A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Backward Division of Serve: Now Alter the Amount of Forward Travel on the Toss

~

Also, while keeping ha ta sequence on the toss, vary this way:

1) the sequence to be simultaneous with the body turns.

2) rise of ha to start before the body turns, which are simultaneous with rise of ta.

Note: Backward hips turn is the more important of the two body turns. (I didn't get into a tilt and a lot of other stuff here.) The serves I have in mind combine forward travel with bod turning back. The turning back is the reason I refer to them as "backward division" or I guess you could say "backswing."

[bottle]

Roll out the Barrel; We'll have a Barrel of Fun

Be very excited by furniture # 12, the orange-slatted barrel that changes its orientation as it whirls then spins in space.

One's excitement is just as important as one's comprehension of this strange, transmuting object.

The barrel once was brown which I liked since I went to Brown University.

Now it is reddish orange but I don't let that get me down.

A furniture is a visual, a picture, drawing or video in the midst of text.

To get to the slatted barrel, go to "The 3D Serve: Upward Swing Path 1" (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ng_part_1.html) and count down through the furnitures until you get to # 12 .

For a rotorded server such as myself, this is the most important animation he will see in his life.

It should be pretty important for a server of any other stripe as well.

If, within the phenomenon known as "leftward lean," the head becomes the axis for torso twist, and the head with bod is tilted to the left, the tt will produce more upwardness of racket travel and naturally increase spin (see Brian Gordon's explanation) of the barrel.

Some players move their head to the left at the last moment to get it out of the way of the shot.

But one doesn't want to be altering the torso twist axis when one is within an arm snap distance below the ball.

The leftward lean should, I speculate, happen before the final torso twist.

How much before?

I don't have the answer, only the question.

If one's front shoulder is closed while one kicks arch into the back, however, I can see how one might honor the words of my late friend Bill Matthias, the former singles champ of Guyana.

"I have concluded, after a lifetime of playing tennis," he said, "that all true power in the serve comes from arching the back."

Chris Lewit has told us that back arch happens at once in two directions, 1) along the spine and 2) across the spine.

Both directions should add to the upwardness of the torso twist.

[bottle]

Fun, Continued

The barrel tilts slightly forward without spinning. It then tilts sideways (and forward) while starting to spin. It then just spins.

This guidance is as good as anyone is apt ever to receive.

[bottle]

Refinement

The arms can be more bent than one has had them. As hands go down the ta can straighten hence separate from ha which holds its bend.

ha now lifts toward right fence and continues on same hook-shot-like pathway up over head, clearing it. To retain this form and yet to achieve a diagonal behind the back, however, one may want to start the hook shot toward the right fence, yes, but also a bit toward the net post.

At moment that feels the best, perhaps as ha's hand clears head or slightly before, one performs one's toss which doesn't just place ball but starts reconfiguration of the bod.

The rear leg first but front leg too are driving by now to start the passiveness of a 20 to 30-degree arm squeeze.

"Squeeze" is not the best term, "closing together of the two halves of the arm" seems better.

This and all movement of arm behind the back is motion-dependent including ESR which is not muscular either. What is muscular is just begun torso twist and abduction/adduction which start together and are pretty long.

Also muscular is ISR which is trying to happen but can't yet because of momentum in the relaxed shoulder.

To snap a wet towel one can't get the weight of it going too fast. The requisite slowness comes from your pre-knowledge of what you will do next; in fact you either have already begun to pull or taken forward arm to an end-stopped position.

Similarly, one's ISR, held back by loose momentum, becomes the central focus over the passive snapping of arm straight which happened just before.

[bottle]

Emersonian Compensation as in Ralph Waldo

There aren't many compensations for having to immediately lift your elbow way up over the shoulders line.

One however is that a smaller amount of passive ESR will get your elbow and hand beneath it lined up with ball in a high facsimile of pro drop.

To "roll out the barrel" one can utilize before and after freeze points rather than trying to think through a bunch of continuous motion.

First freeze point: low point of racket behind you-- as low as you can comfortably get it.

Second freeze point: The gradually tilting barrel has already arrived at its horizontal position.

Torso twisting around one's still head can then help throw bent elbow straight up.

So, the leftward lean that the spinning barrel animates may be faster than one thought.

One wants one's human head off to the side early enough so that the tail end of one's torso twist can continue the vertical plane originally started by rear foot push.

