(smashes tennis ball)
- Whoo! In every complex system, there are things called leverage points. These are small tweaks you
can make within the system that set off a chain reaction, that create big ripple effects
throughout everything else. And when you find the
leverage points on your serve, you're able to simplify the technique. You're able to stop
overthinking or being confused or feeling overwhelmed when
you step up to the line and instead have that
feeling of confidence. Cool, calm, mastery, when
you step up to the line, because you know that you can bomb serve whenever you want to,
with power and control. And you're going to learn exactly how to execute the ATP
swing in three steps, let's get into part one. (upbeat music) The first step is to get
into what we like to call "The Pre-Throw Position." It kind of looks like this. (smashes tennis ball) The way you get into this position is defined by three characteristics. First, your elbow needs to be
elevated away from your body about 90 degrees and it's done through the shoulder flexion motion. Number two, you've got to have 90 degrees of what's called shoulder
horizontal abduction. You could see this by
the fact that when pros finish their windup, their
elbow is going to be positioned away from their body and to the side when you view it from the back. And lastly, their elbow is going
to bend in about 90 degrees until their palm is
facing toward the court. Now, if you look at the top ATP servers, every single one of them is going to reach a similar position to this by executing the three motions that we've just covered. The reason why is because it
sets up your arm to get into what we like to call "The Pro Drop." Now, by getting your palm
down toward the court, we do something really powerful. We set up your arm to be able
to rotate back externally. You see with the palm
down and your arm bent, you're in what's called
internal shoulder rotation. And this is followed by a
powerful external shoulder rotation that pros execute
in the racquet drop. So again, it's going to
look something like this. Number one, my shoulder is raising away. I'm going to draw my arm back. I'm going to bend my arm in. Now from here, I'm
ready to blast the ball. Now, if I take my racquet out of my hand, watch what happens. I get into a very similar
position to what you'll see in baseball pitchers and NFL quarterbacks. Well maybe not the NFL,
I don't look like that. By getting into this position,
I'm setting my arm up to flip back and snap in. And that's where all the
fluid power comes from. Just like this. (projectile dropping sound) No, nah. Every single time. It's like I can't control it.
(guy laughing) All right. Now this pre-throw position is so powerful because it allows you to utilize what's called "The Stretch Shorten Cycle". The stretch shorten cycle
happens when you lengthen or you stretch your muscle
prior to contracting it. It's kind of like when you
stretch back a rubber band and then release it. The stretch creates the powerful snap. And when you're able to
get that same stretch and load on your serve, you're
able to create the same snap. Now, step number two is
going to be all about the wrist here. You want to perform ulnar deviation so that you can absolutely
smash the like button. Guys, (laughs) in order to
help us grow the channel, we'd really appreciate it
if you hit the like button. Second step is all about activating the stretch shorten cycle through the correct dynamic racquet drop action. It's called The Pro Drop
position because you'll see that almost every single top ATP pro will reach this position prior
to snapping into contact. But I rarely see it executed
at the club or junior levels, but you're going to learn
exactly how to execute it today. As pros drive through the
ground and they rotate their hip and torso into the net. This, combined with the
inertia of your racquet is gonna cause the racquet to flip down and back behind your body. Now this force is what allows your arm to subsequently slip back
into external rotation. As we talked about, your arm is up, drawn back and bent, ready to flip. And if you've executed step one correctly, and you've gotten into
this pre throw position, then you're able to create this nice left-to-right swing path with your racquet as you drive your legs through the ground. And you can feel this right away, simply by getting into your pre-throw and rotating your torso
and driving your legs. Just feel the flip right there. If you have your racquet,
you can do this with me. And when you feel comfortable, you can go here and snap that racquet in. Now pros are going to remain in this externally rotated
position all the way until the last few
milliseconds before contact. And this gives them the
appearance of leading up with the edge of the racquet. As they go from their initial acceleration in this full flip to starting
this elbow extension motion. As they start to straighten their arm out, it's almost like they're
chopping the ball. And in fact, if you didn't
internally rotate your shoulder, you would in fact chop the ball. But, a few milliseconds before contact, they set their shoulder up to flip back in and rotate the racquet in
as powerfully as possible. And in fact, according to
Dr. Bruce Elliott's studies, this internal rotation of
your shoulder and forearm, which has turned the long
axis rotation is responsible for over 50% of your
rocketed speed at contact. So again, I've reached this full fluid racquet drop position. And as my shoulder propels up, I'm going to have this natural
elbow extension motion. Then at the last second, they internally rotate their shoulder for tons of rocketed speed. It's going to look like this here. Pre throw position, fluid racquet drop, snapping that racquet right into contact. Now, if you don't have the
Lamborghini of shoulders, don't you worry, I've got you. For those of you out there who don't feel like you have as much
mobility or flexibility in the shoulder and you
can't reach those same deep athletic positions you
see the top pros reaching. You could still utilize
the same technique. You see, the same biomechanics apply. You just need to use a little
bit less of an extreme version of the same motion. Here's exactly how that works. Get into your same pre-throw slot. And from here, instead
of getting your racquet all the way down here
in this deep position, what you're going to do instead is utilize more horizontal
shoulder adduction. This is where your arm comes
forward in front of your body. And you could see this
done even at the pro level in some players like Federer. So compare Federer's
serve to Radek's serve, and you'll see that at the
start of Federer's acceleration, his arm will start going
in front of his body faster than you'll see on Radek's serve. Now here's how you do that,
from this pre-throw position, simply think about pulling
your elbow forward to the ball and feel your arm going
forward in front of your body. And as you relax, and
if you reach the correct pre-throw position at your start, you're going to naturally
get the same fluid motion. And as you could see, you could still get a good
amount of power on your serve by utilizing the same technique, but just making it less
extreme, just like this. (smashes tennis ball) Now, there is another way that
you can add even more power to your serve and we're
going to cover that in the next part of this video series. So stay tuned, click the link below and until next time, athletes. I will see you in the next video. Oh, I should become a volleyball player. Volleyball, volleyball? I don't know.
