A New Year's Serve

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From Forehand to Serve

Now that we've got the Federfore where we want it, the time has come to take all lessons learned across the bridge to rotorded serve.

And what is the distinguishing feature of the rotorded serve we have developed? A bent arm toss followed by that bent arm remaining poised in the air until all cows have come home.

So what has bent arm got to do with a Federfore? Bent left arm is used sometime to catch the racket but more often not, in which case its function is not to stop the shoulders but significantly slow them, which one should do on a serve, too. A second function for serve and forehand both is to establish opposite hand as the still hand in an elasticized slingshot.

So, get some figure eights going in practice before the first serve. And then add windmills-- but of the kind used as pitching exercise at Jaegersports.com. One can have a racket or two in hand (one in each hand) or not. The point is to stride purposefully toward one's opponent windmilling one's arms toward him, all of which may convince him that you are a nut.

Remember, people are afraid of crazies. "Walk slow, John," my triple-lifers used to say on a day when they were favorably disposed toward their writing teacher and were explaining to him how he might survive walking through big city at 4 a.m. or even at 9 a.m. while crossing the prison yard.

But will your opponent be truly threatened by your two arms flailing toward him since the net is between you? He may simply decide you are doing something gymnastic.

On the chance that he is intimidated, however, shift into reverse. Start windmilling backward while stepping backward. Then, with menacing suddenness, come toward him a second time. The real purpose is to fill your arms with blood.

Already, I'm revising this. First retreat. Then advance. Then retreat. Then do figure eights with bent arm up in the air. Then step up to the line to start the match.

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"Subtle Arcs"

"Tennis is about subtle arcs." Somebody said it. I can't remember who. Nor do I care since I believe it. Belief is the important part.

If a subtle arc is slightly off the optimal, the experimenter will develop a whole elaborate mindset such as, "Genius should never be imitated, and Fred Perry's ping-pong-like strokes, unique to him, brought down the tennis fortunes of Great Britain by creating a race of Fred Perry imitators when successful imitation of Fred Perry just wasn't humanly possible."

This is an interesting thesis, but I don't buy it, especially since genius, as Goethe pointed out, is always characterized by simplicity. And I don't think the Brits used a sufficiently Ben Franklin like off-the-wall inventor's garage bench in American suburbia approach and didn't toil for long enough and were overly sensible and therefore gave up too soon. Yes, Alan Bates should have spent even more time with Zorba the Greek.

When anybody imitates anybody, they tend to do it in too slavish and superficial fashion.

The way now to understand the Federer forehand is to turn away from all the videos for a few minutes and study the stroke production opus of Gordon-Macci-Yandell ("The ATP Forehand Parts 1 and 2").

Then start fooling around with the backswing. I know I started preaching backswing toward right rear fence post. Next I thought that racket tip might point there but that once you factor in huge upper body rotation and lifting of both hands, you get a kind of inside out hooping or spiraling hay rake motion to the ball that yes is "inside out" while not exactly being the same as an inside out SWING.

What does that mean, and why should you or anybody care? Because Roger's forehand is almost surely better than the one you currently have, and you should respect ANYBODY'S honest opinion/experience in trying to get closer to it.

If one does the swimming pool experiments of #'s 1204 and 1205, one may end up thinking like me that backswing should go more steeply up and down and closer to the body than one may have thought. (Possible images to mainline best pattern into your neurological system: An upside down boot? A midget church steeple? Just the idea of a twin direction "peaked" backswing going up then down while around toward behind your body without ever getting there seems revolutionary.)

By doing this, one may eliminate some contrived and time drain closing of the strings. Closing nearly always does occur but can blend nicely with other stuff through a little fiddling with how one hand relates to the other during the lift of both. This "two-hands-are-equal" little adjustment feels very different and easier and quicker than some radical twist in the hitting arm.

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Pitch

Building on the previous post with right hand just under the water and left hand just above the surface in the air, why for the love of Pete or Roger or Aggie or any other player one admires would one even think of adjusting pitch anywhere but right there?

Fiddle with the relationship between the two hands. Go this way and the strings close. Go that way and the strings open.

I don't mean to sound preachy, but I'm trying to report activity more economical than what I used to do, and like any recent convert to anything think that everybody else of course should do the same.

