A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

~

Oh man, Tom. This is a great day after all. Sure, go ahead and use the review of THE TALENT CODE. And I'll be in touch very soon. When you mentioned Malcolm Gladwell, if not before, I realized that you were coming at tennis and tennis instruction from interesting new perspectives.

[bottle]

Here's Some Fun

To get to # 760, start with figure eights, then adapt Don's toss-and-catch drill to the new construction.

First serve will remain unpolluted and gravity driven, with racket falling near the body to start the action, with big feel natural weight shifts from front foot to back foot and then re-accomplished out on front foot and beyond.

If anything, the addition of # 760 to one's toolbox will make one more aware of these weight shifts through differentness, and probably will lead to more weight on rear foot for a longer time (on a first serve).

Using # 760 as second serve model will finally free up an old guy to keep his weight more centered and use both instead of just one of his arthritic legs, which he may want to place closer together at the outset, also.

Brenda Schultz McCarthy always advised this for a person with arthritic legs or not-- get WAY OUT on front leg for a first serve but center yourself and thrust with both legs for a double barreled effect on the second.

But perhaps the shotgun image is too dramatic. Instead, one should perhaps take a soccer description from Tom Allsopp that occurs in one of the 164 comments under the # 760 video. The football reference is to the way a player throws overhead with both arms after the ball has gone out of bounds. This throw never looks like much to someone outside of the sport. It's nothing like a goalie's distance throw. It involves the whole body, however, and is extremely accurate and therefore important.

So, building from that idea, I go from a basic three or more service counts to two simple counts. Am I going to abandon initial drop of the racket from eye level? Of course not. But I'm not going to begin my two-count until the racket is low like Tom Allsopp's. And I'm not going to shift weight in any direction until then either.

Don's toss and catch drill, to review his own words, goes like this:

A good drill is to integrate the practice toss-and-catch with the figure 8. Establish the rhythm with the toss-and-catch, then continuously, work in the figure 8 so that you go "Toss(1) - and(2) -Catch(3) -Pause(4)

You catch the ball as your left hand is just beginning to descend. As you complete the retracing of the motion to the beginning the force of gravity drops to zero and that is your "Pause".

http://www.youtube.com/user/GlobalTennisDC#p/u/24/_wkhxlMD-0o

Don't be intimidated by the 4-count for learning toss-and-catch within a figure eight. Count for the new overall second serve is a different thing (fewer counts, only 2 in fact!).

The takeback on the # 760 serve is three-quarters-- half up but half around, with racket separated out to side of body. Will scapular retraction keep racket head down enough as strings rise toward the falling ball?

And am I having fun yet? I think so-- the only reason other than myelinization to undertake a project of this magnitude.

But what about deception? Hasn't little u-i abandoned it? Bah, humbug. Deception isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Just have a hundred pitches available, like Satchel Paige, each with a colorful name.

[bottle]

Revise Backhand!

I've decided I like Emira Stafford's backhand better than Stanislas Wawrinka's, at least as something for me to do. And once you're fifty or more, as I understand it, your myelin begins to crack. You've got bad sparkplug wires! No one knows the perfect remedy, but the best course clearly seems to be to lay down some fresh, twisted goop through trying something that's somewhat new.

The first question I've had in trying to understand Stafford's backhand is whether she uses body-arm sequence in lowering the racket head behind her back.

Instead of tackling the question as research, however-- which would amount to dry scholarship over Bottle's own self-interested stroke development-- I'm not going to ask anybody but rather follow Martina Navratilova's dictum that when the choice is between sequence or simultaneity, simultaneity is usually better since it won't break down as soon.

So the hips going out will level the shoulders, but racket, having wound up higher than in my Wawrinkan version, can drop, independent, from the shoulder joint at precisely the same time.

Face it, if a player does both while also removing slack from the arm, the racket head is going to tuck in close behind the hips with handle out toward the side fence. One therefore will put more stick into the stroke, i.e., the racket length will swing around with more snap.

The whole emphasis, for me, will now lie naturally where it always should have been-- in the area of contact.

After the racket comes around (one might even say "pivots" or "twirls"), the tip and handle rise at the same rate. Can or should we analyze this rise further? Unless we're a centipede fearing paralysis, yes! There's acceleration with a bit of deceleration at the tail end.

Hence, the beautiful truncated finish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEyyXV5o9oA&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_630357

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i3M9tY-oKE&feature=related

[bottle]

Speculation, i.e., I Don't Know

The big question in tennis, always, is whether to change something or not.

Old school says, "Change nothing and hit the same old boring shot and make it every time."

