1. INITIAL BODY. Use John McEnroe’s stance only you can keep your bent arms address if that’s what you have. Also you probably don’t need to lean over as far while getting same effect by taking some extra body angle forward with the (a) straightening and drop of tossing arm palm vertical and (b) straightening and separation of hitting arm with palm at setting it naturally wants to be and so that the two hands become at least a yard apart and (c) push of hips backward and (d) turn upper body backward in a baseball pitcher’s way enough to remove rotational slack from LOWER BODY and put downward part of toss to RIGHT of left knee. It’s all smooth and simultaneous and unhurried. I am right-handed.
2. TOSS is assisted by body angle transfer forward to backward at end of hips travel along baseline. Rising toss hand revolves inner edge so palm just gets horizontal for release and once the ball is gone the palm reverts back to vertical. The hitting arm since it is so far back to start has little to do thus making it less likely to interfere with smoothness of toss (a physiological possibility apparently). Like tossing arm it revolves the palm up and that is the main thing it does accompanied by a very small rise of itself. The two palms thus turning outward can lead to the romantic notion that one brain impulse serves all. If there is a little sequence one way or the other I can’t see the harm.
3. THE BEND. (Sit down on imaginary seat and shift knees for front foot take-off.) The hitting arm, thanks to the palm having revolved, can now compress completely on a low, trophied elbow, assuring that saved elbow will rise a maximum amount as it twists upward in the next step. But, as arm bends this way, your wrist also humps (a very natural feeling, this, to do both things at once). This assures a maximum amount of loose wrist from humped to open in the next step.
4. THE BODY THRUST AND CATAPULT now takes place; i.e. the rest of the serve. Although I have read about radical rotation I don’t believe there’s that much at least for a second serve. McEnroe at contact has shoulders turned back at about 60 degrees rather than the 45 degrees that is usually prescribed. I’m sticking with an idea from reading Brenda Schultz: UBR (upper body rotation) only starts from contact. Contact is over the head.
5. ARM MOVEMENT: One should take tennis interpreter Jeff Counts very seriously when he describes all the players who neglect to twist their forearm out when they serve. In John McEnroe’s case, this movement flows out of the wrist shift from humped to open as part of the motion we all do inverting our elbow up basically in response to leg drive but sometimes in response to UBR or catapult. McEnroe: leg. But what happens immediately after that?
A next frame will probably show McEnroe’s arm in a right angle, which means it’s about to twist as if you are throwing a tomahawk (straight up in the sky, someone said after watching McEnroe’s slippery racket fly). It sends the arm on a new slant as well. EVERYBODY needs this extra power. It’s the device by which even the most rotorded player can bounce a short overhead over an adjacent fence.
The trouble occurs when we rotorded ones move this power position backward for an upward spinning serve. I myself shunned it for a while because I thought I was giving away racket angle. But when you study McEnroe closely you see the loss is not very much.
In one frame he (M) has arm compressed, wrist opened out, forearm parallel to the court. In the next frame he (M) has arm right-angled, wrist opened, forearm still pretty much parallel to the court though pointing in a different direction more toward rear fence.
This tomahawk or right angle is what Brian Gordon points to as the main source of centrifugation. And with less or more than a right angle (and I am the one opining here but you knew that already), the tomahawking movement, in which upper arm violently twists, cannot be efficient: a simple matter of maximum leverage.
The active tomahawking can passively straighten a spaghetti arm for sure accelerating it faster than any other way.
So how to get from compressed arm to right angle? By using triceps? Tried it. Best for me is just opened wrist flowing into muscular twisting of forearm in same direction, with this forearm twist sufficient to open arm desired amount in an entirely passive way.
P.S. It’s raining. Otherwise I’d be doing this stuff rather than writing it.
2. TOSS is assisted by body angle transfer forward to backward at end of hips travel along baseline. Rising toss hand revolves inner edge so palm just gets horizontal for release and once the ball is gone the palm reverts back to vertical. The hitting arm since it is so far back to start has little to do thus making it less likely to interfere with smoothness of toss (a physiological possibility apparently). Like tossing arm it revolves the palm up and that is the main thing it does accompanied by a very small rise of itself. The two palms thus turning outward can lead to the romantic notion that one brain impulse serves all. If there is a little sequence one way or the other I can’t see the harm.
3. THE BEND. (Sit down on imaginary seat and shift knees for front foot take-off.) The hitting arm, thanks to the palm having revolved, can now compress completely on a low, trophied elbow, assuring that saved elbow will rise a maximum amount as it twists upward in the next step. But, as arm bends this way, your wrist also humps (a very natural feeling, this, to do both things at once). This assures a maximum amount of loose wrist from humped to open in the next step.
4. THE BODY THRUST AND CATAPULT now takes place; i.e. the rest of the serve. Although I have read about radical rotation I don’t believe there’s that much at least for a second serve. McEnroe at contact has shoulders turned back at about 60 degrees rather than the 45 degrees that is usually prescribed. I’m sticking with an idea from reading Brenda Schultz: UBR (upper body rotation) only starts from contact. Contact is over the head.
5. ARM MOVEMENT: One should take tennis interpreter Jeff Counts very seriously when he describes all the players who neglect to twist their forearm out when they serve. In John McEnroe’s case, this movement flows out of the wrist shift from humped to open as part of the motion we all do inverting our elbow up basically in response to leg drive but sometimes in response to UBR or catapult. McEnroe: leg. But what happens immediately after that?
A next frame will probably show McEnroe’s arm in a right angle, which means it’s about to twist as if you are throwing a tomahawk (straight up in the sky, someone said after watching McEnroe’s slippery racket fly). It sends the arm on a new slant as well. EVERYBODY needs this extra power. It’s the device by which even the most rotorded player can bounce a short overhead over an adjacent fence.
The trouble occurs when we rotorded ones move this power position backward for an upward spinning serve. I myself shunned it for a while because I thought I was giving away racket angle. But when you study McEnroe closely you see the loss is not very much.
In one frame he (M) has arm compressed, wrist opened out, forearm parallel to the court. In the next frame he (M) has arm right-angled, wrist opened, forearm still pretty much parallel to the court though pointing in a different direction more toward rear fence.
This tomahawk or right angle is what Brian Gordon points to as the main source of centrifugation. And with less or more than a right angle (and I am the one opining here but you knew that already), the tomahawking movement, in which upper arm violently twists, cannot be efficient: a simple matter of maximum leverage.
The active tomahawking can passively straighten a spaghetti arm for sure accelerating it faster than any other way.
So how to get from compressed arm to right angle? By using triceps? Tried it. Best for me is just opened wrist flowing into muscular twisting of forearm in same direction, with this forearm twist sufficient to open arm desired amount in an entirely passive way.
P.S. It’s raining. Otherwise I’d be doing this stuff rather than writing it.
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