A New Year's Serve

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Enjoyed this Episode

But must overcome my tendency to toss too soon. Found that keeping toss arm up as in the Kirsten Dunce film WIMBLEDON is still good advice no matter how bizarre the serve. I even am recommending to myself that I move tossing arm back a bit while holding it up to make sure the shoulder over shoulder tilt remains uncompromised.

Also, from previous post entitled "Soft Slice the Opposite of Irish Dancing" (# 3545) discovered that these serves are not too soft, look zippy, ought to do well at least at my level of competition and perhaps more. They are not the tearing silk acutely angled soft slice with almost no weight on it that Vic Braden demonstrated in Winchester, Virginia, but are fast enough to give opponents some trouble, especially if mixed in with more bod-gyrated serves.

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Default Serving: Both Gut Turns are Horizontal

Only in that way can one achieve the long shoulder over shoulder action one seeks after punch-clasping one's middle.

But I'll try this, to see. Might not work at all.

Note: I may have left out an hand-written iterative post here in which there is a return to hips first, shoulders second backswing sequence, with both firing simultaneously in the forestroke.

The hips establish the leftward lean and shoulders tilt. Then comes the late toss helped by shoulders turning horizontally back.

The racket which started with independent arm movement never will point at top of fence. It will go back level instead. The hips tilting shoulders down will establish the ATA position. So there is a lot of levelness or unexpected horizontality of two different kinds in this new serve that I now envision or speculate upon, i.e., dunno about good result but maybe.

Progress from this specifically iterative approach has definitely occurred in other strokes. I am a better tennis player at 77 than at any younger age with everything relative of course and I bet I could get some people who knew me before to agree. But service is the most difficult and forbidding shot of all, a last holdout for improvement in my view.

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Soft Slice the Opposite of Irish Dancing

Dennis Ralston and Bill Tilden both say it, so why won't any modern servers try it?

The arm whips around the body, they say. Forget all the groaning and moaning and lugubrious heaving of various body parts.

For soft slice I certainly will give this idea new tries. Quite by chance I rediscovered my soft slice out wide which sometimes goes into hibernation for eight months at a time.

Use modern splay-foot flat-foot stance, thus establishing lower body stability, the opposite of Irish dancing in which upper body is the stable part.

The rediscovery also relates to the various takebacks recently experimented with.

In this one ship the racket to ATA but at the same time turn the shoulders back while bod from the waist down remains in its deep freeze.

Toss occurs as upper bod changes direction to passively squeeze the two halves of the arm together for elbow knifing toward the ball.

The arm then naturally straightens and carves to a paveloader finish by one's left side.

There is no ISR whatsoever in this trick shot.

But what did the tossing arm do once it tossed? It came down and thumped the belly or chest to stop the upper body and hence accelerate the arm.

Such thumping also occurs in a normal serve but for different purpose.

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If

If the right shoulder is trying to twist up over the left shoulder but both shoulders are being bumped in the same direction, something interesting ought to happen!

But what about if you go ATA first? Haven't tried that one. Until you toss you can do anything you want.

So, ship to ATA first. Then turn shoulders slightly to offer your ice cream cone to the person standing at the fence.

Then complete the belly turn as hips turn backward due to nifty foot arrangement. As core proceeds forward.

The girl didn't accept the ice cream cone so you toss with it instead and continue compressing downward on the legs.

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Advised: Tennis Instructions Designed to Self-Destruct

All the numbered items in post # 3539 were intended to self-destruct. The idea was to get the racket as far as possible behind you in one swell foop. Consciousness of each way of doing this needs realization once and only once. To which I now add another item, the classic ATA, i.e., Vic Braden's ancient primitive cry of "Air the Armpit."

Early ATA puts the elbow-- early-- on shoulders bat line. That is an imaginary line running through both shoulder balls and the upper arm-- a long lever in other words. And if you can find a way just at the right moment to add forearm to the straight line you will have established an even longer speed lever.

If you are the earth being moved, you can stub Archimedes real fast into outer space.

In terms of iteration, we have now edited out all the stuff about low elbow position (relative to shoulder!) I earlier wrote about.

