Serve Power Training

user92626

G.O.A.T.
Following Brad Gilbert's video advice, I went out and tried to hit the ball at the other back fence without a bounce, standing at your baseline. It was definitely hard. Only 3 or 4 for every 10 made it, but only touched the fence @ 3 feet high.

Has anyone tried this? Could you make it? No lobs. Just "active power" shot.
 
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HugoBossDB

Guest
Maybe I'm just a purist, but I don't like to practice anything that isn't related to putting that ball in the service box.

When I started a guy always told me to serve it 5 courts down to practice power but the motion and muscles are subtlety different and that can be counterproductive.

Bottom line, if you can serve it into a fence with pace, you can serve it into the court with pace.
 

LeeD

Bionic Poster
Never a great idea to listen to a guy who serves at 105 while being 6'1" and 175 lbs at his prime. His sister, Dana, could serve just as fast, and she was a GIRL!
 

DeShaun

Banned
Yeah, I tried BG's little training suggestion, gunning for the far wall, for the first time yesterday and today my shoulder hasn't ached this much since those days when I was first trying to learn how to serve and was spending hours of day on end hitting hundreds of incorrect serves thereby inflaming my shoulder, so I would be careful not to overexert yourself if you decide you want to try BG's little training suggestion because my shoulder hasn't ached like this since the days when I had no idea what I was doing but was willing to smash hundreds of balls every afternoon.
 
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LeeD

Bionic Poster
Yeah, if you can't tell your ball speed when you serve into the opposite court, you cannot tell how much gas to press when you accelerate from a stop.
Only an idiot needs to hit fly balls to figure out how hard they can hit.
 

user92626

G.O.A.T.
I haven't seen an improvement in accuracy yet. After all I just tried it once. But I've seen some difference in power. Because I was hitting all out and liberally, I was able to feel where I could tap the power from. Now it's just a matter of aiming!!! :)
 
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HugoBossDB

Guest
I haven't seen an improvement in accuracy yet. After all I just tried it once. But I've seen some difference in power. Because I was hitting all out and liberally, I was able to feel where I could tap the power from. Now it's just a matter of aiming!!! :)

Haha! Maybe it's one of those Coyote Retreat Business Man screaming in the woods kinda thing.
 

mike84

Professional
if you want to increase serve speed i would highly recommend getting yourself elastic bands and do simple exercises

this helped me with increased speed and my arm didn't burn out after 4-5 sets.

plus practicing hitting ball long would probably hurt your accuracy of serving in the box.
 

thebuffman

Professional
i think this thread has clearly missed the purpose of the drill by brad. all this drill is looking to do is WARM UP and loosen the arm. these are just warm up drills. the point is not to put any balls into the net but to get the arm loose and lively with 10 serves at most. generally you are letting the serve just fly and the ball should land somewhere around the opposite baseline. really lively arms are able to get the ball to the fence (not all have a lively enough arm though).

the spike drill is along the same lines. it is just warming and loosening the arm and looking for rhythm and good pronation on the serve. my coach had me doing these drills from the service line with the goal to learn rhythm and pop trying to get the ball over the back fence.
 
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Winky

Guest
I guess.. but I've never heard of warming up in sports where you'd try to hit the crap out of the ball. That's like "warming up" in golf by trying to rip a few 300 yard drives. Shouldn't you warm up by hitting softer shots?
 

thebuffman

Professional
it makes sense. the target is not the back fence. hitting the back fence is more a macho thing. heck even one of the bryant twins couldn't hit it regularly. the key to this drill is to clear the net. you do not want to put 1 ball into the net. you are not even trying to get the serve into the service box. it helps you clear your mind completely about the service box and is solely about warming the arm and getting your rhythm.
 

user92626

G.O.A.T.
I'm with Winky. Otherwise, BG's point is very confusing.

For warming up can we just hit easy shots instead of emphasizing on hitting the back fence on the ball's fly?

---
Btw, I just played some casual games today and noticed that my serve routinely hit the fence on one bounce, though not necessarily always made in the serve box. I was amazed cuz weeks ago it was really hard to crank that kind of power.:)
 
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HugoBossDB

Guest
i think this thread has clearly missed the purpose of the drill by brad. all this drill is looking to do is WARM UP and loosen the arm. these are just warm up drills. the point is not to put any balls into the net but to get the arm loose and lively with 10 serves at most. generally you are letting the serve just fly and the ball should land somewhere around the opposite baseline. really lively arms are able to get the ball to the fence (not all have a lively enough arm though).

the spike drill is along the same lines. it is just warming and loosening the arm and looking for rhythm and good pronation on the serve. my coach had me doing these drills from the service line with the goal to learn rhythm and pop trying to get the ball over the back fence.

Nah, disagree 100%. No warm up should involve overhitting with wrong sequence of muscles, that is a recipe for injury. Dunno who taught you that but when I warm up I do dynamic stretches then arch the ball in at low pace and move it down/speed it up from there.

These kinds of drills are things novices come up with to try to sell you on their hackneyed perspective of biomechanics.
 
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Winky

Guest
Well the main thing I got from that video is that Brad Gilbert is a complete d0uche. Otherwise his tips seemed a little gimmicky, but not awful. The brothers didn't look like they were ripping the ball, though, they just were serving without worrying where the ball was going. I can understand that, kind of like target shooting where the first few rounds out of the gun each day I'll shoot downrange without a target.. just getting the feel of the gun, the recoil, etc.
 

AirK

Rookie
Another thing is I can't see how hard it is to hit the back fence when you are giving such clearance over the net.

With the spike drill he said IF you could hit the back fence then good for you but the whole point was to just hit the ball loosely so it bounces at your service line then over the net. Just because the Bryan brothers were going for it doesn't mean you have to - they have a completely different level of muscle conditioning and can do it especially if it's just for the sake of the video.

I'm not agreeing/ disagreeing with what Brad is saying I just think he's been interpreted.
 
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