Racquet snaps the wrist on serve...

[llll]

don
thanks for posting the videos. its much clearer now
one question being alittle technical
when you are holding your elbow and the racquet goes from pointing to your right then flips and points to your left isnt that pronation not internal rotation??
i always thought internal rotation was from the shoulder turning the UPPER arm
in your example with your starting position your hand is at 12 oclock
internal rotation would move your hand towards 9 oclock counterclockwise
BUT the racquets orientation to your forearm would not change.
icbw

[don_budge]

Pronation and Use of the Wrist When Serving...

I wrote this in March in response to "erbr" and deleted it after posting it for some time...not nearly as sophisticated as Rod Cross, but I understand the math. Normally I operate on the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle with my students and myself as well.

The Wrist is a Hinge

Am I the only person who considers pronation as a natural biomechanical occurrence?-erbr

Knowledgable tennis players and golfers all over the world agree with you. When teaching the serve I sometimes make a bit of an oblique reference to the serve being similar to an upside down golf swing. Instead of teeing it up on the ground, we attempt to tee it up in the air. To begin with some of the similarities are the take away, the backswing, the transition between backswing to forward motion and the "release" of the wrist(s) which deliver the racquet or club to the ball...it even helps to "waggle" the racquet a bit in the preserve routine. The action of the wrist(s) is perhaps the most fundamentally important aspect of swinging a tennis racquet or a golf club (Ben Hogan certainly agrees with you)...or to swing anything else for that matter. This goes for all shots...long or short, fast or slow...not just the serve. It is also perhaps the most difficult aspect of swinging to convince a tennis or golf student of...it is a matter of swinging, not hitting. Getting too "wristy" even with short putts is the kiss of death, but that being said...you still must swing the putter.

I describe the function of the wrist...or "handled" as it is called in Swedish...as that of the hinge on a door. One never has to consciously think about applying the wrist in the swing of the racquet or the club, but you must let it do what it most naturally wants to do...and that is to swing smoothly with all of the centrifugal energy that the mind/head (the idea behind the shot intended to play), the feet and legs, the hips and body, the shoulders and finally the arm have created. The action of the wrist is a product of all of this and it's job is to transfer all of that action into the face of the racquet. It's really such a simple thing...ha ha. But it's best not to talk too much about it...or to think too much about it either, for that matter. Better to concentrate on footwork and getting into position and just letting "the thing" happen.

Once the wrist(s) take over...delivering the payload feels a bit like "slamming the door".

Everyone always talks about the thumb being such an important digit for homo sapiens. But the wrist for tennis players...and for golfers, is the joint that makes it all possible. Superb question erbr...and I agree with you.

[don_budge]

Roller Coaster of Love...Part 1

Then I wrote this in April for Phil's "frustrating" thread...I deleted this one as well. Stupid me, I didn't realize that this was somehow related to Rod Cross's physics lesson on...what is it he is talking about anyways? I remember talking to my college roommate and doubles partner and backcourt mate on the basketball court, many years ago, 1076 I believe it was...he was a Chemical Engineering major, I said to him..."you know Jim, a tennis match is really one big physics problem and equation, I wonder if you could take an entire tennis match and express it as an equation in terms of force, vectors, with specific quantification." He looked up at me from his studies and said, "That's an interesting thought." I never did follow up on my thought. He went on studying and I went out to practice.


Roller Coaster of Love...remember that tune?


Phil...I have been studying your video over the last couple of weeks and gleaned everything I can from it. The one view has its limitations and the still sequence of your serve adds some insight as well. The only sure way to do this thing is in person...care to fly over to Sweden for a couple of lessons. Just kidding.


