A New Year's Serve

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Back to Square One

The turn in my new lift-and-turn motion must be a square one.

That is a joke and a very bad one.

My shoulder casing mushed when I suddenly twisted as I got born.

Maybe? I expect a doctor of obstetrics to dispute that one.

Regardless, any kind of athletic motion resembling a throw results in my elbow staying too low.

I have tried many such motions and therefore know.

I've filmed and filmed myself. Elbow low.

The only way I can see of getting elbow up where I want it is to lift it straight off, with arm still bent, up over my face as if I were taking off my T-shirt.

So I'm going to do it. I hope no one minds.

In terms of iteration, the toss now can begin: forearm up over head then toss.

With hitting elbow pulling toward left as part of toss.

Is there more range to be derived from the trick shoulder housing just then?

About eight inches which stretch I classify as part of my bod-dominant toss.

Ha can now cue the toss.

Ha rises and turns. To repeat the bad but necessary joke, this turn is a square one.

The ha shoulder double-winds: a) around and b) down.

The ta shoulder double-winds: a) around and b) up.

The ice cream cone toss goes across and up and back across.

The hips and shoulders form a cantilever too.

All this happened at once and now is over-- a good time to explode from the legs.

In what directions do legs, hips, shoulders go?

Legs: almost straight up yet a bit forward.

Hips: about one inch backward.

Shoulders: about two feet forward, from the hips.

This is the visible part of the serve at that point.

A notable relationship: bent ha goes toward left fence while bent ta goes straightening toward right fence.

Instruction for cueing the initial pre-serve lift: Make it slow and keep forearm parallel to court as you take hand up middle of mouth and nose and between the eyes.

[bottle]

Experiment was Fine

No lessening of quality from anything else I do. And yet there is more ease. The one modification I now plan (although others may emerge in my sleep but I hope not) is to transfer the elbow's left turn from something square in city traffic to a wide smooth arc that a motorcycle might follow on pastureland.

[bottle]

Addendum

Haven't even tried # 4624 yet. Before I go to my netless court, I want to add another move to my radical scheme. The elbow rises slowly up, yes, but then makes a left turn for the left fence. It is still very smooth and slow in doing this.

There is no escape now for Mr. Congenitally Dropped Shoulder Server, no way for him to cop out on a really high upper arm. Even my camera will have to show it.

This is when unified toss and double bend will chime in, thus making the motion continuous with no stopgap.

The arm will be just open enough to clear head. Needling can begin any old time it wants to.

Also, need to remember to walk over to bangboard and hit some one bounce dinks, steering from finger pressure only. Hadn't done that recently and so missed a couple easy volleys on Friday night.

People say this is winter. Ha! The park attendants should leave nets up the whole year.

[bottle]

So I Held Some, didn't Hold Some Last Night

The same thing was happening to the people around me, some of whom had good serves. That's what I had last night: a good serve. A good serve, don't you know, does not suffice on the homogeneous grit-laden hard courts that everybody plays on nowadays. Whether you have a good serve or a poor serve does not much differ. If you had an excellent serve, that would differ.

So, time to try something else-- anything, in the thought of sometime getting lucky.

Gladys Heldman did not want anybody to bend their knees while tossing. But I don' care what Mamma don' 'low, gonna play that eighty-eight anyhow.

All my serves start from the same address.

Even the persons hostile to my serves agree that I have a good address.

The bent right arm starts up.

A server can do anything he wants before he has tossed, and if he doesn't take all the time in the world for this, he is a nut.

As hand finally clears eyes, one does one's body and arm toss.

And kicks.

And proceeds as normal.

[bottle]

Method in Madness

One takes stuff away from even or especially from a negative experiment without euphoria and hopefully with clear and sober eyes. Example: I no longer try to imitate the overall John Isner serve but retain a radically different rising path for hitting arm. My idea re needling also has changed.

Needling needn't be Trumplike. It can be a physical thing in tennis that greatly increases the distance of one's passive arm snap. John Isner seems to prove its effectiveness. Others may generate high racket head speed with a shorter tract of loose straightening arm.

One's possible control of spin direction quickly comes into play. Solution of this challenge could be exotic or unexpectedly basic for someone whose store of ESR is limited by physique.

Note: The right arm in new thinking never goes down but out and up. How high? Quite high. How bent will it be at top? To be decided. The feel up there will be of a cushion. The movement will be continuous but with a semblance or suggestion of a pause. The countervailing act (shoulders one way hips another) will reinforce toss while moving both arms.

Since the arm already is bent at address, it could simply remain that way on its trip to the top a la Djokovic.

