A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Re: Flattened One Hander Off of Korda Like Preparation

I'm thinking, with 1-8 grip, the racket tip is quite far around-- more around than up. And the racket at that point-- when rear shoulder has just risen-- is therefore parallel to court and inviting a long, pure, horizontal bonk from the butt rim.

The best cue then may be to pull hard but not jerk on that rim with whatever the muscles that react to the command.

Arm will be straight for last instant roll.

No farther roll after contact.

Triceps definitely will be part of what straightens arm. But centrifugation of passive arm definitely works better for the alternate "fanned" shot, which produces light but effective topspin, very good, say, to lift the ball high and then to bounce it high.

[bottle]

Getting Ready to Rumba

We learned the basic rumba step, but I don't care about that.

To do Latin dances, go forward:
left right
left right
left right
left right.

Translate those eight commands to
forehand backhand
forehand backhand
forehand backhand
forehand backhand.

Now do the same thing backward, starting with the right foot.
right left
right left
right left
right left.

Translate those eight words to
backhand forehand
backhand forehand
backhand forehand
backhand forehand.

Now go sideways (quick-quick) twice as fast:
right left
right left
right left
right left

BH FH
BH FH
BH FH
BH FH

Do this all over the house, reversing direction of course.

Are we going to play tennis this way? No need to be in a stupido hurry. Me, I'm just trying to dance properly. After I've mastered a bit of this stuff through the use of tennis, I'll turn around and apply what I've learned back to tennis somehow.

Each of these steps (every single one!) is a particular kind of hips turn. The leg that's moving straightens. The leg that stays put bends.

[bottle]

Go Get the Ball!

Vic Seixas, the last Wimbledon singles champion to have serious issues with his backhand, preached in his autohagiography that you (a tennis player) should bring the racket tip around to the ball a little at a time.

I in these posts recently started to make the same mistake again until Stotty in Great Britain went out of his country to correct me.

So, following the instruction of post # 976 for “hit-through-more” backhands, bring racket open to ball—just to where at the last instant you will roll the strings square.

But you have to learn some drill before you can master this shot, especially if you ever have had an impure thought. And you need to get your juices flowing, especially the goopy one called myelin, a fatty, grey-white substance manufactured in two contrasting bailiwicks in the human body—one in your central nervous system (CNS) which is your brain and spine, the other in your peripheral nervous system (PNS) which is your arms and legs.

Nobody other than a nerve doctor must absolutely know all of that, but the subject will be a lot of fun if you get to look through an electron microscope and see in the PNS one little volcano per sausage link spouting on the side as in the painting of an asteroid in LE PETIT PRINCE par Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Life is short, so you want to induce this fresh supply of oligodendrocyte produced myelin in CNS and lava-like myelin in PNS to coat your neuronal pathways very soon. You want every nerve impulse to rattle down its long track up to a hundred times faster than before.

You wouldn’t want to go to all that trouble to insulate an incorrect move.

So don’t roll at first. Simply hit the ball over the opposite fence and tell your golden retriever please to live up to his name.

[bottle]

"Summing"-- an Interesting Verb in Tennis

Rather than name the tennis personages who have spoken of "getting the slack out of" one hand backhands, I simply invoke the idea and then suggest that there must be alternate ways of doing this other than moving the upper body away from still racket until one feels a tug in the shoulder.

Such a tug could come from backward moving momentum in the racket, too, no? And arm could be either bent or straight and still be taut.

In my previous experiments with "fanned" topspin backhands (not the hardest hit balls possible), my efforts to use angular momentum primarily from the hips to straighten the arm passively did not work quite right until I added a bit of forward elbow travel to the equation.

I "summed" a couple of forces in other words until I got more tension to work with in transition to roll of the straightened arm.

So why not-- for a flatter shot-- do some "summing" in the opposite direction as well? Since the backhand progression I've been exploring contains a moment where rear shoulder goes up why not ship arm backward a bit at the same time?

If body then starts forward while racket is still gliding backward, one may achieve the objective of removing slack, no?

But will this method work and be controllable? Absolutely, at least until the idea proceeds from theory to practice. In theory, everything could be too perfect, always. But maybe reality is not so different from theory in this particular case-- experiments are on the way.