The service motion is a bit complex and it involves quite a bit of motion from all of the different parts of the body...so we try to simplify things by creating a model we can relate it to in simple terms. The model that I use is the “berg och dallbana” which translates literally into English from Swedish as the “mountain and valley course”...but it means “roller coaster”. A roller coaster is an amusement park ride that is perfectly designed using the law of gravity. The design is so perfect that the ride feels that it is wildly out of control and traveling at incredible speed...but is so amazingly in control that the owners of such rides are betting everything they have that the ride will not spin out of control and kill a bunch of innocent people on a Saturday afternoon. This is the safe and secure principle we shall attempt to modify your backswing to in order to get you going forward into the “hit” with perfect and effortless energy. We are going to be using gravity as our main source of energy...to create a perfect, yet simple motion...a roller coaster of a serve.


Here’s the thing, Phil...about the set up and backswing. This is a real challenge without having you in front of me to study for a while. To set you up to begin your motion I would like you to create a line directly at your target with the toes of your two feet which are approximately shoulder width apart. Imagine this line going forwards towards your target and all the way back of you to the fence. This line will serve as our “track” for the backswing. I would like to see you bent slightly at the waist so that your arm can “swing” from your shoulder without your body getting in the way. Finally, I would like you to line your racquet up to your target as well, on the same line as the line that your feet created. Point your racquet at the target and hold it about waist high supported by your left hand. Weight distributed from between 60/40 to 70/30 from the front foot to the back. Great...now we have you lined up, and taking aim.

Here we go...hold on to your hat! One thing that we must clarify before we go into any kind of explanation about the motion is the pressure of your grip. Sam Snead referred to the grip on his golf club as holding it with only so much pressure as you would hold a live bird. We only hold on with our hand tight enough to not let go of the racquet. We maintain only enough pressure in the entire arm, forearm and wrist to swing the arm and racquet back into position in one piece without disturbing the exact position that it is in at the setup position. We must eliminate all sources of tension and resistance when we are attempting to use pure gravity to dictate our motion. From this relaxed and confident position at setup we need only to release the racquet with our left hand that is supporting it, and allow the weight of the racquet head to merely fall upon the line of the track all the way back to the fence until it reaches a position at the top of the hill. From the starting position, the roller coaster car begins its decent down the first hill until it reaches the bottom where it will begin its assent slowly up the second hill all the way to the top. Remember the track is along the line that we created with our feet towards our target and it extends all the way back. Keep the racquet on this track. By allowing gravity to dictate the direction and speed of our backswing we will create the position back in our swing where the laws of gravity make the most sense and the least number of things can go wrong. In fact nothing can go wrong...just like the roller coaster. By dropping the racquet head and allowing the weight of it to travel smoothly in front of you and only using the energy of your weight transferring to the back foot by slowly turning your shoulders and allowing your arm to freely swing back into position, we create a position where the racquet will naturally drop behind us at free fall speed into what you are referring to the “pro drop” position.

Now this is where things get a bit interesting...and exciting. Thinking about this point of the motion where the racquet makes a loop starting at free fall speed, behind our backs and how it relates to a roller coaster, we can imagine where the cars of the ride go into a loop and the riders are actually upside down on the track with only gravity to keep them glued to the track. This is where the riders of the roller coaster are screaming at the top of their lungs and their faces are contorted with the g-force that is plastering the tissue of their faces to their skulls. It’s in the loop, baby! This is where the drive of the legs, the turning back of the shoulders and the thrusting or throwing motion of the racquet combine to exponentially create an incredible amount of speed with very little effort. You can imagine that the line a piece of pencil would draw if it was attached to the tip of the racquet...this is your track for the roller coaster of your serve.

The backswing is where I observe the source of your issues. It looks to me that if we can get you into position you can make the move forward if you can maintain a loose grip on the racquet and the relaxation in your arm to create a whip like sensation. (insert post #32 at this point for the action of the wrist)


Just one more thing...it looks to me in frame #3 you have tossed the ball right out of the picture and in frame #4 it is returning to earth. I think your toss is a bit high...which would lead us to the next lesson, how and where to toss the ball.