I find that however a bit too dry and mechanical for me. I prefer a slight straightening and re-bending as elbow goes up.

But back doesn't just bend backward. It twists decisively backward too. This raises the base of left (tossing) arm while lowering the base of cocking right arm, hence hand and racket as well.

Too many minutiae of stroke technique here? Then shift to this other kind of tennis knowledge:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZaB...=EmailCampaign)

[bottle]

Horrified at Film of Self

The shock of seeing cramped, arrhythmic motion with a bunch of stunted arm work low and out to right of bod hereby ends my experiment in Isner generis serves.

Already I'm back to platform, but with ha now leaving the station long before the ta train.

ha is first straight, bowling up at side fence. How high? Quite high. A guy with a trick arm like mine must concentrate above all on getting his elbow up and out of the way where it won't do its usual mischief.

Sounds like the exercise where you start with ha brandished like a tomahawk. The difference is that there is continuous motion as arm bends to its right angle or even less but think! Think!...

For ta is still in Grand Central.

So how to blend ta with ha in continuity forever? Easy, so easy. First relax. Then go up and to left with your ice cream cone but at the same time employ a huge liquid, oozing cantilever.

One need only ask, when contemplating all this a day or two later, did left shoulder get higher than right? Did upper and lower bod each segment in its own direction? Was ball given a high, uninhibited crossing ride?

And what about ha? Did ha, never stopped despite its brandishing keep moving at its original rate?

I tell you, I positively assert, if the answer to all these questions is yes, there will be no need for the artificiality and affectation of ta held up for an extra interval as in the Kirsten Dunst movie called WIMBLEDON.

No, ta will get tall just as legs kick like a double barreled shotgun (despite their carefully distinguished roles).

Where's ha? The hand of ha is just passing your head like a cloud across the moon.

Well, every picture tells a story. The arm, forced for months to needle too soon is now permitted to needle at its leisure at beginning of the leg drive and as part of easy racket drop about to plunge into a cushion of rising tension but not terrorism.

[bottle]

Conclusion after a Trip to Court

Alter upward pathway more through stance than internal adjustment of arm.

Elbow coming straight up at right angles to the shoulders creates the longest steepest path to the ball for this particular server.

[bottle]

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

I think I would be more impressed with somebody attempting the prescriptions of Dr. Brian Gordon and then reporting back on how they worked out than in somebody who simply praises Dr. Gordon to high heaven.

That sentiment of mine could do a couple bad things: 1) make me some new enemies whom I need like a hole in the head and 2) lead to my being over-impressed with myself and in that way fail to develop a devastating trick arm serve.

In cinematic vaults there is the example of an Indian cricketeer known for hurling balls that are unreturnable or uncontrollable if one succeeds in touching one.

This indigenous recruit as part of an all-Indian team then mows the occupying Brits down in spite of all the accumulated experience of cricket they bring to the subcontinent.

Pure fiction or based on true incident? In American baseball Sandy Koufax, who pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers, had a similarly withered arm and along with it a curve ball like nobody else's ever.

Well, that's what I would like, and I'm trying to follow Brian's prescription of getting the hand under the elbow so that both are lined up with the ball.

For me with my elbow so heedless of possible impingement located way above center line because so thoroughly and improbably skyed this spatial challenge is different from that of an ordinary server where the necessary alignment happens for him a bit lower and more to his right.

If a hypothetical server now, someone with a congenitally dropped shoulder exactly like mine, does find unexpected springiness, strength and healthful range directly overhead, he should want to explore.

As elbow screws up to the mountain summit and over it, fractionally lowered now, should its mountain path have come from the right, the left or straight up the fall line?

Which path puts one in perfect position at low point to pass up through pro drop-- aligned-- as all of Brian's correctly sequenced upward rotations kick in?

[bottle]

This Serve is Coming Along

It got better and stronger through three different sets. So maybe I shouldn't fool with it. But I will since I am an inveterate tweaker. Messing around with stroke mechanics is half of my pleasure in the game.

My plan from here has to do with the tight circle that characterizes the middle part of John Isner's motion. His needled arm resembles a rapid clock hand. To emulate that, I need to work on better and better coordination of racket motion and leg drive.

The details of which must, due to the weird nature of trick arm serves, be strictly personal rather than universal unless somewhere in the world is another congenitally lapsed shoulder exactly like mine. (Why didn't I think to switch to the normal other arm when I was 12 years old?)

Part of this plan has to do with my recognition, that, no matter what my legs were doing, there wasn't enough easy motion available to match it before real stretch-shorten cycle chimed in.

