Serving without jumping

A

Attila_the_gorilla

Guest
Since a while ago, I've been trying to incorporate the "walking serve" into my warmups, initially cos I see the pros do it all the time and wanted to see what it's about.

So today I went out and dedicated an entire session just to serve without jumping. I basically just trigger the motion with a little hip action, load the front foot, and the momentum carries me around to bring the right foot forward. I get much better rotation in the serve than when I do jump.
And amazingly, hitting about a couple of hundred practice serves like this today I found that for some reason I get much cleaner contact, better speed and surprisingly good bounce. The serve percentage was also much higher than I had expected, I thought the lower contact point could be an issue, I'm less than 180 cm I think.

The clean contact could be due to the fact that this kind of serving really forces me to focus on toss accuracy. Whereas when I use my legs, I have this feeling that I can get away with a bit if toss variation, cos pushing off my legs will let me follow the ball. But with this old-school serve style, my toss had to be spot on just to be able to execute the serve.

No doubt I'm getting greater racket head speeds with this method than when I jump. I think it's because I'm a platform server and jumping makes it harder to use my front foot as a pivot to rotate around.

I'm not saying this is how I wanna serve now, but will definitely keep practicing this and hopefully I can later incorporate pushing off the ground without losing much rotational energy. Obviously it's not the concept of jumping that's to blame, but just my flawed execution of it.

Try it for yourselves, you may find it a worthwhile exercise to show you some untapped potential.
 
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A

Attila_the_gorilla

Guest
Chas Tennis said:
Which pros do the "walking serve"? Link?
Click to expand...

I see it quite often in practices, not so much warming up for matches. Maybe a few to get the upper body moving. Just in case you're not sure, here's just a quick demo of what I mean. The first three looseners from 40 secs.

 
Raul_SJ

Raul_SJ

G.O.A.T.
Attila_the_gorilla said:
I see it quite often in practices, not so much warming up for matches. Maybe a few to get the upper body moving. Just in case you're not sure, here's just a quick demo of what I mean. The first three looseners from 40 secs.
Click to expand...

I also employ platform and do not leave the ground. Have not practiced jumping much but I get ~10% more power when jumping.

You say you are using platform and do not come off the ground and generating just as much pace. But how to reconcile this with the kinetic chain concept?. It would seem you are leaving some power on the table by not jumping.

Raonic video looks to be incorporating knee flexion. Maybe that is good enough for reliability and consistency? But I am not convinced that power is equivalent.

Perhaps, as you suggest, increased rotational energy is making up for the loss of leg drive... but that raises the question of why one cannot employ the same rotational energy in a jump serve. Why must rotational energy be sacrificed by jumping?

Of course, another benefit of jumping is a higher contact point. But my question relates strictly on the kinetic chain and power issue.
 
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A

Attila_the_gorilla

Guest
Raul_SJ said:
You say you are using platform and do not come off the ground and generating just as much pace. But how to reconcile this with the kinetic chain concept?. It would seem you are leaving some power on the table by not jumping.

Raonic video looks to be incorporating knee flexion. Maybe that is good enough for reliability and consistency? But I am not convinced that power is equivalent.

Perhaps, as you suggest, increased rotational energy is making up for the loss of leg drive... but that raises the question of why one cannot employ the same rotational energy in a jump serve.

The other benefit of jumping is a higher contact point. But my question is strictly on the kinetic chain and power issue.
Click to expand...

It is obviously possible to have both. I'm just saying that I struggle to do it. That's the point of my post, to give a suggestion to people who may have a similar issue.

This exercise isolates the upper body and the idea is to have that upper body motion and explosiveness so ingrained that hopefully eventually you'll naturally start to incorporate it in your normal serves.

I recently saw a short monologue by Pat Dougherty that touched on the issue of legs vs rotation and how using the legs may sometimes hurt your upper body technique. It doesn't have to, but it may.

 
Raul_SJ

Raul_SJ

G.O.A.T.
This might be examples of "walking serve". Possibly before the rule change that allowed jumping. Or maybe they were doing it the old way despite jumping being allowed.

It would be interesting to see the speed data before and after the rule change. I heard Laver was clocked at 140mph before the rule change.

OTOH, practically every pro incorporates the jump, so that must be the ideal way, if one is comfortable with it.

 
A

Attila_the_gorilla

Guest
Raul_SJ said:
This might be examples of "walking serve". Possibly before the rule change that allowed jumping. Or maybe they were doing it the old way despite jumping being allowed.

It would be interesting to see the speed data before and after the rule change. I heard Laver was clocked at 140mph before the rule change.

OTOH, practically every pro incorporates the jump, so that must be the ideal way, if one is comfortable with it.

Click to expand...