A description of the Pancho Gonzales serve…

The Gonzales service is a natural action that epitomizes grace, power, control and placement. The top players sigh when they see the smooth, easy action. There is no trace of a hitch and no unnecessary movements. I have never seen a serve so beautifully executed. The toss is no higher than it has to be and it is timed so that he is fully stretched when he hits it. The backswing is continuous and the motion of the backswing blends into the hit and continues into the follow-through without a pause..

Like you...I am a huge admirer of the Gonzales serve...and he obviously knew his "metaphysics".

[don_budge]

All we need to do is change the frustrating...to fascinating...Part 2

And this was the follow up...I think I am still talking about physics here.

All we need to do is change the frustrating...to fascinating

I believe that the keys to your service issues can be found in frame #1, frame #2 and frame #3. This setup position in frame #1 will certainly get you off to a poor start in your swing and if you start the swing poorly what are the chances of you finishing it well? In frame #2 you can see how quickly you have jerked your racquet back into position and since you were so quick you have prematurely quit swinging backwards...you have not completed your backswing. The problem is now in full view in frame #3 as here you are waiting in this position instead of arriving at the point where the roller coaster car (your racquet's head) has reached the top of the mountain and is ready to fall behind your back at free fall speed...to initiate the loop in your swing behind you. It’s impossible to arrive at the “pro drop” properly unless you allow your racquet to fall, without hurrying things. It looks like you have tied yourself up and are preparing a rather wild and hurried swing, which is more like a hit than a swing at this point, at the ball...btw, where is the ball?

In frames #4 and beyond...you demonstrate that you have practiced a lot or have been playing a long time because you are making quite a nice swing at the ball and appear to be in pretty good control and in balance. The key word here is “appear” because the problem will magnify itself when you are nervous, when it is windy, when the sun is in your eyes or any other little thing that distracts you. You probably do not have a great deal of versatility in your serve because all of your concentration is focused on getting the service in play. Even some pretty Swiss lady who happens to be watching you play may get you just a little too excited to hold your rhythm. If I know that some pretty woman is watching me serve, I slow my backswing even more...give her the full show, you see. My serve tends to get even better under pressure...because of the slower backswing.

But if you turn over the controls of your service to gravity in terms of the speed and the track of your backswing...you can hold the rhythm under any conditions...even when the nerves are in play, like for instance, when you are serving out the set. Ever notice how difficult that tends to become? Trying to get the horse in the barn...you have got to take your time and have an enormous amount of patience and control. You cannot trust your emotions, your wrist or anything for that matter, the only thing that you can truly trust is the knowledge and the confidence that nothing can go wrong...because you have a perfect swing and beautiful rhythm, because your mechanics are based solely on the law of gravity. If you miss the first serve you can swing even harder with more spin at the second because you know...what are the chances of missing two in a row? Practically zero. Some days second serves can turn into a real adventure can't they? And why? It's because of the doubts...that faulty rhythm and mechanics can produce.

I watched The Masters golf tournament this weekend...I think I enjoy watching golf more on TV than tennis, I don’t know why I tend to find tennis boring to watch...maybe it is the lack of style nowadays. Perhaps it's the beautiful rhythm of the swings that holds my attention...they mesmerize me. But one thing about the golfers...every single one of them is virtually identical in their backswings. Why is that? That is because the ball is teed up or lying still and they have the time to make the perfect backswing. You can see that none of them are in any particular hurry to finish their backswing because they are gathering all of the resources of power and control that they possess to use the force of gravity together with the motion of their arms and body to control the club head. They get themselves into perfect position at the top of their swing and without hurrying things they allow gravity to initiate their downwards motion to deliver such a sweet and crisp contact at the bottom of their swing on the ball.

Since we are serving...it is the only time in tennis that we have total control of the ball, we can tee it up with our toss, maybe we should learn a bit from the golfers and take our time in the backswing so that we can get ourselves (mind, body and soul) under control to make the most powerful, efficient, controlled yet effortless swing that we can. Sort of like Richard Gonzales...but within our limitations, Phil. Just like the golfer we are trying to gather everything in our power to make the ultimate contact with the racquet head on and through the ball...but instead of the swing climaxing at the bottom of the swing as a golfer does, the serve is climaxing at the top of our swing. Isn't that rather interesting?