Well, some potential comes now from the simplification of arm being needled. Exactly when if at all to dynamically press the two halves of the arm together may have been unnecessary concern.

Very simply, not thinking about dynamics, you can finish squeezing the needle at the place that will start the easiest swing. My suspicion is that, while simultaneity of elbow lift and elbow bend is a fine and time-saving idea, the bend still can conclude first to lengthen the beginning feel of a whirling clock hand.

Precisely when arm gets fully bent is when I wish for my legs to fire. But I don't think I can conceive of the point for that in advance in this room. Trial from various o'clocks out on the court must occur.

To run the experiment the elbow can wind straight up at a relaxed rate. The bend however could be twice or thrice or four or five times as quick as that.

[bottle]

How to: A Whole On-Court Session to Achieve just one Serve that one Liked and which was Not Immediately Repeatable

I must try to say what I think might have happened to produce that one great serve.

I must, since my approach to discovery is narrative words, a method clearly established long, long ago.

In using modified Isnerian form, one wastes no time in lifting elbow into a needled skyscraper.

This seems as high (1) and as far (2) toward one's back as one can go.

(1) is true; (2) is not.

For legs, kicking just then, drive the needle farther to actual physical limit which is toward side fence behind one.

The amount of this additional stretch is significant since it will become the abduction/adduction (upward rotation # 4) going the other way.

The legs also kick the three previous external rotations into play as in a conventional serve where elbow is lined up with the shoulderballs.

However, ESR, the first of these rotations, despite how much or little of it one has available, does not immediately edge the racket as far as it could to the right.

The reason is that you, the player, are fighting it. You have already started the muscle group that produces the ISR before it happens.

And so, while racket moves out to right thanks to conquering legs and back, the racket push to right is slow if anything can be slow in the space of a tenth of a second. With the slowness extending through abduction/adduction and one-half of motion-dependent arm extension as continuing leg and torso twist drive up to the ball.

EXERCISE: Mime in slow slow motion the conflict between ESR and ISR before ISR actually happens. Level of elbow should not matter for this exercise. Twist elbow the two opposing directions at same time until the bully force gives way to the other.

Take it easy while doing this. Only through taking it easy will you
(viz.,e.e. cummings' "little u-i") ever learn the requisite feel.

[bottle]

A Tumble of New Ideas: Friend or Enemy?

Shouldn't ask? Just keep forging ahead? Who knows where it all will lead. To holds, I hope, that are unexpected right now by my opponents,

One theory of bad serving is that the person never knew that abduction/adduction should exist, but if they did, their understanding of it remained imperfect.

I've heard the magic words that proved the existence of a/a for me but not yet the words that would help master it. Are there even such words?

In their absence, I return to the paveloader exercise taught by John M. Barnaby and discredited in certain circles perhaps for its association with ISR-absent carved slice serves.

One doesn't have to love those serves to like the exercise. Start with racket at one's side not turned over and resembling the scoop of a paveloader slightly behind you.

Now take the racket a short distance toward net then return it to its paveload pose. Repeat but with a bit more distance toward net. And so on, around and on up in increments all the way to the very top but always coming back to the original finish/start position.

I've done this at various points in my tennis career without regret.

But now, with John Isner rather than Milos Raonic elbow, I want to explore loose arm extension during every increment of distance.

On very first movement toward the net I add a needle-nosed look to my apparatus by completely squeezing the two halves of my arm together.

Then, as I return elbow to paveload with a bit of force, the arm naturally (and passively) straightens and then bends somewhat to resume its comfortable finish/start position.

Repeat cycle in small increments all the way up.

You are practicing motion-dependent arm extension at each step..

Abduction is when elbow moves away from bod. Adduction is when elbow moves toward bod. Movement toward the paveloader's finish no matter from how far is adduction every time.

The combination of abduction and arm compression feels like a very natural backswing a lot like what the right arm does in golf.

Adduction of needle leads to an easy swoosh as arm straightens but with no contribution from triceps. Motion dependent means no muscle.

As one attains one's higher reaches as if one is a mountain, one can eventually introduce some ESR-ISR sequence to this by now established pattern.

Gone (destroyed) will be the paveloader position since one's racket will have inverted.

In fact, one no longer will want to practice all the way to end of the follow through, saving that for actual serves.

ISR will start late and finish soon with racket still high.

ISR will start before contact for kick serves, will start just after contact for slice serves.

Isnerian serves of the type I now pursue can easily flatten out or implement a steeper trajectory from the outset, starting with a very steep abductive backswing (upswing close to the head) combined with arm squeeze just as in the exercise.