Namely, report on the progress toward economy that they've made-- in order to help new persons find that or other edits.

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Swimming Pool Pantomime of Federfores

I found myself doing this one time in a private indoor swimming pool in Somerset, England. The owner of the pool, an internationalist whom I'd known for most of my life, came downstairs to start making breakfast but looked in briefly because she heard thrashing in the water. She finally decided, right then and there, that I was a complete nut.

The direction of arm straightening however is very important. Determined precisely by where the elbow points, it counters the flip before the flip even starts to happen.

People other than myself may not have to dwell on "scapular retraction" since they can achieve the same phenomenon through the less threatening self-command "relax your shoulder right after the flip." (Or during the flip or just before the flip. Let's keep the possibilities open.)

The world contains many swimming pools. Particularly instructive, unit turn completed, is to lift one's hands into such position that right is just under the water with left just out of the water.

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Spear Longer

Order 30 20-milligram pills of scapular retraction from the Eli Lilly Company: Only $800 with your physician's prescription from your local pharmacy today.

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Backswing, Flip and Contact

(Seen from the Rear)

In the video I most recently used (in the immediately preceding post) the backswing is to the left of the ball. The flip is to the left of the ball but closer to it. Would this be true on other shots hit to different targets?

Inside Out

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHInsideOutArmActionRear_250fps.mp4

Short

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHShortArmActionRear_250fps.mp4

Moves Back

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHMovesBackArmActionRear_250fps.mp4

Forehand Wide

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Wide&stroke=RFFHWideOpenStanceRear4_500fps.mp4

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Federfores, You Stevedores

"Maybe Roger will throw you a used sweatband," my critics used to say. "And why do you want to imitate him anyway when there're so many other tour players to choose from? Why not James Blake?" Reader, if you don't know by now, you're never going to know, and I doubt that you and I will ever have very much to talk about.

People pretending to criticize the Gordon-Macci-Yandell opus now had better get a few things straight. First, if they think the slogging is worse than fiction, they need to read REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST by Marcel Proust or every volume of FINNEGAN'S WAKE by James Joyce.

Second, to criticize something, you need to talk about it, not just about your own brain or pizzle. But in this case, to read with either is a grave mistake. For this article-- the Gordon-Macci-Yandell-- requires that you read with your arm.

Will you have to change your grip to strong eastern to do this? Very possible unless you are constructed like Rafa Nadal. The authors themselves may disagree-- I hope so. Next issue: All the miserable misguided articles and posts we've had to read about how double-bend is better. It isn't.

But the authors picked Roger as their model long before last Sunday. And for small periods during the 15-year research, Roger didn't do well...for him. Perhaps we all need a simplicity check. His strokes and movement look best and are most functional of all the world's best tennis players.

Let's talk about forehand backswing now on the theory that considering a whole tennis, golf or rowing cycle at once is the best educational approach for most people.

Today I see something I didn't see yesterday, and I deem that a very normal process evident everywhere in life. Such a change has nothing to do with Gordon, Macci, Yandell or anyone else who probably stands between me and my best tennis.

Some videos I've seen lately don't portray racket tip pivoting up on elbow. Rather, both ends of the racket rise at the same speed. This happens after a unit turn of course. And next, the arm extends, which brings racket in toward the body and lines it up with the shoulders.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHInsideInArmActionRear1_500fps.mp4

Golfers, to get this lined up feel, sometimes thread a pin behind their back through their elbows.

This is what I want for myself as I conduct drop and hit experiments today: A very solid connection between upper body and racket during the first part of the forward swing.

Then, as can't-be-delayed-enough-racket becomes perpendicular to baseline and net, the arm gets slingshotted forward on top of big body whirl which naturally will slow down a bit.

Did scapular retraction occur just before this to engender such an effective slingshot encrusted on the still ongoing broad arc whirl? I insist that it did.

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Underestimating a Federfore is as Bad as Underestimating Roger Federer

Always, I think, people will underestimate the subtleties of anything new. Maybe this is good. Their thinking that the path is simple may be the one thing that causes them to change, i.e., to act.

A slight difference is available in the way the hand may lower in a Federfore. If one has performed "diagonal load," to use Geoffrey Williams' useful term, the arm starts out neither toward the side fence or rear fence but in between.