I can see that you have plenty of ability and that you are in really good condition...in three or four hours I believe I could get all of your resources together, in harmony with the universe, to make a gravity based swing at the ball. Depending upon your flexibility...to change.

And to make a long story short...incorporate Don's figure 8´s. I remember doing those exercises religiously before practicing my serve back in the old days.

[don_budge]

One more thing..."it"

So there is always one more thing. After the student has mastered his "figure eights" and developed a gravity based and frictionless swing and the wrist is behaving itself...the whole thing is dependent on one more thing. Putting the ball in the path of the traveling racquet head. This can be very disruptive to the whole process.

There is basically one point in time and space where it all collides simultaneously, and perfectly...where the grip, the motion and all of the generated energy meet the ball. Any deviation from this one point in time and space will produce less than "perfect" shots as energy and potential energy will be wasted or erratic.

I call this point "it". Musicians get it...the whole craft depends upon it. Golfers get it. Tennis players get it. Great oraters get it. Anybody who successfully and repeatedly is accomplished in anything in any walk of life gets it. It's too bad more people don't get it...have you ever known anybody who just doesn't get it. But...it is not so easy as that when you are trying to deliver the ball to that one point in time and space in order to put the ball right where the ball should be, and when the ball should be there. When and where...time and space.

As tennis players, this in the end, is the object of our craft also...we seek to find that one point in time and space where everything is perfect. This relates to our serves, our groundstrokes, to those of us hitting the ball in the air still it relates to our volleys. It relates to every single type of shot under the sun. The quest as it were, is to get the grip right, get the feet, body and racquet into position, and then move all the responsible parts to get the racquet head to meet the ball the way we intend it to when we attempt any particular shot. The ultimate challenge for a human being is to have that kind of control over ones self to master such an endeavor. This is why golf and tennis are God's gift to humanity in terms of at recreation...possibly even more significant than that. There are physics, in a "perfect" world and there are the metaphysics in the real world as we know it. Rod Cross is great but he has left a huge variable out of the equation while focusing on some others. But don't get me wrong, he is fine in a certain sphere of influence, I think.

Perhaps a new thread...and a couple of more videos from Coach Don on the toss...in order to assist the student to find "it". Excellent job, Coach...btw.

[tennis_chiro]

Technically, you are correct!

don
thanks for posting the videos. its much clearer now
one question being alittle technical
when you are holding your elbow and the racquet goes from pointing to your right then flips and points to your left isnt that pronation not internal rotation??
i always thought internal rotation was from the shoulder turning the UPPER arm
in your example with your starting position your hand is at 12 oclock
internal rotation would move your hand towards 9 oclock counterclockwise
BUT the racquets orientation to your forearm would not change.
icbw

You are right, Larry, that there is some pronation involved here. If I was truly doing isolated internal shoulder rotation or trying to demonstrate it, my upper arm would be in a vertical plane with my elbow next to my body and the racket face would be maintained in a vertical orientation through the entire motion I am demonstrating there. But in the actual swing, the elbow joint is straightening out as the arm extends the racket up to the ball; there is a lot going on. The pronation is not really a motor unit developing power for the serve according to Brian Gordon's article, but the wrist and forearm do work to align the racket face correctly for impact. As you can see in my little video, as the arm internally rotates (and then counter rotates/externally rotates back to the beginning of the motion) faster and faster, you end up with more and more pronation at the end of the motion as the racket head points down more and more to the ground). The racket face moves from 3 o'clock to 9 o'clock and back again. As it goes faster in my little drill, it is more like 4:30 to 7:30 and back, etc. In my demo, the upper arm is actually doing real internal rotation from 3 o'clock to 9'oclock and externally rotating back, but the hinge at the elbow translates this into a different kind of motion at the racket face, almost like a ujoint in the axle.

