A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Ben Hogan, Translated?

Keep the heel or nub of the forehanding hand ahead of the strings until you have rolled the frame upward to and off of the ball.

Roll the frame upward more powerfully yet easily than before by issuing an executive brain command to your arm to start its roll while the hand is going down.

An executive brain command? Me? Does not everybody in tennis say, "Don't think too much?"

Unquestionably, they are right. But they never say, "Make sure to think enough."

So, is the executive brain command merely intellectual or will it cause a physiological reaction in the body? Oppositional muscles may/will activate in the arm and shoulder giving rise to a resistance that will build and fight the downward motion of the frame.

Are these thoughts rehash, i.e., regurgitated dimunition of good information we're all privy to at Tennis Player? Or does it add to overall discussion? Probably depends on the reader. But to my mind it is translation.

Translation from Ben Hogan? Well, Ben Hogan is where the mental train began, as once again I invoked in my mind a series of six-irons hit from the middle of the incredibly long ninth fairway in Lakeville, Connecticut. The teaching pro standing with me and speaking constantly of Ben Hogan was trying to delay the forearm roll-over he just had taught to me.

Translation from Ben Hogan to what then? To tennis and to Bottlespeak since I want to bring this information home to myself.

Similarly, reader, you should translate all the useful information you encounter to your own readerspeak.

[bottle]

A Song Sung by Fred Perry's Girlfriend

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKxaMAxC3Go

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irhlNJdqqbs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q56QzGcAKZc&feature=related

[bottle]

Three Sides of a Box

First I'll write this. Then try it. Then report back in a separate post.

When it's time for the service sling-shot, add forward thrust from the shoulder ball while glomming on internal rotation of the upper arm.

This distortion of elbow close into upward facing chest puts racket frame out to the right as never before. Both elbows will end up forward of the shoulders line at contact (see Lloyd Budge on book cover at # 1151).

The shoulders line and the two elbows form three sides of a box rather than the straight line more commonly advised.

The difference between this experiment and previous ones by me involving knifed elbow is the force provided by more knowledgeable scapular adduction (sling-shot).

This is a powerful motion that won't act on tossed ball by itself but rather will pre-load A) upper arm, B) triceps and C) lower arm, all of which are trying to do something opposite.

An uninvited inference is that the two halves of the arm will press together later than in previous designs, after, not during the three inches of leg extension.

Wanted or not, this is what we shall try.

"Forward thrust from the shoulder ball" perhaps requires further explanation. Scapular retraction and adduction are a sure way of moving the elbow about the body with force. Twist of upper arm involves rotator cuff muscles and is powerful too. "Forward thrust from the shoulder ball" is in my personal view however mechanical ball-in-socket movement useful for positioning but not for generating muscular force.

A server whose previous motion has always been so continuous that he could never understand other people who seem to pause or almost pause with racket tip straight up may now find himself doing something similar.

Sling-shot is so sharp, so definite, so powerful that one can be assured of it dominating the oppositional muscles, which therefore can be given considerable rein.

This will form essential snap in scrape up the ball.

Can one hurt oneself this way? Possibly. Can one generate effective spin? Definitely. Should one super-relax the arm to avoid such hurt? Absolutely.

In feel, one finally can replace artificial sequence, i.e., elbow extension and then internal rotation of upper arm, with a single unified throw.

One motion overpowering another is what the pre-load philosophy is all about. The arm wrestling scene in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA by Ernest Hemingway is perhaps the best image to express this.

In that scene Santos, the Latino fisherman, keeps his hand from being pushed all the way down to the table. The gathering of force that saves him then pushes both his arm and his opponent's the other way.

This incident expresses simple forces that can occur in a tennis stroke. When rotational forces in the upper arm are included, the analogy, though less perfect, still applies just as much.

Another feature of the serve being propounded if not belabored here is a ripple-like roll traveling up the body to stretch the already stretched sling-shot's elastic.

One starts with legs and pushes rib cage up to separate the shoulders.

[bottle]

Result

Not as much kick as Jared Palmer, but a lot for a rotorded server such as me, and no health challenges were indicated whatsoever once I got to the court and saw what was what. Even if a person can't by temperament follow all of my detail, he or she should be interested in the old fashioned idea of keeping one's chest open to the sky, as opposed to the Maria Sharapova-Venus Williams style of serve where there is a big cartwheel of back shoulder rising over front shoulder. Which is great if the server is so flexible that he can point downward with his racket even as his head is pitching forward. Well, such serves may be great. They at least appear to be workable.

