My serve looks good, but one thing's missing: Racquet drop

T

torpantennis

Legend
So I've looked my recent serve videos, and it looks surprisingly ok for my lowish level. The chest is pointing somewhat to the sky at the trophy position. The shoulders turn almost a full 180deg from trophy position to the follow through. The shoulder clearly goes to ESR, and then ISR fires nicely, and the pronation is more or less like it should. The racquet even makes a small loop.

The only problem: Racquet and forearm seem to move as a unison, and the racquet doesn't drop any more than my limited ESR allows the forearm to drop. The butt of the racquet is never pointing into the ball. Currently I can only serve 80+mph. I think if I could get the racquet to drop like it should, a 100+mph serve could be attainable.

Any ideas how to "figure out" the racquet drop? Any good drills to help my body and mind find how it feels when the racquet drops to the "slot"?
 
Try loosening your grip, mainly using just your thumb, forefinger, and middle finger, the other's loose and even off the racket.
This gives you deeper racket drop, so the racket get's pointed straight down at the ground behind you, during the swing phase.
Unfortunately, 100 mph, while nothing great, is somewhat hard for any 4.0 to achieve. Akin to throwing a football 50 yards, a lot of people can't seem to be able to do it.
Of the 50 or so 4.0's I've played against, maybe only 5 can hit 100, and four of them choose to just spin the ball in with twists, tops, top/slices, and pure slices.
I do know several 5.0's who can hit over 130, but they are 6'4+", trained and coached, young and strong, and take their tennis seriously.
 
With my right hand, and it's hit serves a TOTAL of maybe 150 times EVER in 35 years of windsurfing, IF I get a first flat serve IN, it bounces around 20" high at the backwall.
80mph is not very good.
 
Of course it's not good, but good racquet drop should add at least 10-15mph.

And remember, these serves are top/slices, the only serve I use.
 
If you can hit top/slices at 100 mph, it means you can hit flat serves up to 120 or even more, depending on how much spin you use on your top/slices.
Ain't happening anytime soon.
Roddick can hit 150's flat. His fast spin serves maybe 120, and his second serves around 95, when he's ON.
 
There's a video from the Feel Tennis guy on improving racquet drop. Check it out, it's not bad. I suffered (and often still suffer) from the same issue. For me, it's mentally fearing that I have to rush the motion to make contact with the ball. I started tossing just a big higher and it's helped. Now, each time I hit a serve I try to feel the elbow pointing to the sky during the drop. Coordinating the slightly longer motion (due to the bigger drop) with hitting the ball takes some adjustment.

I think it's even more important on topspin serves where the distance from the drop to contact is where you want super-high acceleration of the racquet head within a very short amount of time. When I get a really good drop, man my kick serve drops like it's falling off a cliff! (Rare, but it happens occasionally.)
 
i think my only error is that for some reason, I've ingrained this habit of enforcing a pronation->supination->pronation cycle, from trophy pose->start of shoulder rotation->ball contact. So what I think I should get rid of is that early forearm pronation at trophy pose. It's exactly that pronation which causes the racquet to NOT point downwards at the back position from where it's pulled upwards.

I'll try a neutral (or even slightly supinated) trophy position, and check from the video whether the racquet then drops or not. I feel like I'm now very close to finding the correct serving motion!
 
An exaggerated racquet drop, IMO, is the hardest element of the serve to master. You rarely see rec players with this.
 
mbm0912 said:
An exaggerated racquet drop, IMO, is the hardest element of the serve to master. You rarely see rec players with this.
Click to expand...

Imagine a pro player, in a good racquet drop position. Then rotate his wrist towards pronation, and BOOM, the tip of the racquet is not anymore pointing towards ground. The racquet is actually more or less parallel to the ground with the pronated wrist. I think this is my problem.
 
Try these:

1. Put 2 tennis balls in the toe of a tube sock and take shadow serves holding the end of the sock away from the toe. Try to go through the entire motion in a smooth continuous swing that keeps the balls extended. The balls should drop behind your back.
2. Start in the drop position with butt pointing up. Toss and hit.
3. After 2, try starting in trophy position. Toss and hit.
4. Figure 8 serves. Holding ball and racket make figure 8 motions with your arms where you go through a shadow stroke service motion and continue into the next shadow stroke service motion. The motions are continuous and your hands make a figure 8 if you keep it going. Keep arms/hands loose like speghetti noodles. Now, do 3 loops with smooth continuous loose motions - shadow stroke the first 2 loops and toss and hit the 3 loop. The goal is that a smooth loose motion will help you with the drop.

