A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Triceptic Extension in John McEnroe's Serve

I'm sorry that so many people in website discussions of tennis (they're fine out on any court) oppose the use of their natural intelligence. My assumption has to be that they're charter members of the famous 29 per cent of unquestioning Americans.

Modern Legends, John McEnroe, 1st serve ad, video five, court level front 2 shows no upper arm rotation to straighten arm through centrifugation. The black patch on the bottom of McEnroe's sleeve does not turn under until the arm is straight.

That along with McEnroe's contorted face makes me think the extension is triceptic, and if so, why wouldn't it start when the two halves of the arm are squeezed together.

In that case, however, the forearm fires out (twists) as triceps fires.

This produces exceptionally vigorous feel.

And right angle position of the arm becomes a passing photographic happening with no especial significance for the server.

P.S. I also examined whether upper arm was rotating within McEnroe's sleeve (to centrifugate passive or spaghetti arm extension) and concluded that it was not.

Old Count

1. feather
2. bend
3. invert low compressed elbow slightly
4. wind forearm while extending arm to a right angle
5. fire with upper arm twist to outside of ball.

New Count

1. feather
2. bend
3. slightly invert low squeezed arm coincident with low weight shift onto front foot
4. fire triceps and twist forearm out and send elbow up fast, too
5. reverse the throw.

[bottle]

Questions for my Antagonists

What exactly is wrong with amusing oneself? It's how I developed a forehand and then a backhand far superior to the sheeple-taught synthetic strokes I had before. Now I'm simply trying to achieve a similar improvement in my serve. No one need listen. Or they can if they want.

Also (am I behaving, am I behaving?!), what is it about the name Leonard Shlain that terrorizes humorless youths and incites them to battle? Is it that Shlain is an intellectual? This older larger right brain younger smaller left brain subject is not a joke, you know, and pertains directly to every level of tennis.

John McEnroe hits a beautiful shot (right brain).

John McEnroe makes an ugly remark (left brain).

[bottle]

Justine vs. Pete

I did read the foregoing, and I am so hurt that I can barely continue.

Although Justine modeled her potent serve on Pete, she came up with something very different. First her feet start closer together. Second, the two halves of her arm squeeze completely together. Third (I am watching the first video under 1st Serve Deuce in the stroke archive) the arm appears to straighten from completely pressed together to completely straight all in one direction from a muscular burst of the triceps.

My caution in using the word "appears" comes from the logical possibility that Justine could loosely extend the arm to a right angle with centrifugal force before finishing this extension off with triceptic burst.

However, although her upper body is revolving under the hub of her head coincident with her "catapult" (which term can be defined as rotation that moves the head), she isn't using the most effective centrifugator of a spaghetti arm available. That would be twist from rotor muscles in the shoulder according to Brian Gordon.

She does use such force but only where it can be multiplied by simultaneous rotation from the forearm muscles after the arm is straight.

[johnyandell]

There might someone out there besides bottle who likes it...I see it as a harmless idiosnycracy of the site so long as he behaves himself.

[stroke]

lgvargas,

So true. John, please make it stop.

[lgvargas]

Bottle-you do realize that no one reads your dissertations on the serve and is purely for your amusement and pleasure.

[bottle]

What I Want to Try

Extreme arm bend and upper arm twist to the max with palm first facing down but then toward the head-- the natural result of performing these two acts, which together feel very much like windup for throwing a rock coincident with body and legs bend.

Then comes combined UBR and stirring of elbow which ought to be enough centrifugality to open the arm the necessary inches to a right angle-- but you twist racket out from the forearm at the same time.

This produces an interesting sequence bucking kinetic chain dogma.

The forearm fires outward before the whole arm fires triceptically, and with forearm then of course, AFTER THAT, twisting the opposite way.

Or you can keep the arm spaghettied (loose, passive) a bit longer while you through axle-like twist fire the upper arm to partially straighten whole arm with new centrifugality now directed more to the left.

A different serve. Back to the first. Vic Braden once reported success among his many students by accelerating the loop in the loopy serves he taught everybody.

Similarly, the neuronal pathway I've described here gets a lot of service functions out of the way before firing the triceps just as legs and catapult fire.

So how did these ideas work this day when I took them to court? My bidnis and not yours unless you're playing me. Here's a much more interesting and totally relevant thought: "There are two aspects to our psyches-- reason and madness-- and we deny either at great peril." -- Leonard Shlain

[bottle]

Noise in the Flow Serve

"All professional educators should spend one half of their residency at a tennis court." --Hypothemonk

One lesson from imitating McEnroe is that you can bend the arm completely together using your biceps without harming overall structure of the serve.

