A New Year's Serve

[tennis_chiro]

Clarity is king

I don't mean a tennis racket frame but rather a tennis video frame, viz., 33 clicks in on Don Brosseau's computer in California, and 33 clicks in on my different kind of computer in Michigan. At first I thought I was coming up with a different number, but that is because I wasn't yet disciplined enough to click backward with my left arrow all the way to the correct starting point and do this every time.

Is such discipline important? You bet it is! We don't just want disciplined, uninhibited tennis. We want disciplined ways to apply the new technology to our game.

I refer to post numbers 733-4, which are about a David Ferrer forehand-- here's the clip. The frame in question shows so much distortion, of, yes, racket frame, that, it's a kind of benchmark of where maximum acceleration ought to occur in the modern forehand.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/david_ferrer/df_forehand/df_fh_arm_action/df_fh_arm_action.html?DFFHCenterArmActionRear4.mov

I'm remembering now Ivan Lendl's best instruction book-- his collaboration with the late Eugene Scott. The photography in that book concentrates on the exact same spot just below and before the forehand contact. Again and again, Ivan Lendl's racket frame displays distortion identical to that of David Ferrer.

So what, you say, unless you're seriously interested. Well, I tried to imitate Lendl's forehand-- a disaster. Then I tried to imitate Federer's forehand-- less of a disaster.

In Ferrer's forehand, I have discovered-- and declared several times in these posts-- there is a single frame in the present Tennis Player videos where racket in response to already whipping body is solid with the body, i.e., is moving at the exact same speed.

Please chill out, here, reader, in anticipation of all the frames in the next sentence. That the key frame is the same frame where racket frame distorts most, photographically speaking of a certain camera speed, may come as a shock.

We struggling, confused tennis players-- perhaps all tennis players-- tend to be entranced by funky terms like "windshield wipers." If we could only get the wiper up to cloudburst speed, we think, or if, before that, we could only delay mondo in order to make it reach warp speed, our forehand would be truly great.

All wrong. Frames 31 and 32 show mondo. That's twice as much time as 33, the singular frame of maximum distortion. And Doug King, when speaking of twirling a baton, urges his students to "keep the racket in hand," to retain a modicum of slowness and control. That would be frames 33 to 43 .

That leaves # 33, the frame we most want to discuss. My belief is that the elbow is out from the body a very small bit but to all intents and purposes is firmly glued to it. This implies, then, incredibly quick hip and body turn, which any chimp can learn.

Bottle,
I thought you might be really on to something here. I started to think about trying to capture the picture with my 1000fps Casio camera. Like maybe the tennis racket shaft actually bends a lot more than we thought, like a golf club that bends before kicking back.

Then I remembered we have 500fps high def shots right here already. Yes, 1000 fps might show a little more racket deformation on impact (it does), but what we are looking for in what you are pointing out here should be obvious at 500fps. I can almost see a little flex in the racket, but not the optical/photographic anomaly/illusion we are seeing in that blurr we are talking about in frame 34(1+33).

However, it is true that to hold the ball at all, you have to accelerate through impact. And if this image works for you, that's all that matters.

don

To see how this is a photographic anomaly, see the following clip 80 to 70 clicks (left arrow depressions) before contact. This is not yet the high speed part of Rafa's stroke and yet the racket seems to be deforming before our vary eyes. It's just an illusion created by the angle of the shot.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Rafael_Nadal_HD_HS/Forehand/RN_FH_Center/RN_FH_Center.html?RN%20FH%20Center%20OpenStance%20Side3%20500fps.mov

[bottle]

Betting the House on a Single Frame

I don't mean a tennis racket frame but rather a tennis video frame, viz., 33 clicks in on Don Brosseau's computer in California, and 33 clicks in on my different kind of computer in Michigan. At first I thought I was coming up with a different number, but that is because I wasn't yet disciplined enough to click backward with my left arrow all the way to the correct starting point and do this every time.

Is such discipline important? You bet it is! We don't just want disciplined, uninhibited tennis. We want disciplined ways to apply the new technology to our game.

I refer to post numbers 733-4, which are about a David Ferrer forehand-- here's the clip. The frame in question shows so much distortion, of, yes, racket frame, that, it's a kind of benchmark of where maximum acceleration ought to occur in the modern forehand.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/david_ferrer/df_forehand/df_fh_arm_action/df_fh_arm_action.html?DFFHCenterArmActionRear4.mov

I'm remembering now Ivan Lendl's best instruction book-- his collaboration with the late Eugene Scott. The photography in that book concentrates on the exact same spot just below and before the forehand contact. Again and again, Ivan Lendl's racket frame displays distortion identical to that of David Ferrer.

So what, you say, unless you're seriously interested. Well, I tried to imitate Lendl's forehand-- a disaster. Then I tried to imitate Federer's forehand-- less of a disaster.

In Ferrer's forehand, I have discovered-- and declared several times in these posts-- there is a single frame in the present Tennis Player videos where racket in response to already whipping body is solid with the body, i.e., is moving at the exact same speed.

