So far I have only partially answered how I generate the racquet head speed in that I have only dealt with how I load my shoulder differently than how traditional servers do.
I will now describe the novelties in the release phase which make use of the increased shoulder loading effectively to generate more racquet head speed than in a traditional serve’s release.
In a traditional serve the ESR loading is mostly completed as soon as the leg drive and racquet drop occur. There is a small additional stretch that a small minority of servers add during shoulder raise phase. Forearm extension occurs after shoulder raise with the racquet mostly edge while it drives to the ball and then finally around half way between big L and contact whatever shoulder stretch that remains in the ISR muscles (which has not leaked out between racquet drop and elbow extension) is quickly released, the ESR muscles fire at the same time and the entire shoulder rotates the straight arm with the racquet held by the wrist at a 45 degrees. The amount of rotation is about 90 degrees.
Here is what the three versions of traditional serve’s release phase look like.
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In the case of my serve, the loading phase is much delayed and does not complete until after forearm raise and wrist lay back.
I load my shoulder initially with the front foot plant that is timed with my version of the racquet drop. The front foot plant puts a brake on the torso rotation initiated by the back foot and hips. This braking impulse is converted into a shoulder stretch in the first phase of shoulder loading.
In the second phase the front foot leg drive timed with the shoulder raise is fired which loads the shoulder even more.
The loading continues in the third phase as I raise my forearm and point its flat face to the back fence. This phase loads the forearm as well.
The loading continues some more in the third phase as I lay my wrist to the side and point the racquet face up with its tip pointing to the back fence right corner. This phase loads the forearm even more and adds a loaded wrist to the mix as well.
When I complete my loading phase the racquet is now in a position to let the shoulder rotate internally more than 180 degrees (my ball toss is well into the court and the wrist is laid back past horizontal) into contact using the same forearm to racquet angle of 45 degrees as the traditional serve.
Here is what the second, third and fourth loading phases and the release to contact of my serve looks like.
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The release phase of my serve starts much later than traditional serves. During release, I am able to bring to bear more than twice the ISR acceleration of a traditional serve. I retain the forearm raise component of the traditional serve and am able to incorporate some of the ulnar deviation component of it as well into the internal shoulder rotation and wrist roll. Wrist flexion is not the major component of the racquet’s drive to contact. It is ISR, forearm pronation and wrist flexion in that order. So for the loss of a part of ulnar deviation, I bring to bear twice the ISR and forearm pronation and a much larger wrist flexion during release. So it is no wonder that the RHS I generate is higher with this motion than with the traditional motion. I am able to do both and this anomaly led me to dig deeper and figure out what exactly was going on.
Some doubts were raised in other threads on the RHS, I am able to generate using a face on approach by bringing in concepts of classical mechanics like the mass moment of inertia of a tennis racquet.
Below is a figure that describes the three MMOIs of a tennis racquet (lateral - the one involved in ulnar deviation, polar - the one which supposedly closes the face in a traditional serve and transverse which is the one involved in the approach to contact of a pure waiter’s tray serve). The argument seems to be that since it is much more easier to move the racquet laterally and to spin it along the polar axis than it is to rotate it transversely, much more RHS is generated by a traditional serve than a serve like mine which has a large transverse rotation component.
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This argument has a number of fallacies
- In a traditional serve most of the RHS at release past big L is generated through ISR with the racquet at a 45 degree angle to the forearm. So it has the same transverse rotation component as my serve (but half as much) and this transverse component is the largest determiner of RHS in this serve.
- It ignores a two big determiners of final RHS which are the angular deviations involved (twice as much in my case) and the rotational power stored and released (which is much larger in my case).
So yes, I experience higher RHS and can explain why it happens and am able to use the insights gained to keep improving my serve.
I also am in the process of improving the traditional serve by incorporating components of my fast low bouncing serve to it. This allows for retaining the advantages of the traditional serve while injecting the benefits of my natural serve into it.
Fantastic!
I made an important realization here. In groundstrokes, swingweight comes into play. In edge-on serves, it is the spinweight.
I made the mistake of saying they will be the same. I think that holds only when the cross section of the racket is circular everywhere.
Nevertheless, are these two numbers much different?