Send arm and body forces summing in one direction and then summing in the opposite direction to see what happens.

[bottle]

Turning the Corner Abruptly while STILL Swinging Inside Out

Re one hand backhand: The title here pretty much says what I wish to accomplish today.

[bottle]

Service Reiteration

If you didn’t notice (or perhaps don’t care—I won’t blame you since maybe you are impatient to play tennis), I like to try different things. The elements are frequently the same as in previous posts but in altered arrangement.

Racket can fall down and up to a mirror image of itself including original bend in the arm at address. How can racket most easily do this? Through combination with an extremely slow turn of the knees all through the drop-and-lift or with delayed turn of the knees that only occurs after the toss?

And if that second idea is the best way to go, can’t we put into effect another delay, of body bend? And then a third delay, of scapular retraction which we’ll have occur only as part of the body spiral upward? Such elaborateness of sequence which we’d be wise to shun in other tennis strokes can occur with impunity during the service set-piece each of us has maybe through tossing higher?

One of the good exercises we tried combined a catching of the toss with slow attainment of right angle in the arm. But we’re actually serving now. Everything will be a bit different. Still, we use this exercise idea as an organization tool. If we know approximately where we’re going, we can better figure out what should happen first.

Down together up together then (with knees bending naturally in tandem with the racket falling down). But how far back (i.e., around) does racket get at top of this motion if we're truly resolved to stay minimalist and relaxed? Is arm and racket anywhere near replicating the starting position? Hardly. What HAS OCCURRED is that weight shifted from front foot to rear foot to both feet all as part of the toss.

Now the knees can turn slightly backward then stop turning and the whole body form a bow. That’s two distinct actions held together by slow bending of the arm that embraces them.

How high should the elbow be at this point? At the height that will—after body “turns inside out”— A) place elbow slightly BELOW line of the two shoulders and B) feel comfortable in producing this solid-with-maximum-leverage biomechanical scheme.

Anyone of a mind to doubt or challenge these ideas should see the following article provided in this forum by Doug Eng, http://www.chrisoleary.com/projects/...Mechanics.html , and perhaps any of my own posts where I discuss getting spine of scapula lined up with clavicle (and with both forming a yoke that comes together to lead into and line up with upper arm).

Finally, I can’t help playing with the Latin dance idea that has me swinging my hips all over the house. One leg straightens as the other bends. Do that for easy turn of the hips in either direction.

[bottle]

Bizarre Weight Shifts Seemingly Impossible Because So Numerous

Re rumba serve: Hip turns are determined by simultaneous straightening and bending of the two legs.

Yes, one leg bends, the other straightens as hands go down and weight shifts to rear foot. Hips turn back but shoulders don't-- use Latin dance model.

As weight shifts to front foot (essential ingredient of toss), rumba up on straight leg but keep shoulders in place. Some hackers complain that they don't get toss high enough in a third set. With this instruction, they can screw some leg into the toss all of the time.

Turn weight (clockwise for a right-handed player) back on rear foot but let shoulders go with the hips this time.

Press middle of archer's bow forward. This loads front foot again.

Serve.

To summarize: Weight shift forward, weight shift backward, weight shift forward, weight shift backward, weight shift forward-- a total of five weight shifts before the serve. What abbreviates all but the last is keeping your head over your feet.

Think you (I) will be doing this? Not the point, which is exploration. Have got to try it.

The serve itself may add a sixth rumba step depending on whether you can bend rear leg one more time before it too extends.

[bottle]

Branch Out from Serve to Dance; Apply Dance to Serve

Second side-move in first rumba basic step: Put attention there.

In a quick-quick slow, it's the second quick that needs most discipline.

I'm talking about rotation of the hips formed by simultaneous straightening and bending of legs to consolidate weight and balance on one leg every time.

The second "quick" for a right-hander brings bent leg straight as it sidesteps over to the other which bends at the same time. And this is QUICK! Or did I say that?

But there are no sidesteps in a serve. And in fact, for platform stance, there are no steps at all prior to contact.

There is shift back, shift forward and gathering, and all movement is toward the net except when it goes straight up.

Once your weight starts moving toward the net you never want to retreat which would be temporizing. But you can slow and gather.