Obviously no issues with the "kinetic chain", despite no jumping.

But please read and understand my original post. I'm not advocating no jumping. I'm saying practicing the serve without jumoing can be a very useful exercise, if you're struggling to unlock your upper body potential during your serve. Do this as a drill, in the hope of gradually transferring that lively upper body to your regular (jumping) serve.

I have no interest whatsoever in having discussions with armchair players and biomechanics fanatics. I'm just giving a suggestion of a drill that I see I greatly benefit from. If you don't play tennis, this is not for you.
 
West Coast Ace

West Coast Ace

G.O.A.T.
Attila_the_gorilla said:
Since a while ago, I've been trying to incorporate the "walking serve" into my warmups, initially cos I see the pros do it all the time and wanted to see what it's about.

So today I went out and dedicated an entire session just to serve without jumping. I basically just trigger the motion with a little hip action, load the front foot, and the momentum carries me around to bring the right foot forward. I get much better rotation in the serve than when I do jump.
And amazingly, hitting about a couple of hundred practice serves like this today I found that for some reason I get much cleaner contact, better speed and surprisingly good bounce. The serve percentage was also much higher than I had expected, I thought the lower contact point could be an issue, I'm less than 180 cm I think.

The clean contact could be due to the fact that this kind of serving really forces me to focus on toss accuracy. Whereas when I use my legs, I have this feeling that I can get away with a bit if toss variation, cos pushing off my legs will let me follow the ball. But with this old-school serve style, my toss had to be spot on just to be able to execute the serve.

No doubt I'm getting greater racket head speeds with this method than when I jump. I think it's because I'm a platform server and jumping makes it harder to use my front foot as a pivot to rotate around.

I'm not saying this is how I wanna serve now, but will definitely keep practicing this and hopefully I can later incorporate pushing off the ground without losing much rotational energy. Obviously it's not the concept of jumping that's to blame, but just my flawed execution of it.

Try it for yourselves, you may find it a worthwhile exercise to show you some untapped potential.
Click to expand...
Good post.

I think the clean hits is just from the simpler, less 'moving parts', swing. Almagro is one pro who has minimal leg action, barely gets off his toes, but still can crank it (lively arm).

When my 1st serve % drops I'll quiet my legs to get my accuracy back.
 
TennisDawg

TennisDawg

Hall of Fame
I think if you were able to use the old serve technique correctly you would have a simpler serve and it would be just as effective at the recreational level. After reading this post, I'm going to revert back to it, it seems since I've been trying to learn the modern technique it has complicated things. And I haven't seen that my serve is any more powerful. I need to look at old videos.
 
TennisDawg

TennisDawg

Hall of Fame
Raul_SJ said:
OTOH, practically every pro incorporates the jump, so that must be the ideal way, if one is comfortable with it.

Click to expand...
Depends, probably if you want to someday join the pro tour. But, if you want to play recreational NTRP, I believe it would be very effective, even become a weapon. It's certainly much simpler.
 
N

NLBwell

Legend
Raul_SJ said:
This might be examples of "walking serve". Possibly before the rule change that allowed jumping. Or maybe they were doing it the old way despite jumping being allowed.
Click to expand...
This was after the rule change. Of course, they had learned their service motions many years earlier and didn't change them. The other thing is that it helps you get to the net better when doing serve and volley, which everyone did then (though Edberg and others did fine at S&V later not stepping through).

I always warm up my serve with a walking motion. It helps get my timing starting up and can fix things when my serve goes off.
Here is my serve from a couple years ago, which I've posted before. The balls spent 6 months to a year in the trunk of my car, but some of the balls are pressureless, so those actually bounce (except for the couple that were cracked open). As you can see, it is pretty old school (and I'm using my old Black Ace). Actually, with the injuries/surgeries I've had on my legs, I really couldn't jump if I had tried.
(There's a couple of McEnroe-like serves thrown in for grins.)

 
C

coupergear

Professional
I'm totally with you on this drill I think for me it's better for me not to leave the ground because that really screws everything up. frankly I serve harder and faster just staying with this walking type motion during my actual serve obviously pay attention you don't want to footfault. But it really gets a loose throwing motion and it keeps you from trying to arm the windup I was always doing too much arm during the whole backswing motion and really muscling the racket through the motion as opposed to letting that flow happen. Just look at how easy they are swinging yet how much power they get even just warm ups.
 
D

Deleted member 754093

Guest
There was a coach I used to know who did this. He had a very simple motion and got decent pace on the ball, while also placing it well.
 
RyanRF

RyanRF

Professional
I've been working on this same thing:
(apologies for the vertical video)

A proper serve should work at 90%, 70%, 50% 30% effort. If it stops working when you slow things down, it means there's something inefficient in the motion.