There won't be more loose motion in a delayed elbow rise, in fact there will only be one elbow rise and that will be early.

If rotor cuff limitation (tears or adhesions or drive band insufficiency) then prevents the racket tip, possibly farther back by now, from getting low enough, one is, if still serious about one's tennis, looking at grip change past continental toward backhand or even extreme backhand.

Even a player of limited shoulder flexibility can bounce balls high over the net with ISR, can hit good ISR overheads, is this not true?

He only then-- if all else is perfect-- need change grip to develop consistently good serves too.

I go to court now.

Trial at court: Didn't like grip change enough to continue with it. Did have success using ATA as only thing to think about. Concluded that although it's unhealthy to have elbow much above shoulders bat line, as cue one might think for a while of pointing racket tip at top of fence-- just to get elbow all the way up to bat line. At the same time one can offer the ice cream cone in one's tossing hand to a person standing at that fence, inside or outside of the court-- doesn't matter.

A further thought due to this realization: I really would like the tossing shoulder to be assisting the leftward lean and independent arm movement to produce the bent arm toss.

But I started with horizontal wind back of shoulders. I now would like to minimize that belly turn so more range of it is still available to continue as hips do their backward thing.

As a result of this, the hitting shoulder will now come down more to meet the elbow rising to bat line.

The scheme in this is that the hitting shoulder next will rotate upward more-- and with vigor because of the longer path-- as tossing arm whacks the belly to bump both hips in one direction and both shoulders in the other.

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The Perfect Cup of Tea

-Place the tea bag squarely in the bottom of the cup.
-Pour boiling water directly on the tea bag
-Leave for 90 seconds
-Squash the tea bag firmly up against the side of the cup, just once
-Remove the tea bag
-Add milk
-Add sugar if required
-Stir well
-Sit down and enjoy

Yup, thanks. At some level the new serve has got to take the form of prescription. Here's some follow-up to my last post.

The serve worked best for me if I tossed during very beginning of knee compression/hips turning back and core gressing forward.

The late Gladys Heldman inveighed against knee compression during toss for reason of common sense, but most serves took a different form in her day.

The knees can compress more slowly than they then extend, it seems to me.

Besides, leftward lean is then happening, which helps support and add to vigor of the toss.

Also rules were made to be broken by those who know them.

[stotty]

The Perfect Cup of Tea

-Place the tea bag squarely in the bottom of the cup.
-Pour boiling water directly on the tea bag
-Leave for 90 seconds
-Squash the tea bag firmly up against the side of the cup, just once
-Remove the tea bag
-Add milk
-Add sugar if required
-Stir well
-Sit down and enjoy

[stotty]

A serve should have no unnecessary movements, for the same reason that a forehand should have no unnecessary backswing and a backhand no unnecessary quirks. Simplicity is the key to successful tennis strokes just as simplicity is the key to making the perfect cup of tea.

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All the Ways the Serving Arm Goes Round the Bod

I don't even want to think about a down and up motion of the hitting arm. That's too complicated at the moment.

So I go here in the category of what I want to try next with horizontal travel of the arm to get the racket far back. Maybe the lessons learned will later apply to a down and up.

What are the options for getting racket way back-- to develop working room for most powerful conversion to vertical string path?

1) Farm gate. If the arm is right-angled, the humerus can simulate a farm gate hinge pin. If humerus is perpendicular to the court the pitch will not change. The hand will travel X amount to physical limitation.

2) Swing elbow instead. This too could move hand X amount-- approximately the same amount as the hinge example.

3) Try either of these methods with vertical and open racket face. The hand will still go X amount but racket tip will start farther back and end farther back in the open string variation.

4) Keep elbow in to do farm gate then let elbow go: now we get X + X but also a curved path followed by a straighter path-- too complicated? Better for more regular circularity to start at address with elbow somewhat out?

5) Simultaneously combine farm gate and elbow swing to achieve 2X.

6) Start with strings square then roll them open, creating another X amount if you measure at racket tip rather than hand.

7) Extend arm from bent elbow = X amount of travel again or almost.