A rotorded server can only speculate, he'll never know.

Since I'm giving myself a report card here, I'll go on to forehand and backhand.

With all the new Gordon-Yandell-Macci information, I'm sticking with the nubbing out the heel of the hand idea until after the strings have wiped up-- as the main thing I need to change in my forehand right now.

There is a lot to remember always, on every shot, and that is the trouble. When one is confident and willing to let one's curiosity for further experimentation rest a bit, then one needs to make sure that one is doing everything in one's approved design. How? My idea is to consider only one detail per day-- but there always will be some whim to lead me off the track, and I'm not sure squelching a whim or anything to do with the imagination is ever a good idea.

As David Lynch, the film-maker says, "If you don't write the idea down, later you'll want to kill yourself."

A final note on the new serve. Keeping both arms bent for a kick serve may seem to discard any notion of deception, but on the other hand the rhythm for it and other serves in which one doesn't do that can remain the same. Also, newness of construction may lead to sub-variations of the Najdorf Variation of The Sicilian Defense.

I'm very pleased with recent changes to forehand since there is no longer any reason whatsoever to strain the wiper. The shot is the natural combination of topspin and pace appropriate to me.

On backhand I didn't do so well, trying to prepare with arm out to the side instead of back. The future for me is the hip and arm shot I'd already developed with Geoff Williams' help, and you can't get the racket wrapped around yourself too much for that. Especially if you know how to get there with a flying grip change. Luckily, this one-hander hadn't been down in the crypt of lost shots for long. Forward hips accelerate the racket through a tight loop by passively straightening the arm. Scapular retraction is relegated to end of followthrough like Federer. I like very much the idea of stepping closed when have time, hitting the shot open when am strapped for time, running through the ball to the end of next week and forgoing recovery when one is completely desperate.

(Maybe one can find an outdoor art show adjacent to the tennis facility and carefully inspect each painting before returning for the next point.)

[bottle]

Lloyd-kick, Cont'd

Some of the pre-loads are more mystical than others. The pre-load for upper arm twist is most mystical of all. So I'll take it for granted, i.e., half ignore it for today.

My thinking is that I made a big stride yesterday but wouldn't want to spoil anything. A lily is fine just the way it is, does not require an application of gold leaf.

So I'll choose much simpler triceptic pre-load instead. Yes, Bottle, dwell on that and call it Wednesday concentration.

The way to make the triceps work best, I decided while still in bed (my partner just loves it when I wave my arm around swatting her in her sleep-- not!) is to firmly anchor the hand in midair, then sling-shot the elbow around it on a rising path.

Upper and lower arm will try to come together to form a single needle. Make that difficult. Resist the compression. It will happen anyway.

Zounds! Now the triceps is a sling-shot, too. A zing and a zing and a ping!

[bottle]

The Two Slots

Although I'm not responsible for the abomination of tennis language that contextualizes the word "slot" in two separate ways, I can accept the distinction, just have to concentrate overly much, think anybody else will have to concentrate too much also, and there should be a public flogging or boiling in oil.

Speaking in forehand, I'll call Slot 1 the area directly to the right of a right-handed player looking toward the net. This is the unvarying method of orientation that a car mechanic uses-- he uses the driver's point of view. The shots that "stay in the slot" keep everything from backswing to flip to contact and a bit afterward in the passenger's seat.

Slot 2 is the coincision of straight line and inside out arc. For a drawing of this (though on the backhand side) see Post # 1149 .

The coincision is the collision is the contact is "the slot." Old-fashioned instructors would describe it thus: "C-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-R-R-R-Y the ball." But then we learned that contact only lasts four thousandths of a second. But you could be carrying when the contact occurred, the geezers would argue. They were advocating manipulation, which is a deliberate carrying forward of both ends of the racket at the same time and a diminishing of potential of the players who try it.

Is the secret instead an uninhibited arc but a bit of weight transfer to prolong the contact by a micro-second?

Additionally, racket (or golf club) coming out to ball on the broadest arc possible will generate extra pace since you'll "catch more of the ball."

So, how does one do this? Well, different shapes of swing in tennis or golf are possible. If backswing is outside of target line, and you then cross line to the inside, you get weakly smothered slice. If backswing is way to inside and you then cross line to the outside you get weakly smothered hook. Backswing can go slightly to the outside, and forward swing come slightly from the inside after a small loop-- not the only way to put yourself on the ball but one of the possibilities.

