!
 
Its taken me a few months to learn the motion and get consistent contact. I still shank one every once in awhile, but getting much better. Some guys on here were calling me a 3.0 and saying my serve was a liability , so i figured id upload a video...I am left handed and 4.0s and 4.5s have trouble keeping it in in the court.

http://lucky.phpwebhosting.com/~chkelly/kicknov12.wmv

Nice serve. It is so obvious you are not a 3.0 player, but there are always a certain segments of posters on this board who like to cut people down. The funny thing is that most of the people I have seen posting people 2 levels below their actual level don't even probably play in actual USTA NTRP matches and are just making things up based on who knows what.
 
Nice kick serve. Mechanics are good and the action on the ball is good. Your ball toss is well disguised as well. Yes, I agree, 3.0s don't have kick serves like that...let alone kick serves at all. You could improve racquet head speed for more pace (then again, you look like you're not hitting full out so you may in fact have that racquet head speed when you're playing a match for example) but I think the next step would be aiming for spots on your kick serve rather than speed. I find that good players have kick serves with lots of action. Great players have kick serves with lots of action and can place the serve at will.
 
Your tossing arm needs a ton of work, as do most lefthanders, it needs to go much further back and stay there longer. That will create a much stronger body crunch set up. But apart from that, you have the makings of a thumper. But you won't ever get it till you understand the body crunch and what sets it all up. It starts with the right arm(in your case) being much, much further over your head.
 
What grip style do you use to hit the kick serves? Well that serve is certainly higher than 3.0 level, dunno about the rest of your strokes and game without more videos! =] From the looks of it, it doesn't seem like you're putting all that much power into the serve. It has a strong kick, but if you want it to be stronger, you gotta start putting more weight into that ball.

I still haven't gotten the kick serve down. I guess according to you guys i'm not even 3.0 hahhaha...
 
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Nice serve - I think you could do probably do with a bit more racquet head acceleration. But hey who am I to talk - i don't have the guts to stick my serve on here!

Well done!
 
JCO! question for youu...You can see when do the takeback, the strings are facing the net as i bring my arm up. I was looking at SAFIN serves, when he brings the racket up he turns his wrist so the strings are facing the side. Do you think this makes a difference? I remember you made a comment how during the racket drop my racket is in the wrong position...


Yes! It's called supination. It causes the racket to run along the side of your body. Check out this instruction:

http://www.hi-techtennis.com/serve/develop_kicker.php

If you could add the supination, this thing would be killer. It's already a great kick server.
 
A fully extended tossing arm will make your toss a bit more consistent.

You do decently well to keep your tossing arm up and really use your shoulders to generate speed, but if you'll go to about half-way through the video and go frame-by-frame you'll notice a few things, the first of which is something you can easily improve to effortlessly create more racquet head speed:

Compare these two:
kicknov_pinpoint.jpg

safin_pinpoint.jpg


Safin, in this second serve, has completely brought his feet together but his arm is still pointing up at the ball. You, however, have already started dropping your arm by the time you've brought your feet together and are starting to unwind. By the time you make contact with the ball, this dropping of your arm and early unwinding has caused you to lose a lot of power that you could have otherwise put in your shot.

My suggestion: make a conscience effort to keep that arm fully extended and pointing at the ball until you start your upward leg thrust. Then, as you're moving upward towards the ball, bring your right arm down and left arm up (like a pendulum) and you'll notice how much more power is translated as a result, and how effortlessly you'll be able to turn this racquet head speed into extra spin or speed (or both) in your serve.

If you feel as though you don't have enough time to go through this motion, which will probably happen because your toss looks relatively low, then try throwing it a bit higher. Even if it causes you to started hitting the ball as it falls, the extra time will allow you to setup and also the downward motion of the ball will automatically cause even more topspin to be added onto the ball due to an effect called shearing. Just my two cents though, give it a shot and see if it helps you a little :p
 
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A fully extended tossing arm will make your toss a bit more consistent.

You do decently well to keep your tossing arm up and really use your shoulders to generate speed, but if you'll go to about half-way through the video and go frame-by-frame you'll notice a few things, the first of which is something you can easily improve to effortlessly create more racquet head speed:

Compare these two:
kicknov_pinpoint.jpg

safin_pinpoint.jpg


Safin, in this second serve, has completely brought his feet together but his arm is still pointing up at the ball. You, however, have already started dropping your arm by the time you've brought your feet together and are starting to unwind. By the time you make contact with the ball, this dropping of your arm and early unwinding has caused you to lose a lot of power that you could have otherwise put in your shot.

My suggestion: make a conscience effort to keep that arm fully extended and pointing at the ball until you start your upward leg thrust. Then, as you're moving upward towards the ball, bring your right arm down and left arm up (like a pendulum) and you'll notice how much more power is translated as a result, and how effortlessly you'll be able to turn this racquet head speed into extra spin or speed (or both) in your serve.

If you feel as though you don't have enough time to go through this motion, which will probably happen because your toss looks relatively low, then try throwing it a bit higher. Even if it causes you to started hitting the ball as it falls, the extra time will allow you to setup and also the downward motion of the ball will automatically cause even more topspin to be added onto the ball due to an effect called shearing. Just my two cents though, give it a shot and see if it helps you a little :p

Sweet! Yes, keep that body coil intact longer by not dropping the tossing arm. Nice analysis.
 
guedoguedo, nice and smooth serve. It looks like you can swing faster (warming up in video?), time to increase to ludicrous speed ;)
 
I am happy to report after forcing myself to stretch my arm up high for about a week , my serve is improved. It was uncomfortble and threw off my timing initially, but after a couple of days it now feels natural. It is giving me more pace and spin. THanks for the tips
 
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