8) Starting with elbow somewhat out, combine all the other methods to get racket around the largest amount. Does this mean going farther than the shoulders bat line? It needn't. But it gets racket tip around and way back toward the fences.

Arm will be straight. That means it gets to bend as knees bend down thus turning hips naturally backward due to a conventional splay-foot stance.

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Progress

Post # 3536: Lost serve every time along with dropping all three change-off sets in doubles. Post # 3537: Held serve every time along with prevailing in all three change-off sets, again in doubles. One of the four players was not the same, but he is a good player. So I would say the return to hop-style serving (with new knowledge brought across) had positive repercussion.

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Hop (one) and Hoppety Hop (two hops)

Even writing narratives about one's tennis strokes can become a copout, a distraction, a failure of character as in the Trump administration. And even good fruit can go bad if you leave it in the sun too long.

My strokes nevertheless have mostly benefitted from my impulse to make them into stories.

On the backhand side, all shots including the volleys now include arm straightening right up to contact. That is a provocative view and far from the modern norm. But who cares? One wouldn't if something works? There has to be a reason my doubles' opponents hit to the other guy.

On forehand, I use both composite and strong eastern grip. I like to crack forehand volleys above the net with a bit of wrist snap.

On overhead, I'm partial to that technique which takes strings up on the ball even as those strings are slanted down.

On serves, I'm back to down-and-up gravity assisted rhythm but with the hitting arm only, and with strings turned out at address to simplify and make more spare what is about to happen behind one's back. The tossing hand, ice cream coned, stays on bent arm around waist level and turns back with the shoulders.

The service stance is conventional once again, with back foot perpendicular to target, front foot pointed at target or to the right of it since I am right-handed. The amount one is turned away from the net need not and should not always be the same.

The feet in this stance are flat which is startlingly good for activating the transverse stomach muscles, a first thing to do in present narrative.

For a long time I've started backward rotation with the hips rather than the shoulders but see no reason not to reverse this sequence. (The reason for this has to do with a better hop or hoppety hop.)

The hop itself has been a subject of fear since I have a replacement in left leg, but I think the healing has proceeded to the stage where I can hop again so long as I don't rise more than a couple inches off the court.

"I have come to the conclusion that all true power in the serve comes from arching the back," said a former national champion of Guyana. Was he kidding? I'm still not sure.

Arching the back, as Chris Lewit has shown, can happen in two different directions. One of them could qualify for the description "leftward lean."

The toss in present serve is at the beginning of forward travel. The knees then bend and straighten. As they straighten the hips naturally rotate due to the splayed stance. At the same time I seek to fire the stomach though still in my leftward lean.

Since I am a "rotorded" server, i.e., a server without much humeral twist available (pun fully intended), I'd like to snap both shoulders upward more than over. A fanciful idea I've recently evoked is to slap the belly downward rather than backward, so that the shoulders snap upward more than downward..

Finally to use a baseball term there is the question of "arm slot." My better serves occur with this slot starting lower than I used to use. This puts a bit more action in all directions into the body assisted rise of elbow up to shoulders bat line.

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Kinetic Chain Nonsense the Villain Once More?

Someone will read that and conclude that I am opposed to kinetic chain. I'm not.

I'm opposed to the way people interpret kinetic chain and try to use their interpretation.

If kinetic chain theory is correct, an impartial observer should be able to examine any one of its links with good result.

And a link that seems very powerful is the one between hips and shoulders with shorthand for shoulders being "gut."

The closest any famous coach has come to the proper examination I seek is the late baseball coach and slugger Ted Williams.

He taught his Washington Senators to "fire the hips marginally ahead of the shoulders."

My question: Did he really need to say that? Does one have to consciously decide on this "marginal" sequence? How about firing hips and gut at the exact same moment? Won't the hips naturally overpower gut to form desired sequence? And isn't firing hips and gut with a single brain impulse much more compact and easy to do?

We take our new serve to the court where we work on single piece arm spiral up to medium high bent-elbow position a few inches below shoulders bat line with the knowledge in mind that big bod action will achieve the last few inches of elbow rise all by itself.