Please chill out, here, reader, in anticipation of all the frames in the next sentence. That the key frame is the same frame where racket frame distorts most, photographically speaking of a certain camera speed, may come as a shock.

We struggling, confused tennis players-- perhaps all tennis players-- tend to be entranced by funky terms like "windshield wipers." If we could only get the wiper up to cloudburst speed, we think, or if, before that, we could only delay mondo in order to make it reach warp speed, our forehand would be truly great.

All wrong. Frames 31 and 32 show mondo. That's twice as much time as 33, the singular frame of maximum distortion. And Doug King, when speaking of twirling a baton, urges his students to "keep the racket in hand," to retain a modicum of slowness and control. That would be frames 33 to 43 .

That leaves # 33, the frame we most want to discuss. My belief is that the elbow is out from the body a very small bit but to all intents and purposes is firmly glued to it. This implies, then, incredibly quick hip and body turn, which any chimp can learn.

[bottle]

Breathing During One's Best Serve, Continued

I'm happy with all of these ideas, but some of them are in flux-- that often happens, I think. There was an interesting article in the past Sunday New York Times which I find germane to this discussion. The golfer-author spoke of reading Ben Hogan when he was young and taking it all very seriously. When he got older, however, he realized that what Ben Hogan was talking about applied to Ben Hogan's game and to nobody else. From that the author eventually reached the conclusion that advanced golf cannot be taught by anybody in a generic way that will apply to a lot of people!

I wonder if that's true in advanced tennis. I think I've always resisted the teaching pros I knew-- just a little bit-- and that's how I settled on the idea of this column. I'd just report on my own experiments and ideas and not try to be generic. Amazingly, people like to read this stuff-- at least the tennis players who are real experimentalists like to. Maybe they relate to my quest even though they themselves work with a completely different set of details and wouldn't agree on a lot of stuff if we were in a coffee shop talking things over.

Honestly, though, I would like to break the rule of generic impossibility once in a while, maybe here on the issue of breathing during a serve. I know a lot of top pros, among others, do different things. Have you ever looked at Andy Roddick's cheeks all puffed out during contact, reader? What's that about? Do you know. Do you even have an idea? And why have I never heard that discussed?

Usually, when people don't talk about the things in tennis I want to talk about, I simply retreat into my own experiments, i.e., I have the discussion I want only with myself.

At the court today, I found that my ideas on breathing in a gravity dominant serve were a little off-- a little off at least in the context of my own speculative thought.

What was really cool, I found, was yes to drop the scapulae as part of the initial racket drop but not to start inhaling too soon. If I waited until the racket was roughly even with the back of my neck to inhale, I came up with a maybe very promising construction.

That would be: 1) arch as part of the drop (I'm using "scapular retraction" as synonymous with arch-- a bit controversial in itself) and 2) complete the arch as elbow and everything else is on its way up to the ball...complete the arch with simple inflation of the two balloons which are one's two lungs.

When one inhales one lifts the sternum more, and lifting of the sternum is part of Chris Lewit's definition of a good (and healthy) upper back arch.

[bottle]

Fine Points

Don't lift both arms too equally. The tossing arm releases the ball and points while the racket arm bends to bring the racket tip in a timed way to a rhythmical catch-up, i.e., a zero-gravity moment in which front arm and the racket length are roughly parallel.

Similarly, don't be too literal-minded in connecting initial downward fall of the arms with exhalation.

A person could start inhaling while racket was near the end of this drop-- how would that harm the serve?

Shouldn't one keep one's breathing as natural as possible? There is a correspondence, we have indicated, between breathing rhythm and specific service action, but one can overdo it with too much attention to niggling, left brain detail.

[bottle]

~

Among other possibilities is doing what I have always done: Don't think about breathing at all.

Nobody has to do anything, in tennis. That's important. A reasonably engaged player, however, will always be on the look-out for an idea to improve any aspect of his game.

[bottle]

A Quieter Version of # 736

Breathe in and out and in through the nose to contact, then exhale sharply from the mouth.

[bottle]

Breathing in One Gravity Dominant Serve (Mine, Today)

Breathe in, through the nose, while lifting racket to eye level and shrugging shoulder-blades upward.

Breathe out, through the mouth, while ball arm and racket begin their fall. Body may turn slightly backward to broaden this fall. The two shoulder-blades can fall and come together to produce scapular retraction as well.

As the arms start up, begin inhaling through the nose. A not so fanciful idea here is that, through inflating two balloons (your lungs), you give gradual strength to the initial scapular retraction all the way to near contact, at which time scapular adduction contributes spring to the other sources of power.

Exhale sharply through the mouth from contact.

[bottle]

Guess I'll have to count the clicks from now on.

[tennis_chiro]

33 clicks in?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...ctionRear4.mov

See what I mean? Maybe the frame in question is a painting by Salvadore Dali. The racket frame in that frame has melted ahead of the handle.

