Why Is The Serve In Tennis So Difficult? One Main Reason...

you hi Thomas from field tennis have you ever wondered why the serve is so difficult when you look at the four hands and back ends of recreational tennis players you can see that they're not so much different from the four hands and back ends of the pros but when you compare the serves there's a big difference well there are many reasons why the serve is so challenging there is one special thing about the serve that makes it so difficult I want to show it to you today when you first started to play tennis then you had to serve your first serve you probably didn't use a continental grip you probably didn't position sideways you didn't call you didn't pronate and so on so you simplify the serving your serve probably looks something like this that's the most natural and logical serve and that's because of a few reasons the first one is that we're using a forehand grip which means that when we use a forehand grip our hand is aligned with the strings of the racquet so it's very obvious very logical for us to feel where the ball will go we can very easily direct the ball because we feel the hand really well we can feel the hand orientation so when we position our hand behind the racquet we translate the hand to the strings or vice versa and so that's why it's very easy very natural for players to do that so every beginner will probably use a serve like that the second reason why we're using this serve at the beginning is because we orient towards the target we orient towards the court and we have the target in sight and that's how we can aim so it helps us stay in control we would like to be in control early looking at the target and then the third point that follows is that once I have the target in sight and my hand is behind the racket like this with the forehand grip then when I serve I will move my arm together with the racket directly towards the target so my swing path is towards the target and that's why because these things are so logical and so natural that's why everyone starts with the serve like that but then something happens you start to learn about the proper advanced serf and you realize that you have to use a continental grip now let me show you what happens if I'm in this old position and I have to change to a continental grip so this is a forehand grip this is my orientation towards the court the strings are pointing towards the court and my arm is pointing towards the target and now I change to a continental grip and that's a 90 degree change so when we change from a forehand grip to a continental grip we're going to point the strings away from the court by 90 degrees and that is the biggest problem in tennis that messes up everything all our logic or our natural logic that we used before that made so much sense swinging towards the target orienting towards the target positioning our hand behind the strings swinging like this it doesn't make sense anymore everything is broken down because of the Continental grip which changed from this position that made sense at first now to this position and now if I want to align the strings towards the target I have to change I'm exaggerating a little bit so that you see a point but you will see that it's not a big exaggeration so I have to change my orientation if I want to orient the strings towards the target and still be comfortable because if I'm like this if I'm facing the court and I want to position the strings towards the court I can't do it it's it's very awkward and it's very straining so even here I can't make the racket point outwards towards that corner so that's why we cannot stay facing forward we cannot orient towards the court we have to change something so again because we change the grip to a continental one we now have to orient like this in order to position the strings and point them towards the target we also have to use a different movement so it's much more this movement than this movement you see this this one is 90 degrees away from the target so our serve will have an element of this that's how you will serve again I'm exaggerating a little bit but as you will see soon not so much so that's the biggest problem in the serve that's a continental grip when we change to a continental grip everything that you knew so far has to change you cannot face the target you cannot hold the racket in the same way and you cannot swing towards the target anymore and because this doesn't make sense at first that's why the serve is so difficult now here's why I'm making this video in the first place if you look at these players they all still use the basic elements of a beginner serve even though they're working on their serves they use a continental grip they're learning to position more sideways at first they're learning to coil and drop the racket and yet as the moment of the contact comes closer they orient to face the court and they use their shoulder to drive the racket towards the target why because that makes the most sense that's how everyone started and this common sense of how to direct the ball towards the target is still there the goal of this video is to explain to you that this common sense does not apply anymore when you want to learn a more advanced serve that's why it's so difficult to make the change and here's the change from a forehand grip so this was your usual serve and it looked like this when you use the forehand grip and then you changed it to a continental grip so from forehand to a continental grip it's a 90 degree change and if we exaggerate a little bit in order to align the strings towards the target we have to change our orientation and now we're not using this movements to hit the ball towards the target but more of a dis movement now let me show you that my exaggerations were not so big so you will see that what I'm going to do right now is going to start to resemble a real serve so if I position myself completely sideways and I said at first that I can just hit the ball like this but now I will just add a little bit of the speed to my hand so that it's not starting from zero speed but it's starting with some speed so I will generate some speed in this direction and then I will change to this direction you might start to see that this is starting to resemble a real surf so I'm simplifying a little bit so that you get a clear mental image but you can see that this doesn't look so bad so I'm using this part of the swing more to generate speed even though it's away from the target and then I'm transitioning to this type of swing where I direct the ball towards the target and as you can see I'm still sideways almost completely 