Your head moves and then it doesn't move.

[bottle]

Perpetual Change in the Technique of All Sports

Vs. same old, same old foul shot (basketball) a million times. Million dollar per year basketball coaches advocate this, thinking it the best way to win.

The robotic repetition appears to work, mainly because it never gets measured against the opposite philosophy. Not enough players have ever subscribed to the notion of perpetual change for there to be a study.

If some player has perfectionist tendencies and always thinks he can improve his foul shot, he needs to do it in silence and perhaps even in secret on his own.

In professional football, however, we learn that Tom Brady brings in a special coach around this time of year to work on his passing technique.

Tom Brady!? Fiddling with technique?

My contention is that not doing something new all the time-- perhaps a very small difference-- leads to the same result as not wearing something new on Easter.

A bird will poop on your head.

[bottle]

Film at 2 p.m. Balls too Frozen till then. This is the Script.

Idealism in a Barrel: a Personal Narrative of Body Core

Hands up together (rock forward).
Hands down splitting (rock backward).
Ease forward on the toss, bent paw combing the head
Straight paw coming close behind to lift and pass
Hips and shoulders turn
Backward to raise ta more
And settle weight on
Rear foot, which now
Beams a dream of gleam
Of a colored barrel that topples
And plunges, starting to spin,
Warping to left where it
Spins faster on a line up
From behind one's tilted head.

Did the driving, spinning
Hand, warping to the left
Leave the racket head
Behind, wefting to the right?
It did. But what else did it
Do or try to do?

It tried for ISR-- no dice.
For this barrel has mo
And ment and um
With hand moving hard
To left
Behind the head.
But building quiet force
Until the arm, unconscious
And Unseen, snaps straight
So that ISR, unopposed at last
May release without surcease.

Film notes: The folks at Hudl Technique agree that my phone can never flip me from left-handed to right-handed even though it did flip me to left-handed which no one understands.

If I therefore want to see myself as right-handed, I film again with the Moto android natural video-recording function, then play back both versions with the Hudl left-handers rendered in four different speeds. With the Hudl ability to stop or reverse or proceed with a swipe of one's forefinger.

Writing notes: Although all writing is autobiographical I don't do advertising copy. I do discovery instead.

[bottle]

Much of the Previous Serve has Got to Go; it Simply Wasn't Good Enough.

The new year's serve shall be momentum-based. A succession of known body movements can only work if their sole purpose is to enhance a basic tale of slow-building racket head mo.

This is also a criticism of tennis posts that constantly adulate or execrate someone. The best tennis instructors are not looking for someone's inclusion of them in a Bible or bibliography.

While staying positive, they would rather that you steal and actualize their cardinal ideas.

[bottle]

Does the Brightly Colored Barrel Actually get Parallel to the Court?

I don't think so. Brian's most fantastic of all animations is to me idealism and the expression of principle, exaggerated to make a point. One can't be too literal the way that literary people are when they try to think in tennis. The real happening is that the upper body becomes the closest thing in the player to a barrel on its side.

The principle, described as a skater's phenomenon, is seen as torso rotating forward without twisting, then twisting at low speed as axis bends over to the left, next rotating faster once that leaning has stopped.

Here is a letter, arrived today in my in-box, that seems highly relevant to this topic and to so many others for the student of the game who actually believes he can acquire great strokes:

By Brent Abel (excerpted):


I was on the phone the other day with my good friend, fellow Tom Stow student, smooth as glass player, tennis coach extraordinaire, one of the funniest guys I know, and all around smarty pants dude ... Jim McLennan of Essential Tennis Instruction.

Mac and I go waaaay back. I've learned more from this guy than just about anyone else about how to think about the game.

Jim has helped me better understand what Tom Stow was trying to teach me. That's a been a big part in any success I've had as a player or coach.

If you're not in Jim's world, you should be here.

Back to our phone call the other day.

One of the words and concepts that Jim has been harping on forever is ...

Rehearsal.

No ball. No opponent. No practice partner. No ball machine. In fact, no tennis court.

Instead ... at home.

Why?

Off court rehearsing turns your conscious on court manufacturing of stroke technique into sub conscious ... automation on the court.

Oh man. That was way too wordy ;-) But if it's confusing ... read it a couple more times.

Mr. Stow would demonstrate how to walk through your home, get to a door jamb, and show you how to feel the spacing & contact point for your forehand.