That ought to tell you something, reader, about acceleration just at that
racket-clinging-to-side-of-body-but-just-a-bit-out stage of a Ferrerfore.

This photographic phenomenon can be seen as well in other videos, which are, I would argue, equally instructive.

Are you talking about the shot of the frame 33 clicks in?
don
PS They have a Kindle reader on Amazon for Macs. You don't need a Kindle.

[bottle]

Racket Just Went Through an Autoclave and Melted

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/david_ferrer/df_forehand/df_fh_arm_action/df_fh_arm_action.html?DFFHCenterArmActionRear4.mov

See what I mean? Maybe the frame in question is a painting by Salvadore Dali. The racket frame in that frame has melted ahead of the handle.

That ought to tell you something, reader, about acceleration just at that
racket-clinging-to-side-of-body-but-just-a-bit-out stage of a Ferrerfore.

This photographic phenomenon can be seen as well in other videos, which are, I would argue, equally instructive.

[bottle]

~

If one is particularly susceptible in the lower back, one could keep it ramrod straight, at least in one dimension, and still have a good serve.

[bottle]

Note

All this talk about arching, like that in the articles of Chris Lewit, is intended, among other things, to counter the extremely stupid ready made notion shared by too many novice tennis players that arching is something you do in your lower back.

Boris Becker's words, "I kept my nose up in the sky," are extremely useful, but no one wants to injure their lower back.

Anyone still confused on this point should carefully read or re-read post # 728 .

NONE of the Wikipedian wisdom seen there concerns the lumbar region of one's back.

[bottle]

Arch

"I arch throughout the serve." -- Mark Anthony Philippoussis

What does this charmingly imprecise statement mean? It's sort of like the Wikipedian vague reference in post # 728: "It's usually used to throw."

WHAT is usually used to throw? Trapezius or the lower third fibers of trapezius? Conducting one's own experiment on such questions is usually easier and more productive than contacting the statement's source.

One simply-- perhaps arbitrarily-- chooses a possible answer and then runs it through an experiment.

"I arch throughout..." But no one arches throughout, which would be from the very first to last moments of serve. Or does one? Try it?

Or did Mark Anthony mean that he arches throughout the storage of energy part of his serve?

Mark Anthonies are always very eloquent-- "Lend me your ears!"-- so does the verb "arches" mean that the arching happens as it goes along or is the player rather maintaining an arch like the one in Paris or St. Louis?

Think I'll try arching anywhere, specifically during first gravity drop today. And the type of arching I'll try will emphasize lower fibers of the trapezius as described in sentence four of the first paragraph of the Wikipedian entry.

For if one holds out both arms straight and then lowers the scapulae, one feels as if he could throw a rock or a tennis racket over the top of a huge barn.

A third vague reference is the idea of arching and unarching, which sounds great, but does that mean, specifically, scapular "retraction/adduction" as in the last two words of the Wikipedian entry? Let's assume that it does.

Now let's put all of our hypotheses together in a gravity dominant serve.

As racket first drops down, so will the two scapulae countering the sternum, which if not rising will at least remain stationary.

How was it?

****************
My first book, THE LAST WORDS OF RICHARD HOLBROOKE, is now up at Amazon in the Kindle store. I myself don't have a Kindle yet. If someone had a Kindle and wanted to review it, they could. I've also heard of people reading Kindle books on ordinary computers.

[bottle]

Federer to Ferrer

1 2 whap snap.

That's my Ferrer based forehand.

The 1 2 is the inversion in this reverse action forehand.

The whap is a single continued beat of extremely fast body whirl with elbow glued against side at a separation of one ball.

The snap is a combination of wiper and elbow throwing out through the ball.

So the stroke, to repeat, is 1-2-WHAP-SNAP.

I'm not including the subsequent five or so frame beats of finish since the acceleration, i.e., the stroke, is over.

This stroke is simpler both to hit and to describe than the Federfore I explored for many years.

Both Federfore and Ferrerfore have three syllables along with quite similar backswing, but Ferrerfore retains the bent arm that both started out with.

Ferrerfore is easier to understand and hit well, especially for a person getting older who would like to simplify.

So it's one-two-whip-snap hit open or closed.

Oh yeah-- grip. Well, I hit my Ferrerfore with the Federer 3.5-3 strong eastern grip.

[bottle]

From Wikipedia

Scapular Movements

The upper portion of the trapezius can be developed by elevating the shoulders. Common exercises for this movement are shoulder shrugs and upright rows. Middle fibers are developed by pulling shoulder blades together. The lower part can be developed by drawing the shoulder blades downward while keeping the arms almost straight and stiff. It is mainly used in throwing, with the deltoid muscles.

The upper and lower trapezius fibers also work in tandem with the serratus anterior to upwardly rotate the scapulae, such as during an overhead press. When activating together, the upper and lower fibers also assist the middle fibers (along with other muscles such as the rhomboids) with scapular retraction/adduction.

"It is mainly used in throwing..." Hmmmm.