[bottle]

Praying Mantis Look

The way one describes anything in tennis is not to be underestimated. We who believe in neuro-linguistic programming are apt to pursue those words and images we associate with tennis results and not be dissuaded from them just because somebody else uses different terms to describe or not describe the same thing.

In Lloyd-kick (that would be Lloyd Budge and not John Lloyd or Lloyd's of London), I've spoken of a three-sided box formed by shoulders line and the two elbows. That's okay but a bit geometric and therefore sterile. If you have reason like me and most servers in the world to learn a Lloyd-kick serve, make yourself look like a big tall praying mantis (see old book cover photo at # 1151).

Then play with language again to ensure that you are pro-active and not just a supplicant-- change the words "praying mantis" to "preying mantis."

[bottle]

Forehand Contact

I like roll. I like scissor. I don't like roll and scissor together, not today anyway.

[bottle]

Iditerod Iteration: More Varied Ways of Compressing the Arm

The Iditarod sled-dog race has a beginning, middle and end. So does a Lloyd-kick serve. Lloyd had a kick serve-- can anyone deny it? Me, I'm on the kick of imagining it. Or if not of imagining it as it actually was, then working from the one photograph I have in my possession and imagining how, applying my own strengths, limitations and knowledge to this information, I could, in achieving such a look, create good kick.

One way in any serve a person can compress the arm is keep palm down and rotate the shoulders in two different directions with no pause between. Thus the old video where Vic Braden, continually swinging around his broad mesomorphic shoulders, says, "See-- nice 100 miles per hour serve." Or the two buckets drill where later instructors have a student stand with one foot in one tennis basket, the other in another.

A second way is to take the arm up high and then let the racket fall, folding the arm. Part way down the legs (and back, Allen Fox suggested) kick up.

Others do something similar but seem to key with the upper arm more, i.e., they twist the upper arm as if it's the key in the back of a mechanical toy.

A fourth way is to abandon all notion of arm and body bending together.

One then could start with knees bent. And use an abbreviated down and up toss-hitting arm action with both arms bent throughout. And separate the elbows during the process to form a slingshot, adding final tension to the slingshot's elastic with slight upward pressure-- as little as three inches-- from both legs with rib cage also rising up within the chest.

The hitting arm already was right-angled-- correct? So it doesn't have much to do during the whole down and up rhythm other than arrange itself at perfect throwing level and move back a little only as the result of the two shoulders stretching apart and offering chest to the sky.

Now we let the releasing slingshot compress the two halves of the arm together creating double resistance for ourselves: 1) the folding arm is trying to unfold, 2) the twisting arm is trying to untwist.

[bottle]

Hades and Hell-- Essentially the Same

I am interested in imaginative response to the Gordon-Yandell-Macci reports.

Such a course can easily lead to a watering down of original content not perfectly understood-- I realize that.

But the ideas themselves aren't impossibly difficult. The true complexity in this work lies in its methodology in decades of scientific research, which as a tennis player I would like to accept and bypass and move ahead from.

If the findings are solid, one can extrapolate from them-- this is how science works.

Already, I found a solution to the problem of rotorded kick.

So I am naturally optimistic about amping up my topspin forehands through shortening them and loading the flip better through additional muscle use in the area of the shoulder.

These after all are the muscles which, in my limited range serve, sent the coyote as well as the road-runner running, and told Sisyphus to go straight back to hell.

"The pleasure of Sisyphus" indeed. I've taken pleasure from my Sisyphusan efforts-- that's true-- but no one ever proved that I wouldn't find something (with a little help from my friends).

[bottle]

Hand Still! Relaxing and Enhancing Scapular Adduction

Phylum: ROTORDED SERVES. Hand to remain still during final stretch of the slingshot. The racket therefore will close.

Hand to remain still during release of the slingshot. The racket therefore will open.

In both directions the elbow moves past the hand.

Before, in this pattern of serve, the arm didn't have much to do during its final stretch. Now it has a lot to do.

Note 1: The hand moves plenty during the down and up stretching apart of both bent arms, but then it gets still. This prescription leads to a single motion (as in a baseball pitcher's "motion").

Note 2: There may be room, i.e., time, for experimentation in final scapular retraction as well. The mechanics of this, as we've outlined them ("we" being my head and two feet starting out flat) consist of minimal drive from both legs and internal raising of rib cage.

Why shouldn't this be simultaneous? Or with legs moving first? Or with rib cage rising first? Or with rib cage rising while hands still are pulling apart? Obviously this is added experiment.