New school, which includes the study of myelin, says, "Improve the wiring in your nervous system by making small adjustments and corrections, some of which you will find through raising the level of difficulty to where you just start to make mistakes."

And yet author Daniel Coyle feels that only three per cent of future myelin knowledge-- such a new subject!-- currently exists.

So, when you make some seemingly small change, do you build on the neural advantage of previous practice or have you just started all over toward the 10,000 hours necessary, according to Malcolm Gladwell, for anyone to master anything?

Given present uncertainty, one's course is probably determined by individual temperament and the ideas one has heard.

If, say, the player reads books and studied GOLF IN THE KINGDOM by Michael Murphy, he probably thinks that every tennis stroke and golf stroke ought to be a little different from every other.

Figure out the best electrical wiring for that!

Can learning itself be myelinized? I think so. Can the ability to incorporate change faster than other people be myelinized? Possibly.

I repeat my favorite part of THE MEMOIRS OF HELEN OF TROY: A NOVEL by
Amanda Elyot.

In a bedroom scene, Theseus explains to Helen his success with women. "However slow you want to go," he says, "go ten times slower than that."

[bottle]

Building on # 760, Tom Allsopp's Brief Demonstration of Kick Serve

Try verbal if not physical modification of # 787 toss-and-catch drill: (1) toss, (2) point, (3) catch, (4) pause (poise).

To build specifically on # 760, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQSd3...eature=related, try one serve with no horizontally backward body turn at all, just the arm going on the 45 degree angle up and around the body. To achieve this goal, the feet will be parallel to one another, no?

Here's the first high profile guy-- Tilden-- to talk about this arm going around the body idea-- before Gonzalez and Ralston for slice. Has anyone ever specifically refuted it? Not in the tennis literature I've read. Maybe in non-verbal language out on the court in first serves.

Tom Allsopp, above, shows some backward body turn-- a minimal amount. Note how Tom's shoulders are sloped upward even though the movement of his knees toward right fence is pure and square. Tilden shows no backward body turn here but yes forward body turn of every kind:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeArmActionKickRear.mov

[bottle]

~

Wouldn't life be exciting for a rotorded server if the Tilden model worked well for him-- level shoulders to sloped shoulders late?

He'd be starting his throw from higher.

I must confess, I haven't tried this yet.

[bottle]

Two Kick Variations to Try

One's wish in either case is improvement in the squareness of the total body bend. This term "squareness" may be slippery. Better that the term be slippery, however, than the movement it describes. Smoothness, balance and perfect confidence in one's lower body are achievable, I believe. First serve body bend, in which leading hip glides out toward the net may pollute one's second serve.

Whether the player is Stan Smith with the slightest of serving step, or Tom Allsopp or John Escher with no step at all, the working image now becomes cantilevered knees and shoulders toward the opposite side fences.

This is what I decided to try:

1) Find the most natural way to slope shoulders upward toward the net without compromising twin push from legs.

OR

2) Keep shoulders square like Bill Tilden, during the body bend. Rear shoulder now has less distance to rise. Is that bad or good?

Conclusion: The first contest out on the court, today, was not between slope and level (slope was clearly the best way for me to go), but all arm vs. arm-and-body on the 45 degree takeback/takeup.

The second contest was about how best to achieve slope of shoulders without sending front hip toward net. Should you do it as part of the toss? I prefer, for now, a slow tilt that embraces an arm only takeback, i.e., the tilting starts a bit before the toss and continues a bit after it.

[bottle]

Best Movies of Myelin Found So Far

http://www.youtube.com/v/d9pGc2BeVvE&fs=1&source=uds&autoplay=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/E9IRrtptjAQ&fs=1&source=uds&autoplay=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/XgIaAs_ONG4&fs=1&source=uds&autoplay=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/mOgHC5G8LuI&fs=1&source=uds&autoplay=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/tMdW8lFw5VY&fs=1&source=uds&autoplay=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/IgDuW4RsluE&fs=1&source=uds&autoplay=1

"Finding and fixing is at the core of the process." -- Daniel Coyle

[tennis_chiro]

Thanks, Bottle

http://www.youtube.com/v/d9pGc2BeVvE...uds&autoplay=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/E9IRrtptjAQ&fs=1&source=uds&autoplay=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/XgIaAs_ONG4&fs=1&source=uds&autoplay=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/mOgHC5G8LuI&fs=1&source=uds&autoplay=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/tMdW8lFw5VY&fs=1&source=uds&autoplay=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/IgDuW4RsluE&fs=1&source=uds&autoplay=1

"Finding and fixing is at the core of the process." -- Daniel Coyle

Thanks, Bottle
You really made my day. Honest. I feel ready to go back to work again getting the little beasties to do it over and over and over and over again...nicely, of course!