Most players accept this idea and practice it regularly when it comes to groundstrokes. They will hit slow, easy, and smooth as part of warming up, then gradually build speed while trying to preserve the mechanics.

I'm trying to apply it to serves also. Harder than it looks unless your motion is already in a good place.
 
A

Attila_the_gorilla

Guest
NLBwell said:
This was after the rule change. Of course, they had learned their service motions many years earlier and didn't change them. The other thing is that it helps you get to the net better when doing serve and volley, which everyone did then (though Edberg and others did fine at S&V later not stepping through).

I always warm up my serve with a walking motion. It helps get my timing starting up and can fix things when my serve goes off.
Here is my serve from a couple years ago, which I've posted before. The balls spent 6 months to a year in the trunk of my car, but some of the balls are pressureless, so those actually bounce (except for the couple that were cracked open). As you can see, it is pretty old school (and I'm using my old Black Ace). Actually, with the injuries/surgeries I've had on my legs, I really couldn't jump if I had tried.
(There's a couple of McEnroe-like serves thrown in for grins.)

Click to expand...

You're a very good server! Thanks for sharing.
 
FiReFTW

FiReFTW

Legend
Why are you suprized you get cleaner contact and more consistency? Your basically removing a whole part of the serve so less things can go wrong. Also its much harder to time the hit when you jump since ur going upwards at a faster speed.
You get much better consistency not jumping, but you limit yourself in terms of power an spin a bit more.
 
D

Deleted member 23235

Guest
Less moving parts makes for an easier serve (but you lose at least one power source)

I like doing the walking serve too to warmup,... basically groove my toss.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
C

Chas Tennis

G.O.A.T.
RyanRF said:
.........................
A proper serve should work at 90%, 70%, 50% 30% effort. If it stops working when you slow things down, it means there's something inefficient in the motion.

Most players accept this idea and practice it regularly when it comes to groundstrokes. They will hit slow, easy, and smooth as part of warming up, then gradually build speed while trying to preserve the mechanics.

I'm trying to apply it to serves also. Harder than it looks unless your motion is already in a good place.
Click to expand...

That view is questionable. Tennis strokes involve strong accelerations that stretch muscles. 90% effort stretches muscles with greater accelerations than 30% effort.

The reason is Newton's

F = ma

F= force
m = mass
a = acceleration

You might move the racket along a similar path with less effort but that is just the positions of a tennis stroke. The velocities (kinetic energy) and state of stretched muscles (potential energy) are also important. Velocities and muscles stretching are very different with less effort, less acceleration. Still, lower effort motions, shadow swings, may have value as a warmup, learning or other reasons.

The path is easiest to observe. The velocities are easy to observe but hard to estimate accurately. The state of muscle stretching, in particular, is very hard to observe.

In the very impressive Raonic 'no jump' warm up serve, he still accelerates strongly without using his leg jump.
 
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A

Attila_the_gorilla

Guest
Yeah, for me this exercise was not about serving with less effort, but about maximizing my upper body use. I was actually hitting better and bigger serves this way, obviously because for some reason I fail to incorporate the same upper body work in my regular serve.
Yesterday during a match I noticed that I get much less trigger motion out of my left hip, and much less stretch in the left side of my abs (obliques?) in my normal serve. When I practice the walking serve, these things work much much better.
 
C

Chas Tennis

G.O.A.T.
Attila_the_gorilla said:
Yeah, for me this exercise was not about serving with less effort, but about maximizing my upper body use. I was actually hitting better and bigger serves this way, obviously because for some reason I fail to incorporate the same upper body work in my regular serve.
Yesterday during a match I noticed that I get much less trigger motion out of my left hip, and much less stretch in the left side of my abs (obliques?) in my normal serve. When I practice the walking serve, these things work much much better.
Click to expand...

Great observation!
 
TennisDawg

TennisDawg

Hall of Fame
Attila_the_gorilla said:
Yeah, for me this exercise was not about serving with less effort, but about maximizing my upper body use. I was actually hitting better and bigger serves this way, obviously because for some reason I fail to incorporate the same upper body work in my regular serve.
Yesterday during a match I noticed that I get much less trigger motion out of my left hip, and much less stretch in the left side of my abs (obliques?) in my normal serve. When I practice the walking serve, these things work much much better.
Click to expand...
If you are hitting a decent serve without the jump then I would stay with it. You could even make it better. The servers in the 70s even into the 90s used that technique. Nothing wrong with it. If a junior is learning the serve use modern techniques, but not necessarily for the average NTRP player.
 