Call this one extreme. More recently, I've been trying again to squeeze the halves together reflexively-- the opposite extreme.

Somewhere in between-- most likely-- is an arrangement that leads to improved noise at contact (tearing silk is what you want). You suddenly find the noise, almost by accident, and then you lose it as you maintain rhythm in your serving practice, finishing your motion and taking a couple of steps toward the high rise basket and the next ball, stepping back and serving again all in a rhythm that includes the steps. There should be more doing than conscious thought in this continuous process. You're looking for a certain noise, focus, radio station where tearing silk plays all the time. Almost automatically, you try bending your arm at a slightly different place. Maybe the phantom radio station is somewhere around the transition between your arm folding in and extending out (the racket tip winding on your forearm to the outside). You stir your knifing elbow a little more, a little less-- and there it is. But this is a pretty old radio. Can you keep the dial on such a fine line?

And what if everything went back more toward the rear fence instead of around to the right?

Then when UBR combined with catapult could you not toss to a contact point more directly overhead?

I can't help but think that when some instructor-- maybe even yourself!-- wants you to stop some element in your serve there is the alternative available of simply using a more extreme stance.

Should you turn your racket out, like McEnroe, or concentrate on keeping palm toward ear while it goes past as the man (Vic Braden) always prescribed for spinny serves.

If you've decided to turn the racket out, you have many options of where to do it, no? Up over head? Down by legs? Won't the result be much the same? Which works best? And what's the best time to turn forearm out? Does the time of this matter? Should you consider turning forearm out and elbow in behind your neck at the same time?

[bottle]

Hypothemonk Expanded

Hypothemonk says, "Analytical words are not the same as right brain imagery-- especially because of their emphasis on time and sequence. Expand from the shots you already have. In arm-squeeze serves don't always stop the UBR (upper body rotation). Let everything whirl-- and keep going-- the UBR (horizontal rotation), the catapult (vertical rotation), the arm, the racket tip.
This may be the most pleasurable serve you ever will hit because of its exaggerated flow. You might or might not like the resultant spin. How high was your elbow? The ball will go fast though not as fast as your best first serve. In returning to squared arm serves for their more specialized purposes, understand that fleeting square arm utterly changes the direction of arm extension."

Hypothemonk says, "Read 'The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: the Conflict between Word and Image,' the greatest tennis book ever written. When," he further argues, "the neophyte discovers there are subjects in this book other
than tennis, and the word 'tennis' may never appear in its 464 pages, he should blame, bite, or kill me rather than the person who created me since I am a fictive character."

[bottle]

Hypothemonk: He Combines Science and Religion

If you explore your serve long enough, you will generate new selves. That's right: You will break down into a bunch of different people.

Hypothemonk, in my case, is just one of them. He says, If you plan to discharge a fully compressed arm, then squeeze the two halves reflexively together with UBR (upper body rotation) and worry about little else.

He says, Go ahead and keep your palm down. Start from a stance as extreme as Pete Sampras and maybe turned around as much as John McEnroe.

He says, Whirl the shoulders forward as much as Sampras while staying low then change your body into a catapult toward net with no more UBR until after contact.

He says, Scissoring the arm this way creates the feel of stirring a pot, does it not? so keep on stirring-- a lot!

He says, Permit your elbow to knife ahead while your stirring, extending forearm forces the racket tip well to the outside.

He says, Your racket will still be in good position because of the radical beginning stance and then your restraint about using continued UBR.

He says, Finally, fire your triceps to start your racket tip direction the opposite way but with full energy overall continuing to fly out to the right.

He says, Don't push off of one leg when you can push off of two, and to do this pivot front foot back on its heel during early pre-toss windback of your upper body.

And, Practice the double-leg thrust and catapult component by itself, throwing your head forward (after the legs!) with initial UBR minimized.

He says, For widest slice and most powerful first serves, go directly to a right-angled arm and then load up the rotor muscles-- reflexively-- rather than continuing with the contest between bicep and triceps (the Brian Gordon pre-load strategy in a different context), reserving that for serves in which you scissor completely.

"Don't bother to bend the arm all the way while opening out the racket and keeping the elbow trophied low like John McEnroe," he declares. "It can work-- maybe even spectacularly-- but just keep the arm squared like so many other servers in their pre-load phase throughout the world. More simple."