I'll stick with my statements about sticking each leg in this experiment. Overall travel toward the net is like an inchworm with a tremendous burst of energy straight upward in between the two inching moves.

[bottle]

Mercer Beasley, Latin Dance Division

Mercer Beasley, tennis coach of the great Ellsworth Vines, either taught Vines a wee dance move at the end of each closed forehand step-out or learned the same from watching Vines.

Beasley writes in his 1936 book HOW TO PLAY TENNIS, "You turn your hips with the stroke. This is the pivot. It is not the force with which you make the stroke, but the weight of your body coming into the stroke that creates the force..."

"If you are a dancer, you will discover that unconsciously, perhaps, you use the same pivot. Try it for yourself. As the orchestra strikes up you sway to the rhythm of the dance. You do not dance just with your legs. You pivot from the hips, shifting your weight from one foot to the other. The more smoothly and rhythmically you pivot, the better you dance."

[bottle]

Spin-off

I'm amazed by how much words-- particularly words that are searching for something-- can mold or change some future action.

The forehand off of a round conventional loop suggested by # 984 gets arm
far forward even before the step-out.

You're back there cranking on your rear foot. Then the arm goes out-- slowly.
Then you complete your step, crossing a bridge to balance on the other side.

Maybe the arm and leg should go out together slowly-- just to start. Who knows?

In fact, one could be slowly cranking one's arm through running and skips right up to final placement of the propping foot.

Then, I'm thinking, the time has come for a Latin dance step. My design won't be any good if it doesn't work in both spheres-- tennis and dance.

To allow more time for smoothness, I'll divide final neutral hitting step into one third and two thirds.

For one third, slowly drag foot straight out of a train station. For two thirds straighten front leg while bending rear leg.

This is quicker and more economical than putting foot down before you ever turn your hips.

[bottle]

Orientation of Rear Leg

On all of these improved hip turns (and I do suspect before applying any reality tests that old models were lousy, especially the ones where you turned your hips and your legs followed), the front leg had better straighten in line with your foot or you could get hurt.

The bending rear leg, all swivelly, offers more latitude. Let's start by aiming the lowering knee toward a corner post every time-- just to provide some sort of a constant.

Out on a dance floor you need only imagine a tennis court to do the same thing.

[stotty]

I'm amazed by how much words-- particularly words that are searching for something-- can mold or change some future action.

I remember some bloke once said (don't know who but his words have stuck with me forever) "The limits of my language are the limits of my world"...or something like that.

It's very true.

[bottle]

Pivot Common to Good Tennis and Good Dance

Our dance instructor John Perna made it very clear that the hips movements he briefly showed us were advanced technique for future Latin maneuvers we might or might not do.

I try to understand it all in terms of what one knee alone is doing throughout the whole figure of a box step. I decided to concentrate on my weaker knee for this.

This led to a dramatically new appreciation of when a knee should bend to include contact in tennis. When both knees are always straightening together, is not the player losing control and going wild?

Ivan Lendl threaded his left knee through his right to hit a backhand. Roger Federer doesn’t do that but often sends his bent or bending left knee sideways to counter. The protective lowness of Miloslav Mecir was a characteristic of his game.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/rogerfederer/rogerfederer_backhand/rogerfederer_bh_center/rogerfederer_bh_center.html?FedererBHCenterRear1.mov

Roger’s hips in this video rotate during contact, no? His left knee, countering, also bends, no? As his front leg straightens, no?

Me, I’m trying to apply the new dance idea to serve, to forehand, to backhand just to see what will happen.

Listening to music and moving legs and hips would be more fun than so much figuring out; but, on the other hand I had an hour of free time coming this morning at our club, and Sebastien, the French teaching pro who used to hit with Tsonga was there and made sure I got the best court, the isolated teaching court with a million-ball basket on rollers which he said I could use.

I tried forehands, backhands, serves. All worked pretty well. That’s the trouble with my experiments. I’ve run them so often, just dropping balls for the ground strokes, sometimes I can’t see where it’s all going. And none of the shots was worse than what I was doing a month ago. But were they better? Maybe. It’s possible. Got to give each experiment its proper duration.

I realize most people think such behavior is nuts and you’d do better hitting or playing with someone or working with a ball machine.

