Quite possibly as last year I was doing sets at 320 but my shoulder has been bothering me lately from volleyball and I could only do a couple of reps at 280 the other day before I decided I'd better stop. Now that I am back into tennis I kind of wish I hadn't lifted for power all those years. Supple I'm not and I find that the skinny guys have way better throwing arms which crosses over to serving pretty well I believe.
I think maybe you bigger guys just need a slightly different mechanic.
For me what works is the straight up, shoulder over shoulder tumbling javelin thrower over the top motion.
For guys like you, I think that you can get plenty of speed/spin, but you would have to derive your power from more of a rotational motion.
You aren't bigger than CC Sabathia, and he can throw a baseball 97mph, which translates to around a 145mph lefty serve.
Someone like me has a steep shoulder tilt, and front hip out, and then when I push off the front hip comes back, the front shoulder goes down catapulting the back shoulder and arm up into the ball.
I think the bigger guys would be better served by instead of loading the front leg and putting the hip out over the baseline, anchoring the front foot and coiling as you load the legs almost so that you can feel the stretch a little bit from your front hip to your back shoulder on a diagonal across your torso, and bring your racquet back into your trophy pose so that your arm is totally loose, but you feel a little stretch across your pecs. Then when you go to hit the ball and push off with your legs you will ever so slightly snap your front hip to rotate your hips to be a bit more open, and that will pull the back shoulder around as the front shoulder clears out of the way, your arm and racquet will naturally lag behind the back shoulder in the racquet drop. It would be like a giant sidearm catapult, and your racquethead speed would be sick. Then as your racquet gets pulled out of the drop you just steer it to the right angle of attack for flat/slice/top/kick. As long as you realize that your goal is to rotate more in the horizontal plane than the vertical one.
I know a couple of guys who serve like this and can absolutely bring it in the 120s, and nasty spin serves. And the best part is that because of the sideways rotation and slinging action of the arm it is tough to read at all.
It is funny, I chicken out when I have to throw anything light and can't do it.
I can't throw a baseball to save my life, because it feels like my arm is going to fly off and I panic and lock up.
I can serve the cover off a tennis ball on a warm day, and put up a representative throw of a football, but trying to put up a number with a baseball, no way in heck.
J
I started at about 200, but that after adding some weight on purpose. The time before that was H.S. over a 1/4 century ago...so we might want to include age in the equation!