And we also work on a down-and-up option that establishes the exact same pre-bat position.

Then, in more serves, we fire hips and gut to accomplish both a good toss and an elbow inversion (continuing) in which our toss and racket tip is cocked out to the right.

At which point we clutch the gut for jackknife toward the side fence, which accelerates the already quick shoulders all in the direction indicated by pigeon-toed rear foot.

Oh yes, ISR was happening at contact too.

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Keep Some Things, Delete Others, Reinstitute or Bring Across

First thing to bring across is late toss. It just can't be late enough as far as I am concerned. Toss late into the overall motion.

Second, pigeon-toed rear foot for the type of rear leg drive I want.

Third, the single molten move.

Fourth, drive from rear leg both lifts toss and lifts (inverts) hitting elbow.

Delete: All the nonsense about folding up arm to then lift elbow part way to bat line. Mark it off as an experiment for servers with lapsed shoulder.

Just lift elbow to a few inches under bat line straight off as second part of one's old down-and-up motion.

It is however a down-and-up motion with a difference. Only the hitting arm goes down and up. And as it goes up it turns out. I'll begin these new experiments with some modern tradition. At the end of the "up" the arm will be right-angled in trophy pose but with strings turned out a bit.

Furthermore: As racket goes down the hips turn to lift front foot by its heel up on its toes. As racket goes up, the shoulders turn to lift rear foot by its heel up on its toes.

But you haven't tossed yet! Forward hips turn-- now-- simultaneously lifts hitting elbow and ice cream cone toss.

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A New Serve Every Day

Today's serve however is no different from yesterday's except in the way it is described. Or rather cued. With three counts rather than five.

1) The arm turns over, which takes racket around level.

2) A single molten move: The hips turn raises front heel as hand folds upward from the elbow. The rear shoulder goes down as pigeon-toed rear foot goes up (at heel) and elbow goes slightly up.

3) While tossing, drive with rear leg to raise elbow to bat line.

3) is provocative but 2) is interesting in that the shoulder going down balances the elbow coming up with net result that the elbow stays at one level while being carried about by bod.

Don't be overly struck by that however. To think about it would probably be just as great a tactical mistake as pondering the rest of the serve in minute detail.

Post-mortem: Served this way this morning. The result was less than stellar. Was on the winning team in two of the three set-long matches but held half the time. Not good enough. See next post.

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Pigeon-toed Serves

Stop thinking about so many body parts.

I will, I will, Martina, but not right now. The new serve is still in a design phase that I am thoroughly fond of as I enjoy every jot and tittle.

Proceed now to one arm doing nothing-- in the middle of the serve-- while the other winds hand up to ear.

Turning the racket over can set pace of the whole serve which we now edit so that the backward hips backward shoulders sequence is a single molten move.

One could say there are five parts to this new serve different from yesterday if one wanted. Better to say "parts" than counts because as counts the parts are uneven. We could signify the conglomeration as 123-4-5 but that would under-express the speed with which the 3-4-5 is jammed together.

1) The hitting arm slowly turns over in an effort to set best speed and rhythm for beginning of the serve.

2) The hips turn so that front heel goes slowly up followed by shoulders turn and rear heel going up to form a starter's block as in track. At the same time the arm folds together and continues up until hand is by ear thus raising elbow a small amount.

3) The rear foot and leg fires hips mostly in a roundabout direction but upward too. This pigeon-toed foot best indicates the roundabout direction. If it were splayed in conventional set, it would make the body skate too much toward the net. The energy from this leg thrust forms a spiral around and up. At the same time the elbow inverts which puts it on shoulders line to transform it into a shoulders line bat.

4) The bat accelerates from transverse stomach muscles. The axis for this forward rotation of the shoulders is either on a tilt or is actively tilting or both. The elbow continues to invert to create conflict in the humeral connection (rotator cuff) for what happens next.

5) ISR. Halfway through this ISR the opposite forearm kicks one's middle as front leg thrusts up and body slightly jackknifes and upper bod continues to rotate as the total serve goes into its scarecrow conclusion.