First, I thought, OMG! These people today are so lucky to have all this in detailed animation and video. I had to go through this and so much more trying to get it clear in chiropractic school (almost 5000 hours of class). It's much harder trying to read or follow a chalk board lecture. Then I realized I was doomed. If I start looking up all these things and learning them on youtube, I'll never have time to go out and do anything.

You have to understand, chiropractors are all about the central and peripheral nervous system. The underlying theory is the central nervous system is always right (the brain - INNATE), but the message gets messed up as it is passed down the PNS through various junctions and through all kinds of spaces that get pulled and pinched and compressed by various forces that create an exitation/inhibition of the nerve in question and the message it is transmitting. It can get a lot more technical than that, but that was at the core of D.D. Palmer's original theory.

I ordered The Talent Code last week, but it hasn't arrived. How do you think I am ever going to get around to finishing TLWORH!!?

But it is great to see something so concrete (I guess myelin is a lot softer than concrete, but it's natural strength is like that of spider silk). My former student, little Angela Kulikov's father was a Russian boxer. On a trip to Moscow about three years ago, they sought out that tennis school in the middle of the park in Moscow and took a lesson. Many kids lined up perfecting the motion before they ever got to hit a ball. Kids waiting in line practicing dry strokes while the other kids were hitting. Repetition.

But it's very hard to get American kids in the 21st century to make enough repetitions for it to matter. It should be fun, but it is still a lot of work. Progress is only briefly mercurial. You don't see the results until much later. I tell them it is my job to be a Nit Picker. But it's not a lot of fun to be Nit Picked!

I've had a number of students who didn't complete the path I had them on, but in the year after they left me they suddenly started to do very well. I think they had just gotten to the point where there was enough myelin to make a difference. But I haven't been able to convince them to stick around long enough for them to let me finish the job.

But after that Nightline video, I promise to keep trying.

don

[bottle]

It's pretty humbling stuff when you consider that we human beings are apt to think that we actually know something. Me, I must confess, that, until right now, I didn't even make the distinction that you and all chiropracters and the videos make between CNS (central nervous system) and PNS (peripheral nervous system).

About ordering books: I'm much too cheap ever to buy a Kindle, Nook, etc., and don't know the various promotions ("If you stay at our hotel, you get a free...", etc.), but my partner Hope (I do invoke her name whenever possible) purchased one and has never seen it since. I'm in the middle of BOUNCE, by Matthew Syed, who syed it isn't just the 10,000 hours of reps but the good coach (that would be you) and the circumstance (that would be California). Anyway, it just takes seconds to order and receive any book, and then you can adjust the size of the print.

One of Daniel Coyle's other central terms, besides myelin, seems highly important: the word "ignite." How much latent scientist is there in a kid or anyone else? And how can we turn it on? A tennis instructor, actually, might be in unique position to do so.

Thanks.

[bottle]

Yesterday (wish I had some musical notation on my computer)

Two days ago, between hitting serves, I dropped a few balls and hit some backhands, and noticed several members of the South High School tennis team in Grosse Pointe, Michigan watching me closely.

That certainly doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I was hitting one-handers, and I was dropping elbow to start the forward stroke in a way I hadn't for a long time, as I tried to imitate Emira Stafford (to find Emira see earlier video in this thread or go to tpatennis).

Yesterday, between hitting serves, I dropped and hit three forehands: a Ferrerfore, a Federfore and a Ziegenfuss.

The Federfore is the most myelinated (practiced) of my forehands. But the way I hit it is flawed, as if a prehistoric bug is frozen in amber somewhere. I get good pace but not enough topspin, and have often wondered if this was due to right hand not hinging backward far enough due to a broken arm at fourteen.

The Ziegenfuss is most fun because it is so opposite to what most people do: arm first then body completing the stroke. Gradually closing the wrist as I slowly swing forward has made it "free-wristed" in the classical definition of that term given by Paul Metzler of Australia. Wrist then gets to go backward for a second time as ball pushes against it.

But the Ferrerfore remains my most promising choice even though I've made a small change in it within the last week. Elbow gets a little high in preparation. After all, we were given free tickets for the Tigers game last night. In all simplicity, I say to myself, "This shot shall be a sidearm throw, like Ben Hogan's right arm in a golf swing, with elbow coming into the hip and palm then facing down."

The palm facing down forms what others choose to call a windshield wiper but is less metallic and more organic and leads to a natural finish around the left upper arm.