I'm not as worried here about identifying which parts of this motion are true internal rotation and which parts are something else (pronation) as much as I am concerned about creating a model that enables you to feel a little of what happens when a player swings the racket through an effective service motion. The biomechanists will undoubtedly take apart everything we might say here in the forum, but our revenge is to actually take something away that enables you to make a better pass at the ball!

don

[tennis_chiro]

So nice to hear about gravity!

So there is always one more thing. After the student has mastered his "figure eights" and developed a gravity based and frictionless swing and the wrist is behaving itself...the whole thing is dependent on one more thing. Putting the ball in the path of the traveling racquet head. This can be very disruptive to the whole process.

There is basically one point in time and space where it all collides simultaneously, and perfectly...where the grip, the motion and all of the generated energy meet the ball. Any deviation from this one point in time and space will produce less than "perfect" shots as energy and potential energy will be wasted or erratic.

I call this point "it". Musicians get it...the whole craft depends upon it. Golfers get it. Tennis players get it. Great oraters get it. Anybody who successfully and repeatedly is accomplished in anything in any walk of life gets it. It's too bad more people don't get it...have you ever known anybody who just doesn't get it. But...it is not so easy as that when you are trying to deliver the ball to that one point in time and space in order to put the ball right where the ball should be, and when the ball should be there. When and where...time and space.

As tennis players, this in the end, is the object of our craft also...we seek to find that one point in time and space where everything is perfect. This relates to our serves, our groundstrokes, to those of us hitting the ball in the air still it relates to our volleys. It relates to every single type of shot under the sun. The quest as it were, is to get the grip right, get the feet, body and racquet into position, and then move all the responsible parts to get the racquet head to meet the ball the way we intend it to when we attempt any particular shot. The ultimate challenge for a human being is to have that kind of control over ones self to master such an endeavor. This is why golf and tennis are God's gift to humanity in terms of at recreation...possibly even more significant than that. There are physics, in a "perfect" world and there are the metaphysics in the real world as we know it. Rod Cross is great but he has left a huge variable out of the equation while focusing on some others. But don't get me wrong, he is fine in a certain sphere of influence, I think.

Perhaps a new thread...and a couple of more videos from Coach Don on the toss...in order to assist the student to find "it". Excellent job, Coach...btw.

I have to say, Steve, I rarely if ever find anyone who wasn't one of my students who is so in tune with my emphasis on the use of gravity in developing a consistent toss. Gravity is really wonderful. It doesn't change appreciably from Death Valley to Mexico City. It doesn't change when you are fatigued. It doesn't change whether you are playing for a Pepsi or your life. It's always the same. At least on this planet.

My rational goes like this. I will let gravity determine the speed of my backswing and I will synchronize my left hand to my right as I toss the ball. Therefore, gravity is determining the speed of my toss and that should certainly lead to a higher level of consistency. The repeatability of this speed is comforting to the body. It says "Oh, I remember this motion. We've done this before; in fact, we've done exactly this before exactly like this; I'm sure we can do it again."

So if someone comes to me to learn to serve, I use this model to build their motion and I have a series of progressions that help them through the various stages of development of their service motions and I know as they go through these stages they will eventually put together an effective serve. (I will try to put up some videos soon that show a three to four year progression some of my students have gone through as they build their serves with these drills.)

On the other hand, if someone already has a service motion, I have to be careful. Before I take their motion apart and leave them naked and helpless as they try to learn a whole new motion, I will try to work with their motion and incorporate some of my principles into their own creation. Usually, I can find a "workaround" that enables them to improve within the framework they have already established.

There are two types of established serves that I will take through a complete change: the obvious one is the player whose serve really doesn't work and who has nothing to lose by giving up their old serve. Unfortunately, my being convinced of this is not enough; the student has to be the one who comes to that realization. They also have to have enough trust in me to stick with what I am asking them to do because it will be painful and frustrating. Those old habits do not go away easily and they will raise their ugly heads at every opportunity.