C

Chas Tennis

G.O.A.T.
There is a rule in tennis that restricts forward motion during the serve. For example, you can't build speed running toward the baseline, jump above the baseline and hit the ball. Check the rule.
 
acintya

acintya

Legend
Attila_the_gorilla said:
I see it quite often in practices, not so much warming up for matches. Maybe a few to get the upper body moving. Just in case you're not sure, here's just a quick demo of what I mean. The first three looseners from 40 secs.

Click to expand...

why is he holding the racquet in a so weird position ? which grip is he serving with - continental or EBH?
 
heninfan99

heninfan99

Talk Tennis Guru
acintya said:
why is he holding the racquet in a so weird position ? which grip is he serving with - continental or EBH?
Click to expand...
Supination, some believe starting in this position helps with power and that it's more comfortable for them
 
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pabletion

pabletion

Hall of Fame
Yup. Good post. Maybe one of the reasons us mere mortals struggle with the serve is that we gather waaay too much information from the get go and try and incorporate everything at once. I see so many unnecessary starting motions to begin the servev like the dipping down, bending knees before tossing theb going up, then bending again, going up again......

Pros have it all polished to the rhythm of a clock, and a great way to learn the serve is to start with a simple basic motion, to, like you say, unlock the upper body. THEN you start adding components that might give you more effortless speed, but not before.

I recently saw the 94 USOpen final, if you check out Stich's serve thats a perfect example I think of the walking serve, maybe one of the last ones.
 
C

Chas Tennis

G.O.A.T.
acintya said:
why is he holding the racquet in a so weird position ? which grip is he serving with - continental or EBH?
Click to expand...

Raonic flexes his wrist to start and holds it going to Trophy Position. At TP he simply extends his wrist to be very similar to most other servers. Whether that wrist angle has any biomechanical purpose, I don't know.

I believe that the farther in time from impact the more optional angles and motions may be seen; the closer to impact the motions will look similar to almost all other ATP servers that use ISR. In other words, the last, say, 100 milliseconds will look very similar but the last 500 or so may not. The toss and follow through techniques show considerable variety.

link
 
C

Chas Tennis

G.O.A.T.
acintya said:
why is he holding the racquet in a so weird position ? which grip is he serving with - continental or EBH?
Click to expand...

Raonic flexes his wrist to start and holds it going to Trophy Position. At TP he simply extends his wrist to be very similar to most other servers. Whether that wrist angle has any biomechanical purpose, I don't know.

I believe that the farther in time from impact the more optional angles and motions may be seen; the closer to impact the motions will look similar to almost all other ATP servers that use ISR. In other words, the last, say, 100 milliseconds will look very similar but the last 500 or so may not. The toss and follow through techniques show considerable variety.

See 16 to 17 seconds.
 
A

Attila_the_gorilla

Guest
acintya said:
why is he holding the racquet in a so weird position ? which grip is he serving with - continental or EBH?
Click to expand...

heninfan99 said:
Supination, some believe starting in this position helps with power and that it's more comfortable for them
Click to expand...

It seems pretty regular continental, but he flexes his wrist at the start of the motion.

It could be that starting with flexion gives him greater wrist extension on the backswing, increasing the racket head's range of motion and speed.
 
C

Chas Tennis

G.O.A.T.
acintya said:
why is he holding the racquet in a so weird position ? which grip is he serving with - continental or EBH?
Click to expand...

Raonic flexes his wrist to start and holds it going to Trophy Position. At TP he simply extends his wrist to be very similar to most other servers. Whether that wrist angle has any biomechanical purpose, I don't know.

I believe that the farther in time from impact the more optional angles and motions may be seen; the closer to impact the motions will look similar to almost all other ATP servers that use ISR. In other words, the last, say, 100? milliseconds before impact will look very similar but the last 300? or so may not. (Time estimates not accurate.) The toss and follow through techniques show considerable variety.

Maybe it helps Raonic keep a relaxed wrist. ?

See 16 to 17 seconds.

To do single frame on Vimeo hold down the SHIFT KEY and press the ARROW KEYS. Sometimes frames may be skipped on high speed videos.

In this video, Raonic straightens his wrist about 62 frames before impact.

62 frames X 1/240 sec/frame = 256 milliseconds.
 
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heninfan99

heninfan99

Talk Tennis Guru
Attila_the_gorilla said:
It seems pretty regular continental, but he flexes his wrist at the start of the motion.

It could be that starting with flexion gives him greater wrist extension on the backswing, increasing the racket head's range of motion and speed.
Click to expand...
Yeah, IIRC PowerPlayer said he's a fan of this technique and we had a group discussion and determined it was supination.
 
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A

Attila_the_gorilla

Guest
Or try this after 22 mins.

As usual he only does a few loosener walking serves. The rest, and once the pracyice match starts, he serves normal.
 
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