A New Year's Serve

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The idea I recently had-- totally strange to me at least-- is of using ISR on a forehand the way you do on a serve pros and cons of 888casino. This makes top edge of the racket push forward rather than remaining vertical and fanning upward.

Bad idea. Been there, done that. The racket might be closed a little but shouldn't be closing. In fact some think it ought to be opening (which I doubt). But for sure topspin comes from how racket leaves the ball (top edge first). And since there is independent arm movement in an ATP3 that's one source of the spin. As in a Joe Palooka uppercut (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5SKBn8xERw). Or, if the swing is level rather than rising and the racket was closed a little ("beveled") we would be apt to call that administration of spin "poptop."

The other source of topspin, more optional, it seems to me, is windshield wipe, which if done best preserves constant racket pitch through contact, i.e., a little before (under) and a little after (over).

The thing is, from reading and listening to Brian Gordon in his videos, that arm "swing" or "throw" or "ply" or whatever you want to call it happens simultaneous with the wipe when wipe occurs. You want to make sure your arm is full of blood same as in the long toss exercise for pitching or throws from the outfield in baseball. (Guys get on a football field and toss a baseball from one end zone to the other-- they build up to that by teaching themselves in five-yard increments to have a live arm.)

But the other idea you advance, which victimized me for years before I knew better, is very tempting, especially for short angle topspin forehands. You can do it, probably best in that direction, and you will hit some winners and immediately become addicted. Just say no! And strive for repeatability instead. (Right, your link to casino stuff shows you already were aware on some level of the crapshoot nature of changing pitch on the ball. Dropshots are another subject-- okay to try it there since you are subtracting speed from what just arrived.)

[Mamie]

The idea I recently had-- totally strange to me at least-- is of using ISR on a forehand the way you do on a serve pros and cons of 888casino. This makes top edge of the racket push forward rather than remaining vertical and fanning upward.

[bottle]

Shouted Words to Live by: "Old Men Shouldn't Jump up in the Air!"

They came from a geezer in the middle of the geezer's division of a large tennis tournament in northwest Virginia. All the geezers were lined up side by side on about ten adjacent courts all along the same fence.

If they are true, and they are, a geezer needs to stay low to the ground.

To this purpose, I propose a pair of alliterative and alternative hip turns within the same forehand.

The first hip or rather hips turn (since one has two of them or did) is with both feet flat on the ground. And while you're at it, geezer reader, turn your shoulders on top of your turning hips. All tennis experts agree that this will slow down your hips.

But you always want to defy the experts, geezer, so willfully speed up your hips again. Do this by turning your hips and back knee into your rigid front knee just at the moment you hurl your arm.

The philosophy of this will permit your rear heel to come up at last, which will be fun, even fine.

The sequence: Knees, torso and arm.

Knees, torso and (hips and arm).

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The Details of a Shiva-like Multiple-armed Serve on the Cover of FUNDAMENTALS OF TENNIS by Stanley Plagenhoef are Different from What Thought in that the Wrist from Wave Upward remains Humped through Four Fifths of Arm Extension.

The second part of Narim's "wave" is just an educational tool designed to put one on the right track.

In fact once the elbow goes up the hand goes up in rapid forceless succession.

So keep going with no hesitation whatsoever.

With the full alternation of wrist position continuing, as I described before, just later.

The wrist snap must therefore be re-clarified and re-conditioned-- always a tragedy.

This is just how one man, Stanley Plagenhoef, does his serve or describes it.

Just one man, but a good man, with a serve that deserves a throw (of one's dice).

The humped wrist gets the swashbuckler's sword edge close to ball as if about to decapitate a soft boiled egg in a tall English eggcup.

But at last instant goes from humped to cocked-- the full change of available range.

Yet you still have not made contact. So the suddenly opening racket appears almost to catch the ball.

But remember-- still has not made contact.

Can this opening be forcible? I think not. But is the ISR starting at the same time forcible? Yes.

Hand force only begins now with a great tightening of one's fingers.

Which turns wrist through full range the opposite way.

I predict, despite knowing of teaching pros who absolutely disagree with this, that the fingers tightening can trigger the wrist action and at last make it work.