The second kind of established serve I will change, is when the player comes to me and says I really want to change my serve and is not put off by the fact I lay on them that they will have to hit at least 10,000 practice serves in a three month period before the serve even begins to be useable in competition. It will still take a couple of years to fully learn and more than that to master, but without that initial immersion in focused practice, they will never break their old habits. (The fact that there is some finite number that will enable them to build new better habits makes this infinitely easier than learning strokes you have to hit when the ball does not start out in your hand.)

Ed Weiss and I are working on articles that go into all of this in a little more detail, but let me point out two things:

First of all, whatever motion you use, you must have good rhythm or you will not have any consistency to your toss and therefore to your serve. I prefer to tie that rhythm to the free gravity drop of the racket and in those glorious "pre-McEnroe" eras, the majority of good serves were constructed in a similar fashion. Now whether you use gravity or not, and today it is pretty rare, the lynchpin that holds the service motion together is the weight-transfer/rock. Back to front, Front to Back to Front, whatever...it must absolutely synchronize with the toss of the ball to have consistency under pressure, fatigue or environmental stress (wind).

So I make my students learn to "Toss-and-Catch". My argument is that if you can't get the ball to go up and come down in the right place when you only have to catch it, how can you expect to be able to toss it when you are going to have to hit it. So I have my students toss-and-catch and then "rewind" the motion back to the beginning. They should be able to do this in perfect, repeatable rhythm. So ideally they can take two balls and get 4 tosses and 2 hits without a hitch in a rhythm that is metronomic. Admittedly, they are not firing their legs up into the ball and meeting the ball 4 feet into the court as they eventually might. But if they can't walk, they shouldn't be able to run...or should I say they shouldn't be surprised if they fall down a lot when they try to run!

The second thing I want to say in light of Don_Budge's post above about getting the toss to the right place:

Toss it...See it...Hit what you see!

Tilden may have suggested tossing the ball into your service motion, but I think this is sheer folly. To hit the serve with timing, you have to toss the ball into an area where you can bring that last tenth of a second snap up to the ball you see and you want to hit it with your body fully extended. If you can hit the ball in the tenth of a second after it peaks, it will effectively be stationary in the air having dropped less than 2 inches. If you consider the last 6 inches up to the peak and down from it (about .4 sec) then you have almost a .3 sec window when you want to be in position to be able to strike up at the ball (that last .1 sec on acceleration to contact).

But don't get the idea that you will throw the ball into a churning "electric fan of activity" that is the service motion or my Fig 8 drill. Toss it - See it (and move your racket into position for the final explosion of power) - Hit it.

so much for tonight's ode to insomnia,
goodnight,
don

[julian1]

Do we accelarate on a contact point of forehand?

Thanks, Julian. That was really great. I've now done my mental gymnastics for the whole day, maybe even the whole week.

Wow. Talk about paralysis by analysis. I'm not even going to consider linking to the American Jounal of Physics article. I probably need to read that a couple of times to really digest it, but there are a few things that this article validates on a more applicable level.

(I like to think my students walk away from my lessons thinking, "Wow, that was interesting. Don really knows what he is talking about!". This is great information for me, but I already have a reputation for being too technical. If I integrate too much of this overtly into my lesson presentation, as true as I believe it must be, students may be really fascinated during my presentation, but as they don't get to "reread" that presentation, they will probably walk away saying, "What the hell was that about?!")

So:
1. Trying to hit your serve "harder" when you are serving really well will probably make the ball go slower, if not totally destroying your rhythm and effectiveness. Hit it "faster", not harder, by releasing more completely.

2. On the groundstrokes, use the wrist as a "passive hinge" controlling the ball, but not snapping through it as you try to keep the strings on the ball as long as possible.

3. In the same vein as the passive hinge, try to swing the racket head, not your arm or your hand. This means the wrist maintains its position and slight wrist cock as you swing forward to the ball on the forehand.