No you wouldn’t. The best you can do is a lonely court with no one around and a million balls to hit, just from a stop, if you want to think more than usual and value your own new ideas. Alternatively, you could take a shower but make sure you take it alone.

A bunch of people brainstorming wouldn’t do better, it turns out. The people in large brainstorming groups become even less creative than they already were, according to impeccable studies reported last week in The New Yorker Magazine. Loners do better, came up with twice as many ideas. Reporting later to a group is a different idea that may work surprisingly well due to a building design that leads to numerous and "natural" informal discussions among the people in that structure.

Anyway, such a building, famous at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is known for the large number of significant ideas it has produced.

If you are one of the solitary ones (and I refuse to call us "nerds," the usual practice), you should remain open-minded about each and every experiment. Often that means being very critical about it.

But I can’t see how anything that improves balance: tai chi, yoga, dance classes, etc., can ever be bad for tennis.

Serve perhaps was most interesting. I’ve often been hung up on not turning the shoulders while I tossed, I think. That’s a good sentiment, but keeping the shoulders still doesn’t mean the hips can’t rotate rumba-like underneath.

But I didn’t for the most part like the multiple weight shifts I discussed several posts ago. A few serves incorporating them were interesting, but best were those where I left some of the planned weight shifts out.

[bottle]

Steffi-Slice-- Go With It!

That's backhand slice where you take the racket back roughly at shoulder level, with shoulders already tilted, and you keep them that way.

On the forward stroke you use your hitting hand as the fulcrum of a see-saw. Which means that the racket tip goes down while your elbow goes up.

Pretty fancy, eh? Yep it is. But more fanciness is about to come all through the huge quickness of this part of the cycle. Not only does the elbow, which has become the next fulcrum, plunge down but the racket tip hurls up.

So how fast does the elbow plunge? And who's on first. What's on second, honk-honk. (Baseball.)

Well, the elbow is not plunging so fast and so far that the net worth of the total arm construction is going down.

It's not just math but a visual problem. You need to stand to the side. (A video camera will do.)

If you look at Steffi-slice from the side, either Steffany's or Roberta's or Wulf's or your correctly imitated version, the racket tip hurls up more than plunging elbow takes it down.

Net worth goes up in other words!

This notion has excited me. Germans and even we Swiss-Germans love the intricacy of such stuff.

But one more bit of fanciness remains. That's the jack-knifing of your body from the gut toward the side fence to keep strings on the ball a slightly extra amount.

One needs talent to hit this shot but not genius.

[bottle]

Clocky Teaches Tennis (Four Stars)

Clocky convinces a band of tennis thugs to drive into New York City and load a neon sign from Times Square onto their flatbed truck.

The sign, intended to replace all tennis teaching pros, is here in Detroit, is lighting up right now, is shaping bright yellowred letters into headlines as we speak.

DON'T EAT MONDO BRAND HOT DOGS. THEY'RE BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH.

REMOVE THE MONDO FROM YOUR FEDERFORES. 15 PER CENT MORE ACCURACY.

FOREHANDS: BEND YOUR WRIST BACK A LITTLE AT A TIME AND BLEND THIS ACTION WITH YOUR BACKSWING.

REVERSE ACTION FOREHANDS: IT'S THE ARM, STUPID, NOT THE WRIST.

ONE ARM BACKHANDS: ROLL RACKET SQUARE EARLY LIKE ROGER FEDERER BUT KEEP ELBOW STABLE THOUGH ROLLING TO FORM A SHARP CORNER AS YOU WHANG YOUR STRINGS AROUND COMPACT AND FAST LIKE ME, CLOCKY.

DANCE STEP TENNIS: START WITH SERVE. ROCK FORWARD BACKWARD FORWARD BACKWARD. EACH TIME YOU SHIFT WEIGHT END UP PERFECTLY BALANCED ON STRAIGHTENED, PROPPING LEG AS OTHER LEG BENDS. TOSS WHILE GOING FORWARD. SHOULDERS DON'T ROTATE HORIZONTALLY DURING THE TOSS BUT HIPS UNDERNEATH THEM DO. IN WHICH DIRECTION? THE DIRECTION OPPOSITE FROM WHAT YOU THINK.

But who is Clocky?

http://clocky.com/videos/