[bottle]

Every Day is Groundhog Day

John McEnroe gets arm way back-- almost along baseline-- but read John Yandell's instructional article about working with McEnroe and discovering that McEnroe was going around too far.

McEnroe may twist whole arm out during his bending of it.

McEnroe may not hump wrist at all-- maybe it's naturally straight for half of the serve.

Maybe the slightest hint of a pause as elevating hand approaches brain stem will lead to more rhythm, ease, and control.

I don't see any parallelism this time.

More of a KEYING of racket all the way to the square.

And more of a pause to change racket direction when everything is up.

Neither end of the racket to go past the other.

The racket spins as if there was an axle in the middle of it, like a single-blade airplane propeller.

But the racket is held at one end. So one needs a strong, right-brained image, almost visionary, of racket revolving around its midpoint.

The elbow rises (all the way to "square") while the wrist opens and forearm twists and the arm opens out, and THE ALL OF IT revolves the racket around its midpoint.

But the motion has a start place. There is either a pause or the hint of a pause before the unique motion begins. Up till then the arm was smoothly compressing with wrist in natural/neutral position.

One might think of the top of the backswing in golf.

How will you know when you are beginning to achieve this? The racket head will go slightly down from where it is. The hand will go slightly upward from where it is.

Term: "square"
The fleeting moment in tract when arm opens out to a right angle.

[bottle]

Tennis/Poetry/Flu re McEnroe Serve

The author Leonard Shlain says you ski with your right brain, so I assume he thinks you play tennis with it, too. I think you do when you play your best.

I'm writing this with my left-brained right hand, however, which probably means what's coming out is bellicose, analytical, linear, overly logical and misogynist: just the way I want to be when trying to figure out John McEnroe's serve.

If I open the whole arm behind my back; i.e., twist from the shoulder I get one pattern of events up to the ball, and quite another if I open my forearm instead back there. In both cases I'm arranging the racket so I can hump the racket with the wrist in the same direction that the elbow compresses the two halves of my arm.

Option one (twisted the whole arm): (1) bend the arm then wrist; (2) stir the racket tip in the opposite direction with forearm and wrist; (3) continue to stir the racket tip but in a wider orbit by twisting the compressed arm upward and slightly to forward of the shoulders line; (4) use triceps to achieve a right angle while pre-loading upper arm; (5) fire from the shoulder with your upper arm a stationary but violently twisting axle.

Option two (twisted the forearm): (1) bend the arm then wrist; (2) stir the racket tip in the opposite direction with wrist and elbow; (3) twist the compressed arm upward (you already twisted it forward) (4) use triceps to achieve a right angle while pre-loading upper arm; (5) fire from the shoulder with your upper arm a stationary but violently twisting axle.

I had a match today so didn't equally explore the two options. I did try both,
which probably resulted in neuronal pathway damage to both-- a small setback and price to pay for being one's own human lab.

In the meantime I found a first serve video sequence of McEnroe with light and shadow on the inside of his elbow that clearly showed whole arm twist.

Of course we want to be independent and objective, avoiding hagiography. Just because McEnroe does something doesn't necessarily mean it's best.

Prolonged exposure to the McEnroe serve, however, reveals that it is fiendishly clever, that it is almost impossible to improve upon, that it led to Sampras, Federer and all the other radically rotated stance serves now in modern tennis, and all this came about since McEnroe wanted passionately to compensate for a stiff back.

Of course (again) rotation of whole arm and of forearm both behind oneself are a third possibility to check out.

I wrote the following scenarios before I went to the court. You could call them "various options among the two options" I did examine in my match.

A. Option two was awesome even though I had never tried it before, and option one had proved dependable over several days of basket serving, using the following method: Place high rise basket directly in front of you but far enough away so you take a couple of economic steps for the next ball after you've completed your forward motion. I will continue to explore option two.

B. Option one was more dependable, but I'd practiced it for several days, and option two worked well a few serves. To give option two a fair shake I need to practice it, too.

C. I'll stay with option one. Option two wasn't promising enough for further exploration.

Conclusion I: Go with choice C unless simultaneously using both rotor and forearm muscles to turn racket open is proven superior (for me).

Conclusion II: If Shlaim is correct, but a right-handed poet likes her pen, she should try writing her next poem with her left hand.

Conclusion III: Dizziness from flu most affects the right brain.