The hitting arm is straight from before contact to after contact but not over-extended.

This is the kernel of the serve. Not enough people give it sufficient thought. Thought first, no thought later.

One has to discover one's effective snap before one turns it over to habit.

I think players who don't have great kick on their serve-- thousands and thousands of players-- should get the rest of their serve in order then throw every experiment they can think of at the "kernel."

[bottle]

You Won't Believe This

Both hands up slightly (linked).

Both hands down slightly (linked). Knees use the downward rhythm to bend.

Toss and wave all at once.

If you were tossing an old racket for distance the time would be now.

The wave humps the wrist.

The throw depresses the wrist.

The curve-ball is similar to the one or two foot long pave-loader exercise you did.

Narim's wave leads into a soft bit of tract in which the humped wrist cocks (opens).

So now you redo the pave-loader exercise.

Instead of finishing behind you each time you only do that in the first instance.

And in the second instance. But in the third instance you finish where you started in the first instance.

Now you continue the progression so as to mimic the distance from wave to contact. You can return to original pave-load finish.

Using your chosen distance, mimic it, each time working farther up.

But this is not enough. Why mimic a move, other than to learn the feel of it, that primarily is on the left side of the bod when the right side is where you want it?

So now you mimic formation of the wave from two hands down together over and over.

When you are confident of that, you declare this repeated move the same as the original pave-load finish only on the right side of your bod now.

This might be a good time to remember that, through the pave-loaders, you were practicing a constant speed both in opening the wrist and in closing it.

Well, do the same thing now on the right side only in reverse.

Now, where before the wrist opened, it closes. And where it closed, now it opens.

Practice this to and from a catch at the point where the two linked hands will come down together in the real serve. Your cerebellum may ask for a more laid back wrist when the two hands are linked by the racket.

All this-- every bit of the elaborateness in all of the short sections of movement you established for yourself-- is a plot to simulate the soft section of curve-ball that now will happen right after the wave.

Instead of returning to the linked position of both hands on the racket, you will perform a similar movement but with the hitting arm only and take it up, not down.

It won't be all arm since bod will be helping in the real serve, but there is nothing wrong in practicing the arm action over and over by itself.

That would be separate to hump and back to two hands, over and over, both directions, until you feel ready to add the next step.

But other things are beginning to happen as the result of your persistence. You owe it to yourself to notice what they are.

First, there no longer is any independent take-back of the arm before it goes into the wave.

So, to get racket far enough around to generate significant force, the bod needs to turn backward at the same time.

To facilitate this, you might think, the left arm, the tossing arm, should now point acoss at right fence same as on a forehand.

But are we on the track we want? No. We wanted one arm going up, the other going back, or if not that, forming a wave.

Don't give up! You are almost there.

It is not the left arm pointing across that turns the bod as in a forehand. For the left arm does not point across. It goes up very high to perform the toss.

So it is the right arm that pulls the bod around. It stays connected as it goes into the wave.

Up-down, then toss-wave and pull around all at once.

In fact, you feel as if the pull-around is levering the toss up, and maybe it is.

But everything is in preparation for the crucial next step, a slow curve-ball pitch that is part of the wind-up and therefore is smooth rather than fast and forcible.

The body turns inside out. The scapula stretches. The arm curves as you have practiced. The wrist opens as you have practiced. The elbow stays back. Only the bod prevents the racket face from opening beyond control.

Let's continue to think things through since Gallwey's billion dollar computer works best from clear command.

The wrist is depressed, not humped. The wrist is open. The wrist is cocked. And throwing a slow curve-ball. It's still winding the racket up to the ball. But the extensors are firing. You just won't permit them to roll the ball up, as they will if you do things wrong-- you'll get bod-produced topspin that is straight up but painfully weak.

The firing of the extensors is powerful and muscular but slow enough still to store energy.

Which all releases through a combination of ISR and wrist turning inside out from depressed to humped and last but not least the bottom three fingers tightening hard.

Smooth to the ball and snap.

[bottle]

What a Serve!

The geezers were buffaloed. No forward bod progress during the toss.

