Tennis Serve Tip: How To Bend The Elbow Properly

this new serve tip will reveal the timing of when you bend at the elbow is a major component for developing effortless power on your sieve hey everyone it's james here again from the oti coaching team and in this video is going to be another serve tip but it's going to be more on the bending at the elbow to initiate the right to left and after doing a lot of video reviews now i started to notice that some players are getting the timing of this bending at the elbow incorrect and it's hindering the ability to get into a good racket drop as a result so what do i mean by this the first question we're going to ask here is what does it look like if he was doing it correctly well it's going to look something like this you'll get into this half serve position as we always talk about tip of the racket points to what would be the right side fence for a right-handed player it'd be the left side fence for a left-handed player but now from here we initiate what we call the right to left arm action by bending and breaking at the elbow and what i want you to pay attention to is in this position the half serve position my arm is a little bit greater than 90 degrees just like so but now when i begin to bend at the elbow the angle decreases in my arm as you can see i've closed the angle a little bit more and the hand is now over my bicep watch that again i bend and see how the angle decreases in my arm from that point and that now gets the racket truly moving right to left and it allows me to get into that good racket drop which is so important so the next question then is how does it look if you do it incorrectly well i've started to note that this this with a lot of players and what happens is they get to this position it all looks great at this point this half served position but now instead of bending from the elbow at this point and decreasing the angle they continue to lift the whole arm up maintaining that whole structure that you can see see how my hand is not over my bicep is much further away from my body and now at this point where the racket is approximately over my head they now break at the elbow and see what happens with my racket so it drops in very steeply behind my head and the tip of the racket is now pointing to the net when this happens when the racket drops in this steeply it really hinders your ability to get into that optimized racket drop so you're going to miss out on a lot of potential power okay so let's take a look at this quick comparison video between my serve and one of our students robert serve and what you're going to see in this position we're both pretty much in a good half serve position the tip of our racket points to the right side the angle in our arms at a little bit greater than 90 degrees in the hit and arm but now let's pay attention to my serve first on the right hand side of the screen and you're going to see i'll initiate the right to left by bending at the elbow and the hand is going to move over my bicep and closer to my head so at this point i've now closed the angle in my arm take a look at that one more time bend from the elbow and the hand moves over the bicep so now from here the racket is able to fall down and away from the body and that allows me to get into a good racket drop as you can see right here now the racket is aligned on the right side of the body and this is a major power position on the serve now let's take a look at robert's serve and you're going to see something a little bit different and that is he doesn't bend from the elbow at this point but instead lift the whole arm as a unit so when i pause here you can see that the hit and arm is still greater than 90 degrees approximately and now what ends up happening is he begins to bend at the elbow now and this results in the racket falling in very steeply behind his head see that steep angle and at this point you can see the tip of the racket points more to the net and the racket is extremely close to his head if we used to compare this with my serve you can see the tip of my racket points more to the left side and also it's not so close to my head so then if we compare the racket drops you're going to see that my racket is able to fall down and over to the right side more and if you see robert's serve you can see that his racket's aligned more on the left side where mine is aligned more on the right side so it's very important that you initiate the bending at the elbow at the right time since it's going to allow you to get into that optimized racket drop so what you want to focus on instead is making sure that from this half serve position you're breaking at the elbow now to initiate this right to left and really feel how the angle in your arm decreases as the hand moves closer to your head so at this point the hand is over that bicep just like so it's so so important so if you film yourself from a side angle and you see that at this point you've got more of this angle and the hand is much further away then you know that you could work on this and this could definitely help you and then to work on it just like always i recommend you do a lot of shatter swings first starting from the half serve position feel really feel how you're breaking at the elbow and you can feel how the tip of the racket moves closer to the head as you complete the right component of the right to left and you can also when you're doing it watch your arm and see how the angle decreases as you complete the right component and then from there you can complete the whole swing and then you can start to add the ball to the equation but yeah i hope that all makes sense to you it's really about the timing of which you initiate that bending at the elbow and by doing it it should definitely help you get a better right to left arm action it'll help you get into a better racket drop and you'll get a lot more effortless power on your serve as a result so yeah i really hope that helps you today by all means if you have any questions on it please comment below let us know how it goes when you give this a try and i look forward to hearing from you the serve is of course the most important shot in tennis and because so many players struggle with it we now started offering one day serve clinics and these surf clinics will break down your surf with video analysis and show you exactly what elements need to be fixed so that you can hit powerful serves so if you're interested in finally developing a powerful serve with one of our serve clinics click the link inside this video right now for all the details on upcoming serve clinics you

Channel: Online Tennis Instruction

Views: 153,977

Keywords: tennis, tennis serve, how to serve in tennis, tennis serve tutorial, tennis serve technique, serve power, serve mechanics tennis, james ludlow, racket drop tennis serve, racket drop, tennis elbow, elbow, serve elbow, tennis serve elbow position, tennis serve elbow, tennis serve timing, tennis serve timing your swing, oti, online tennis instruction

Id: bc1tBkuwhPk

Length: 6min 29sec (389 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 17 2022