[bottle]

To Nica Mol

I googled the name "Nico Mol." A pretty good player, I think. Well, Nico, I wanted to say you should use "K.I.S.S." for your kissing but that might not be a good idea either. Progress proceeds by opposites-- tennis is simple and tennis is complicated. Billie Jean King wrote in one of her books that the better a player is, the less he knows what he's doing.

Okay, but Billie Jean herself is and was EXTREMELY ARTICULATE about all the minutiae of tennis technique as well as many other subjects. Arthur Ashe was the exact same way.

Some (a few) can talk a hole in your belly even as they play well. In baseball-- I know, not a Dutch game-- but we've had Mike Mussina, Don Sutton, Ted Williams, and Roger Clemens who is so much more convincing when he discusses pitching technique than drugs.

This is a good debate, however (talking/doing vs. just doing) and one I always have with my brothers.

[bottle]

Triceptic Bread and Spaghetti Sandwich

It's pretty starchy, I know, but YOU DON'T HAVE TO EAT IT. In fact, YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO IT. But if, like me, you are modeling the John McEnroe
serve, and you don't seek an answer to the following question-- well...you're the idiot, not me.

What's the best way to get from the two halves of the arm clenched together to arm at right angle?

C'mon-- no smartass answers. Take the possibilities out on a court and report back. The object is to develop something potent to crush your favorite opponent even worse.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was Sunday and my thoughts were of peace and I had two innovations to try:

1. Counter-whirl a bit extra for address, putting arms and low racket
a little farther around than McEnroe has them.

2. Use muscle to form the mad cook's meat cleaver. It's not the same muscle as the muscles pre-loading in the shoulder and therefore shouldn't interfere-- and just a little muscle is required. This may be personal preference since one could also form the right angle more passively. But I want exact control and tempo just then. Spaghetti arm, about to happen, can help fulfill the passivity requirement-- i.e., use as much p as possible until it begins to compromise power and control.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The counter-whirl idea is not only sound but affords a little more double
shoulder twist and gives your own signature to the shot. I'm doing it
today for a main reason, though. It feels good. Those shoulders rotate
as you rock the back heel down. And the back heel hitting the court is an electric switch for the arms to separate. Right arm can continue the "whirl."
I use quote marks because I want whirl feel not whirl speed. The arm can go
slow and loose. Everything to this part of the serve should be totally loose,
both arms hanging down with all tension drained out through your feet.
Left arm can stay exactly where it is or rearrange slightly for a backswing or backdown to the toss-- doesn't matter.

The spaghetti sandwich idea also worked well-- at least on Sunday. But don't be surprised if your consciousness suddenly changes. Consciousness is a floating thing. Right brain and left brain are duking it out. Consciousness has no specific seat in the cortex. We re-invent identity all the time just the way I do my serve.

Does this make me a worse player? Not necessarily, but do allow enough years and applied/focused energy for slow and sure neuronal development.
The younger you are in that case the faster you learn.

I suggested, last time I think, that wrist and forearm simultaneously turn out.
Palm goes from down/humped/closed to almost up (open). This combined with winding forearm creates a lariat or cochleate (snail-like) effect. Best, cocking the forearm is DONE. The next rotation-- wider-- comes as elbow turns in its various directions. McEnroe's doesn't turn forward too much but does turn forward quite a lot-- more than a lot of players.

A little opening with the triceps now and you've got your right angle. At this same moment of squaring the whole arm the upper arm twists passively back like an axle in the shoulder socket. The different muscles involved allow you to do both things at once. The rotor muscles should already be activating to fire forward.

It's all rapid-fire sequence of course and the firing upper arm throws your tomahawk-- I mean your tennis racket-- on a loose or spaghettied arm, which when almost straight you extend from triceps again but this time firing hard.

[bottle]

Intimacy as Knowledge

I have been reflecting upon the Dutchman Nico Mol's description of Mr. Hulot's serve from France (post # 5). Nico did a good job of mimicing my method and I would suggest that he continue with this by going ahead and mimicing other people's thinking, writing and speaking about tennis, too, just as Novak Djokovic can imitate anyone's service style at the drop of a hat.

Because real knowledge is intimacy, not booklearning or televised tennis matches.

I can think I know something about John McEnroe's serve, but until I have given full consciousness to passionate imitation in regular sessions over a period of weeks, I will know nothing.

Then the question will arise whether I'm getting somewhere.

All I can say is that if you don't feel sick to your stomach at the prospect of attaining the best serves in your lifetime when you are 69 years old you should be.