The Feel Tennis site someone metioned above is also very good.
 
Another visualization you can use.

Stop at trophy pose - the racket tip will be pointing to sky or toward side fence a bit. Think of arm as a noodle. Now rotate core/shoulders. Let the back shoulder pull the noodle hitting arm. Think of pulling the noodle forward and UP toward contact point. Your arm should loop and drop naturally if you just let it go.
 
torpantennis said:
Imagine a pro player, in a good racquet drop position. Then rotate his wrist towards pronation, and BOOM, the tip of the racquet is not anymore pointing towards ground. The racquet is actually more or less parallel to the ground with the pronated wrist. I think this is my problem.
Click to expand...

Describing complex 3D athletic motions with words leads to misunderstandings. Can you point out the issues in videos or frames from your videos?

To post a frame from a video on Tennis Talk:

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Usually a double 'http://' will be in the address - delete one http:// or the link will not work.

(You can also click on most any web pictures and do 'copy image location' and paste those also, if allowed.
 
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TennisCJC said:
Another visualization you can use.

Stop at trophy pose - the racket tip will be pointing to sky or toward side fence a bit. Think of arm as a noodle. Now rotate core/shoulders. Let the back shoulder pull the noodle hitting arm. Think of pulling the noodle forward and UP toward contact point. Your arm should loop and drop naturally if you just let it go.
Click to expand...

I feel like my arm is a noodle, but the racquet is not. So my guess is that I limit the wrist/forearm from rotating, i.e going to the supinated position at the racquet drop.

I could make a gif out of some vids. But beware, the lighting conditions are poor indoors, and the vids are taken with a phone so the motion blur is bad! Anybody know a good free program that can make gifs out of mp4 vids? I'd also like to crop the frames a bit...
 
torpantennis said:
i think my only error is that for some reason, I've ingrained this habit of enforcing a pronation->supination->pronation cycle, from trophy pose->start of shoulder rotation->ball contact. So what I think I should get rid of is that early forearm pronation at trophy pose. It's exactly that pronation which causes the racquet to NOT point downwards at the back position from where it's pulled upwards.

I'll try a neutral (or even slightly supinated) trophy position, and check from the video whether the racquet then drops or not. I feel like I'm now very close to finding the correct serving motion!
Click to expand...

I think this is exactly the problem. If I understand you correctly, you have a decent motion except for getting the butt of the racquet pointing up at full drop.

My suggestion would be to serve a few balls using an abbreviated motion. Start with your desired contact point, ie arm extended, body rotated, serving shoulder high and racque angled to your forearm. From there, move your arm back just a few inches and drop the tip of the racquet, ie butt pointing up, by letting your wrist go into full radial deviation and extension. You can flex your elbow slightly. Watch yourself in a mirror. You will see that you can not really force the racquet into full drop but if you totally relax your hand and wrist, you will get it there.

Serve some balls from that position. You will be surprised at how hard you can hit them with no swing.

Progress to hitting from a full drop, ie elbow flexed and shoulder in ER, position.

Once you get the feel of those positions, it should be easy to get there from trophy.
 
LOL, yesterday I got a better (more revealing) video of my serve. Sure, the elements are there, but it's not clean at all. All sorts of funky stuff happening, like wrist extension into a "trophy" pose, racquet doing a strange backloop around the forearm etc. I should definitely clean up the serve! Lack of drop is NOT the only problem. :)

I'll see if I can make a gif when I have time. Then I hope to get some good ideas of where I should start the clean up.
 
There are various factors in achieving a steep racket drop (arching the chest, bending/unbending the knees).

One critical factor in is inherent shoulder flexibility. I suspect the average player does not have the external shoulder flexibility of typical pro players?.

Systemic Anomaly has previously suggested: Instead of flexing the elbow at 90 degrees at trophy (as pros do) , flex at 45 degrees, to achieve a steeper drop. You can try that. But I am not quite clear why 45 degrees would result in a better drop?...

Another suggestion FYB has is to go out in a field and throw an old racket straight up into the air.
 
So here's my strange funky service motion, with the initial wrist extension and the strange loop. On some days I tend to forget to preload the hips, and this day seems to be one of them. Definitely not as nice as the previous video I checked. That motion definitely needs a lot of clean up. Where would you start?

one_serve.gif
 
torpantennis said:
So here's my strange funky service motion, with the initial wrist extension and the strange loop. On some days I tend to forget to preload the hips, and this day seems to be one of them. Definitely not as nice as the previous video I checked. That motion definitely needs a lot of clean up. Where would you start?[/IMG]
Click to expand...