Sound goofy? Not if you were with Tom when he explained why rehearsing was so important.

When you and I are on the court in a practice session working on cleaning up stroke technique, we're consciously trying to make some mechanic or technique happen.

But your instinctive focus is on the the timing of contact with the incoming ball, and that can blur those things you're trying to clean up.

Even if it's a slow underhand fed ball, your brain gets consumed with ... timing.

So rehearsing WITHOUT a ball is the key to feeling those things with stroke technique you want to clean up.

We see lots of the pros in between points rehearse a swing so that they feel whatever it is that's important to them.

My chat with Mac went pretty quickly into why we can't seem to get our students to do more rehearsing.

It might seem like there's no direct tangible value from off court rehearsing at home.

[bottle]

Touch Volleys

I might have received some good instruction-- somehow-- on volleying along the way. But I don't think it contained enough emphasis on variations in finger pressure. If you don't think about finger pressure enough to make it a conscious thing it may never become an unconscious thing, which you ought to want.

I was reading Dennis Ralston on the subject of volleying in one of his books, and found what he was saying unprecedented in my experience yet thoroughly simple. He said to alter direction from the same volley with finger pressure.

Well, if one doesn't do that, if one always determines one's volley direction in one of the many different possible ways, one may never put oneself on the path to learning all the gradations that are there for anyone to draw on in their fingers.

Nothing has helped my volleys more than Ralston's simple idea. When my volleys start to get stale now I get myself to a bangboard and don't even try to hit volleys off of it without ever letting the ball hit the ground as if I were Pancho Segura.

I'm not. I'm a 79-year-old hacker who can have a great day starting with touch volleys.

So, as I was saying (and admittedly have said before), to spark up one's volleys just try hitting balls gently off one bounce against a bangboard, altering direction and speed of the shot through finger pressure alone.

[bottle]

10,000 Hours, 10,000 Repetitions (Reprise)

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/...RoCbPIQAvD_BwE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRU20TeaLKI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8oz-Jf147E

[doctorhl]

Touch Volleys

I might have received some good instruction-- somehow-- on volleying along the way. But I don't think it contained enough emphasis on variations in finger pressure. If you don't think about finger pressure enough to make it a conscious thing it may never become an unconscious thing, which you ought to want.

I was reading Dennis Ralston on the subject of volleying in one of his books, and found what he was saying unprecedented in my experience yet thoroughly simple. He said to alter direction from the same volley with finger pressure.

Well, if one doesn't do that, if one always determines one's volley direction in one of the many different possible ways, one may never put oneself on the path to learning all the gradations that are there for anyone to draw on in their fingers.

Nothing has helped my volleys more than Ralston's simple idea. When my volleys start to get stale now I get myself to a bangboard and don't even try to hit volleys off of it without ever letting the ball hit the ground as if I were Pancho Segura.

I'm not. I'm a 79-year-old hacker who can have a great day starting with touch volleys.

So, as I was saying (and admittedly have said before), to spark up one's volleys just try hitting balls gently off one bounce against a bangboard, altering direction and speed of the shot through finger pressure alone.

I can totally relate to finger pressure. I learned it’s importance for directional control and touch when playing tournament badminton. There was some transfer to tennis. As sort of a lab rat, I wanted to order some digital pressure film and try to get pressure readings from different players, but never followed through. https://www.sensorprod.com/index.php

[bottle]

Cool. Thank you. I requested the free sensor sample.

[stotty]

Yes but how does finger pressure direct the ball exactly?

[bottle]

Yes but how does finger pressure direct the ball exactly?

I don't think Dennis Ralston intellectualized it as much as I would, just expressed the idea, but did mention firming up the bottom three fingers. So hit one down the line with fingers more relaxed? Tighten for a crosscourt? But then, just trying to follow the idea, I think I decided I wanted some fingers closing on almost all power volleys, combined with opening of the racket face, which comes from what? Forearm? But then, it just seemed to me, thinking this way with the fingers so much led naturally to loosening them some for stop volleys or just to take speed off the ball. I'd be perfectly happy with the notion that one shouldn't know too exactly what one is doing, at least to have a good day which just has to happen maybe when one isn't expecting it. But my wonkish mind also wanted to know what exactly it all meant. I revert here to my advice about using a bangboard with little dinks on one bounce and playing around with it. That's the application of the original idea that works best at least for me.