Interactive Forum: Dec 2007 Federer Serve Upward Swing

[EricMatuszewski]

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then how many words are these clips worth?

The detail and clarity of the clips are really something special. Look closely and you can even see the arm musculature flopping around after contact.

I remember showing some close up footage like this to some parents.

All of the parents were shocked by the movements that his arm made. They thought that Fed's technique must be some exception to the rest of the tennis world.

Do you think these movements are "normal" for a high level tennis player.

How would you describe what happens here without a demonstration or video?

Can you translate all the movement you see in these clips to words?

Super Slow-Mo Close Up 1



Super Slow-Mo Close Up 2

[EricMatuszewski]

QuickTime Versions

QuickTime Super Slow-Mo Close Up 1



QuickTime Super Slow-Mo Close Up 2

[bottle]

Triceps, Legs and Back-- WHAT?

Extraordinary, yes.

This may or may not be what you and all good players do, Eric.

Me, I live to be astonished.

I see the elbow forcibly repositioning but then the arm extending and only then (the upper and lower arm both rotating from different muscles and the
wrist straightening--all simultaneous).

Once again, then (all over again) I've got to ask-- what made the arm get straight?

[bottle]

A-d?

Since nobody answered in the first ten minutes, and I am laid up today and can't make it to the court, I formed my own conclusion/guess. Actually, when Roger forcibly repositions his elbow, he is trying to smash a vertical
pane of glass set just slightly left, and when the elbow hits the glass, the arm straightens from acceleration-deceleration. Good advice for all?

[bottle]

What makes arm extension a factor in racket head speed?

Forgive me for my enthusiasm. When I myself am teaching I often must restrain myself if I want to elicit genuine response. But this is such a unique opportunity to learn something of significance. I am so eager to hear what anybody besides myself thinks about this.

We've heard three viewpoints in major tennis instruction, all extremely well-articulated: 1., rotor muscles, 2., triceps muscle, 3., legs and back. I could give the three names but choose not to, in order to retain the substance of
Eric Matuszewski's original, excellent questions. He is the teacher here. My interest is my own serve. And that is why I am so eager.

What is the most effective way to straighten the arm? And then if you choose to be like Roger with the funny nub next to his elbow bone waiting so long before it turns, what then fires first-- forearm or shoulder rotor muscles--or does it all happen at once as I first thought?

[EricMatuszewski]

Thank you for your enthusiasm bottle.

That you can even see "a little weird bump" next to Fed's elbow is a testament to just how far video technology has come.

The "bump" is the medial epicondyle of Fed's humerus. Visually, it's a very helpful landmark when related to the olecranon process (elbow) to help us see internal rotation.

Many of us are aware of Bruce Elliot's work that attributes the largest portion of racket head speed in a serve to internal rotation, but few of us have ever seen such clear footage of that motion in a world class server. I appreciate your complementing me as a teacher, but I think the real teacher here is the video.

You've raised some interesting questions I'd like to answer regarding order and intensity of contractions.

However, It's difficult to conclude order of muscle contractions from video alone in such a dynamic movement like a tennis serve. Muscles contract eccentrically as well as concentrically. So just because a bone is moving in a direction doesn't mean that a muscle is or is not contracting. Momentum will also cause movement that may mistakenly be perceived as being caused by a contraction as well.

Getting a clearer picture of firing order and relative intensities, would take a very well equipped lab.

Until then, my statements on the matter would be little more than conjecture.

But not all is lost ...

A Teacher/Coach should however be able to train a good motion in a student just by having a clear video in his or her head of what the motion is supposed to look like as well as some creativity in how to get the player to adopt that motion.

The first step is getting a clearer image memorized of what your goal is though and it seems you've spent enough time looking at clips to be at least close. Thanks for your post.

[bottle]

Reaction to Reaction

I'm tilting the glass pane 45 degrees to the right and want my elbow to hit it flush and stop.

This is just the avenue I'll pursue until someone (perhaps myself) convinces me of a better way to straighten my arm.

I agree entirely with the idea of teaching the student (me) the pattern of arm movement shown in these remarkable videos and then telling him/her to work it out from there.

Roger seldom if ever fails as a model for anybody on any stroke. Is that adulation? No, it's common sense. In great genius there is always some sort of great simplicity if you can discover it.

If I were teaching the present lesson out on a court without the benefit of these videos right there I might compare the rising racket to an external elevator climbing the sharp edge of a skyscraper in Atlanta, Georgia. The racket tip is all screwed around at the moment of elbow repositioning and is still screwed around (i.e., "cocked") at the top of the arm extension.