Seems to me the biggest error is the weird thing you're doing at the start of the drop. I've never seen anyone turn his wrist like that while serving.:confused:

Instead, keep the hitting side of the strings facing forward as you go into the drop rather than torquing around so that the racket faces at the back fence. Keep the wrist neutral and in-line with the forearm. Stop that extreme pronation when the racket is raised to trophy. Just allow it to stay neutral and try to go into the drop.
 
WildVolley said:
Seems to me the biggest error is the weird thing you're doing at the start of the drop. I've never seen anyone turn his wrist like that while serving.:confused:

Instead, keep the hitting side of the strings facing forward as you go into the drop rather than torquing around so that the racket faces at the back fence. Keep the wrist neutral and in-line with the forearm. Stop that extreme pronation when the racket is raised to trophy. Just allow it to stay neutral and try to go into the drop.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't know where I've got that habit from. My coach thought that I switched to a FH grip. :lol:

It's a bit unclear to see from that funky motion how the pronation/supination goes. Do you have any clue what I'm doing? Do you think there's the unnecessary pronation before the drop, that shouldn't be there?
 
torpantennis said:
It's a bit unclear to see from that funky motion how the pronation/supination goes. Do you have any clue what I'm doing? Do you think there's the unnecessary pronation before the drop, that shouldn't be there?
Click to expand...

I don't totally understand the question, but you're pronating hard as you lift your elbow and forearm going into trophy. At that point in the swing you shouldn't be pronating at all. Do not pronate!

The pronation should occur just before contact. The supination prior to contact should mostly be passive, imo, due to the racket drop. You need to relax the forearm muscles and throw the racket. Pronating hard before the drop is putting your wrist and hand in a weak position and not allowing the racket to drop.
 
WildVolley said:
I don't totally understand the question, but you're pronating hard as you lift your elbow and forearm going into trophy. At that point in the swing you shouldn't be pronating at all. Do not pronate!

The pronation should occur just before contact. The supination prior to contact should mostly be passive, imo, due to the racket drop. You need to relax the forearm muscles and throw the racket. Pronating hard before the drop is putting your wrist and hand in a weak position and not allowing the racket to drop.
Click to expand...

So just to have idea, where should my palm point, in relation to my shoulder line, when I've lifted the racquet to the trophy position? Towards the two shoulders?
 
torpantennis said:
So just to have idea, where should my palm point, in relation to my shoulder line, when I've lifted the racquet to the trophy position? Towards the two shoulders?
Click to expand...

No.

The palm should basically be close to in-line with the shoulders pointed at the side fence or in the direction the chest is pointing (this will change, it should probably be slightly at the ground in the forward direction depending on your serve style).

Look at this video of Federer serving at 7 and 8 seconds. The palm is basically in line with the shoulders and facing the way his chest is pointing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBkFgS3e4QY

My trophy looks about like that, but I have a more abbreviated motion than Federer, so my palm is perhaps a little more pointed at the ground and a little more pointed forward.
 
So here's Federer's trophy position. Seems like his racquet face (and the palm) are pointing slightly more forward than his chest. So a slight supination at trophy position it seems. Is this correct?

roger-federer-photo-2.JPG
 
torpantennis said:
So here's Federer's trophy position. Seems like his racquet face (and the palm) are pointing slightly more forward than his chest. So a slight supination at trophy position it seems. Is this correct?

federertrophy.jpg
Click to expand...

That picture looks fine. If you can get close to that, you'll have a large improvement.

You shouldn't be thinking about pronation or supination at all during trophy. Try to think "neutral."
 
Forget the feet, and even the trophy postion. Some players do pronate at trophy position and yet still achieve a good racquet drop by adjusting their wrist position before the drop.

Instead, focus on this: At the racquet drop, the hitting face of the racquet should roughly face toward the opponent (asssuming you have the conti grip):

Roddick.Federer.serve.1.jpg


It's a big adjustment from what you're doing. If you manage to make your drop look like this, you should be on the right path.
 
Rubens said:
Forget the feet, and even the trophy postion. Some players do pronate at trophy position and yet still achieve a good racquet drop by adjusting their wrist position before the drop.

Instead, focus on this: At the racquet drop, the hitting face of the racquet should roughly face toward the opponent (asssuming you have the conti grip):

Roddick.Federer.serve.1.jpg


It's a big adjustment from what you're doing. If you manage to make your drop look like this, you should be on the right path.
Click to expand...