90 degrees away and this is starting to look like a surf so if I add this part you can see that this is almost the right surf so if I only release now my body from this sideways position and I complete my follow-through then we will get a complete serve its slightly exaggerated because I'm just trying to show you a point but it's not so much different from a real serve you can see and if I now smoothly merge together you will see that this is almost the real serve so what's the difference - a real serve so if I do a real surf you will look something like this so the difference is in just in a slight angle so when I exaggerated a little bit I was completely sideways I was serving like this but when I'm serving a normal serve then I'm just changing my angle a little bit and so as a guideline we use the 45-degree angle in which we Orient so our Y orientation is not 90 degree away from the target when we're making contact and we're not facing the court when we're making contact but we're roughly at a 45 degree angle that's a guideline it's not a rule because it depends on what kind of serve we're serving and from which position for example if I'm serving a kick serve from the outside then my angle would be more close to 20 degrees in relation to the baseline and not 45 degrees so it's just a guideline but this is where we find the middle ground from the old surf that made so much sense and to the advance surf with a continental grip that doesn't make sense at first glance can you spot now the orientation of the pros at the moment of contact and see that they're all at roughly 45 degree angle in relation to the court and not like the club players you saw in the previous image who are all facing the court here are both images at once so perhaps it becomes more obvious now and here's an easy way to tell whether the surf technique is correct or not or in other words whether you're still using an element of a beginner surf we're at the moment of contact you're still orienting towards the target and swinging towards the target as you can see I've marked the arm and the head position when you look at the club level serve you can see that the head is behind the arm which means that the body has already turned a lot and that it's facing the court with the pros on the other hand we see the arm first and the head in front of it which tells us that they are not yet facing the court at the moment of contact they have not oriented towards the court at the moment of hitting the ball again this doesn't make sense at first but it is the only way to allow the power of pronation to work for you because you are now not orienting towards the target and you're not swinging towards the target that means that your shoulder which is driving the arm forward is not anymore the main force that generates power to the ball so your serve used to be like this and when we do like this we're using our shoulder to drive the racket but because we are now positioned more sideways and we're using this move that we simply find we call pronation but it's not just the pronation is the rotation of the upper arm inwardly and other moves by will just simplifying colita pronation because we're now using a different move we have to train our muscles to do it and I just want to show you how hard I can hit the serve in this position just using this move so you can see how hard I can hit the ball without orienting towards the court so my orientation is still sideways you can see my arm is that way so I'm not using my shoulder to drive the racket through the ball but I'm using a combination of moves here so here are a few more so this movement is hidden in my serve when I do a surf I can just stop a little bit and you will see that this is the movement that creates a lot of powers you can see I have not rotated yet and my arm is roughly at the 45 degree angle that way but the racket is driving the ball that way so with this move that's a combination of moves in the arm as we call them and we like to call it pronation this is where we generate a lot of power and we're just using the swing the backswing and the upward swing to generate a lot of speed so we bring a lot of speed to this position where we then transition to this move and so when we combine this together we generate a lot of racket head speed now what deceives you a little bit on the serve is that when you see a good server hit the ball they immediately allow their body to rotate because they need to face the court and they need to see the returner they need to see the ball and they have to react very quickly and so that's why we go from this position very quickly to this position so if I do everything together then it looks to you that I swung towards the target you but as you saw before I did not really I swang more this way and then I use this move the pronation to direct the ball there and to create a lot of power again that's why the serve is so difficult because we're using some moves and some leverages in our arm that don't make sense at first and also you don't feel much power until you train it that's why it's very important that you do pronation exercises that are going to strengthen your arm and make it more explosive because if your arm is not explosive you will not generate any power because I trained for a long time I can generate a lot of power but if I show this with my left arm so I know the theory I know how to do it it's like this this is all the power I can generate so the theory doesn't help me much because I have not trained my arm to do this move very explosively and here's how I can generate power without turning towards the court or without using my shoulder to hit the ball but by using more of a pronation or internal rotation of my upper arm so it's very important that you don't just stick to theory you actually have to practice the pronation exercises which you will find on my website or on my youtube channel and when you do the pronation exercises you will soon start to feel that you can generate power with this move and that is what's inside the surf that's where we generate power it doesn't make sense at first but once you feel it you will understand it and you will be able to apply it

Channel: Feel Tennis Instruction

Views: 978,165

Keywords: Tennis, serve, continental grip, technique, tips, pronation, drill, instruction, lesson, get better at serves in tennis, tennis serves, how to serve tennis for beginners, how to serve in tennis like a pro, tennis serve, serve technique tennis, tennis tactics, tennis tips, get better at tennis

Id: t2xJg6wOprc

Length: 16min 5sec (965 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 29 2016