[bottle]

One or Two Words in a Dozen Languages

deleterious, deleterio, deletério, délétère, perjudicial, vrednyy, káros, skuldig, skuldelig, Linguee, pernicioso, verderblich

What we're talking about here, in my special trick arm case, is too much worry about how to transition from low point to pro drop.

Actually, though, I seek a language different from any of these called "cueball."

To take elbow back in Isnerian form, one folds it while drawing it around snakelike.

This is good for lining it up with the shoulderballs but I require that it be higher than that.

And the way I'll get to highest is not doing the snaky thing but rather just bending the arm to the full and continue elbow in the same vector.

In mechanistic sequence (with a little bump in the middle) the hand winds up on the elbow. The needled elbow continues up over the shoulder. Everything is much closer to head than one would like, but I once knew a club champion in Virginia like that whose serve could and did devastate.

One is filled with apprehension of course from remembering a Vic Braden video on the subject of impingement in which Vic pulls the twiggy arm off of a small rubbery doll.

"It's all right," says John Yandell in one of his articles. In any case, if my arm was going to fall off it would have done so by now.

But the air is thinner up there in the stratosphere. Where a small bit of ESR will change angle of upcoming racket path to the ball more.

In the language of cueball, I just want to aim at the upper right quadrant of the tossed ball and let a lot of other things take care of themselves.

How high is elbow going to be when the legs fire? The look and feel of this could be different than for other players.

Also to be worked out as always in tennis is simultaneity vs. sequence-- which is better?

If one recently was drawing elbow backward as part of the racket fold-up, one can now draw elbow straight up thus doing away with overly mechanistic sequence and still arrive at the same place.

One take-away from John Isner's serve-- something I can do and like-- is use the great cantilevering effect that John employs to keep the toss arm up. If toss arm moves at all up top-- finally-- it is from bod only.

And then, if reason has taken one that far, one can call the toss arm "guide arm" as well.

The toss arm will take the ball up to a slightly leftward release spot.
It will go farther leftward again from shoulder joint. And farther yet from the cantilevering act.

[bottle]

Re "Jingle Bells"

The best part is where the sleigh runs into a drift with a dirt bank in it and gets "upsot."

[bottle]

In Preserving the Isnerian Iterations, One might Enjoy the Following Efforts:

1) Hit some serves with no ESR and no ISR. How does this affect arm arrangement at contact? How does it affect one's looseness of arm extension from the elbow?

2) Delay the turning of racket to edge on. Have it happen higher in the tract? Restoring edge or frame is apt to become a priority for anyone who serves a lot. Charlie Pasarel would periodically serve with an eastern forehand grip temporarily and in practice only to restore his "edge" then resume his service grip.

Regardless of remedy, one needs to appreciate this common malady. From too much practice the strings get sloppily facile, come too flat at the ball and spoil the serve.

3) Reject over-concern about whether one is employing 180 degrees of ISR. Failure more likely stems from imperfect ESR coming just before.

A different subject and useful if the previous wasn't:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvId...=EmailCampaign

Suggested hook song, country and western, "I got tears in my ears from lying on my back in my bed cryin' over you." Condensed version: "I got tears in my ears." More positive and still more condensed: "I got..." That leaves more time for the other stuff. Under reason 2 near the beginning of this wonderfully animated talk from Brent Abel, don't man up since being soft and sensitive will help you determine your best next choice.

[bottle]

Cannot Be Right

The cold balls should easily hit the opposite fence on the fly.

Try the Isner reach with both arms again.

Fold the arm rhythmically while drawing the elbow back and compressing the whole body into a giant spring.

Line up the elbow with the two shoulder balls then and only then.

Reverse the film. Start it forward.

The left arm releases the ball as the right arm starts its fold.

The needling is completed just past skunk tail position.

The legs fire from there.

The needle cranks in a circle that concludes with elbow screwing decisively up and forward. Which is abduction/adduction or screwing or cleanup rotation or whatever you want to call it so long as you give it its own minor attention.

The rest of the serve you ought to know by now.

Ray Liotta, through the use of Chantix, has quit smoking.

Durance vile is over.

I have my serve.

End of story.

Film it.

It's a wrap.

A day or two ago,
I thought I'd take a ride,
And soon Miss Fanny Bright
Was seated by my side;
The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot
We got into a drifted bank,
And then we got upsot.

Now the ground is white
Go it while you're young
Take the girls tonight
And sing this sleighing song
Just get a bob tailed bay
two-forty as his speed
Hitch him to an open sleigh
And crack! you'll take the lead

Oh........