Translating this to one's own serve is just thought and words, of course, until one gets to a tennis court. This past Saturday I made the mistake of being sucked into an informal tennis tournament, North Carolina School for the Arts, which was held on an abrasive hard court rather than on my usual har-tru which never seems to bother the scars in my left leg 68-year-old meniscus.

Worst of all, despite the involvement of a bunch of twenty-year-old intense achiever film-making students all with provocative, unorthodox strokes, I was three points from winning the thing.

Oh well, they gave me a priceless, beribboned medal with the raised word
"winner" stamped on it. That was pretty nice of them.

[jeffreycounts]

That first clip is one of the most beautiful clips I have ever seen. Just extraordinary.

Here are my thoughts:

a) Federer is doing what all good servers do in this clip. Nothing unusual here.

b) His wrist does flex forward coming into contact, but more importantly, he is turning his hand into contact. John refers to this as "giving a high five" to the ball, which is an excellent analogy. This turning motion - or torquing motion - produces tremendous racket acclereation in a very small amount of time.

c) His wrist does not "snap forward" through contact. Instead the hand turns outward, in synch with the entire arm. If you drew a line from his shoulder to the tip of his racket, you would see that everything is rotating together from contact on. When you just "snap your wrist", you aren't getting the entire arm involved, like Federer does. There is a tremendous forward extension of the arm into the court for big first serves.

d) There is a clear sequence of events going on here. A chain reaction. First the arm straights and only THEN, when the butt cap of the racket points forward towards the net, does the wrist and arm turn into the ball. Everything about the serve works this one - complete one motion then fire the next and then the next. Energy gets passed along the chain from the ground to the final turning motion into and through contact.

Tennisplayer.net has captured some of the most amazing slow motion tennis video I have ever seen. This Federer clip is among the best of the best.

Jeff

[julian]

QuickTime Super Slow-Mo Close Up 1



QuickTime Super Slow-Mo Close Up 2

It would help a bit to see a ball thrown by Fed in relation to a racket
or maybe a view from behind?

[airforce1]

sequence, yes

the sequence is important, but the delay in forearm extension is the key to racket speed. Roger is good, but not the best example of this.

[BrianGordon]

the sequence is important, but the delay in forearm extension is the key to racket speed. Roger is good, but not the best example of this.

airforce-

Don't know about THE key but certainly a key factor - good point - interested to hear your logic about the importance - Brian

[airforce1]

If you study the video of the top players, some of them have the big serves regularly and some are a notch or two off that pace.
What I've seen is that Pete, Andy, and the other consistent big servers delay the extension of the forearm from a very low wrist and high elbow till they are almost off the ground with their leg drive.

On the other side you can see the servers who are generally a notch or so off the top speeds and how they start to prematurely extend the elbow, lifting the wrist and racket. Agassi is a good one to look at for this. I have great respect for his serve, but on avg, we all know he is about 10-15% off the pace of faster servers. Guys like Agassi have already gotten thru 1/3 to 1/2 of that movement, at a point that the faster servers have not even started the extension. Roger usually falls somewhere in between these two groups with his serve. He delays the elbow extension longer than Agassi, but not as long as Andy, and with less leg drive as well.

One way to analyze this is to see that the racket for the big servers has about 1-2 feet farther to travel (at the top of the leg extension), in the same amount of time. That translates to more racket speed!

I don't see any great variation in their wrist except that as slower servers movement of the wrist starts sooner with the elbow extension as well.

[airforce1]

Key

The reason that I claim that it is KEY, is because it is my contention it is the only significant and consistent difference between the good and the great servers.

[jeffreycounts]

If you study the video of the top players, some of them have the big serves regularly and some are a notch or two off that pace.
What I've seen is that Pete, Andy, and the other consistent big servers delay the extension of the forearm from a very low wrist and high elbow till they are almost off the ground with their leg drive.

On the other side you can see the servers who are generally a notch or so off the top speeds and how they start to prematurely extend the elbow, lifting the wrist and racket. Agassi is a good one to look at for this. I have great respect for his serve, but on avg, we all know he is about 10-15% off the pace of faster servers. Guys like Agassi have already gotten thru 1/3 to 1/2 of that movement, at a point that the faster servers have not even started the extension. Roger usually falls somewhere in between these two groups with his serve. He delays the elbow extension longer than Agassi, but not as long as Andy, and with less leg drive as well.

One way to analyze this is to see that the racket for the big servers has about 1-2 feet farther to travel (at the top of the leg extension), in the same amount of time. That translates to more racket speed!

I don't see any great variation in their wrist except that as slower servers movement of the wrist starts sooner with the elbow extension as well.

Some great observations in my opinion. This would make a good article!

[EricMatuszewski]

Air force,

Your observation is a good one.

Do you see any correlation between the phenomenon your describing and shoulder flexibility?