One arm goes up, the other sideways. It's one and the same time.

We proceed now to the second of three counts. Tossing arm stays up. Hitting arm does its little wave. Body compresses and winds backward to get ready for the throw.

Count three: Everything you ever dreamed. But where was the weight? Spread evenly between the two legs-- throughout. Next, try some of these serves all from front foot, all from back foot, again from both feet.

Pegleg, delayed, finally does swashbuckle through to catch your weight.

Note: This post was written before I went out to play with the geezers. It is a representation of how I would like things to be.

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Where Others See Nuthin Special I See Turning a Paradigm on a Dime

Specifically, I refer to the little wave low and behind the back described in Narim's video. I shan't play the video here for fear of distracting from my message. If somebody insists, however, they can see it in post #4302 . The wave is a loosey-goosey and passive lifting of the elbow followed by a lifting of the hand, but with everything kept low and within specific parameters.

Well, what does the little wave replace? Trophy position, that's all, the great right angled fol-de-rol from which all great throws are supposed to emanate.

I figure that this rigid mindset originally did come from the top of a cheap tennis trophy. Which came from a cheap design in somebody's 10-cent computer. Vic Braden had a lot of fun deriding it. I'd like to share in his mirth.

So does the little wave come from one's cerebellar computer, the billion dollar jobbie? Possible. For a person whose physique offers too little range up to the ball, adoption of this low wave seems a no brainer. Or, better put, a back brainer.

[bottle]

The Greatest Tennis Cue that Ever Flew under the Radar?

I haven't tested it today so don't know if that's true.

But I'm very sure I know why this cue flew under the radar.

It's because nobody wants to peel an onion or pare an apple skin to hit a slice serve, and everybody knows that isn't what happens.

But it is the feeling of the peeling we ought to preserve.

The exercise to build it goes like this: Adopt a paveloader service finish even though you won't ever use it in real life.

Your hand is the paveloader's scoop. The racket head is way back behind you. Your hand is full of imaginary dirt.

Now straighten your wrist and even cock it while bringing racket back a foot, then return immediately to the paveloader's finish.

Go back two feet next time, then three feet, four feet, etc.

When hand gets behind your head, however, abandon the paveloader finish and start miming a whirled finish instead off to the right.

The feel of this is what will enable you to keep edge on to the ball for much longer which as we all know leads to better serves. At the same time, as edge of your pirate's sword approaches the ball, wrist will turn inside out and pressure will increase in bottom three fingers just as ISR (internal shoulder rotation) kicks in.

What has the paveloader exercise done for you?

Given you all the feel of throwing a curveball in baseball.

Which you need before you arrive at the ball in order for your ISR to properly work.

[bottle]

A Reflection on FUNDAMENTALS OF TENNIS by Stanley Plagenhoef

In this book, should we extrapolate the fine attention given to firmness of grip at contact in the serve to late adjustment of finger pressure, particularly of the bottom three, to all the strokes, to every tennis stroke there is?

Already we received a change to our volleys, a significant improvement through reading Dennis Ralston on the same subject.

The volleys have separate intelligence divorced from myself.

Quite happy, they are, since they enjoy direct connection with a billion dollar cerebellar computer to embody the single cue of a stuck peanut butter jar.

All they asked was that I envision conventional threading in my backhand volley and counterclockwise threading in my forehand volley.

Hence on backhand volleys I would apply finger pressure combined with opening of the racket face to loosen the lid. The less the pressure the more the outgoing volley would go down the line. The greater the pressure the more the seemingly same shot would fly crosscourt. The same cue worked just as well on forehand side. All I need do was practice one-bounce dinks against a wall. This improved both dinks and volleys. Directional control was not the only subject that suddenly came into sharp focus. There was a new crispness to all of these shots.

Now we find Plagenhoef making similar assertion along with comparative measurement (firm grip serves vs. infirm grip serves).

One needs to investigate the difference in racket face direction also.

And for lobs, overheads, dropshots and all ground strokes.

[bottle]

Similar Serve with Narrower Stance and Three Different Weight Shifts and Knees Well Bent from Outset

Start with weight on rear foot. Feet are close together and parallel to one another rather than offset.