Should, then, the experimenter break down all these attempts into two different sessions conducted on two different days? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

[bottle]

To Better Proprioception

We all suffer from too much information, with the remedy appearing self-evident: Slow down and concentrate on one thing at a time.

I'd call that taking a kinked problem apart, unsnarling the fish line, breaking some overall challenge down into palatable bites.

Sometimes, however, we ought to aim for synthesis over analysis, and I want to apply my late discovery of scapular adduction (i.e. slingshot) to more than one stroke.

Most tennis players, preferring mystery, aren't apt to do something like this. Very romantic, they are. For mystery contains one dollop of wondrous strangeness to three dollops of dunno and never will.

Instead of turning the arm to close the racket on a forehand (if you do that), simply position the elbow higher for same result, only do so with one half scapular retraction.

"One half" means that only the hitting shoulder does a stretch.

The opposite arm and shoulder rather is providing stability right then along with insurance that shoulders have fully rotated with arm pointed across.

The better the athletic movement in any sport, the more the seams of it will blend together, which makes the problem of seeing them more difficult.

More sequence than usual is visible in the following video of Roger.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHInsideOutArmActionSide2_500fps.mp4

I see 1) a unit turn in which racket holds position, 2) racket tip rise up, 3) elbow move out from body (scapular retraction) achieving desired racket position while closing the strings, 4) straightening the arm, 5) slingshot to load the flip in interesting ways.

This is a different sequence from anything that players and teaching professionals usually talk about.

If it's a valuable teaching tool, it can be applied to service as well (see post # 1181).

While the correspondence between forehand and serve isn't perfect since arm is straightening in different ways, in both cases I see elbow moving behind hand and then slingshotting ahead of hand. (Whoops, I later changed my mind about this with regard to the kick serve I've been developing.)

Why not explore 1) forehands struck this way in which arm straightens and stays straight for contact, 2) in which arm straightens then scissors at contact, 3) in which arm stays bent throughout.

Why not explore serves struck this way in which arm 1) straightens in the down of down and up, and 2) stays bent throughout the preparation and only straightens for contact.

MO (Mode Of Operation) here: Write first, try afterward. Great relaxation may be necessary to make it all work.

[bottle]

Forehand part: Good but with a different feel from the expectation built up in the previous post. A lot of parallelism occurs as elbow goes out on a diagonal but racket head keeps up with handle (travels at the same even speed as it naturally bevels). I'm not sure that my arm and racket didn't feel like a hand mower in which the blades automatically twirl in reverse.

Serve part: No good at all, at least for me and my spinnyistic goal. In fact, the rotorded kick serve I've been developing seems to work best with a slightly open stance similar to Tony Roche, which shortens not lengthens the overall motion (which I was trying to do). Probably open stance restricts and simplifies knifing, slingshotted elbow to pure scapular adduction with no independent travel from shoulder ball factored in.

Implicit in this view is the idea that arm can move about the body in two different ways: 1) the whole shoulder housing moves, 2) the upper arm moves within the housing.

[bottle]

Don't Throw Your Racket; You Might Injure Your Elbow

My Detroit baseball sources tell me that pitching coaches now are teaching kids first serve technique from tennis to avoid Tommy John Syndrome.

The kids are apt to injure their elbows from improper release of the ball, but a tennis person doesn't have to worry about this since he keeps holding on to the handle of his racket to the end of his motion.

The kids, as I understand it, are learning to pitch without release, at least for a while.

[bottle]

Meeting Luke Jensen

"I don't know if they listen better, but they ask more questions."

This was Luke Jensen, born in Grayling, MI, on a favorite subject of both of us-- women.

"You're Bottle?" he said. "The one and only Bottle?"

Maybe he was conning me, but these questions along with other interactions I noticed around a bunch of Har-Tru courts reminded me of the great advantage an ambidextrous teaching pro and French Open doubles champion has if he is a cut-up.

It's my theory that light patter provides a batter in which the strawberries known as tennis tips can swim.

Luke Jensen was in Michigan performing a demonstration at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club. I wasn't sure where that was but recognized his bald head as I zipped past on Lake Shore Drive. So I did a U-turn and conned my way past the Club's guard.

Luke still was coaching the Syracuse women. His almost half-dozen year's experience doing that, he suggested, has proved an immense reward.

There was a huge group paying good attention this afternoon. When a woman hit a great shot, Luke asked who her favorite teams were.

In demonstrating and correcting volleys, he made everybody's racket path go slightly up.

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Here is a full and very good article on Luke Jensen:

http://www.tennis-x.com/xblog/2010-05-17/4195.php