Because of this 45-degree angle, if racket then simultaneously lowers from both the shoulder joint and extension at elbow, it must of necessity come somewhat toward the body.

This is an earlier inward looping than the person trying to hit his Federfore may have envisioned.

Other people already know the answer-- early dropping from shoulder joint or not along with increasing scope in either case?-- but I'm going to find out for myself.

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Ziegenfussing a Federfore

I'm emboldened by the fact that Valerie Ziegenfuss Bradshaw has never called to object to my frequent characterizations of her forehand.

To Ziegenfuss a Federfore now, we'll keep the shoulders cocked and knees bent for much longer and speed racket through flip toward the ball with a scapular retraction-scapular adduction sequence only.

Then, as the spear gets close, we'll launch a driving body rotation with relaxed but not loosey-goosey hand converting a significant part of the energy to upward wipe.

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Inevitable and Dramatic Reversal of View

Re # 1196, "Feeble-minded Forehand," most arm movement in first repeating furniture occurs from contact. I'm apt to conclude from this that opposite arm, which has spun to Roger's left, now retards body rotation even when not catching the racket as it does in this case.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/biomechanics/brian_gordon/developing_an_atp_forehand_part_01/

And that further makes me think that this final leftward swipe with right arm is passive and from shoulder ball and not from scapular adduction which has already occurred.

And that the change of direction occurs on the ball and accelerates before it decelerates.

As in many classical forehand learning patterns, catching racket for a while seems advisable. Roger's own classification of his forehand: "Modern retro."

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Swastika Serve

Even something good has to come out of every Nazi era. My bent arms separate starting from a rearward position. As they do there begins a relaxed scapular retraction in both shoulders. Let us discuss the two shoulders separately. I am right-handed.

Relaxed scapular retraction on front edge of the body means that relaxed scapular adduction is available to become a component of the toss. While I'd like to maintain equality between the words "slingshot" and "adduction" in every projected case, scapular adduction can in fact be fast, medium, or slow.

Relaxed scapular retraction on trailing edge of the body enables careful and deliberate arch. Mark Phillippoussis: "I arch throughout the serve." So the two elbows and the two shoulders can slowly move away from each other.

Moderation of right retraction now lets upper body rotation get into the act of continuing arm separation since a trailing body part wants to open.

Next, legs can chime in by combining with internal lift of rib cage converting into a wedge.

Note: We've always been told that left arm stops the body rotation. Well, if left arm down low can do that, it can do it up high as well. For a model of this, click on old book cover at Post # 1151 on page 116 in this thread.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/bulletin/showthread.php?t=1198&page=116

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Feeble-minded Forehand

We wanted to be dumb, right? Be "time out of mind." Sought amnesia.

When one makes the conscious decision to pay attention to detail instead, one most likely will pay a fearful price.

Unless one persists in keeping the detail and the amnesia together.

Lately, in personal research on the dynamic of change of direction for upward acceleration in a Federfore, I've been playing with two marbles instead of three.

Marble one: slingshot or scapular adduction (which means there was scapular retraction just before). Marble two: passive round the body movement of upper arm from the shoulder ball.

Instead of viewing marble two as an alternative to marble one, why not declare it mere lubricant or position changer like the subdued wrist closure we all just learned about?

And permit, in one's mind, a marble three, which is simple body rotation.

Here's the challenge: You've fired the racket butt and want it to veer left of the ball at the last instant.

How? Powerfully. So I propose-- today-- that you do this with body rotation only.

Early driving rotation of the body whips the arm then in all sorts of directions.
As arm catches up, however, the body rotation slows. Now the body rotation picks up again and hand goes with it, sideways.

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Serve Not Crazy Enough?

Could be that serve is only adequate and, in the translated words of the Portuguee Fernando Pessoa writing under his most passionate heteronym Alvaro de Campos in the great poem MARITIME ODE is "tied to the apron strings of civilization."

So, building on my second serve bent arm version, which unfortunately resembles a swastika, I shall now add a huge forward shoulders rotation.

I can already hear the anonymous voice of some diabolical twerp on how to do this, "Toss higher."

But I don't want to do that. I want to use the low bent arm toss I've recently developed, and I want to toss during forward rotation-- a decision everybody except maybe for Vic Braden has always deemed horrible.