1) The shoulders slowly turn to slightly separate hands and remove rotational slack from flat-footed legs.

2) The shoulders continue to turn to stretch the gut while weight shifts onto front foot and you lift the ball.

3) The rear foot remains flat but the front foot rises on its toes. This indicates that toss has occurred and weight has naturally relocated on rear foot.

You screw weight back on front foot with internalized hips turn that splays right heel and re-flattens front foot just before the firing of all extensors with pegleg stepping through.

You wanted a longer runway up to the ball?

Well now you've got it.

[bottle]

Why Right Heel Up So Soon?

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q4u...04&app=desktop)

Flat feet drive more stretch into one's mid-section. Weight transfers from front foot to both feet to front. With feet close together in an effort to maximize vertical thrust, the weight could go from front to back to front (and I'm thinking about a second back!). Well, in any case at what speed? 1,2, or 3? Slow, slower or slowest?

Do knees and hips twist at all? Some. That movement is harnessed and diminished by flat feet.

Does the backward bod twist originate in the knees? Not unless you want stupid kinetic chain. The turning shoulders build maximum energy in the gut while drawing the slack out of hips and knees. But if one stops to think about this, wouldn't it be better to take the slack out first?

But shoulders are doing two other things at the same time: 1) straightening to assist the sideways component of the toss, 2) segmenting backward. Put another way, the hips segment forward to form an archer's bow.

You don't like all these words, reader? Me neither. So let's conspire together to return to our superduper billion dollar swashbuckling ability to take in everything we need in tennis from our eyes alone, which are fantabulous if you will just ask us.

My eyes are how I came up with these words. But who needs words other than myself? So visualize your model without words and follow it.

Oh, a two mph serve? Just persist.

Or as Tom Lehrer would say and did in his Vatican Rag, "Genuflect, genuflect, genuflect."

Well, you had to bend your knees to thrust your lead hip out.

The ball is in the air.

Use intelligent kinetic chain this time to drive front leg upward while turning hips.

But remember this: Percy Boomer and David Ledbetter both encased their genuflecting golfers in iron strait-jackets, i.e., a metal cylinder.

You bend your knees too much, reader, and they get stuck. You bend them moderately and they clear the inside of the cylinder and work freely and are great. Like the knees of Ellsworth Vines or Althea Gibson in either tennis or golf or the knees of Tom Okker just in tennis. (Maybe he does play golf-- I don't know.)

But reader, and try now to catch this: If you straighten knees too much, they get stuck inside the iron barrel too.

Neither Boomer of Scotland, who came up with the idea, or Ledbetter of the United States, who stole it, ever quite explained how straight knees in a steel barrel would get stuck, so we just have to take their word for it and come up with some other frame of reference that isn't visual but may use symbols or words of logical formation.

How about, "Ease of hips rotation varies in inverse proportion to straightness of one's legs?"

So, reader, you're not going to get your knees and hips to turn as much as you would like once that front leg gets straight. Why not just step forward with your rear foot?

Nothing swashbuckles like a pegleg, right?

And bring the sharp edge of your pirate's sword as close as possible to the ball, even try sometimes to cleave it in two or frame it.

This is the only way to reduce the radius of your applied ISR (internal shoulder rotation).

But this service iteration of today does not end here.

We've tossed, we've bowed, we're ready to go.

The left leg thrusts as the rear leg twists.

The left leg has read David Ledbetter so knows it can't twist much while thrusting upward so much.

So it assigns its twisting function to the rear knee and hip. The hips movement now is centered on one leg only, internalized, one could say. Rear foot turns then steps into the court. Keep going and knock off the volley.

Let's start another serve but slow the shoulders even more this time.

And summarize: Get pigeontoed just before you step.

[bottle]

10-Cent Computer, Billion Dollar Computer? Hold on! Hold on!

Here is an extremely readable article by Christopher Bergland, author of THE ATHLETE'S WAY, that may turn some paradigms on a dime and thus revise our overly conditioned ideas about function of the brain.

"Your Left Cerebellar Hemisphere may Play a Role in Cognition."

