changing pancake serve

[uspta1269278016]

i have 15 to 18 year old players who want to change their eastern to semi western grips and start hitting serves with continental grips. It seem that the major problem is when the get racquet to cocked position the wrist still opens and they cannot pronate through the swing. i now there are probably no quick fixes , but does anybody have any ideas about this.

[bottle]

Meat Axe

Tell them their frame is the blade of a cleaver and to cleave the ball in two.

They'll soon see they can't do this. But if they're good enough to frame some ball over a fence, good! They're very close then to getting ZING!

On the best serve the front frame barely misses the ball.

Some professors (but also top tour players) like Allen Fox have even suggested not thinking about pronation at all. One idea is that pronation is a reflexive motion automatically provided by your inner caveman/cavewoman to protect your arm, and the less you think about it therefore the better. But the subject gets considerably more complicated shortly after that.

To teach what you're talking about the Vic Braden instructors used to have people throw up a ball without a racket and try to hit as long as possible with the front edge of the hand. At the last instant they would turn the hand and
strike the ball with their palm, "high-five it," some would say.

Would you think about the turn? Maybe, maybe not. Everybody seems to agree that the closer you get the frame (or edge of your hand) to the ball the better.

The other part of your post, though, about the students opening their wrist, though, gets interesting. Is opening the wrist such a bad thing? Sasha Kulikova on the Wake Forest varsity closes her wrist-- really humps it-- then opens it out as part of the snap. It seems to me there are many permissible variations. What is more trial-by-error than learning to serve anyway?

Chris Lewit with his impressive articles on kick serve in this issue and the last advocates keeping wrist faced down a bit; Braden used to say hand should
face your ear as it goes by; he had a teaching image where an imaginary mirror was embedded in your palm and you inspected your head for cooties.
Elbow position has a lot to do with which way the palm and wrist are set for sure. As well as whether you're cleaving at the ball, around the ball, or up at the bottom of it. (And if you're really good, can scrape up the left side of it.)
Are these too many ideas yet?

Looseness of grip-- very important. That will relax everything, but as Chris Lewit says, it doesn't want to be too loose, rather just right.

One really interesting idea, from Charlie Pasarel, is that when you aren't getting enough rasp on the ball, try serving with an Eastern grip for a while before returning to your Continental (so much better for spin, as you know, and that's why you want people to use it).

Lewit seems to emphasize hand going up and out after triceps extension.
His use of the word "hand" is interesting to me. After the hand does this trickiest of things right on the ball perhaps the forearm and even the shoulder take over to complete the big twisting motion started in microcosm by the hand.

Whoops! I'm getting too complicated. Goodbye.

[airforce1]

bottle,
like what you said about not thinking about pronation too much. Maybe the only need for this thought is in learning not to carve around the ball in the opposite direction of pronation.

simple for the op-
suggest for them to try and stay sideways as long as they can (holding off on facing the net) and see if this helps. this seems to help the brain to realize the need to pronate.

[uspta9311799]

Pronation

Agreed. Never once told a kid to pronate when learning a kick, and I have taught hundreds of great kicks.

The severe pronation happens after the contact. There are so many more important elements to focus on...


Chris

bottle,
like what you said about not thinking about pronation too much. Maybe the only need for this thought is in learning not to carve around the ball in the opposite direction of pronation.

simple for the op-
suggest for them to try and stay sideways as long as they can (holding off on facing the net) and see if this helps. this seems to help the brain to realize the need to pronate.

[uspta9311799]

Continental

Most players and coaches give up way too soon with continental. It is going to be a long and painful process, and you must explain that to your students.

You have to convince a kid psychologically to make the technical change. If the mind doesn't buy in for the tough journey, the attempted technical reconstruction will fail.

Explain to your students that the change may take 6 months to a year. Then, whenever they start to get discouraged, remind them of where they are on that timeline, because they will get discouraged within the first 10 minutes when they realize they can't hit the ball over the net with the new grip.

Start them in the TED, see my recent article, and begin right up on top of the net. Hit thousands and the hand and wrist will learn the right way. If the racquet face is opening too much, they must close the hand more on the way up to get that zing.

I focus on the triceps snap up-and-out-to-the-right, not pronation. The tricep and hand action work in tandem, but focusing on pronation alone will probably not work.

The TED is the best way to work on a new grip because it simplifies the hitting action. Trying to learn a new grip with a full motion is too difficult except for the most talented kids.


Good luck,
Chris

i have 15 to 18 year old players who want to change their eastern to semi western grips and start hitting serves with continental grips. It seem that the major problem is when the get racquet to cocked position the wrist still opens and they cannot pronate through the swing. i now there are probably no quick fixes , but does anybody have any ideas about this.