But Uncle Vic in a long tennis lifetime has said lots of things. And he hasn't advocated crazy toss for everybody all of the time. And when he did go in that direction he liked palm down. But I'll make cone toss work with tossing shoulder scapular adduction carefully calibrated to counter the forward shoulders rotation and thus retain the precision of more static, more ordinary, probably more reliable but less dynamic tosses.

Okay, how does this amped up service look? How coming? Pretty bad.

The model is Jose Valverde, Papa Grande, closer for the Detroit Tigers.

Keep hands together. Rotate to the left. Rotate to the right. All this pre-pitch. "Mannerism!" NABRUG shrieks.

But I haven't even tossed yet. So I can do as I please, even hold forth on the internet.

Pete Seeger: "I may be right, I may be wrong, but I've got the right to sing this song."

If one hasn't tossed one has all the time in the world, and as I said, the hands are still together.

So I, you, we, they, nobody but me shall separate the hands now. And let us slow down our mental wheels though not our physical ones. After all, reader, what would you be doing if you weren't reading this? Hope to Pete Seeger: "So what are you doing nowadays?" Pete Seeger to Hope: "Washing dishes." Unfortunately, that gave Hope the idea of never again washing dishes herself.

Okay, we gotta bust loose. So the arms separate. How? Scapular retraction is spread out but is most important in the tossing shoulder here, just now. Which prepares for crazy toss. By then, since the shoulders will have whirled, the player will be in normal position for a rotorded kick.

Haven't tried this serve on a tennis court yet. But find the Papa Grande pre-serve ritual very interesting. With both hands rotating backward with shoulders, you wouldn't think shoulders should rotate backward any more, but if that's the rhythm you're used to, you'll do it-- rotate shoulders backward just a bit more while arms separate causing timed scapular retraction at front of bod. Now shoulders rotate forward as well-timed scapular adduction occurs to tame the rise of tossing arm.

Note on Wimbledon 2012: If your name is Baker, never play anyone named Cabbage Clerk, i.e., Kohlschreiber.

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Outside Inside Inside?

In Federfores, what would happen if the player abandoned his ready made idea of a figure eight swing and simply set up to the outside of the ball and then used the same double lowering loop, and next sent more turned racket butt straight at the ball and veered hand left barely to miss and hit ball right in the seat of its pants?

Now that might lead to some new contact points.

It's still a topspin shot.

And how about a followthrough straight over the shoulder yoke for a field goal?

I'm interested in the theory here, which eliminates one change of direction for more racket head speed. Might not this lead to light spinny shots and heavy shots as well?

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Building Federfore: How High is Roger's Racket Just as it Finishes Closing?

To rephrase this, how high does Roger's racket get, not at its high point but just as it has somewhat lowered?

To rephrase again, how high or low does Roger's racket get just before it whips and flips to inside of the ball?

And how does the player close the racket anyway? Not by consciously turning it, but by 1) moving elbow on a diagonal out from body and 2) extending the arm.

Ray Brown, the neuroscientist was one of the first persons to ever explain 2) for tennis players. Tennis coaches are apt to think such information isn't important but often they are nuts.

Grips mess with pitch but so too does amount of arm extension. Hence a western grip used to hit a basic forehand employs a bent arm, a continental grip a straight arm, and an eastern grip, which is in between, either a bent arm or a straight arm.

To return to the original question, how high is Roger's racket just before it flips to inside?

No one is bound to slavish imitation of Roger, but having a firm understanding of how racket butt moves into transition is very important. Is it or is it not aided by gravity and if so by how much?

And, is it or is it not aided by reverse action, i.e., by body starting its driving rotation early so that arm to catch up must go backward-sideways-downward first? And if so, by how much?

Finally, is whip and flip from shoulder ball or from slingshot, i.e., from the end of a scapular retraction-scapular adduction sequence?

I keep this final question like a bone in my teeth and won't let go no matter how hard anyone pulls. Does slingshot happen here and toward the net ,or, sideways an instant later to have handle just miss the ball?

If one can hit the ball either way, which prevails? Or doesn't anyone know?

"Which screen is clearer?" the ophthalmologist asks, "A or B?"