But now think of pronating their wrist/forearm at that racquet drop position. What will happen is that the racquet face will point to the sky (waiter's tray), exactly what happens with my serve. So if I just avoid that early pronation at trophy position, the racquet should naturally drop to that position.
 
torpantennis said:
But now think of pronating their wrist/forearm at that racquet drop position. What will happen is that the racquet face will point to the sky (waiter's tray), exactly what happens with my serve. So if I just avoid that early pronation at trophy position, the racquet should naturally drop to that position.
Click to expand...

As long as you aim to achieve that racquet drop position.

To break your bad habit, you could even actively supinate for the drop. Sometimes it's good to exaggerate a move to acquire it.
 
Rubens said:
As long as you aim to achieve that racquet drop position.

To break your bad habit, you could even actively supinate for the drop. Sometimes it's good to exaggerate a move to acquire it.
Click to expand...

Exactly! Of course staying loose and relaxed is the name of the game in the long run. But I think I'll even try a slight supination at trophy position, to make sure that I get the racquet to drop, and know how it feels when that happens.

It's good that I've found ways for such a great video angle! All previous videos have been much less revealing...:oops:
 
torpantennis said:
So here's my strange funky service motion, with the initial wrist extension and the strange loop. On some days I tend to forget to preload the hips, and this day seems to be one of them. Definitely not as nice as the previous video I checked. That motion definitely needs a lot of clean up. Where would you start?

one_serve.gif
Click to expand...

It looks as if your grip and wrist orientation forces the wrist to do ulna deviation (bend toward the little finger) where normally radial deviation coupled with wrist extension would allow the wrist to move freely and give you a racket drop. That UD bend is limited and stressful. That is probably why the racket never gets parallel to your back.

Stop the frame with the racket at Big L (below) to check for a Waiter's Tray orientation although that serve is not the usual WT.

Edge-on to ball at inverted Big L position.
http://www.hi-techtennis.com/serve/nalbandian_l.php

Leading to impact, there is no angle between the forearm and racket to develop racket head speed from internal shoulder rotation. Probably any ISR or pronation is late relative to impact.

1) Pick a good slow motion video of a high level serve and compare to yours. List all the variations mainly early in the motion.
Raonic Serve-
https://vimeo.com/63688133

2) Study what a high level serve based on ISR is. Base your conclusions on what makes sense when you look at high speed videos and not on word descriptions or questionable instruction only acted out in slow motion demos.

It might be helpful to list the ideas and words that you have been using to develop that serve in order to identify where that motion may have come from.

For many posts with serve checkpoints from certain camera angles -
Search: camera behind Chas
 
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Can you drop the racquet without the ball? Do you? Most people can quite easily - so the drill is you do a couple of air swings and then toss the ball and try to hit it just like you do with the air swings. Jeff Salzenstein promotes this drill.

I'd exercise caution (especially if you can't do this drill) with this because you can hurt your serve trying to force a racquet drop. One very common serve problem is 'high elbow' its related to the old 'backscratch position' idea. You can achive 'racquet drop by going into this position - and you will end up getting less power on your serve - not more. You ruin your power position..
 
So I played a practice match, and I tried getting rid of that pronation at trophy pose. It felt like I got no problem doing it. Also it FELT like racquet were dropping more. I cannot know for sure since I didn't have camera. But on some first serves I definitely got a bit more power than what I'm typically having. Also, it felt like easier to stay relaxed without the early pronation. That pronation tended to stiffen the arm, at least in the early parts of the swing.

Actually, it's a very small change in the motion of the body, but one that changes the motion of the racquet a lot. This can well prove very fruitful! Looking forward to take the next vid.
 
Keep your palm down. That should fix it. Look up Jeff Salzenstein - elbow the enemy. Very good video to fix your issues there.
 
Power Player said:
Keep your palm down. That should fix it. Look up Jeff Salzenstein - elbow the enemy. Very good video to fix your issues there.
Click to expand...

Do you mean palm FACING down? Or palm down in relation to some other body part?

Yeah, my palm is facing towards the sky at the trophy position (due to the early pronation) and that's the biggest error. Thinking of avoiding the palm facing the sky is indeed a simple clue. That was exactly what I thought when I tried to get rid of that early pronation yesterday. No need to overcomplicate things, just K.I.S.S. stay relaxed and swing away.

That elbow hint by Salzenstein is actually something I've done already. I think of it like "draw the elbow to back pocket". What is my "error" though is that the elbow is tucked in when I start lifting the racquet, so there's a danger of not always remembering to put elbow to the back pocket. I think I should rather lift the racquet towards the trophy by "first lift the elbow to sky, and then put it to the back pocket"?