(https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...e-in-cognition)

Vocabulary in this article: "rageaholic." Also, "proprioception." All Harvard super-athletes, e.g. the Cambridge, MA single scullers Ben Jones and his wife Cricket speak a lot about proprioception. If Tom Lehrer were still alive he might write a song about proprioception. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27PSHASlGUU)

[bottle]

New Ideas on Beginning of Forehand and Serve

Forehand: Lay wrist back and roll racket down in simultaneity rather than sequence as arm straightens somewhat and everything goes down. That creates a loop but unlike most on the tour-- 1) is pencil thin, 2) utilizes gravity from outset 3) is slow, 4) steals from the fact that the arm work in standard flip-head philosophy is rather mild. For if arm extension is smooth and slow it doesn't impart much kinetic energy. When one's bod turns and lifts it causes the wrist layback and racket roll-down which I now propose to get out of the way. That leaves a residual bit of arm extension to take over those previous small functions.

Serve: Note the huge golf club waggle in PAT AND MIKE of Katharine Hepburn, an excellent golfer and tennis player. Such a waggle can work in either game whether it goes to and fro or up and down. But to let it be an organic part of one's backswing is unnecessary and possibly ridiculous. So instead of gravity drop to start a roller coaster, I propose using knees to take racket back just the way a golfer does to remove his club from the ball. There still is a drop of about three inches in both arms but this drop now becomes subordinated to the bod turn.

[bottle]

Gallwey as Old Man

I stick with this (Nadim's beginning to a serve-- solid information to my eyes). But really like the Gallwey as old man clip over at "Fluid Motion Factor-- Steve Yellin." I calculate Gallwey's age at 79 or 80 since he was captain of the Harvard tennis team in 1960 .

But you'll note that Gallwey gives no such resume material whereas Steve Yellin wants us to know he was the number one player at Penn.

Which is part of the same educational complex as Wharton School of Business-- Ivy League!-- our president, Donald J. Trump, asserts whenever possible.

I sort of like Yellin but like Gallwey in this clip more. One of the strong points of going to another Ivy League college is that we learned to prefer primary over secondary sources.

It is a lesson one can absorb as well from schools that aren't Ivy League, about which I always say, having taught in some, that the best people are just as good but maybe there aren't quite as many of them.

At Harvard, Gallwey was coached by John M. Barnaby, who told him when volleying to "bite the ball."

I love the distinction that Gallwey makes here between a 10-cent computer and a billion dollar computer, the first in front of the other in anybody's brain. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pisD1RPj61A)

I figure that Trump-- and maybe Yellin this one time-- and anybody anywhere who sees the Ivy League only as "elite" or ready made idea or "bastion of privilege" is operating from the 10-cent computer only.

[bottle]

A Perhaps Unwanted Message

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q4u...04&app=desktop

The comments under this video if not my own-- that of John Escher-- seem to me altogether too tentative in their enthusiasm. I believe that people just naturally distrust new ideas-- any new idea. Whereas someone with a truly curious mind gives all benefit of the doubt to the thing being tried. Let other people disprove it, through peer review? Or disprove it yourself later the way Richard P. Feynman, while earning a Nobel Prize, rejected the basis of his previous Nobel Prize?

Okay, okay, no prizes here, just the simple satisfaction of something that may work a whole lot better than what one was doing.

Note: The advantages here, it seems to me, lie not just in what Nadim says but in what he shows. And the level of the serve's address or beginning lends itself to really nifty figure eights which will lead in the future to still better serves. It's not roller coaster but it's great. The most important aspect of the very, very beginning, it seems to me, is a 90 degree bod turn from whatever the stance you originally chose. The toss coming next can include forward travel and body bow under the ball all at once.

With a lot of power next to extend from left leg up left side combined with the circularity of hips and shoulders closing somewhat. In the book MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES, Charles Pasarell called the two things, horizontal and the vertical, "double-wind."

You can't send an order directly to your cerebellum much less start celebrating your cerebellum until you've done your homework starting in the front of your brain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvX_5ym_ajI

Homework first, celebration second, front of the brain first, back of the brain second, kids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwjfUFyY6M

Learn the words first.