4. On the other hand, this validates Phil's effort to emulate the Federer wrist extension/flexion flick at the beginning of his forehand forward swing.

I do think we missed a whole lot of stuff here about internal rotation and the optimum angle of the racket shaft to the forearm to create effective power from internal rotation (you don't get much if the upper arm, forearm and racket shaft form a straight line...which they do in the frying-pan-grip-serve used by rank beginners). I wish we could get a comment from Rod about where that fits into the picture. Probably, I just need to do a little more reading in "The Physics and Technology of Tennis" (Is it in there, Julian?)

Well, that's good for a start on Sunday morning. Curious to hear what the rest of you think.

don

Do we accelarate on a contact point of forehand?

[jdcremin]

Late reply

For me, the serve has always felt like and overhand throw and the forehand like a side throw. The wrist is actively flexing when throwing a baseball - to a point, then it relaxes. You guys seem to be saying that the wrist just allows the racket to come through, like a hinge - with no active forearm flexion besides some radial or ulnar deviation on the forehand or serve, respectively. I say that the wrist brings the racquet head forward then relaxes once the racquet handle is aligned with the forearm. So it is a hinge but only after it does some work.

[jdcremin]

All wrist here

Look at the is Federer forehand - nobody can say he's not flexing his wrist from extended to neutral. You lay the wrist back for a reason, to use it, otherwise, just keep it aligned with the forearm like 1954. The same thing happens with the serve.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Inside_Out&stroke=RFFHInsideOutFront1_500fps.mp4

[johnyandell]

The wrist is moving. But is it contraction and being "used" for a purpose? Or a consequence of other forces? Is it action or reaction or relaxation? Does trying to move it slow it down?

That debate has been going on for a long time and probably (actually certainly) will never be resolved to the satisfaction of the protagonists. Unless of course we call drill holes in Fed's muscles for electrodes...

My own opinion for players not at tour level (and probably tour level as well) is that the more you try to consciously use your wrist the more problems you cause. The most recent biomechanical studies show forehand wrist movement (that is forward flexing) is actually impeded at times by the muscles and that it's key role is in racket alignment.

For a look at the wrist around the contact on a Djok forehand see the interactive forum this month...

http://www.tennisplayer.net/bulletin/showthread.php?t=2591

[GeoffWilliams]

Players don't usually hit great shots unless they fly into the shot with their whole body.

[DougEng]

Good Article

Well expressed but it's not new. Hopefully everyone teaches it!! There is no uniform acceleration in any of the strokes, much less the serve. And frankly, I'm not sure if the concept of the racquet accelerating the wrist is that accurate. We underestimate how much inertia at the racquet tip is created that can't be undone. It's a matter of acceleration of distal segments in the kinetic chain. The end of the bull whip. There's a trick I use to teach how to achieve velocity on the serve. How fast can you move the racquet while keeping the elbow still…or how much radial distance can you move the racquet through only rotation/torque of the elbow.

Best,
Doug

[gzhpcu]

Isn't the server hitting up on the ball? Then at the peak we have full extension and the loose wrist is like a hinge. The upper arm and forearm rotate, the arm extends, the racket is whipped foward and upward towards impact. Seems like it is passive to me, important is that the wrist is loose to allow the action to occur.

[bottle]

The angle I'm working on comes from the two articles by Bruce Elliot here at TP-- much more genial and readable than I somehow had been led to believe, maybe by myself.

Elliot identifies a SEQUENCE between upper arm and forearm rotations. He sees forearm rotation (pronation) come first!

When I combined this notion with a post that someone was kind enough to point out to me-- written by myself some time back on the subject of John Isner's serve-- I found myself doing a bit of overhaul.

I saw Isner's internal rotation of upper arm starting pretty late-- approximately at contact.

Just tried some serves with pronation to contact and internal rotation of upper arm from contact and obtained more racket head speed.

It was the first day the practice court I use was free of ice.