I hit just one yesterday, but the guy playing singles on the adjacent court was coming my way between points and said, "Nice shot."

Not that this means anything, again. I don't even know yet how this revised shot will play in a hit or a match, but am certainly curious.

I like this sidearm throw idea-- to describe what the arm does-- and plan to postulate it, i.e., make body take a more subordinate role so as to support it all the way, like a baseball infielder's throw to first.

[bottle]

Re-consideration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQSd3lYxvak&feature=related

I tend to be overly enthusiastic sometimes, but have to say this is the best of a hundred videos on the same topic, at least for some one who constantly has had trouble in producing ball trajectory and kick as powerful as that of Tom.

To try to answer my own question-- how do you get your shoulders properly sloped in this model?-- on re-watching this video, I see that almost all of the first half positioning is spread out and simultaneous, and the shoulders end by sloping up at a point directly above the target, and hips have gone out toward the right fence rather than toward the net.

[bottle]

Re-consideration II

For a few days this excellent model looked as if it were going to work like gangbusters. I had a history of not very dissimilar motion (along with other histories), a myelinized circuit therefore to build upon? Be careful of this idea? Better to start an entirely new circuit?

About the third or fourth day I got wild. That made me think I'd better return to the more gravity-driven pattern I'd developed (or re-developed) just this summer-- it's very solid and something to rely on under pressure.

I can do that, but bring across at the same time some of the ideas such as cantilevering toward opposite side fences. Just use a more revolved initial stance, and if I want to then try driving evenly off both legs, on this second serve, go ahead.

To be unaffected by all of my recent reading, video watching and thinking about myelin seems impossible. But to be over-affected by it seems probable, too. One should always remember how much is unknown. The practical lesson is to value long range development above all. You're getting there! Don't despair. Have faith. My eight-oared crew didn't know much technique but won three Dad Vail national championships and started a rich, annual rivalry with Harvard. We did it one way-- by rowing more miles than anybody else.

Discussion then goes against quick fix while realizing, a bit mindblowingly, that improvised, ad hoc response is crucial to the long range enterprise. You
try hard with enthusiasm and passion, you ignite. Whoops, made a mistake!

That's when you learn or you don't.

[bottle]

Cantilevers, Fresh from the Vine, Only a Dime

Same arrangement of feet orchestrates nicely the first serve, second serve difference, but I've got to have some suppositions. Life just isn't fun without suppositions.

I suppose, that, with knees perfectly parallel to one another and pointing like two flashlights toward side fence, that, the player is basing his overall service presentation on second serve, whereas someone betting on a lot of aces might splay his feet in different directions.

From parallel knees and feet one can bow one's body in the traditional first serve manner, with hip thrusting toward net and weight loading over front foot.

On second serve, as knees compress, weight can load on both feet. Will opponent be able to read the difference? Probably. And if this is a big consideration for you, maybe you'd better splay your feet on first and second serves.

If however you are going with parallelism, you might consider, on your second serve, not raising your heels too soon. Hips and knees definitely go one way while shoulders and head go the opposite. But heels can stay down until the end, or rather the bottom, of this process.

[bottle]

Early Deceleration in a One Hand Backhand

Sounds terrible, doesn't it, this idea of decelerating right after one hits the ball.

Don't be fooled. And stop myelinizing inferior designs.

Instead, consider this venerable description of a running backhand follow-through on page 64 of TENNIS by Pancho Gonzalez and Dick Hawk: "7. This is the end of the follow-through. The racket head points to the top of my opponent's fence."

To achieve that happy goal, I submit, there can be no excess of energy in either the racket head or the body.

So there we are, frozen in perfect balance and pointing at top of opponent's fence-- no farther and no higher. Hold this pose for 120 seconds. Say, "I am a statue."

Then ask, "What just happened?" Well, both ends of the racket rose at the same speed, decelerating. Before that, both ends of the racket rose at the same speed, accelerating. (That was precisely when you came off of the ball.)

Before that, the racket tip pivoted around level from a starting point in close.

Before that, your strings fell in close to your body behind you, which free drop from the shoulder was helped by your hips gliding out and also by straightening of arm at the elbow.

Drop in such a way as to maximize the subsequent round-a-bout, nifty prying action. From drop to end of follow-through is a single motion. Freeze! Best margin of error at end of the follow-through is with strings facing top of opposite fence a little rather than being flipped over. Perfect is tip of racket frame pointing there? The Gonzalez/Hawk language is a bit ambiguous on this POINT, but maybe it should be? Regardless of what's pointing at top of the fence, this feels like a snappy yet smooth backhand to me.