EDIT: Now that I watch it more carefully, the palm is facing to the back fence at the trophy. :) But the point is that I should avoid that unnecessary early wrist extension and pronation. A simple fix...
 
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Two main things OP needs to change.

1) Stop unnecessary motions (pronation) at trophy.

2) Don't fall that much sideways when you hit the ball. Try to keep your upper body more upright. Good posture facilitates good racket drop.
 
torpantennis said:
Do you mean palm FACING down? Or palm down in relation to some other body part?

Yeah, my palm is facing towards the sky at the trophy position (due to the early pronation) and that's the biggest error. Thinking of avoiding the palm facing the sky is indeed a simple clue. That was exactly what I thought when I tried to get rid of that early pronation yesterday. No need to overcomplicate things, just K.I.S.S. stay relaxed and swing away.

That elbow hint by Salzenstein is actually something I've done already. I think of it like "draw the elbow to back pocket". What is my "error" though is that the elbow is tucked in when I start lifting the racquet, so there's a danger of not always remembering to put elbow to the back pocket. I think I should rather lift the racquet towards the trophy by "first lift the elbow to sky, and then put it to the back pocket"?

EDIT: Now that I watch it more carefully, the palm is facing to the back fence at the trophy. :) But the point is that I should avoid that unnecessary early wrist extension and pronation. A simple fix...
Click to expand...

You're making this way too difficult. Set up in a picture perfect trophy position, however you define that, and serve from there. You can serve just as hard without a windup. In your case, you will serve better.

Once you get the trophy to drop to impact sequence ingrained, then you can start tinkering with your windup.
 
About the palm not facing the sky. Actually, many good servers do have their palm facing up at one point during their motion, but it happens very transiently, just before the drop, and then they rotate their palm away from facing up so that they can achieve the drop.

However, it is entirely possible to do the whole serve motion without ever having the palm face up. Rafter is an example of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsY5uRqTOEI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Now I realize that he may be an extreme case, but maybe it can help you to see the complete opposite of what you're doing. Also, it's a pretty good serve:).
 
torpantennis said:
Do you mean palm FACING down? Or palm down in relation to some other body part?

Yeah, my palm is facing towards the sky at the trophy position (due to the early pronation) and that's the biggest error. Thinking of avoiding the palm facing the sky is indeed a simple clue. That was exactly what I thought when I tried to get rid of that early pronation yesterday. No need to overcomplicate things, just K.I.S.S. stay relaxed and swing away.

That elbow hint by Salzenstein is actually something I've done already. I think of it like "draw the elbow to back pocket". What is my "error" though is that the elbow is tucked in when I start lifting the racquet, so there's a danger of not always remembering to put elbow to the back pocket. I think I should rather lift the racquet towards the trophy by "first lift the elbow to sky, and then put it to the back pocket"?

EDIT: Now that I watch it more carefully, the palm is facing to the back fence at the trophy. :) But the point is that I should avoid that unnecessary early wrist extension and pronation. A simple fix...
Click to expand...

You are way overthinking this. Just simplify everything, and also make sure your tossing location is optimal for you as well. That can simplify things a lot.

I'd suggest using an abbreviated serve for a while until it all feels normal.
 
Just keep working at it. I haven't seen any fixes that magically gives 15+ mph instantly. It's a slow process where you add a few mph here, a few mph there. I used a radar gun last year when practicing serve, so I know how much more mph I got when I added in more racket drop or more knee bend. As you've noticed, as your serve gets better, even the little things start to make a big difference. I think that's the reason why you won't unlock all the gains at once, because things can always be a bit better. So like I said, it's a process and keep practicing your serve, and it'll slowly get better.
 
Yeah you're bending your knees prior to the ball toss, should be simultaneous. Toss too far right. No pronation. Kind if muscling/knifing at ball. I agree with above, work on abbreviated serve from trophy.
 
Only thing I'd suggest is having the arm/racket swing closer to your head, like doing a overhead throw. Right now, it looks like you are doing a 3/4 throw in between the side motion and the overhead motion. When I see people do that and hit under the ball, they usually hit their first serves long and float their second serves. Also, if you use more legs to hop into the ball, it can help in power and service percentage.

The toss seems too far to the right causing the 3/4 arm swing.
 
torpantennis said:
So here's my strange funky service motion, with the initial wrist extension and the strange loop. On some days I tend to forget to preload the hips, and this day seems to be one of them. Definitely not as nice as the previous video I checked. That motion definitely needs a lot of clean up. Where would you start?

one_serve.gif
Click to expand...
Try thinking "Palm Down" during the take-back to help eliminate that weird wrist thing.
 
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